This week Big Tuck is bringing you some of the best, brightest, and most bizarre picks from the streaming verse!
NETFLIX
Wild Things
Good GRAVY!! I needed to turn the air conditioning on in my apartment in JANUARY!
This was the first time I ever watched this one, as viewing this would have made my conservative parents’ head’s LITERALLY explode. Honestly, I can’t think of anyone who watched this it came out in 1998…I guess we were all just saving up our movie time for the Matrix coming out the year later to shotgun over. And Over. and Over Again! But I digress…
This was actually really good! I recently got subjected to Clueless (more on that at a much MUCH later date), and this reminded me of a sort of Clueless Noire. Yes, there’s gratuitous nudity, language, and sexual encounters, but if you look past the naughty parts there’s a really engaging WhoDunnIt that keeps you involved with the characters and stories the whole way through! Not a great flick to watch with the whole family, however, if you have a special someone who’s in for a bit of naughtiness, it would certainly be a fun movie to stay in for on a Friday Night!
RATING – 3.5/5 +
HULU
Devil in a Blue Dress
Boy am I glad I got to see this before it inevitably gets pulled off yet another streaming service. If you liked LA Confidential and want to see over 90 minutes of Denzel in a tank-top, this is already a winner.
As the resident Noir expert in North Carolina, I actually read this book poolside some 7 years ago in Florida while visiting my grandparents. Did I remember all of the book? Actually yes, and I have to say it made for an entertaining flick. There’s a bunch of character actors who get to pop up (Tom Sizemore and Don Cheadle are just having a blast!), and while it’s certainly no Oscar contender it is an entertaining time.
RATING – 3.5/5 +
SPECTRUM/AT&T
Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit
Yowza. This was a ROUGH ONE!
It was so hard to believe that this was a REAL movie that got released IN THEATERS. This screams something that would just be dumped on Amazon Prime (looking at you, Without Remorse), especially for the kind of IP that had been mined so far as Jack Ryan in general. So where to start?
The editing is frenetic, trying to be like a Bourne movie but instead, it looks like a crackhead with a 35 mm camera. There were no real surprises or plot twists as the villains are painted so broadly you can see their actions coming from a mile away. The story is ripped DIRECTLY from a crappy 2000s FPS, with all the crammed-in Motorcycle chases (telegraphed from LITERALLY 15 minutes into the film) and overdone hand-to-hand scenes you would imagine would come from it.
The only real treat is Kenneth Branagh (the original drinker of the River of Ham) literally eating the set, which I thought was very surprising until I found out that he DIRECTED THE MOVIE (??!?!!). Anyway, the only thing that stuck to me after watching this was that this was a DIRECT warm-up for him to play the EXACT same role in TENET (a much better movie).
RATING – 2/5