Tag Archives: Netflix

Putting out Fire with Gasoline

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Netflix is a data-driven dance floor, an algorithmic treehouse . The company  monitors the viewing habits of its 158 million subscribers so closely that it not only knows what you watch, but when you watch it, how much of it you watch, the trends that are most likely to hook you —  even the thumbnail images most likely to convince you to watch a new series. Its breadth is both impressing and daunting.

Don’t F**k With Cats is a case in point: Netflix has analyzed the data and deduced that what the world needs more than anything  is a true crime documentary series about obsessive internet users and cats.

What a genius move. What a home run. What a no-fail combination of everything that everyone likes, bundled up together in perhaps the most high-profile film about cats ever made (besides Lion King).Image result for the lion king"

The story of Don’t F**k With Cats doesn’t really matter; you’d watch it even if you thought – as I initially did – that it was going to simply be an America’s Funniest Home Videos compilation of cats clawing people to shreds during attempted baths.

However, the masterstroke here is that the narrative is simply unbelievable. And – this should be said upfront – it’s incredibly upsetting. This aspect can’t really be overstated. There are moments that are viscerally harrowing. The story begins with a video uploaded to YouTube that graphically depicts the torture and murder of two small kittens. You don’t see the video – or any subsequent similar videos – in the documentary, but there are plenty of Grizzly Man-style reactions nevertheless. One is by a senior police officer who ends up reduced to tears. It is a violently distressing display of human depravity. If you’re even slightly queasy about this sort of thing, I’d seriously recommend giving it a pass.

Nevertheless, the story is incredible. An anonymous user uploads the kitten video, and it appalls a group of Facebook users so strongly that they use every tool at their disposal to track him down. They parse the video frame by frame for something – anything – that will give them a clue to the killer’s whereabouts. Plug sockets and cigarette packets are scrutinized. A specific blanket is tracked down through eBay. The expertise of an incredibly niche online vacuum cleaner forum is consulted. Metadata is cross-referenced with Google Maps. This is the hive mind at its most clever.

One key member – a woman named Deanna Thompson – is the de facto narrator of the series. As you’d expect from someone as Very Online as her, she’s incisive and witty, and quick to pull the threads together in a dynamic way.Image result for don't fuck with cats"

But that’s arguably the biggest problem with the series. This is a show with a jokey title and a self-aware narrator that splashes around in some of the worst human behavior imaginable. As soon as the horror of the cat videos subsides, we’re off on a wild goose chase of reverse image searches, Google Street View sweeps and fake identity databases. And then we learn who the murderer is, and that his murders are about to escalate beyond cats. We meet the family of his victim, and the lurching duality of the series threatens to become almost untenable.

Still, it is beautifully presented and the final episode includes a flourish of bow-tying not seen since the climax of The Usual Suspects. But it still makes me deeply uneasy that a man who committed an awful crime purely to gain notoriety has now been dragged out of obscurity to be celebrated in a buzzy Netflix show. At least Don’t F**K With Cats’ filmmakers are aware of this. Hives are just too riveting — even malformed one — to look away.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpdHMaccjw4

“Every day, once a day, give yourself a present. Don’t plan it. Don’t wait for it. Just let it happen.”

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Leave it to David Lynch to give the gifts on his birthday.

The gift, on his 74th birthday today, is a peculiar and hilarious 17-minute short film titled What Did Jack Do?, which debuted on Netflix with a very enticing one-sentence synopsis: “In a locked down train station, a homicide detective conducts an interview with a tormented monkey.”Image result for eraserhead

Shot in grainy black-and-white, reminiscent of classic movies of yesteryear, and Lynch’s own 1977 feature film debut, Eraserhead, the short film features Lynch playing a detective, interrogating the “Jack” in the title about a murder investigation, in the typical darkened, windowless interrogation room. The twist? Jack is a suited small monkey that actually speaks.

As you’d expect from Lynch, it’s  bizarre and unsettling, but also very funny, whether intentional or not.

It’s an oddity of a film that Netflix categorizes as a crime drama, but it really can’t be adequately put into words, and is best experienced in non-synopsis form. On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, it will easily be one of the strangest things that viewers at home for the holiday can watch.

The monkey’s voice is credited as “Jack Cruz,” but it’s unclear exactly who is really behind it. There’s also a waitress who appears for a few seconds, played by Emily Stofle.

What Did Jack Do? demands multiple viewings, whether to make sense of it, or just to marvel in its surrealism. (The story may or may not also involve a chicken named Toototabon. Classic Lynch.)

