Netflix Tuesday - 8/10

Have I mentioned yet that football is coming? I want to go on record that football season should be a national holiday. Yes, the whole season.

Keeping with the football theme, this week's Netflix viewing was like a 125 yard, 2 touchdown Andre Johnson receiving day. Let's get started with the goodness.

A Prophet (Un Prophète) - See it - Maybe I should type that a few more times, See it, See it, See it. I know I can already hear you "I don't want to watch a movie with subtitles. I don't want to read a movie. Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa." Get over it and start wearing big boy pants. This is a terrific movie. I heard Lance Zierlein talking about this movie one morning on 1560 The Game. Lance usually gives pretty good movie recommendations, so I checked it out. I was not disappointed. The story follows Malik during a 6 year stretch in a French prison. Malik (an Arab) finds himself caught in the delicate balance between the Corsican mafia, Italian mafia and the Muslims. For those of you who can't think beyond the lower 48, just think Mexican Mafia, Crips and Aryan Brotherhood. The story is riveting, acting superb and wonderfully shot frame by gritty frame. One of the benefits of watching a foreign film is that you usually don't know the actors involved and therefore don't identify them with characters they've played before. If someone were to tell me this film was shot using real prisoners, I wouldn't have an argument against it.  See this movie. 


Kick-Ass - See it - This is the first movie Nicolas Cage has been in that I've loved since Vampire's Kiss in 1988. That's 22 long years of crap movies but Big Daddy makes all those hours of horrible accents and Jerry Bruckheimer abominations almost worth it. Like I've said before, I'm a sucker for superheroes. Even when the superhero is just your everyday ordinary high school geek whose fed up with the local bullies taking his comic money. Now, if you're going to be an ordinary guy trying to be a superhero, it helps when a couple of extraordinary BadAsses like Big Daddy and Hit Girl have your back. Hit Girl is the cutest little killing machine since Natalie Portman in The Professional. Christopher Mintz-Plasse plays the perfectly bumbling, ineffective villain to balance Kick-Ass's superhero. This movie touches all the bases, comedy, action, bloody, teen outcasts, underdog vs. the world.


The Art of the Steal - See it - Albert C. Barnes was an early pharmaceutical millionaire and collector of art. In the early 20th century he became friends with such artists as Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso. Barnes had a keen eye for art and collected the works of many of the impressionist, and post-impressionist artists. A collection that is now estimated to be worth about $25 billion. However, this documentary is less about the art in the Barnes Collection and more about the lengths to which politicians and power brokers will go to consume and wield as much money and power as they can. The documentary shares the story of how Pennsylvania's politicians have taken it upon themselves to completely disregard the clear wishes of Albert Barnes will and move the collection to Philadelphia for the increased revenue. This movie will piss you off. If it doesn't piss you off then you're probably a Democrat and believe government should control everything anyway or you're a Republican and believe wealthy power brokers should be in control. Either way, the real loser here is individual rights and public trust.


Rollergirls disc 2 - ? - I am loving me some Lunatic, Punky Bruiser, Venis Envy and Jail Bait.