Movies are feeling like movies again. One stream at a time.
On Monday night Netflix landed on my street.
Not too far from my house is Jubilee Stadium, a fairly modest stadium that is home for the St George Illawarra Dragons. Filming there this week and next is the new Mark Wahlberg Netflix film The Big Fix.
As per Variety:
Inspired by a true story and based on a book by Brett Forrest, “The Big Fix” follows a former Interpol officer working inside FIFA who uncovers a global match-fixing operation. What begins as an investigation quickly escalates into a high-stakes pursuit, as he closes in on a well-connected fixer aligned with Chinese Triads, setting up a globe-spanning cat-and-mouse chase.
The production has felt pretty quiet. Unless you walk up to the stadium, you wouldn’t even know that the production was filming there despite the influx of large production trucks. There’s far more disruption to local streets when a football game is on.
Being filmed at the end of my street, I’m likely to press play on the movie when it debuts on Netflix. Even the lure of ‘movie filmed right where I walk my dog several times a week’ may not have been enough to get me watching a Netflix movie in the past. The company had, deservedly, built a reputation for releasing a lot of pretty lousy films over the years.
Which isn’t to say they were all bad. There are a few genuinely great Netflix films. There’s even some very good, underrated Netflix movies that probably should be given greater consideration (one I like to champion is a 70s throwback thriller called Beckett, starring John David Washington). But Netflix played a volume game with its movies and when at least 80% of everything generally isn’t very good, Netflix’s game resulted in a lot of bad movies.
The company is trying to shift that reputation. Today in the New York Times is a feature story with current Netflix movies chief Dan Lin. He’s been in place for a while now and films under his watch have started making their way through the pipeline.
Despite easing the volume of Netflix films, Lin has commissioned 88 films so far in his two years.
The NYT article has two objectives:
It is trying to further establish the narrative that the Netflix movies of the current moment are a different proposition to what was previously being cranked out; and
Dan Lin is trying to make the sorts of movies that Hollywood still lies to itself about making.
Mr. Lin’s instructions at Netflix are to spend less money on fewer, better movies. “The goal was to have really great movies on Netflix and have consistency in quality, and he has delivered that,” Ms. Bajaria, the streamer’s chief content officer, said. What “better” and “quality” mean can be hard to define, but Mr. Lin sees an opportunity in certain types of projects that Hollywood’s legacy studios are leaving behind.
“There are movies that I grew up watching and I love that people aren’t making anymore,” he said. He wants Netflix to make more comedies, more romantic comedies, more book adaptations — more of the films that used to be the bread and butter of the medium.
And, look, I’ll admit it: I’ve mostly bought in to the Dan Lin narrative. I think the movies under his watch have been getting better. I think the movies are starting to feel like actual movies. And I’m actually excited about what’s coming out soon, which the NYT thoughtfully offers a glimpse of:
Netflix is bullish on its upcoming slate, particularly “Here Comes the Flood,” starring Denzel Washington and Robert Pattinson and directed by Fernando Meirelles (“City of God”), and an untitled project, known unofficially as “The Adventures of Cliff Booth,” starring Brad Pitt and directed by David Fincher from a script by Quentin Tarantino. Biggest of all, perhaps, could be Greta Gerwig’s film “Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew.” It is expected to premiere in 2027 with a full theatrical release, something Netflix has given to no other movie.
I’m very high on The Adventures of Cliff Booth (or whatever it will be called upon release).
Coincidentally, today there’s also an opinion piece by Quentin Tarantino penned for the UK’s Sight & Sound. In it he writes about how movies today aren’t capturing his attention like movies in the 80s did.
This isn’t the first time things were bad. The 1980s were pretty bad too. Back then, when a movie self-destructed, copped out on its intriguing premise or just ran out of gas in the last 20 minutes, you didn’t even hold that against it. To expect 80s movies not to have bad endings was to expect too much. If you didn’t forgive them bad endings you just wouldn’t like anything. You might as well stop going to the movies.
Well, I did forgive them in the 80s, because I loved going to the movies. These days, however, the entire concept of what is a movie is more inclined to inspire contempt in me than generosity. Which is fair enough, because by comparison the movies of the last six years make the 80s seem like the 30s. I’ve seen movies I liked since then – West Side Story (2021); Horizon: An American Saga Chapter 1 and 2 (both 2024), a few others, but nothing that really held me in its grip and swept me away to the magical land of enjoyment that I used to visit regularly and was the reason I loved movies above all other artforms. These days I’d rather read a book.
Read a book? Savage.
