Qwikster Doesn’t Quicken

Netflix just announced they are aborting Qwikster, the intended new web site for the DVD mail side of the business. They also claim to have added a few hundred more movies for streaming as well as numerous TV show episodes. In fact, they claim old TV episodes are quite popular with customers. Having recently powered through four seasons of Friday Night Lights, I must admit it is nice to be able to watch the next episode of a series instantly whenever the urge strikes. But if the series is not available for instant view, then getting individual DVDs from Netflix can be a slow process, as I found out with The Wire. Public libraries often have each season of a TV series available in one boxed DVD set, as I found for The Wire

I am not sure if it is appropriate to include videos of stage performances like standup comedy routines in my lists here. I do rate them on my database and at Netflix, for a record of what I have seen and to help with the Netflix recommendation algorithm. I have listed some here in the past but may not include them in the future. A film of a stage play or opera might be more appropriate for inclusion, but I rarely watch such material; in fact I have never been able to stay with an opera viewing for more than a few minutes.

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].

Wild China – 2008 (3.4). Fascinating sights and wonderful cinematography are captivating in this six part BBC documentary about the flora and fauna of China and what is being done by the Chinese government to protect them. Intelligently narrated and without any other commentary or interviews, the movie is an encouraging pleasure to watch, but though informative, it could have reached a higher level if it was just a little more informative about the details.

Prohibition – 2011 (3.2). Ken Burns and Lynn Novick document the history of the Temperance movement, the passage of the Prohibition amendment to the Constitution, its implementation by the Volstead Act, the challenges of enforcement and the eventual repeal. There are lessons here about culture, morals, politics and government, presented via archival photos and footage with actor voiceovers and some anecdotal remembrance interviews. The film manages to not be ideological beyond professing great respect for the personal freedom protections embodied in the Constitution, and pointing out that Prohibition was a freedom restricting aberration.

Friday Night Lights (Season Four) – 2009 (3.2). The story transition to season four is smooth and the progression of the characters during the season feels real as some characters learn from their experiences while others struggle to make sense of what happens in their lives. We look forward to following the characters into season five, the final one, expecting that leaving them after that will feel like the right thing to do.

The Bicycle Thief – 1948 (3.2). I thought I had at least since parts of this Italian classic through the years, but was surprised on viewing that I did not recognize anything until the final scene. Filmed mostly on the streets of Rome, the movie has a realistic fluidity as we follow the man and his young son tracking down the essential bicycle that was stolen from him on the first day of a job that he had finally been able to obtain in the devastated post war economy. Though very low budget and quite simple in theme, this film has an enduring realism in capturing a moment and place.

Out of Ireland – 1995 (3.1). This documentary tells the story of Irish emigration to America using the personal journeys of a handful of individuals, with archival pictures and movies and interviews with historians and folklorists, and actors doing voiceovers. The political, religious and economic background is well presented, both in Ireland and in America. The film tells the story of each individual separately, which is easier to follow than when the stories are interwoven as many documentaries do.

Amexicano – 2007 (2.9). Picking up a little handyman work from a friend, an overweight Italian-American man is anxious about having to hire a day worker helper, but after a bad      experience with a US citizen Mexican day worker, he finds a hard working illegal immigrant from Mexico, and becomes involved with him personally. A little clumsy at first, this small indie gets better and the actors are appealing. Carmine Famiglietti, who has a gentle sincerity about his portrayal of the overweight man, wrote the script.

Familia – 2005 (2.9). Writer/Director Louise Archambault showed promise in both categories with this French language drama from Canada about three generations of women in a family mixed up by divorce and infidelity. It takes a while to catch on to what is going on and who is who, but that turns out to be mostly intentional. The direction is smooth and the acting good. Unfortunately, whether by nature or nurture, and in spite of the fact the men are worse than the women, the entire family is rather unlikeable.

