this week's netflix

I haven't checked in with my Netflix reviews for a couple of weeks, so there are several films here, including two that would have been a hell of a lot better with the last 20 minutes chopped off.

Northfork: I think the Polish brothers have a fine film in them, but they just haven't made it yet. I was originally interested in Northfork because I'm fascinated by the phenomenon of towns flooded to create reservoirs, explored also in the film O Brother, Where Art Thou? Near where I grew up, the Quabbin Reservoir was constructed through the "taking of the towns of Dana, Enfield, Greenwich, and Prescott" in the late 1930s. In Northfork, a team of men have been guaranteed lake-front property in return for evacuating a collection of kooky citizens of the town. The art direction is pretty spectacular, but there are bizarre, nonsensical subplots that don't really work.

Entourage, Season 1, Episodes 1-4: Rick of Futurballa recommended this series to me, and there are many entertaining incidents as a pretty-boy up & coming star (Adrian Grenier) carries on in celebrity style accompanied by his Queens white-boy posse. Kevin Dillon is particularly hilarious as C-list older brother Johnny Drama. Unfortunately, watching Entourage has made me never want to date in LA again. Dana Stevens of Slate dissects the problems with the series in her article "Let's Script-Doctor It Out, Bitch."

Raising Victor Vargas: This is a very charming film of young Dominican love on the Lower East Side. The female lead (Judy Marte) does an excellent job of capturing the attitude of tough girls who mask their vulnerability with ferocity. Meanwhile, the male lead (Victor Rasuk) struggles with a grandmother who is so realistic it seems she was filmed in home movies and then edited into her scenes.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead: A Fool in the Forest recommended this film after my DVD of Meantime wouldn't play, and I can't believe I hadn't seen Tom Stoppard's brilliant tale of these minor characters from Hamlet. The script is a smart, smart hodgepodge of Shakespeare, Beckett, Pirandello, and well, Stoppard. Gary Oldman and Tim Roth are simultaneously clever and bumbling as they follow their theatrical fate. The plot is too complicated to recount here, but the quotes on IMDB will give you a sense of how shrewd the script is.

The Upside of Anger: After Joan Allen's husband (supposedly) runs off, she is left to pick up the pieces and raise her four daughters (Alicia Witt, Erika Christensen, Keri Russell, and Evan Rachel Wood) with the help of alcoholic ex-baseball pro Kevin Costner. There are some decent moments in the film, but for the most part, the emotions don't really match the catalysts for those emotions. Then something happens in the final 20 minutes that casts a huge shadow of stupidity on everything that precedes it.

The Brown Bunny: For most of this film, I was somewhat amused in an oh-look-at-the-funny-egomaniac way. As Michael Wilmington of the Chicago Tribune wrote, "Gallo focuses on himself so obsessively, it's as if he'd become his own stalker." However, when the final scenes arrive, the money shot is over, and we discover exactly why we're supposed to feel so bad for the poor narcissist, I was left with a nausea that didn't subside for days.
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