Netflix movie or show suggestion

Milton said:
Original British films and television series are almost always superior to the (invariably dumbed-down) American remakes. See e.g. House of Cards, The Office, Cracker, Get Carter, State of Play, The Ladykillers, One Foot in the Grave, Prime Suspect, etc. ... the list is almost endless.
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Interesting, we watched the Netflix version and really like it. Tried the British version and were bored with it, couldn't get past the first two episodes.
I am going to add that I agree I generally enjoy British versions better than US.
 
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A few more entries:

Justified - DVD series - US Marshall
The Killing - series, Seattle Washington Detectives
Harry and Tonto - movie, Art Carney and cat
Bomb Girls - series, Canadian Women WWII
Land Girls - series, British Women WWII
 
Saw 1945 B&W movie, Brewter's Million. It was 11:00 pm and I was looking for an hour to kill before falling asleep. This movie came in at 75 minutes or so and I decided to watch it. The story line is somewhat predictable but, overall, it was funny, and enjoyable. The movie is fast paced and I had hard time keeping up with math ;).
 
We watched Daniel Deronda and enjoyed it. This was a 2002 Masterpiece Theatre (about 3 hours) that we somehow missed.

This Netflix summary doesn't quite do justice to the show:
The illegitimate son of a wealthy aristocrat, Daniel Deronda harbors a secret past and a ready supply of cash. But when he meets Gwendolyn, a beautiful woman in desperate need of money, things get complicated, as he's already involved in an affair.
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My Netflix find is gem of a comedy called The IT Crowd. British comedy. Love how the Brits can take the simplest, smallest location and make it hilarious.
 
Heads up for Netflix users:

"A Reddit sleuth posted this list of movies and TV shows that will be purged from Netflix in January 2014. If you have time off from work between now and Jan. 1, :cool: it might not be a bad use of your time to binge-watch some blockbusters (Braveheart, Top Gun, Platoon), art-house flicks (Being John Malkovich) and the entire series run of The Kids in the Hall."

Netflix Schedules Massive Purge for Jan. 1
 
walkinwood said:
Try "Coupling" the BBC series. The first two seasons are hilarious. One of the key characters left in the 3rd season and I didn't enjoy it as much.
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+1

IMO the first two seasons of Coupling are as funny as anything that's ever been on TV.
 
I like costume drama and French literature, so last night I watched Bel Ami (pretty boy), from 2012. It's an adaptation of the novel by Guy de Maupassant. Robert Pattinson was in the title role as a poor country Frenchman who becomes a soldier and subsequently worms his way to a position of influence by seducing wealthy Parisiennes in the 1890s. The female roles were players by Uma Thurman, Christina Ricci and Kristin Scott Thomas. The costumes and cinematography were beautiful, but Robert Pattinson was utterly unlikeable and could not give this role the depth it needed. Hence, it was difficult to understand why the wealthy mesdames would find him attractive. Three stars out of five.
 
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We liked Insomnia with Pacino and Williams. Netflix blurb:
Sent to investigate a teenage girl's murder in a small Alaska town, police detective Will Dormer accidentally shoots his partner while trying to apprehend a suspect. But despite his guilt, Dormer is determined to solve the case.
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Julie and Julia (2009) on DVD. As other posters have noted about the performance of actresses, Meryl Streep was good portraying Julia Child, while Amy Adams' acting was not natural at all, though I do not know what the real Julie Powell is like.

I found the movie so so, compared to the book My Life in France by Julia Child that inspired me to get the movie. Most of it was because the book could get more into the details of life in Paris, Marseille, and Germany in the late 40s and the 50s that I found interesting. The movie of course has to be more limited. Then, I did a bit of research on the book Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously by Julie Powells and found that most readers pointed their thumb down due to vulgarity, political rants, and not much about food. So, I passed.

By the way, I got curious and tried to check out Powells' original blog, but it was taken down. I guess she did not want her blog to take away sales of her book.
 
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Then, I watched Masquerade (2012), a hit Korean movie about a troupe member who got drafted to play the king, while the latter was sick due to poisoning by his unknown enemy in the court. The movie has some hilarious moments. It is based on some historical facts, and I imagine that the portrayal of life in the royal court in those days (late 1500s) is realistic.
 
I just watched A Royal Affair, which is a Danish movie from 2012. Yes, it has subtitles. It's about Queen Caroline Mathilde, who was brought from England at the age of 16 in the 18th century to marry King Christian II, who was a bit unhinged. When he has an meltdown during a Grand Tour of Europe, a German country doctor (who shares with the King a respect for the ideas of the Enlightenment) is brought in to become his personal physician. Much politicking, sexual intrigue and drama follow. It's a true story. The three main characters are very well acted, particularly the King. The production values are very high. This film got an Oscar nomination for best foreign language film, which I think was justified. Five stars.
 