Nightjohn – 1996 (2.9). This TV movie about clandestine literacy teaching of slaves in the ante bellum South feels a little like a caricature at first but then settles into a decent drama with a very good finish. Keeping slaves illiterate was a vital part of keeping them enslaved. Literacy lifts the lowly and receives a memorable endorsement from this story.

Shades of Ray – 2008 (2.8). A young half Pakistani half white couple are matched up by their Pakistani fathers, but the young man has an offer of marriage pending with his white girlfriend. The young leads have appeal, but everyone else is a bit stereotyped, with the male sidekick role being one that should have been jettisoned. The story has a few laughs and occasionally tries to make a social point, but is pretty tepid.

Under the Bombs – 2007 (2.9). There is some drama and a hint of romance in this Arabic language movie about a Lebanese woman returning to south Lebanon in the aftermath of the 2006 bombings by Israel. Her 6 year old son was staying there with her sister when the bombs struck and the woman is desperate to find them. She hires a cabbie who is brave or foolish enough to take her. But what is most interesting about the film is the almost documentary images of the actual destruction and havoc that occurred.

Yanks -1979 (2.8). This drama of two American soldiers training in England for the WWII D-Day invasion and falling in love with British women who were committed to British servicemen away in combat was too long and yet the script failed to use its time to adequately explore the feelings of the characters in sufficient depth. The acting was marginal, with the women doing better than the men. Despite the always worthwhile premise, this film failed to deliver anything memorable.

Maze – 2000 (2.7). Rob Morrow co-wrote directed and starred in this not particularly funny romance about an artist with fairly severe Tourette’s who falls in love with the girlfriend of his best friend who is away for seven months in Africa with Doctors without Borders. Clumsy at first, with the Tourette’s symptoms particularly uncomfortably portrayed, the movie gets a little better as Laura Linney becomes more involved, though a nude scene of her as a model did not need to be so flagrant to make its point.

Netflix Limits My World

I am continuing to note new ways in which Netflix has changed their web site for me personally since I have dropped the option for movies in the mail, in addition to those I pointed out in my “I Dood It” posting here on August 27, 2011, and it is starting to raise my irritation level.

Today I noticed that the Netflix filmographies for actors and directors only include movies available on Netflix Play Now. I also expect the previously existing save portion of the instant queue is going to disappear, so that when a movie in the queue loses instant rights, it just vanishes from my queue rather than going into a saved portion.

Our “Friends at Netflix” have gone out of their way to remove previously available information and methods for me to learn about movies that are not available for instant viewing. They have unilaterally decided to limit my access to the world of movie information about any movie that I cannot watch on Netflix on line. I am sure they would say that they did not act unilaterally but rather made the changes in response to my dropping mail membership; but why did they not explain up front that if I dropped mail membership all these features would disappear, and then maybe I would not have dropped mail? The answer is that they wanted me to drop mail and they don’t want me to have the previously accessible features available to entice me to reinstate mail or to help me find movies to borrow from the library or rent from Redbox. And they guessed right when they figured they could not actually entice me back to DVDs by mail. In fact just today Netflix issued an apology to customers and an explanation that they are in fact going to split the DVD mail business off under the name Qwickster.

I appreciate what Netflix did historically in making movies available by mail and what they are doing now with on line movie viewing, but the way they have handled this transition has been, as I have mentioned previously, insensitive at best and downright underhanded and sneaky at worst. The good will they had with me has pretty much been extinguished. The writer of this article at PC World magazine feels the same way now about Netflix and adds info about how the changes affect households with multiple viewers.  Here is an article telling about how many customers Netflix has lost and how their stock price has dropped. Reiko sent a link to this article from USA Today. And here is NPR’s take on the latest development.

While all this Netflix flap has been going on here in the US (and Canada?), Netflix has been quietly setting up for launch of its streaming service in Central and South America as well as the Caribbean. Tomorrow the world!

