{"id":213,"date":"2013-02-15T00:00:38","date_gmt":"2013-02-15T05:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/smugfilm.com\/?p=213"},"modified":"2013-09-07T17:29:30","modified_gmt":"2013-09-07T21:29:30","slug":"netflix-quickies-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/netflix-quickies-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Netflix Quickies #1 (Sleepwalk With Me, Red Hook Summer, Cavegirl, Zeta One, Good Deeds)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alright so whenever I go on Netflix Instant I just sorta pick random movies from my queue, try them for a few minutes, and then if I\u2019m not feeling them moving on to another until I finally find one I don\u2019t hate, and then I watch that one. This \u2018Netflix Quickies\u2019 thing is basically gonna be a series where I just talk about movies I decided not to watch after the first couple minutes and explain exactly what turned me off about them. Here goes:<\/p>\n

\"SleepwalkSmall\"<\/p>\n

Sleepwalk With Me (2012)
\n<\/b>Directed by Mike Birbiglia and Seth Barrish
\nWritten by Mike Birbiglia, Joe Birbiglia, Ira Glass, and Seth Barrish
\n90 min. (gave up after 2 min.)
\n
\nI\u2019m not really a fan of Mike Birbiglia\u2019s stand up. I tried one of his specials a while back and turned it off after like 15 minutes. I know a lot of people really like him and stuff though, so maybe I\u2019m just not picking up on some layer (or maybe everyone else is overrating him). Probably a combo of the two.<\/p>\n

But anyway, to my surprise, I was actually kinda feeling the first minute of this, where he\u2019s just in his car and it\u2019s an unbroken shot of him driving and doing a monologue. But then all of a sudden right in the middle of me getting hooked on that it just cuts to like a normal, predictable thing\u2014a dramatization of the story he\u2019s telling, with the monologue now a voice over, and him in the scene, and I\u2019m just like fuck this, man. The first scene shoulda just been him in the car, no cutting. That woulda been great. Ugh. Dude had an opportunity to do something really attention-getting and elegant that would\u2019ve totally brought the intimacy of a stage monologue to film in a unique and natural way, but he didn\u2019t do that\u2014he went the hackneyed pseudo-Woody Allen route.<\/p>\n

\"RedHookSmall\"<\/p>\n

Red Hook Summer (2012)
\n<\/b>Directed by Spike Lee
\nWritten by Spike Lee and James McBride
\n121 min. (gave up after 8 min.)<\/p>\n

Spike Lee sucks (I\u2019ll do a whole essay on him some other time) but basically I\u2019ll give anything with Clarke Peters in it a shot. Even he can\u2019t save this one, though. Thing just sucks on all levels. First of all, the goddamn look: I mean, Spike has never been one to have great looking films, but this is just ridiculous. It\u2019s got this awful over-saturated thing going on that\u2019s just impossible for your eyes to even deal with. The grass is all neon green and the shirts are like in a detergent commercial. What they did in Do The Right Thing, I didn\u2019t like either, but at least that was creative\u2014this is just cheap and lazy. It looks like some intern just upped the saturation in Final Cut Pro and called it a day.<\/p>\n

The camera work is terrible, too. There\u2019s this one part in particular (the scene I took the screenshot of) where the camera man literally just walks backwards so one of the actors can pass by him and exit the scene, then walks forward again after the actor has passed. Like, man, I\u2019m all for doing as much as you can with just an unbroken shot and shit, but do it well<\/em>. Stuff like that is just totally distracting and unnecessary. People are trying to watch a damn movie. Maybe you could’ve gotten away with that shit if it had been a\u00a0v\u00e9rit\u00e9 thing or whatever, but nope. Just Spike being Spike (lazy).<\/p>\n

I probably wouldn\u2019t be bothered so much by the look of the film if the dialogue and the line readings were at all good, but they absolutely aren\u2019t. There\u2019s this one awkward line in particular that really annoyed me where the main kid says something to some skaters skating by, and it\u2019s just so fucking not-how-any-kid-would-ever-talk that at first you think the kid is being sarcastic, but then the next line clarifies that the line was intended to be serious and that Spike legit thinks that\u2019s how kids talk to one another. It\u2019s really weird.\u00a0Anyway, no real surprises here, because I figured this one would suck.<\/p>\n

\"CaveGirlSmall\"<\/p>\n

Cavegirl (1985)
\n<\/b>Directed by David Oliver
\nWritten by David Oliver and Peter Groves
\n85 min. (gave up after 10 min.)<\/p>\n

When this started up I was like \u2018alright, now we\u2019re talking.\u2019 A bumpin’, bubblegum synthpop song (SSQ – Synthicide<\/a>) over boring footage of helicopters flying in the desert? My kind of 80\u2018s cheese. But then it went absolutely moldy. (Get it, because cheese.)<\/p>\n

First off, this movie is surreally miscast. The High School nerd protagonist looks old enough to be a teacher. Same goes for his fellow students. 90210 used to get away with this because all the actors were attractive, but here everyone just looks middle-aged. It\u2019s very distracting and disorienting. You can’t tell if it’s some school for adults or whatever.<\/p>\n

