Netflix, registered in 1997 as a DVD rental service, is one of the largest online movie theaters today. Its audience amounts to over 86 million viewers worldwide. In recent years, Netflix has paid attention not only to the distribution of other people’s content but also to the active production of its own. Each original project of the company is an event for moviegoers.
Bright (2017)
David Eyre, director of Rage and Suicide Squad, took on one of Netflix’s most expensive projects. Making crime films is nothing new to him, but Bright, starring Will Smith, and Joel Edgerton is a mixture of tense police thriller and sci-fi. The movie tells the story of two cops-partners – the human Daryl and the orc Jacoby, who live in Los Angeles, inhabited by elves, fairies, and centaurs.
The ambiguous but interesting case of “Brightness” clearly demonstrates how difficult it is to create an original fantasy world and integrate it into the modern social context. Becoming a police officer, the orc Jacoby loses the respect of his fellow tribesmen, but also cannot find himself among the people with whom he works shoulder to shoulder. There are, however, more daring attacks on the racial and national problems in the United States. However, like a good old buddy movie, “Brightness” works better: there are spectacular shootouts, criminal intrigues, and chemistry between two different characters who must learn to understand each other.
The Night Comes for Us (2018)
Indonesian cinema is gradually being revived. Timo Thiagianto, perhaps the most prominent national director of our time, has already replenished the Netflix library with his rather unfortunate horror “Until the Devil Calls”, and recently released a new action movie “The Night Is Coming After Us.” And this time, the subscribers of the streaming platform were pleasantly surprised.
The plot in his picture is the tenth thing. It’s more interesting to watch the cruel oriental meat grinder that the director arranges in front of the camera. “The Night Is Coming For Us” is an ode to ultraviolence and the cheap but inventive action films of the 70s and 80s. Bones break, heads are shot, and the heroes lose so much blood that any room in which they fight instantly turns crimson – such frankness always suits the genre.
Triple Frontier (2019)
The former military, wanting to ensure a serene existence for themselves and their family, decides to rob a rich drug lord. To do this, they need to cross the jungle and get into their protected home. But in the middle of the operation, as is often the case with robberies, everything does not go according to plan, and now their main task is to survive.
JC Chandor made a rather trivial film that blindly walks along the old genre paths, but the movies are saved by charismatic actors (Oscar Isaac, Ben Affleck, Charlie Hunnam) and action scenes in which the action is no worse than in Bay’s films. When Chandor stops lecturing about the plight of the military and friendship, his movie becomes a model action movie.
The Outsider (2018)
Post-war Japan. Prisoner Nick saves Yakuza Kiyoshi from death. Soon this act will bear fruit: the Japanese rescues the hero from captivity and gives him a job, arranging for the clan. Nick becomes one of the most brutal killers and gets to know the criminal Japanese system better.
Eastern aesthetics, mixed with Western traditions, create a moderately restrained and tense film about the intersection of two cultures. In places, “The Outsider” is too attentive to the Japanese mafia and intrigue, but the charisma of the main actor Jared Leto makes even the most leisurely moments interesting. It is also interesting how the authors demonstrate cruelty and violence in cold colors. Against the background of high-spirited fighters “Outsider” at first, seems like a black sheep, but then its slowness becomes enchanting.
Mute (2018)
An underrated camp tribute to David Bowie’s Berlin Trilogy by his son Duncan Jones. The director bizarrely combines the already classic atmosphere of neon neo-noir and the dirty, almost “Balaban” 90s (some of the action takes place in the interiors of Soviet apartments, and even in the frame for a couple of seconds “Zhiguli” flashes), for the first time, it seems, bringing to the first the plan is precisely the kitsch component of the genre.
For serious plots, few people notice that fantastic dystopias are an inherently extremely ridiculous thing, and Bowie Jr., echoing his father’s style, spins this observation to the maximum. “Dumb” is a movie where a criminal story about clandestine surgeons coexists with European queer drama, and Jones’s intimate confession about his relationship with his dad and his feelings about the new role of his father is brought to us by Alexander Skarsgard with just his eyes. If this is not the perfect adaptation of the most surreal creative period of one of the greatest glam artists of the 20th century, then what?
