Netflixing

I have a subscription to Netflix and I love it.

I use the $14/month plan, which is the 2-at-a-time unlimited deal, along with access to the "Instant" library of movies and TV you can watch online. I might downgrade to the 1-at-a-time plan come Fall semester, as I will no longer have time to breathe, let alone watch a movies two or three times per week, but I digress.

I looked over my rental history, and discovered that within the past eleven (almost) months, I've had just shy of 100 DVDs mailed to my apartment. Now, that number has been somewhat bolstered by multi-disc seasons of TV on DVD, but it's still an impressive figure. And that's not counting the films I've seen in the theaters or on my computer (via that "Instant" library I just mentioned).

Point is: I've got a lot of fuel to burn. So what I'm going to do is go through that list and, one by one, pass along a short review.

Here's my first.

The date is roughly the 22nd of September, and it is the first of many syndicated movie nights. My friend Jon had a very sweet big screen, HD TV, and the surround sound system it deserved. So we decided to set up movie nights where the attendees would be expected to sit quietly as the movie played, respecting the art as much as enjoying each other's company.

There Will Be Blood was our maiden voyage. I think there might have been four of us. Or three. A slow start to a long tradition.

But the film was pretty incredible. Daniel Day-Lewis was often described as a tour de force, and it was true, absolutely. The man devoured us whole from the screen. He was a self-described oil man, but really, he was a typhoon.

I probably don't need to fill you in on the plot because it was nominated for eight Oscars and won two of them the same year No Country for Old Men came out (a film that will get a much broader treatment sometime on this blog in due futurity.) But if you don't know, it was about a man named Daniel Plainview and his hand in the oil industry when it was still very young.

The performances were nothing short of spectacular, which Daniel Day-Lewis won the Oscar for Best Actor. And the cinematography was supernaturally good. The film was stunning every second, and for that it also won the Oscar for Best Cinematography.

After all that, however, I don't feel like I can fully endorse this film because it was perhaps one of the more depressing films I've seen. The culminating moment between the two most important and powerful characters unfolded with such depravity, brutality, and raw human rage that I felt personally injured when it was over. The film wasn't rated R for anything graphically depicted. It was for the hate so meticulously painted on the screen.

To say that I wasn't moved, that this film didn't leave a lasting impression upon me, would be utterly disingenuous. I can't help but admire this kind of craftsmanship and artistry. But it was a dark, dark film. You might hear people quote it--"I - drink - your - MILKSHAKE!"--and laugh. I've joined in. But that laughter, I believe, very often hides the troubling aftermath of this film in the minds of those who watched it. It's sort of the same as laughing at cancer. It's an ugly thing. Humor is a coping mechanism.

***PS: There is a new post on my new blog - That Hideous Strength