Netflix for Thanksgiving

Justin Here. It's been months since I've done a Gems of Netflix post, but I thought that Thanksgiving Weekend is a good time for people to catch up on some films they've maybe missed, or never even heard of.  It's also a good time to watch some awesome classics.

1. The Terminator - There's nothing like watching a low budget, violent masterpiece by James Cameron.  This is the movie that turned Arnold Schwarzenegger into a star and made everyone afraid of what would later become the internet.  It's the precursor to the allegorical Terminator 2: Judgement Day from 1991.  The story is simple, the evil artificial intelligence Skynet has developed time travel technology to send back a Terminator robot (Schwarzenegger) to kill the mother of John Connor, Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton).  The human resistance from the future has thankfully stolen this time travel technology and sent back Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) to protect Sarah.  The film itself is somewhat of a slasher film and definitely an action film.  Perfect for Thanksgiving.

2.  La Femme Nikita - Nope we're not talking about the USA show from the nineties or the CW show that's on right now.  We're talking about Luc Beson's (The Professional, The Fifth Element) film about taking a street thug off the street and turning her into an assassin for some nefarious espionage organization.  The film is in French and subtitled, but that shouldn't be too off putting.  If you want you could watch the American remake Point of No Return starring Bridgett Fonda but I've never seen that and believe it's not as good.

3.  The Game - David Fincher's follow up to Se7en is often forgotten.  It's a tense ride starring Michael Douglas and Sean Penn that has a great twist at the end.  Douglas plays a wealthy investment banker who is given a gift to play an augmented reality type game.  The lines blur between the game and reality as this psychological thriller winds it's twisty path.  This being a Thanksgiving list I thought it would be important to have a family film on the list (Douglas and Penn being brothers in this film).

4. CQ - Roman Coppola's (son of Francis, brother of  Sophia, cousin of Nicolas Cage and Jason Schwartzman) directorial debut is as much a film about making films in the sixties in Paris as it is a sixties sci-fi film. It stars Jeremy Davies (LOST) as a young second AD who is suddenly given the reins to a feature science fiction film. Also it's got Billy Zane, he's a cool dude.



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