Netflix Instant Play Picks of the Moment: Bronson (2008)

Friday, February 6, 2015

Bronson (2008)

I tend to see this site as an opportunity to make recommendations—better yet, to offer capsule "appreciations." Bronson is almost the exception. It had been sitting in my Instant Play Queue for so long that I'd forgotten why I'd put it there; my son referred to it vaguely as a movie about a boxer. Well, there I was alone with the TV, and as so often happens when we two have the room to ourselves, I take a little risk.

Ahem. Calling Bronson "a little risk" is like calling King Kong a big monkey. I had even forgotten it's a Nicolas Winding Refn movie (the mesmerizing Valhalla Rising and the hate-it-or-love-it Drive, not to mention the recent Only God Forgives, which was more hated than loved—except by me); but he was nice enough to get his name up front, so I could steel myself. And for some reason I'd neglected to register even its lead, Tom Hardy, so good in Inception and as Bane in The Dark Knight Rises—and fer Pete's sake, he's the new Mad Max! So the blows started raining down on me pretty quickly.

And boy, they just don't let up. Hardy is phenomenal, as fluid and scary as De Niro in his Travis Bickle/Rupert Pupkin days. I won't say much more; it is once of those performances you really do have to see to believe. And Refn is not just daring but sure-footed, even fleet. Bronson seems at first to have nothing in common with his last few pictures—until you settle into its Clockwork Orange heart, in which music and frantic movement couple in startling ugliness with precise framing and graceful tracking. It's "beautiful" to watch, if the poem's right and beauty is truth, truth beauty. Because this true story is unremittingly ugly (when it isn't being funny in a lethal-slapstick kind of way), its lead less motivated than Jake LaMotta, its path strewn with senseless violence and energy expended on building an abyss.

So no, I can't smile and tell you to enjoy. But I couldn't take my eyes off it (despite my streaming cutting off too many times to tell*), and I want to see it again. Just be warned: pick any random half-dozen assortment of dark and dank adjectives, and you can pin them on Bronson as easily as a tail on a donkey, sans blindfold. So I guess you've been sort of encouraged, and warned.
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*And who should we blame? Netflix? Comcast? When oh when will the internet be a public utility?

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T.V. Party

•Eerie, Indiana: A short-lived, early-'90s older kid show about a town situated somewhere between The Twilight Zone and The Addams Family.

•The IT Crowd (series 1): A British series that feels a little like Scrubs—if that show were set in the basement of a corporate headquarters, where an I.T. staff answers the phone with an automatic "Have you tried turning it off and on?" while dealing with Monty-Pythonesque catastrophes. And oh yeah: It's funnier than Scrubs, with the added comedy bonus of British accents.

•Thriller: Not as well-known as its contemporary, The Twilight Zone, this 1960-62 series began as "thrillers" and moved into territory more closely associated with the horror comics of the '50s than the cooly observed socio-psychological parables that Rod Serling favored. Still, as with Zone, top-notch writers pitched in: Robert (Psycho) Bloch, Cornell Woolrich, August Derleth, Charles Beaumont. And of course there's the usual early-'60s lineup of hey-look-who-it-is actors, including Mary Tyler Moore, Victor Buono, Warren Oates, John Carradine, and the ubiquitous William Shatner. Great music, too--plus, you get the King, Boris Karloff, as the host. (I'd suggest you mix these up with episodes of The Andy Griffith Show for a taste of both sides of the pre-counterculture '60s.)

•Spectacle: Elvis Costello With ... : If The Beatles were still together when John was killed, they could have asked Elvis Costello to join them. Just listen to any number of the songs on Imperial Bedroom—such as "Beyond Belief," as full of slippery rhythms and winking lyrics as any Abbey Road tune. Elvis knows—and loves—music, and his Sundance Channel series gives him a chance to straight-up interview, goof around with—and best of all—perform with some stellar guests, including Smokey Robinson, Rufus Wainwright, Elton John, Lou Reed, and Bill Clinton(?). Season two, not yet on Instant Play, includes Nick Lowe, Lyle Lovett, and Bruce Springsteen. But regardless of the guest, the real fun is watching—and listening to—the puckish Elvis enjoying himself immensely, happy to share the stage with the kind of musicians he loves—which is just about every kind. His enthusiasm is infectious in what may be TV's best music-talk show since—well, maybe the kind of things MTV and VH-1 used to do when they were about music, a decade or so ago.

About This Site

I've been a Netflix subscriber since 1999, and since then the opportunities for instant streaming have multiplied dramatically. But to narrow the playing field, I'm going to stick with titles that are Netflix-ready—although most of these certainly can be found elsewhere. The picks are recommendations, not "reviews"; my hope is that the titles are new to you—or ones that you've seen before and I can persuade you to revisit. In any case, I hope that, for the moment, these picks make you as happy as I am when something new or an old friend pops up on the Watch Instantly lineup.

Note: Netflix Instant Play Picks of the Moment is not affiliated with or endorsed by Netflix, which you should get right now, right HERE.

(And a special thanks to Roger Ebert, rest his soul, who Tweeted this site and added mightily to my Followers. You should also go get Ebert, right now, right HERE.)