I have been trying to figure out how to work around the lost Netflix functionality. For filmographies, full and even better ones are available at the Internet Movie Data Base and I especially like the listing of all cast members with the name of the character they play and often a picture of the actor. The IMDb also gives more each movie average user review scores and sometimes metacritic scores, both on a 10 scale, but unlike Netflix, there is no link to the Netflix page for the movie and there is no column to quickly see my Netflix prediction for each movie. To access the Netflix movie page for user reviews and predictions, I have to type the movie name into the Netflix search box. The IMDB also may work as a replacement way to browse by genres for movies that are not available on Netflix streaming, and IMDb also has some trailers that Netflix does not. [Even before this latest transition, Netflix took away two other useable features on the movie page – they dropped all links to critic reviews and they dropped the identity of the user reviewers and the measure of their similarity to me.]

So here is how I am proceeding now. I use the IMDb for the full filmography and for their average user score for any movie that interests me. I use Netflix for anonymous member reviews and for the average member rating and the prediction for me based on the Netflix algorithm. But here is the interesting thing (at least to number freaks like me). I have created my own IMDb prediction algorithm by taking the IMDb score (which is on a 10 scale) and cutting it in half to make it match the 5 scale Netflix prediction and then subtracting 9/10 of a point to compensate for the lower rating I give most movies compared to both Netflix members and IMDb users. 

Based on the last 48 movies I rated, the Netflix algorithm was off on predicting by an average of .375 per movie, while my IMDb formula was off only .151. With my IMDb prediction, half of the 48 movies were better than predicted and half worse, but with the Netflix prediction three quarters of the 48 movies were worse than predicted. In the past I have praised the Netflix algorithm for its accuracy, but either I have changed without them detecting it or they have changed without telling me. In view of their diminished good will factor, I was leaning toward the conclusion they are skewing the numbers, but a quick look at my notes on some old Netflix predictions movies I have not seen shows that the numbers have not changed significantly. For now, I will be using both predictors and continuing to keep track of which is more accurate.

Studying Netflix operations and watching a couple more seasons of Friday Night Lights cut into my movie viewing time, but 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].

Still Walking – 2008 (3.0). The talented Hirakazu Koreeda directed this thoughtful Japanese drama about a family gathering for the fifteenth annual remembrance of the accidental death of the oldest son. The interplay of the various characters at first seems designed to be taken at face value, but then we begin to realize that the face they show is often masking what they are actually feeling. Good script, acting and direction help cover the fact that much of the story takes place over one evening in the home of the parents. In 2005, Koreeda directed the excellent Nobody Knows, a poignant movie about a family of young children abandoned by their mother. He seems to draw wonderful performances from young actors, as he does in this movie, particularly from the step-son.

Friday Night Lights (Season Two) – 2007 (3.0). What was good from the first season is still there, but unfortunately the second season includes some unnecessary subplots of violent crime that seem totally out of place and detract from the overall experience of the story lines and characters.

Friday Night Lights (Season Three) – 2008 (3.0). There are some pretty big gaps in the story arc from season two to season three, but they become less annoying as the season progresses and the characters, young and old, grow from their experiences. Some characters move on and some new ones show up, including a believable villain.

Tying the Knot – 2004 (2.9). This low budget documentary does a fairly effective job of advocating for legalization of same sex marriage, without being strident or even appearing completely one sided. Concentrating on the stories of two popular Tampa policewomen and two older Oklahoma men, the movie shows how these long term relationships had all the semblances of marriages, without the legality and how the absence of legalization can create seriously unfair problems. You can feel the change coming while realizing it is not right around the corner.

Phil Ochs: There But for Fortune – 2010 (2.8). He had a way better voice than his contemporary Bob Dylan and he wrote very topical and powerful folk protest songs, but Phil Ochs never became famous or had a hit. The simple reason seems to be that his music was not as catchy as the Dylan songs. This decent documentary about a talented, generous and congenial man troubled by mental health and alcoholism issues is loaded with footage of him performing in numerous venues. There are also interviews with some other musical artists and with his family members. The movie makes me want to listen to CDs of his music to hear more of what I missed back then. 