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Meadbh said:
I just watched A Royal Affair, which is a Danish movie from 2012. Yes, it has subtitles. It's about Queen Caroline Mathilde, who was brought from England at the age of 16 in the 18th century to marry King Christian II, who was a bit unhinged. When he has an meltdown during a Grand Tour of Europe, a German country doctor (who shares with the King a respect for the ideas of the Enlightenment) is brought in to become his personal physician. Much politicking, sexual intrigue and drama follow. It's a true story. The three main characters are very well acted, particularly the King. The production values are very high. This film got an Oscar nomination for best foreign language film, which I think was justified. Five stars.
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Not about this movie, which sounds really good, but re subtitles. I never minded subtitles. DH though extremely smart is a slow reader (I see him sounding out the words sometimes :)), but he still loves subtitled movies even though he might miss some dialog in a wordy film, because of course the subtitled movies that are available are often the best movies in a given language. I like hearing the dialog in the original language.

Sometimes I'll even turn closed captioning on for an English-language movie when there are whisper-talking actors or it's a Gosford Park ensemble type with a lot of geographic pronunciations going on. And we turn on Spanish captioning for DS's inlaws. Love technology.
 
We both like to turn on English captions whenever available. Nowadays, actors and actresses do not enunciate like they used to. Either that, or our brain's ability to comprehend has deteriorated. No, it's not an aural deficiency as we can hear loudly, but cannot make out what they say.
 
NW-Bound said:
We both like to turn on English captions whenever available. Nowadays, actors and actresses do not enunciate like they used to. Either that, or our brain's ability to comprehend has deteriorated. No, it's not an aural deficiency as we can hear loudly, but cannot make out what they say.
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True re enunciation--actors sometimes make their voices part of their persona never mind we can't understand them. I think it is also the built-in sound systems in these big flat TV sets today--ours replaced the old fashioned kind less than a year ago and it is not as clear (our aging ears might have something to do with it :) but the difference was immediately obvious). We bought a sound bar with the new TV but it wasn't delivered so we decided to try the TV without it. Might have to make it a valentine's present to ourselves.
 
We also use sub-titles. At first they helped DW watch english language programming with accents she's not used to. I got used to them watching movies while exercising, now I find them helpful watching tv, a sure sign of age related hearing decline.
 
Manon of the Spring. Great movie. French.

Edit to add: Manon gets her revenge on the greedy men who killed her father in Jean de Florette.
 
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MichaelB said:
We also use sub-titles. At first they helped DW watch english language programming with accents she's not used to. I got used to them watching movies while exercising, now I find them helpful watching tv, a sure sign of age related hearing decline.
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I was watching a George Gently a while back when the inspector was questioning a farmer in northern England. Despite replaying it several times, the accent was so thick, I had to turn on the subtitles to understand what the character was saying. :)
 
The Guard
An unorthodox Irish policeman with a confrontational personality is teamed up with an uptight FBI agent to investigate an international drug-smuggling ring.

The Guard (2011) - IMDb

I liked it. I couldn't find the best quote from the movie so I will have to try it from memory. US cop is trying to explain that he is smart. "I was a Rhodes scholar. Do you know what that is?" Irish cop: "Yea, like Kris Kristofferson."
Really? Yes, and I got to learn about his very interesting life history, too.
Some interesting stuff like that in the movie.
 
We watched A Dangerous Method (2011). This movie is based on a non-fiction book and tells of the affair between Carl Jung and a patient of his, and the fall-out between Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud who was Jung's mentor.

I was never a student of psychology, and did not know much about psychoanalysis (Freud) and analytical psychology (Jung) to appreciate the difference between the two. This prompted me to do a bit of reading later to cut through the psychobabble.
 
NW-Bound said:
We watched A Dangerous Method (2011). This movie is based on a non-fiction book and tells of the affair between Carl Jung and a patient of his, and the fall-out between Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud who was Jung's mentor.

I was never a student of psychology, and did not know much about psychoanalysis (Freud) and analytical psychology (Jung) to appreciate the difference between the two. This prompted me to do a bit of reading later to cut through the psychobabble.
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No worries, NW. I have a PhD in psychology and haven't a clue about Freud or Jung. In graduate school (U. of Iowa) we weren't allowed to mention their names. "Dust bowl empiricism", doncha know. None of that theoretical nonsense. :cool:

But the movie sounds interesting! Maybe I'll watch it. Most of my professors are gone now...:D
 
Whoa! I am flabbergasted.

I have read what Wikipedia has to offer on psychoanalysis and analytical psychology, and did not get much out of it. I started to think it was me who was so dense.
 
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