With zeitgeist-grabbing hits like Stranger Things, 13 Reasons Why and erm, House of Cards, Netflix has risen to become a dominant player in the Golden Age of Television.
But they haven't made as much of an impact on the movie side of things, despite a huge amount of investment in this area.
Netflix produces and acquires plenty of original movies that become exclusive to their platform, but they're still kind of finding their feet and have yet to establish a solid movie identity.
So I thought I'd dip into some of their recent offerings and see where they're at. Here are capsule reviews of five Netflix Original Movies, all released within the last month or so.
Netflix's latest push for Oscar love ended up receiving four nominations, including the first woman to be nominated for Best Achievement in Cinematography, Rachel Morrison. It's a well-deserved nod – the film looks absolutely stunning.
Based on Hilary Jordan's 2008 novel, Mudbound tells the story of two families in World War II-era Mississippi: the white McAllens and the African-American Jacksons, who work the McAllen's farm. Propelled by a raft of powerful performances, the heavy film explores racial injustice with an unflinching eye. It's a sometimes difficult watch, but very much worth the effort.
Bright
Netflix's first big blockbuster swing is set in an alternate contemporary Los Angeles where orcs, elves and other fantasy staples live uneasily alongside humankind. Will Smith plays a veteran cop partnered with the first orc member of the LAPD, played by Aussie actor Joel Edgerton under a tonne of make-up. Together they must track down a magic wand, which grants its users insane powers, if it doesn't kill them.
Widely criticised for its heavy-handed racial allegories, which are admittedly problematic at times, Bright isn't nearly as bad as its been made out to be. Heck, I kind of dug it. It's probably best accessed as a throwback to '90s buddy-cop movies. With orcs.
13 Reasons Why star Dylan Minnette leads this low-key horror as a teenager who moves with his mother to a huge mountain home after his father suddenly dies, leaving them financially strapped. The house is owned by Logan's rich aunt, who is trying to sell it, which means Logan and his mum have to make themselves scarce on Sundays while the real estate agent shows the place to prospective buyers.
Then spooky things start happening in the house and it's unclear if the shenanigans are caused by something ghostly or worse: prospective homeowners. Although the tension ramps up considerably during the climax, it's a pretty forgettable film.
Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters
Released theatrically in Japan, this is the first in a planned trilogy of anime films about the legendary kaiju. Twenty years after humanity abandoned earth to warring giant creatures, a group of survivors returns home with a risky plan to take down the King of the Monsters and reclaim the planet.
Featuring an above-average English audio dub, this is a hugely entertaining take on Godzilla that honours his mythic status and resists the prevailing temptation to make the big guy sympathetic. There are some crazy cool ideas in here, a fantastic sense of scale in the action scenes, and the usual amount of anime wierdness. It's awesome.
A Futile And Stupid Gesture
A light biopic of the hugely influential (but little-known) American satirist Doug Kenney (Will Forte) who alongside Henry Beard (Domhnall Gleeson), edited satirical university rag The Harvard Lampoon, then went on to create National Lampoon, a magazine which set the standard for American comedy in the 1970s. Kenney would subsequently write the films Animal House and Caddyshack.
Somewhat slapdash in its construction, the film features novelty comedy icon casting (Joel McHale as Chevy Chase, Jon Daly as Bill Murray) and a strong meta-bent: it stops half-way through to point out its own inaccuracies. It's watchable enough, but this is primarily for comedy nerds.
