Created May 19, 2012 02:58AM PST • Updated Nov 17, 2012 12:42PM PST
Let’s give thanks for five solid recommendations this early holiday season. Four are available from Netflix Instant, while Safety Not Guaranteed is not. Oh well, it’s an uncertain world.
Stay tuned to this channel for regular NOD updates. Want to receive it in your inbox? Subscribe to the ViewGuide News.
-
0 Forum
Replies
- Great
- 73 Points
| Title Released Trust Weighted Summary Viewable | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Wick
– with 66 Trust Points – rated it
Really Great
 Discuss
Safety not guaranteed, but viewing pleasure is assured from this endearing romcom. It features a smart story about a Miss Lonelyheart falling in love with an apparently crazy time-traveler she's researching for an exposé. His crazy but real (crazy-real?) scenario meshes well with today's über-ironic audiences. Unfortunately, Safety Not Guaranteed is not easy for audiences to find. It was in a couple theaters in June, then went missing. This week "CineArts at Santana Row":http://www.cinemark.com/theatre-detail.aspx?node_id=1679 has it at 5:30 and 10:15. I caught the late show last ni… |
||||||
Wick
– with 66 Trust Points – rated it
Great
Discuss
A deserved classic, this aptly titled movie features giant stars, a ginormous mansion incongruously stuck in the heart of the giant state of Texas, a running time that exceeds three hours and giant story elements. It all works amazingly well, never seeming drawn-out or boring, notwithstanding a rather stately pace. Chronicling the amplification of 20th Century Texas society from cattle wealth to oil megawealth, Giant also stoops to conquer racism towards Mexicans. It does all this by following three generations of Texas gentry, their feudal underlings, rivals and assorted functionari… |
||||||
Wick
– with 66 Trust Points – rated it
Great
Discuss
The Coen Brothers are writers as much as directors, making Barton Fink – a satiric tribute to tortured writers and the demonic pull of Hollywood – more than a little self-reverential. Oops, did I say reverential? Referential, self-referential. Either way, it's one of their best movies, notwithstanding being clankingly arch at times. It is after all a career thriller. A writer goes to Hollywood and is forced to … go Hollywood. With the Coen's trademark ironic humor applied, the whole schmear ends up as a Borscht Belt Day of the Locust, if you catch my drift. "That's showbiz"… |
||||||
Wick
– with 66 Trust Points – rated it
Perfect
Discuss
Greatest Western? The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence is certainly in the running, given how it plays with Wild West myth-making, features three iconic stars along with a passel of great costars and wields a humdinger of an ending. "Nothing's too good for the man who shot Liberty Valance," the last line portentously declares. The same could be said of the praise that can be heaped on this John Ford classic. The story unfolds in flashback after a grey-haired Jimmy Stewart returns with his wife to the little town where they met decades earlier. Reflecting back, he tells the tale of a vi… |
||||||
Wick
– with 66 Trust Points – rated it
Very Good
3 Forum Replies
Two movies in one – the demented story of a badass junkie and the inspiring story of an avenging angel. Both are about the same guy, Sam Childers, an American biker who has saved and continues to save hundreds of otherwise doomed Sudanese kids. As a kickass movie about a real guy trying to stop a current wave of genocide, Machine Gun Preacher succeeds as action-adventure and as call-to-action. Wow. The call-to-action is the same one the "Kony 2012":http://invisiblechildren.com/movedc/ phenomenon raised earlier this year, the need for the world to stop Joseph Kony's "Lord's Resistanc… |
