Movies are a challenge for me. I usually feel like I’m missing the point, that I don’t quite get – or don’t get at all – what makes one good and another not. I think my main problem with movies is that they’re overwhelming. There are the visuals, of course, but also characters and a story. Most movies, to me, seem like an on-screen competition among those elements. Unlike books, which I read at my own pace while picturing images as they occur to me, I feel like I often miss huge parts of movies.
Which is why I love Netflix. As much as I bitch and moan about the Internet’s creeping deeper and deeper into our lives (and conversely, becoming more and more irremovable), this, my friends, is some technology I can get behind. I signed up for Netflix last fall, and to be honest I did it because I thought I should. I would horse around with it for a couple of months, I thought, and then my Netflix membership would quietly go the way of YouTube, which I OD’d on a couple of summers ago, and Facebook, which I came to regard as a troubling attempt to confirm the fact that we are indeed alive.
I think the main reason I signed up for Netflix is that I felt like a bit of a dweeb for having never tried it, so the fact that I’m love with it surprises nobody more than it does me. It’s cheap, easy and convenient: the movies, without due dates or late fees, come and go in the mail. The main reason I like it is that I can watch movies as many times as necessary. I recently took two days and three viewings with Angela’s Ashes, two run-throughs on a Saturday evening and a rainy Sunday morning for a quiet little gem called In the Bedroom. With Netflix, I can watch a movie with the volume off and pay attention only to the camera angles. Nobody needs to know that I was unable to grasp an entire movie having watched it only once, unless, of course, I chose to share.
Which brings me to Powder Blue, which I watched – once – this weekend. I don’t understand movies deeply enough to articulate this in a fancy way, but for some reason the script, the acting, the story and the visuals all worked together on this one. The way I know that is that I didn’t hit pause or rewind a single time. I paid no attention to the clock. I let the phone ring its way into voicemail a couple of times. The plot goes like this: a group of people in Los Angeles seek solace in the week leading up to Christmas. I did a search on the movie on Monday morning, and was surprised to learn that Powder Blue was made in 2009 (it seeemed older, for some reason) but only had limited release in the U.S., which seems weird to me given some of the big names in it. I’m not in the film biz, so I have no idea why. Another strange thing: how did Netflix know, based on my ordering history, to recommend this movie?Anyhow, I do not work for Netflix in any capacity, and I recommend Powder Blue.
