Instant Picks of the Week 4/14/17
Gone are the days of scrolling mindlessly through your queue! No longer will you have to sift through the vastness of what’s coming to the instant viewing wastelands this month! Whether you’re looking for a stellar film or an exciting new show to binge, Instant Picks of the Week brings you the hottest releases in film and television on instant viewing platforms that we know you’ll love, or at the very least not despise.
FOLLOWING (Netflix)
Christopher Nolan’s 1998 debut feature film presently lurks, and streams, on the mighty Netflix. This neo-noir drama was produced on a shoestring budget of $6,000, shot on black and white 16mm film stock. It follows a young writer—credited as “The Young Man”—who has taken a liking to observing strangers on the streets of London in the hopes of yielding inspiration for a novel. The Young Man eventually meets Cobb, whom he promptly becomes attracted to (platonic, here): Cobb’s lifestyle of robbing the well-to-do, in order to show them (the well-to-do) what they’ve taken for granted, enthralls our protagonist—the spark for a tale featuring twists and turns. FOLLOWING, the spark for an illustrious career, marked Nolan’s prodigious entry into narrative feature filmmaking. It’s crafty and sophisticated: classic Nolan. And the film also relies on his (now trademark) non-linear plot structure, a device used in MEMENTO, BATMAN BEGINS, INTERSTELLAR, and THE PRESTIGE. Before DUNKIRK’s release, check out the ovo, as Horace would say. [John Loftus]
A MAN CALLED OVE (Amazon Prime)
Nominated for an Oscar for best foreign film and best makeup of 2017, this Swedish comedy follows a lovable grumpy old man through his memories and struggles in his current state of being. Ove mourns over his dead wife as he constantly visits her grave to complain and fails in his attempts to commit suicide, triggering many memories good and bad. Through these memories, Ove becomes an incredibly sympathetic character, but not in a cheap way. We learn about his dad, his wife, and more simply through a few medial memories and his experiences with their deaths. This witty Swedish comedy is relatably funny in its cynical jokes and unique in its use of flashbacks. [Lynnzee Highland]
