Brightest Young Things

Svetlana and I are pretty obsessed with Netflix. I take the slightly more OCD route though by rating all my movies (between 1 and 5 stars) and rearranging my queue on an hourly basis. I will often berate her for giving odd ratings: "5 stars out of 5 for The Descent? Really?" She doesn't care. I also send a lot of "notes" to friends, a Netflix feature that allows you to suggest movies to your friends via an up to 200 character mini review. Svetlana wishes I would channel all my Netflix energy into BYT. So at her request every once in a while I'll post some of my mini-reviews from the past 4+ years, ten or so at a time. Feel free to give me shit like I give her shit:

Road House
actual movie: 1 star, entertainment value: 5 stars. The pinnacle of unintentionally funny films from the hideous boob jobs to the wanton violence to the curious homo-eroticism, this is a winner/loser.
3 stars

9 (not Nine)
Didn't live up to the promise of the short film. The initial excitement over of the wonderful visuals eventually fades without a compelling narrative. I'd skip it, and I normally love this stuff.
2 Stars

Time Out
96% positive on Rotten Tomatoes, #11 on the AV Club films of the decade, yet I'm giving it only 3 stars. It's good, just not that good, jeez. Or maybe I'm just stupid...
3 stars

The Man From Earth
Yikes. An intelligent and thought provoking script for sure, but the production value and performances are so atrocious to the point where it's unwatchable. Like ohmygod so bad.
2 Stars

District 9
Offbeat twist on alien movies with an incredibly inventive mix of CGI and documentary style filmmaking. Dark, gross, funny, and poignant, def worth your time.
4 Stars

Big Trouble in Little China
So so so stupid, but highly entertaining. It's like they gave a bunch of 12 year olds a lot of money to make a movie, but they were pretty cool 12 year olds. Worth a nostalgic revisit.
3 Stars

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
Like watching a junkyard puke for 3 hours. Except less fun. Utterly inept filmmaking in every respect. Possibly the worst movie ever made and will make you hate America forever and want to die.
1 Star

Big Fan
Not the lite sports comedy I assumed it was, it's actually really dark. Funny, but dark. Patton is effective, plays it straight. A little slow tho. Put it in your queue, but maybe near the middle.
3 Stars

Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey
A lot better than you might remember/have guessed. Sadler is hilarious as Death, the special effects are inventive, the jokes are clever, and there are cameos by Faith No More and Primus. Excellent.
4 Stars

Act of God
One of the few times I'd wished a doc took a more conventional mainstream approach to the subject matter. Would have made the whole thing a lot less sleep inducing. Some good moments, but skip it.
2 Stars

Wanna be my Netflix friend? Click here:
http://www.netflix.com/BeMyFriend/PmzrQcDhoaLYHM0oKBu0

Check out One Second Movie Reviews Part 18 here:
http://www.brightestyoungthings.com/movies/one-second-movie-reviews-part-18/

Wanna know what's going to be avail to steam on Netflix? Check these guys out:
http://www.streamingsoon.com/

Also check out this cool article on nytimes.com that Svet found where you can click on DC and then scroll through movies to see what neighborhoods rented them:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/01/10/nyregion/20100110-netflix-map.html?hp