The entire first act consists of the nerd protagonist getting injured or picked on in various ways by those around him. I’m serious\u2014the entire<\/em> first act. It’s as though the screenwriter was once told that you have to establish your main character in the first act, and he thought that meant that was literally all<\/em> you had to do, over and over, until enough time had passed for there to be a second act. It\u2019s very repetitive and boring. One or two scenes of this would\u2019ve sufficed.<\/p>\n

After getting sick of that, I skipped ahead to the \u2018cavegirl\u2019 stuff, which doesn\u2019t happen until about 23 minutes in. The cavegirl is basically just an 80\u2019s California pinup in tattered clothes, and she can\u2019t act to save her life. She’s kinda cute, but her acting is so grating that I just turned it off. She’s trying to behave like a ‘cavewoman’ but comes off more like a retarded hippie. It makes you stomach churn in the same way watching a Hollywood actor playing a retarded person does.<\/p>\n

The one good thing I can say about this movie is that not far into it there\u2019s a campy girls’ locker room scene, with all-natural, bouncing breasts galore. Watch that part.\u00a0Also, I should point out that the guy who plays the nerd is the awesome Dr. Arzt from Lost. <\/i>I love that show, so it was amusing to see him in this, but the novelty wore off pretty quickly because he\u2019s quite bad here. His acting is kinda similar to when Ron Jeremy would attempt to be funny in old porn.<\/p>\n

\"zeta\"<\/p>\n

Zeta One (1969)
\n<\/strong>Directed by Michael Cort
\nWritten by Michael Cort and Alistair McKenzie
\n84 min. (gave up after 10 min.)<\/p>\n

The opening titles are fucking incredible. Great-looking stills of sexy sci-fi\/spy girls, with a legitimately kickass title song playing. Drummer fucking\u00a0destroys.<\/em> I guess they didn’t tell him the song was for a crappy movie or whatever, because he seriously plays his ass off like the shit’s gonna be a hit single. I’ll definitely revisit the opening titles here and there just to relish in their awesomeness. The rest of the movie, absolutely not.<\/em><\/p>\n

The first scene is this extremely dry and boring and neverending thing between this guy spy and this girl spy, and it’s basically like that brilliant scene in My Night at Maud’s<\/a> except not at all well-written or well acted or interesting in the least. Also longer, I think. The opening scene is, I shit you not, 23 minutes long. Props for being daring, I guess, but\u00a0fuck.\u00a0<\/em>Write a damn bit of dialogue that’s interesting. There’s people watching.<\/p>\n

I ended up skipping ahead before bagging this one because there was promise of breasts, and the movie delivers\u2014sort of. The titty scenes are too weird to be entertained by, even if you have a taste for camp. Maybe they’d be fun if you were thirteen and hadn’t seen many movies with nudity in them, or much camp. But there’s so much better stuff out there. Just watch the opening titles.<\/p>\n

\"tyler\"<\/p>\n

Tyler Perry’s Good Deeds (2012)
\n<\/strong>Written and Directed by Tyler Perry
\n110 min. (gave up after 8 min.)<\/p>\n

Arguably the most narcissistic movie title ever. And yes, that’s the actual full title, as listed on Netflix. In theaters it was released as ‘Good Deeds’ because I guess someone tapped him on the shoulder last minute and was like “Hey dude, we can’t actually send it out as ‘Tyler Perry’s Good Deeds’, I mean, I know you don’t give a shit about critics or whatever, but that’s just asking for them to lambast you” but then it bombed anyway, because it’s a piece of shit anyway, and Tyler was all “Man, I told you we should called it Tyler Perry’s Good Deeds” and everyone was like “Alright, fine, call it whatever for Netflix, fuck” and so Tyler Perry called it whatever for Netflix because fuck.<\/p>\n

The opening scene is one of the worst opening scenes ever. Literally. I swear to God I’m not exaggerating. The reason why it’s so bad is because is because it destroys any possibility of there being a character arc for the protagonist.<\/em> The way the movie starts out is we see Tyler Perry’s character Deeds or whatever taking a steamy, hazy shower, and there’s sentimental music playing, and he’s narrating. He’s telling you about how he’s disappointed in himself and depressed and frustrated with his life because he followed the exact path his wealthy parents set out for him. But the character shouldn’t have come to that fucking realization yet. The character can feel that deep down, and it can come out in subtle ways in the first act or whatever, but that seismic realization should come\u00a0way<\/em> later in the movie, not the opening damn scene. Putting the character already at that point, in the opening scene, shows a severe lack of confidence. It’s all, ‘Oh no, I can’t possibly<\/em> have my audience not sure if they have sympathy for the main character for any amount of time at all, they need to know he has a heart of gold at all times.” And the result is a main character that has nothing do for the whole movie except wallow in his ‘a cunt’s hair away from changing his life’-ness for almost two hours.\u00a0Serious fucking rookie screenwriting mistake shit.<\/p>\n

Anyways<\/strong><\/p>\n

There’s no shortage of movies-worth-being-turned-off-in-the-first-few-minutes out there, so I’ll probably do another one of these in a month or whatever. If you have any movies you tried watching and turned off because of awfulness, be sure to let me know about ’em in the comments section and we can discuss ’em and whatnot. Toodles!<\/p>\n