The Unknown Soldier – 2007 (2.8). This German documentary about the controversy over a public exhibit documenting the involvement of the regular German Army in the holocaust atrocities contains some jaw dropping information, but the presentation is not well organized. Jumping between multiple interviews with the English subtitles sometimes overlapping the German titles identifying the interviewee was distracting, and the lack of maps to help viewers locate the places discussed did not help.

Biloxi Blues – 1988 (2.8). Neil Simon’s story of new Army recruits in basic training in Mississippi near the end of WWII made for a decent enough dramedy, though it probably has more appeal to those of us who have been through military basic training ourselves. My experience from 20 years later resonated with a lot of what was in the movie. There is a nice nostalgic feel and the movie holds its age well.

The Thin Red Line – 1998 (2.7). Another movie by Terrence Malick with rich visuals and lyrical, intelligent, subjective narration by the characters, this story about a WWII US Army unit fighting on Guadalcanal after the Marines had captured the airfield meanders and lingers and like most of Malick’s work the sum of the parts never quite equals a whole.

Lewis Black: Stark Raving Black – 2009 (2.6). This standup comedy routine from a 60 year old Jewish comic had a few humorous moments but was mostly marginal.

The Joke – 1968 (2.4). There is not much reason to watch this movie about a college student in 1950’s Czechoslovakia who is severely punished for a politically incorrect joke and years later seeks revenge. The film is a satire on the repressive communist system and was allowed to be made and shown during a brief period of local political liberalization, but unless you are interested in the political history there is not much in this film worth watching. One interesting flashback editing technique involved the contemporary man appearing to interface with the people in some of the flashback scenes, supposedly to show how his mind was mingling the past and present.

I Dood It

Tired of spending time trying to find “mail worthy” DVDs from Netflix that are not available from the King County Library, I decided to cut my Netflix cost still further (by another one half). I dropped the mail option completely and will concentrate on just streaming for now with occasional supplementation from the Library or maybe a redbox kiosk. As a sign of how bad the pickings were getting, the last three  I received in the mail I rated 2 stars “did not like”.

The list of pros for doing this was considerably longer than the cons list. In addition to the financial saving and time saved from “mail worthy” browsing, the pros include more time for instant viewing, no bothering with mailboxes and concerns for mail security, no suffering through marginal mail movies because I paid extra for them, and no rushing to watch a movie to get it in the mail. In fairness to the Netflix mail program though, I never had any problems with mail security (but I did sometimes get a defective DVD), and there can also be pressure to stream a movie before the streaming rights expire (notice is given usually about a week ahead of the expiration date).

It is interesting to see the changes that take place when Netflix mail rights expire. My regular Netflix queue was promptly removed from the Netflix site. Using the “Watch Instantly” tab I can access genre lists to browse and sub-genre lists that can also be sorted by rating prediction, but all this is limited to movies that are available for instant viewing. A new tab or maybe one I just don’t recall is a “Just for Kids” tab with links to play now shows. The “Instant Queue” tab appears to work basically the same as before. The suggestions for viewing that were available on the “Suggestions for You” tab have now disappeared; though the tab is still there and the page acknowledges I have rated over 2,500 movies, it tells me to rate more so Netflix can help me find movies. The “Browse DVDs” tab is still available, but when I want to browse DVD choices I am presented with a page of ten marginal movies which are available only by mail and a reminder that I can have a broader selection if I sign up for DVDs by mail; there is no further overall guided browsing available now. Every movie page also has a reminder and button to sign up for mail DVDs.

Netflix is a sly business and I think the changes I have noted are designed to make it look like they want me to sign back up for mail, while at the same time actually discouraging me from doing so. That way they can say they did not kill the mail business, but that the customers chose to let it die. The changes may require some functional adjustment on my part to learn how to best use what browsing capabilities are still available, in order to find movies to get from the library or redbox. I expect the loss of this functionality is a clever ploy by Netflix to discourage getting movies elsewhere.

