Christopher Nolan
Mark Duplass, who stars as Pete in The League, recommends Netflix picks on his Twitter account on a fairly regular basis. Tonight he pointed to the first feature by Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight, Inception), Following. That got me wondering what other Nolan films were available for streaming, so here’s a Nolan Mini-Mega-Post featuring Following, Memento, & Insomnia.
Following, uh, follows a young writer with a penchant for stalking. He falls in with another stalky type, and they get into some trouble. The black and white, noir-style photography suits the subject matter well. Remarkably, Nolan made this movie over the course of a year, filming on weekends, for a ridiculously low budget.
Memento follows Leonard, who has lost his ability to retain short-term memories and has to piece his existence together out of clues he’s left himself via Polaroid pictures. Kind of like Dana Carvey in Clean Slate except, you know, not terrible. Is is one of those movies that you can’t watch the same way the second time, like The Usual Suspects or Fight Club, so if you’re watching it with someone who hasn’t seen it, don’t be a jerk and ruin it for them.
Insomnia is a remake of a foreign film staring Al Pacino and Robin Williams. But, despite all of that, it still has a 92 on Rotten Tomatoes. It’s not my favorite Nolan film, but it’s definitely Queue Worthy. Besides, what else are you going to do when every channel on your TV is showing football?
Zombieland
Honestly, I thought 2004′s Shaun of the Dead said all that needed to be said about zombie comedies, but them came Zombieland and its controversial fast zombies. Unlike Shaun, Zombieland doesn’t try to give you a glimmer of hope—director Ruben Fleischer gives us a distopian near-future America completely overrun by a nearly unavoidable mutation of mad cow disease with zombie-like symptoms. With great one-liners, an incredible cameo that I won’t ruin here and a rather useful set of rules for navigating our zombie future, Zombieland delivers both laughs and adventure.
It’s not exactly a well-kept secret… it made more than $100 million in theaters, quadrupling it’s budget. But, if you haven’t seen it, now’s your chance to check it out.