The sense I get from QT is that there’s no introspection happening as part of this conversation. I’ll agree that the movies today are different and the experience is different. But I’d also point out that I’m a different person and moviegoer than I was in the 80s and 90s (for starters, I’m an adult now). I’m not sure QT ever considers how he’s different himself.
But the article isn’t about how QT feels about modern cinema. He’s writing about one film that he has loved this year. It’s a Netflix film from earlier this year:The Rip.
The film is a police thriller starring Affleck and Damon that I also thought was great. The ending is a bit lousy, but I was willing to go with it because so much of that film had me in its grip.
But a suspenseful new movie has come out that did grab me and held me for its entire duration: Joe Carnahan’s The Rip, starring the dynamic duo of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. The film is an exciting cop thriller with a novel premise that manages to deliver the goods in really clever ways. The whole package worked for me: Carnahan’s direction, the splendid cast, the look of the film (courtesy of cinematographer Juan Miguel Azpiroz) – but the real powerhouse component of this splendid collection is the sensational screenplay by Carnahan and Michael McGrale.
It’s funny: even though I’m more associated with gangster movies – and of course I do like them – I’ve always kind of preferred cop movies, especially the type I grew up watching that came out in the 70s. (I saw The French Connection twice at the cinema, the first time in 1971 when I was nine, the second a year or so later when Fox re-released it on a nationwide double feature with Vanishing Point, also 1971. That was the year I saw Dirty Harry on its initial release, too.) But it’s been such a while since I saw a truly satisfying cop flick that I practically forgot what it felt like. The Rip doesn’t just invoke that type of film fondly, it’s one of the finest examples.
While I’m not into the passage where he rips into John Pankow as miscast in To Live and Die in LA (I’m all in on Pankow in whatever he does), QT does a great job of talking up what I loved about the film.
The sheer weight of the $20 million, hidden in a dozen orange storage buckets, makes it like the nitroglycerin in Sorcerer (1977), ready to blow the team to smithereens at any moment due to deadly retaliation by the bad guys who stashed it, mishandling on their part during the confiscation, or the psychological effect that $20 million has on the different team members. Over the course of the night the five-man team will find out who’s who and what’s what.
Great stuff.
The Mark Wahlberg movie filming at the end of my street won’t be as good as The Rip. Well, probably not… I’m happy to be proven wrong on that. But, we are seeing some genuinely good to great films landing on Netflix with regularity.
Great movies can be a magic trick. The surprise here isn’t that the magician is saying “ta da,” but rather “tudum.”
News Desk
Sadie Sink will star in new FX series The Marriage Plot. While the plot sounds like pretty standard young adult fare about love triangles and making choices as adults, this is elevated with director Hiro Murai (Atlanta, Widow’s Bay, Station Eleven) attached to the show. Read: thefutoncritic
Canadian Bell Media has announced a TV show remake of Meatballs, a Seth Rogan-produced remake of The Littlest Hobo, a revival of Big Brother Canada, and a new show from Letterkenny’s Jared Keeso about two garbage men in Montreal. Read: Deadline
Joshua Jackson has just joined the season 3 cast of Apple TV dramedy Your Friends & Neighbors. With no detail on who his character will play, this feels like on-point casting for the show. Read: Deadline
Paramount is trying to get a lawsuit tossed. The suit is seeking to stop the Paramount Skydance acquisition of Warner Bros Discovery moving forward. Read: Variety
All Her Fault writer-producer Megan Gallagher has a new show for Peacock The Break-In, based on the Katherine Faulkner book. FYI, Gallagher is not the actress of the same name (whop you may know from Millennium or The Larry Sanders Show)… but both the actress and the writer look very similar. Read: THR
Patricia Heaton will star opposite Richard Schiff and James Wolk in courtroom drama Public Interest. Read: thefutoncritic
Ellen Pompeo will star in new Hulu dramedy Chicks. Read: Variety
There’s now an official Mister Rogers Neighborhood YouTube channel. I don’t buy into the idea that any kids are actually going to watch this. But it makes for good boomer nostalgia. Read: NYT
Netflix anime series Devil May Cry will end with a third season. Read: Polygon
The complete series of Speed Racer is coming to Blu-ray on August 25. Read: HD Report
Trailer Park
My daughter, all of four years old, loves Simon & Garfunkel. It’s hilarious watching her walking around the house singing 50 Ways To Leave Your Lover. I’m not sure how we’ll watch this in my house, but Paul Simon: The Quiet Celebration will stream in the US on Disney+ and Hulu June 26.
BAKI-DOU: The Invincible Samurai returns for Part 2 on Netflix June 18.
That’s the newsletter for the today.
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