Since it does not make much practical difference here whether I streamed a movie rather than watched from a DVD, I am dropping any reference to streaming in the movie write ups. So 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.

Friday Night Lights (Season One) – 2006 (3.3). Big time Texas high school football in a small Texas town gets top treatment in this series which is at various times soap opera, sports movie and family drama.  Following the team and characters through the first season for the new coach, plenty of intertwining plot lines are developed as the teenagers deal with growing up under athletic, scholastic and social pressures, often with a lack of admirable adult role models. I didn’t care for the home movie look created by purposely shaky camera work, but thankfully its use diminished as the season progressed.

The Pacific – 2010 (3.1). This HBO mini series is similar to Band of Brothers in following some American fighting men in action in WWII, this time concentrating on Marines invading South Pacific islands defended by Japanese forces. The battle scenes are brutal and horrific, almost like a documentary of the great losses suffered by our forces. But this series also follows some of the men on R&R and back on the home front, concentrating on three Marines in particular. The most effective scenes emotionally are interactions between Marines and their civilian loved ones, where in spite of strong reciprocal love, there is so much the civilians can never understand about what the Marines experienced.

The Betrayal – 2008 (3.0). As part of the withdrawal from Vietnam, after the US pulverized the small neutral Kingdom of Laos with saturation bombing in order to “save it from the communists”, American support was abruptly pulled from the country without regard for the fate of Laotians who co-operated with the US. One of those was a career military man whose son was a co-maker of this interesting documentary, which tells the story of what happened to the man, his wife and ten children. Though the underlying story is horrific and the experience of the family through the years filled with pathos, there is a poetry to the film that makes the experience of watching it feel more reflective and spiritual rather than critical and profane.

No Direction Home: Bob Dylan – 2005 (3.0). Martin Scorsese put this documentary together, with archival concert, touring and personal footage and also interviews with insiders. There is no narration, though an interview with Dylan looking back provides some continuity. It doesn’t quite all come together and we really don’t learn anything new about Dylan, who comes across as not especially likeable, but the impact of the songs he wrote and is shown performing in the turbulent 60s reminds us how much his music was a part of the times that were a changing.

Catfish – 2010 (2.9). A young documentary film maker and his partner decide to make a movie about his photographer brother who has been contacted via Facebook by an 8 year old girl who paints very good pictures of his photographs. The photographer talks to the mother and the seductive older sister as the film warms up, but also briefly slows down before the three men from New York start considering making a surprise visit to Michigan. Some inventive low budget techniques are well employed and the social media subject is topical in this somewhat different and promising piece of work. Apparently the trailer misrepresents this movie as a thriller, which is pretty much of a stretch.

Cedar Rapids – 2011 (2.8). There is nothing new or special in this comedy about a dorky insurance salesman who goes to the “big city” for a convention and has what for him is an unconventional time, but there are enough laughs to make it fun. The John C. Reilly character is especially a hoot, at least until he is relegated to a sidekick role.

Defiance – 2008 (2.8). Based on a true story, this WWII tale of Polish Jews who flee the Nazis and hide out in the Belarus forests makes a longish movie with continuous action and violence and is a little short on character development and personal drama, but as another of the few films that shows armed Jewish resistance, it is worth watching.

Skin – 2008 (2.8). Based on the true story of a dark skinned girl born to white parents in South Africa, this movie follows the girl’s life into adulthood, confronting Apartheid and prejudice and trying to deal with the strains her skin color puts on her relationship with her parents. Such an interesting subject should have become a better film, but though the locations were real and the spirit of the production was genuine, the script was uneven and the direction and acting were not strong enough to compensate for the minimal time allowed for the characters to express themselves on what is the true significance of skin color or race both in societal terms and on a personal level.