In 2019, Lynch received an Academy Honorary Award, which represented his very first Oscar win, despite a storied resume.Image result for twin peaks sayings

His last major project was the Twin Peaks revival series, which was released in 2017 to much critical acclaim. There has been much speculation as to whether there we’ll see another season. Although Lynch has not denied the possibility, he has said if it were to happen, it would not air before 2021.

In the meantime, for Lynch-starved viewers, What Did Jack Do? will have to do. And does.

The Hail Mary Quarterback Sneak

Aaron Hernandez

The strange case of Aaron Hernandez — the pro football player convicted of murder before dying by suicide — may be the least eye-opening illumination of a slaying ever committed to film.

On a police-procedural level, the events of the past decade explain how the NFL star brazenly walked the edge of murderous madness, making him perhaps pro football’s first serial killer (O.J. was nothing more than a jealous ex).

What remains as mysterious as pi’s square root is why. Hernandez never confessed to all the murders, and hanged himself shortly after the conviction for one. Still, he’s such a mystery that he’ll be the subject of two mini-series this month: Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez and Aaron Hernandez: An ID Murder Mystery premiere Jan. 15 and Jan. 20, respectively, on Netflix and Investigation Discovery. As non-fiction films, both are hindered by the sport’s cavalier attitude toward violence — a rein that prevents both series from galloping.

What both unwittingly uncover, however, is how football does more than shrug at violence. It holds an inherit machismo obsession that creates the very cauldron of violence from which criminals emerge (Simpson, Jim Brown, Michael Vick, anyone? The list is frighteningly long.)

Neither, however, clearly answers the singular question at hand: What prompted a young man with seemingly boundless opportunities to throw his life away?
Instead of an answer, what viewers get are plenty of salacious but conflicting details, which don’t bring us much closer to understanding why.
Netflix’s Killer Inside makes a more valiant effort to find the truth, at least in terms of probing causes of his behavior. Investigation Discovery follows with Murder Mystery, a more dutiful tick-tock of the criminal trial (its primary sources are journalists who followed the case), complete with the usual cheesy reenactments — a tactic that Killer Inside also employs, just a bit more judiciously.
A star athlete in Bristol, Connecticut, Hernandez grew up with a stern father who also played football, becoming a standout in high school and at Florida before being signed by the New England Patriots.
Small wonder that widespread shock greeted the news in 2013 when Hernandez was charged, and later convicted, in the murder of Odin Lloyd, the 27-year-old boyfriend of his fiancee’s sister, and subsequently accused of a separate double homicide.
With a $40 million NFL contract and an outwardly enviable existence, as a friend says, “None of it made sense.”
Both programs try, mostly in vain, to make sense of it, contemplating a host of potential contributing factors, the most serious being CTE, the brain injury caused by repetitive contact that has plagued many football players.
As Killer Inside (and what’s with the unimaginative title? Why not Killer in the Huddle?) makes clear, the league’s emphasis is on protecting its multibillion-dollar product, as opposed to promoting the health and safety of players. Those conflicting goals prevent a full-throated discussion of the dangers.
Other motivations, however, are raised, in some respects undermining — or distracting from — that central thesis. They include the assertion that Hernandez was conflicted about his sexuality, particularly with a high school friend and teammate, Dennis SanSoucie.
Hernandez’s brother, Jonathan, also later spoke about abuse by their father, who died when Aaron was just 16, which resulted in a rift between Aaron and his mother.
In terms of the presentation, the most illuminating wrinkle in Killer Inside involves having access to audio of phone calls Hernandez made from prison, providing modest insight about his post-arrest state of mind and relationships with those closest to him.
For all that, these overlapping documentaries yield an inconclusive portrait. While there’s a tendency to indict football, at every level, for exploiting young talent, there are so many variables baked into Hernandez’s particular tale as to muddy that message.
The Aaron Hernandez story thus remains a tragedy that has defied, and continues to, simple explanation. While documentaries frequently connect their subjects to larger truths, Aaron Hernandez and Killer Inside ultimately feel at least as preoccupied, to varying degrees, with wading through its smaller tabloid trappings.
Both of the films’ ultimate failures are captured in one of Hernandez’s phone calls, taped by prison officials. In it, Hernandez refuses to say goodbye to his daughter, only “talk to you later.” He then discontinues the call, marked by an automated operator that says “The calls  hung up.”
Somehow, it feels like we were cut off, too.