Netflix Power Tools

Almost three weeks of May went by before I watched something to add to the list. The last movie we streamed before the lull, the depressing The Stoning of Soraya M., might be partly to blame, but the NBA playoffs and yard work usually grab a bunch of my attention this time of year. I got back into viewing with some documentaries, a foreign film and one more from Susan’s list of romances to try.

PC World magazine has an interesting list of web sites which feature tools to make Netflix more useful. Since I am only using instant play right now, I have been trying out two tools that specialize in movies available for streaming, Instant Watcher and Netflix Pivot. Instant Watcher has lots of lists of movies recommended by various criteria, including a useful list of movies on which the streaming rights are about to expire. Netflix Pivot is the most fun, because it presents a colorful interactive wall of DVD boxes that can be filtered by a great variety of criteria to instantly present you with boxes of movies. [Update March 2014: Netflix Pivot is no longer available]. All these tools are linked to the Netflix general customer rating for the movie and to the movie page at Netflix. If you don’t have time to check these out now, bookmark the page for checking out later, or come back here to find it again.

Here is what I have watched since I posted my last list. [The ratings I give are on my own number system which is explained at the link on the sidebar].

Let’s Talk About Sex – 2009 (3.2). Only an hour long, this documentary about adolescents and sex does a very good job of realistically presenting the variety of attitudes among teens and parents around the US towards sex and sex education. Interviews with church leaders of varying attitudes shows how unrealistic they can be. Moving to Holland, a quite different attitude is shown and the comparison statistics on teen pregnancy and STD/STIs are startlingly different. Produced by Advocates for Youth, the movie tour is led by Australian director James Houston with unobtrusive interviews. Archival footage from sex ed documentaries and from TV shows provides appropriate humor. 

Angels in the Dust – 2007 (2.9). Marion Cloete and her husband are white South African progressives who have dedicated their lives to running a school and orphanage for South African children who are victims of the AIDS epidemic, either personally through forced sex with adults or through the loss of their parents, or both. This documentary follows Marion closely as she goes about her work in the village area where she has located her school. Her dedication and the warmth of the children are encouraging, but the victimization of the children and the pain they endure are heartbreaking. Though we also see her husband and two adult daughters who are involved in the school, we don’t learn much about their lives before the school or about how the school is run and funded, nor are we informed about other initiatives by the government and NGOs to deal with this problem.

Ingredients – 2009 (2.8). There’s nothing particularly new in this one hour documentary about the virtue of locally grown food versus industrial scale food from afar, but the movie has a farm fresh feel as farmers and chefs from the Pacific Northwest and New York State speak positively and enthusiastically show us how they farm and raise animals and how they work with community supported agriculture programs and inner city school programs to eliminate the middle men and educate kids about real food. By only briefly mentioning the evils and dangers of industrialized food the film saved a half hour of time and discouragement.

Selling God – 2009 (2.8). While pointing out how fundamental Christian evangelists in the US use the classic marketing techniques of hucksters, this low budget documentary also manages to include a lot of tongue in cheek put downs of religion in general, while still including a few comments from some more progressive religious scholars.

Visual Acoustics: The Modernism of Julius Shulman – 2008 (2.8). At an early age Julius Shulman stumbled into becoming a photographer for architects and he joyfully kept working at it into his nineties. Based in Los Angeles, he became so sought after in his field that he worked with many famous architects in numerous locations. This documentary follows this enjoyable man in his twilight years as he meets with colleagues, students and owners of some of the celebrated houses he has photographed, often revisiting them years later. Not much is told about his personal life, even though his daughter is involved in several interviews in the movie. Modern architecture itself is not the star of the film; that honor goes to this happy man and his photographic accomplishments.

Intimate Stories – 2002 (2.8). Another easy to take movie from Argentina, billed as a comedy but more of a gentle drama with humor, this is about three people from wind swept Patagonia taking to the road for a purpose. One is a traveling salesman on a romantic mission, one an elderly man in search of his lost dog and the third a young mother who must go to the city to claim her right to spin the wheel for a prize on a TV show. The stories loosely intertwine in this laid back look at the kind of mild adventures that sometimes enter our lives.

Jude – 1996 (DNF). Almost a quarter of the way into this movie version of the Thomas Hardy novel, Jude the Obscure, the script delivered a young man into adulthood, a job as a stonemason, a marriage and abandonment by his wife, all while he supposedly read Greek and Latin classics and longed for a University education. The problem is that most of the film time was spent on scenes of disconnected dalliance without any connected drama or exposure of the characters as real people. The other elements of a good movie looked like they may be there, but without a decent script this movie does not seem worth watching.