The Crucible – 1996 (2.8). Arthur Miller’s play gets liberated from the stage and placed in some nice Salem sets, but the screen time is dominated by dialog deliverance. Hysterical fear of evil doers and irrational punishment of innocents by governmental power unfortunately has a way of repeating itself, from witchery to communist infiltration to terrorist cells. Good acting all around, with Paul Scofield especially effective as the chief judge.

The Third Miracle – 1999 (2.2). I suspect something got lost between the book and the script for this movie, because the story in the film does not make much sense. From talk alone we learn that a young Catholic girl refugee from WWII Eastern Europe came to Chicago and eventually abandoned her 16 year old daughter to live in a Parish convent and work as a sort of domestic. In 1979 a priest who is questioning his own faith is chosen to investigate whether the woman should be a candidate for sainthood. He flirts with her daughter and becomes immersed in the case, but neither the people nor the process make much sense as portrayed in this confused production, which wasted the talent of director Agnieszka Holland and ended without seeming to know what it was trying to say.

The Object of My Affection – 1998 (2.2). Supposedly a different kind of romantic comedy, about a relationship problem that is new to the screen, this movie was not romantic or funny and if the story had not been told before, the reason apparently was that it is not worth telling. Add a poor script, uninspired direction and weak acting and this is one to avoid. SPOILER ALERT (but don’t hesitate to read anyway): Jennifer Anniston falls for a gay guy (maybe she should try this in real life).

The Adjustment Bureau – 2011 (2.0). Maybe the short story was good and maybe the creative mind behind the script and direction is talented, but the result for me was a marginal premise for a boring story about unappealing people with a foregone conclusion. I admit sci-fi is not on my favorites list but this film was an especially weak ambassador for the genre. Bending some of the rules of what we think we know about the way things work is part of the sci-fi license, but bending them back and forth and changing the bends on the fly as this movie does is just sloppy story telling.  

Getting Tougher

There are not many movies in my DVD queues that Netflix has but the King County Library doesn’t. The KCL collection is truly extensive and readily available, except for the quite new ones. I have had Netflix mail me a few of those older ones that the library doesn’t have and I can see why the library didn’t bother. These are small independent movies that aren’t very good. It is getting tougher to find a good movie for mailing and I need to get tougher with my Netflix ratings of what I have watched, so I don’t get misled by the Netflix predictions. Barely marginal movies need to slip below 2.5 so I can tell Netflix “2 stars did not like”. Also, rather than just relying on the Netflix prediction, I need to read some of the member reviews to get a better idea of what kind of movie it is, and also take with a grain of salt any prediction based on a low number of member reviews (early raters are usually predisposed in favor of a movie, so they skew the early predictions higher).

This list of 16 movies includes 8 by streaming, and now that I am down to one at a time in the mail from Netflix, the streaming will predominate, though it could diminish again if I start getting movies from the library. For now I have arranged my streaming queue with the highest Netflix predictions at the head and I plan to mostly watch those first.

So again, here is what I have watched on DVD and streaming since I posted my last list. The ratings I give are on my own number system explained at the link on the sidebar. Those watched via Netflix instant view, include “Streamed” after the numeric rating.

Cautiva (Captive) – 2005 (3.6). Twenty years earlier, The Official Story very effectively told a tale of an Argentine woman who suspected that her adoptive baby had in fact been stolen from political victims during the “disappearances” of 1978. This newer movie is just as effective as ithe earlier film as it tells the story from the point of view of a teenage girl coming to realize the parents who raised her may have been participants in such a kidnapping. Well done all around, it is refreshing to have a movie with a script that moves the story along at just the right pace, direction that enhances the film without calling attention to itself and acting that is consistently authentic. This is another winner from Argentina.

