XX is a horror anthology in four parts, all from female perspectives available on Netflix.
Mothers doing their best, Girls just trying to have fun, and Single Ladies looking for a little solidarity. In XX we get to see vignettes of everyday life going horribly wrong and getting darkly twisted.
Continue reading “Watch Out: "XX," a female-focused horror anthology”
I take full advantage of streaming Netflix. Often the movie selection is heavy with shitty, straight to DVD films that no one wanted to watch from jump street. However, every so often I find a gem! This weekend I found Pontypool.
Pontypool is an easy title to overlook. The name means nothing to you if you’re from most of the world. But that’s kind of the point when you realize what’s happening as you follow the story.
Slow to start, Pontypool is one of those movies where neither you nor the protagonists know what’s happening or why. Something is happening and everyone is scared and confused. The film focuses on a radio jockey who can’t hold his tongue and his tragically devoted producer and production assistant.
Unlike most zombie/infected movies, the conflict centers not around the biting and attacking but around the other symptoms.
In a small town in the French Canadian province of Ontario, people start acting strangely. They do the typical zombie things like attack in groups, hunt the uninfected, and chanting random phrases.
Oh, most zombies don’t chant random phrases? Yeah, I thought that was weird too.
In Pontypool the infected show symptoms via their impaired speech and then obsession with specific words… There’s a scene in the film where the radio jockey has to fill air time and realized it’s time for obituaries. He highlights each death in their small town in a way that’s both poetic and disturbing, matter of fact and high level enough to still feel respectful.
You should definitely check out Pontypool for a different perspective on a common trope.
The Resistance is a short web series set in a future where everyone has a disease that only one company has the cure for and that company isn’t about to give their best selling product away for the greater good.
The show is short but well-produced and action-packed introducing the cast or rebels in episode one with a violent Robin Hood-style robbery of a vaccine shipment.
Built on interlocking mysteries and growly bad-ass secretive protagonists, The Resistance is a great way to pass 15 to 20 minutes for a week or watch in one fell swoop as a movie as the SyFy channel aired it.
I think it’s worth checking out even though it’s not a long series or even an on-going series.
Currently, episodes one and two re available for free on Hulu.
Summary from the official The Resistance site:
Set in the dying world of Aurordeca, The Resistance is an action-packed thriller revolving around an epic tale of destiny and revenge. Syrus Primoris, a brilliant chemist, has taken control of the ten regions of Aurordeca in the wake of a devastating plague. Half the population is already dead. It is only Syrus and his miracle suppressant, Noxe, that can keep the other half from succumbing to the virus. In exchange, the people grant Syrus absolute power. Only one group stands in open opposition to the regime. The Aurordecan Resistance Movement (ARM), led by the fierce and driven Lana. ARM sees Syrus for the despot he truly is and fight tirelessly to find a cure for the disease and to free the people from their enslavement to the suppressant. But everything changes through a chance encounter with a mysterious and deadly drifter, Arclite..
I’d say this series is good enough to fill the gap between books you’re reading or shows you’re watching on Netflix if you want to give yourself a bit of a break without committing to anything too big.
So, remember back in the 90s when Scream was some seriously groundbreaking shit? That was when Skeet Ulrich was famous. It was one of the things that had me puzzled when I started watching Jericho . I knew I’d heard the name but just couldn’t place it. But, once it was placed it was unforgettable. Everything about him just screams, “I love the 90s!” But maybe that’s just what bad boys in the Midwest look like… maybe.
However, Jericho isn’t about Skeet Ulrich’s heroic reascent to become a famous person — because, I’m fairly sure this show didn’t actually make him famous again. According to wikipedia, Jericho is about:
Jericho is an American action/drama series that centers on the residents of the fictional town of Jericho, Kansas, in the aftermath of nuclear attacks on 23 major cities in the contiguous United States.
I like rummaging through the slush on Netflix streaming and seeing if there’s anything I can sit through. Sadly, it’s not often I can find something in the apocalyptic genre worth sitting through much less worth recommending. The bucket seems to be heavily populated with made-for-TV movies that couldn’t make it on TV and what seem to be student projects. But sometimes I find a gem.
Monsters was one of these gems. The film is beautiful in a way that only science fiction and fantasy can manage. The characters are deep and real, and the environment is immersive. Continue reading “Apocalyptic Movie: MONSTERS”