Like Dandelion Dust – 2009 (3.2). Another spin on the “happy adoptive parents may lose their young child to the now supposedly reformed biological parents” story, this one is better than I expected and I was surprised to learn from watching the special features after the movie that it is based on a book by a Christian author. The film did refrain from expletives, but it was not religious in tone, in fact the one religious couple actually came across as a bit naïve. Nicely paced and well-acted, without leaving time to explore possible plot holes, the script came across as presenting a real situation that makes you think about what you would do if you were either one of the parents. The six year old boy was a good actor, and seeing Mira Sorvino in another very good performance makes one wish her filmography included better films. 

Bramwell – (Season One) 1995 (3.2) Streamed. Jemma Redgrave plays a young1895 British doctor who starts a free clinic in the East End of London, after being sacked by the male chauvinist doctor in charge of the traditional hospital. She lives with her widowed father, a respected doctor, and is helped with her clinic by a philanthropic widow, a respectful somewhat new male doctor, cranky nurse and capable porter. Though she is inexperienced, she is strong willed and independent, sometimes to a fault. The interesting general story arc is maintained and supplemented by episodic dramas. The image quality is somewhat poor, but the interesting stories make up for it.

The Diary of Anne Frank – 2009 (3.0) Streamed. This Masterpiece version of the story of Anne is quite personalized, narrated by her and presenting her as a precocious teen often so caught up in herself that she was a little hard to take. Though hiding out under the noses of the Nazis is highly dramatic, this movie does not indulge those dramatic aspects, nor does it explore much of the personal dynamics between the other people in hiding. All that is shown is basically what revolves around Anne from her point of view. Though perhaps much truer to the diary, this approach is also much narrower.

Hiding and Seeking – 2004 (3.0) Streamed. With the feel of a home movie, this documentary tells of an American Jewish man born in a WWII refugee camp who is concerned that his adult Orthodox sons in Jerusalem are too closed minded about Gentiles. He takes them to a small village in Poland where a Polish family hid their grandfather and his two brothers from the Nazis for 28 months, risking death themselves. After they find the place and even some of the people involved, one of the close minded ones opens a little, but their narrowness is almost too strong to overcome. The grandfather is too feeble to travel and is ashamed he never contacted the family after the war, and we learn that the silence was hard for the protectors to understand. There is no great profundity here, but some genuine humanity.

FDR – 1994 (3.0) Streamed. The story of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt is so inherently interesting that it would be hard to make a movie about them that was not good. This American Experience documentary did a fairly good job, but does not hold its age that well. Their strained personal relationship is followed through the years and his political career to the Presidency is quickly tracked. The Depression is touched and his relationship with Churchill is explored through WWII, but there is not a lot on the specifics of the politics at play through the Roosevelt years. There is so much material that any attempt like this to touch it all has to fall a little short of the immense possibilities.

Monsieur Hire – 1989 (3.0) Streamed. A middle aged voyeur is discovered by the woman at whom he peeps and then he is surprised when she shows interest in him. Meanwhile the voyeur is suspected in the death of another young woman. This very watchable French film will hold your attention and keep you guessing all the way to its very French ending.

Battle in Seattle – 2007 (2.9). The protests against the WTO meeting in Seattle in 1999 brought unprecedented attention to this international quasi-governmental puppet of multinational corporations. This movie about those protests does a good job of capturing the developing events, concentrating on the veteran peaceful protest organizers, one swat team member and his wife, and a TV reporter caught up in the violence that erupted after anarchists targeted the windows of chain stores and Seattle police efforts to disperse or arrest deteriorated into a police riot. WTO snubs of a representative of Doctors Without Borders seeking low cost medicines and of a delegate from an African nation trying to get more equity for smaller nations were appealing subplots that could have used for screen time, but overall the film conveyed an effective message of the resilience of protestors in the face of unsympathetic corporate greed.

La Mission – 2009 (2.8) Streamed. Benjamin Bratt plays a Mexican-American single dad ex-con now living a stable life as a San Francisco bus driver whose hobby is restoring cars. He is justifiably proud as his son is about to graduate from high school and head for college, but macho dad is shocked to learn his only child is gay. Written and directed by real life brother Peter Bratt and set in their hometown, this drama feels legitimate in showing the struggle of the father to deal with his homophobia, though sometimes close ups of him just thinking uncomfortably slow the pace. There is no pat plot formula here, and that seems more real.

Raising Victor Vargas – 2002 (2.8) Streamed. This movie starts amateurish, crude and awkward as it show Latino teens in a high rise ghetto but then shifts to become a story of the tensions in a family consisting of a devoutly Catholic Dominican refugee grandmother trying to raise three disparate teenagers. The crudity thankfully diminishes, the amateurism assumes a sort of charm and the awkwardness proves honest, but maybe just a little too late.

A Tale of Springtime – 1990 (2.8) Streamed. This typical Eric Rohmer French talkie starts with several minutes without a word spoken, boring, perhaps on purpose. But soon the chats begin, primarily between two women, a high school philosophy teacher and a younger girl who meet at a party and offer each other companionship.  They talk their way through several venues and cross paths with the girl’s divorced father and his young girlfriend. Not a lot happens, as everyone seems to be mulling their situation and their next move, but there are some reasonably interesting conversations. Too bad the bottom half of the Netflix streamed subtitles are cut off – a problem I just reported.

Badlands – 1973 (2.8). Critic favorite Terrence Malick chose this story of a young senseless killer and his teenage girlfriend for his first movie. Despite the disclaimer, the Charles Starkweather case is the obvious source. Incredibly young Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek star along with the open Midwest country that Malick delights in showing. Narrated by the girl, the story is naively deadly, and the film captures that well and holds its age technically, though the shock in 1973 of showing such murders, like the shock over Starkweather in the 1950s, has been greatly reduced by all the screen and real world murders that have occurred since then.

It’s Kind of a Funny Story – 2010 (2.7). This movie about a teenage boy who feels pressure from his parents to succeed in a school for very advanced students, while at the same time struggling with the self-esteem issues and bursting hormones of adolescence is pretty slow starting. When he goes to the emergency room for suicidal feelings, he gets admitted for psych evaluation and finds that all teenagers are being sent to the adult psych ward while the teen ward is under renovation. There are some characters and relationships of interest here, but they don’t show up soon enough and they never get very deep. Add a few mild laughs and a marginal film develops.

Room 666 – 1982 (2.7). This 45 minute documentary was filmed in 1982 in a hotel room at Cannes during the film festival. Wim Wenders set up a camera and 16 directors took turns going to the room and turning the camera on for 11 minutes while they talked about the future of the cinema. Wenders heavily edited the content and years later added a commentary track for the DVD. Only a few of the directors are well known and only a few of the comments are very interesting, but the film does provide a time capsule.

Lebanon, PA – 2010 (2.4). Lots of new people were involved in this indie drama about a 35 year old ad man who goes to a small town in Pennsylvania to pick up the pieces of the life of his estranged father who died suddenly. In the process, he begins to re-evaluate his own life. Uneven, poorly paced and not well fit together, portions of the story had potential, but it never quite developed as the characters seemed like they should be interesting but never quite became fully real. The script left too much of the back stories of the characters for too late in the movie, causing unnecessary guessing about motivations. The most appealing acting and story line was about a problem facing the man’s 17 year old cousin, well played by newcomer Rachel Kitson.

Fly Away – 2011 (2.1). I made the mistake of relying on a Netflix prediction based on a low number of member ratings when I chose this movie about a teenage girl with severe autism and her mother struggling to cope with her. An independent film put together by an all women venture, the film obviously meant well in trying to show how hard the task was for the mother, but the point was belabored with scene after scene of a girl who was really hard to take and a mother who was stubborn and inflexible in not seeing that her daughter needed to be placed where she could get better care. Add to that a cloying man who all but stalks the mother in his total acceptance of the daughter and a final delivery to an idyllic institution and you have a film that really missed its mark.