By Ryan Keating-Lambert
Bored of the quarantine yet? I am too. Home office seems like a great idea in theory… but when you factor in children, a lot of work (or lack of work) and more, you need a bit of an escape. Here are ten films to (hopefully) get you through covid-19. BUT, before you get watching, can I make a suggestion?
Since none of us are able to go to the cinema, let’s have a watch party! Netflix watch parties are taking over the world right now to give you the feeling of watching a film with other people from the comfort of your own home, which I miss already, to be honest! Each watch party includes a chat screen to talk to your friends while the film is streaming. If I can’t do my regular Movie Barf Monday evenings in Edison Filmhub right now, I can at least do this!
To participate, download the free Netflix Party plugin for Google Chrome and click on the link I provide on Facebook every Monday at 19:15 for a 19:30 start. Looking forward to seeing you there!
Check out the full list below…
10. I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore
I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore is a very underrated American indie comedy / thriller written and directed by Macon Blair and starring the wonderfully talented Melanie Lynskey and Elijah Wood, which you simply HAVE to watch for its unique brand of black comedy that borderlines absurdity.
When Ruth (Lynskey) is burgled, she finds a new sense of purpose by tracking down the thieves with her odd neighbour (Wood). But they soon find themselves dangerously out of their depth when facing a pack of degenerate criminals.
9. The Invitation (2015)
Directed by Karyn Kusama (Destroyer), The Invitation is a superb thriller which slowly reaches boiling point through its well-written dialogue and brilliant performance of underrated Tom Hardy look-a-like, Logan Marshall-Green.
Set around a dinner party. Green’s ‘Will’ reluctantly brings his girlfriend to a dinner party of his ex-wife, where he relives the trauma of losing his late child. But after witnessing some disturbing behaviour from the hosts, he begins to suspect ulterior motives for the party.
8. Horse Girl (2020)
Horse Girl is a lively exploration of one girl’s madness and frustration. What starts off as a quirky indie comedy that we’ve seen a hundred times before soon turns into a wonderfully unique representation of mental health that’s both heartfelt and hypnotic. And Brie is fantastic.
The film centres around Sarah (Alison Brie) who lives a simple life, training horses and working in a crafts store. But when she starts to experience bizarre episodes of sleepwalking and other disturbing behaviour, she worries that she may succumb to the same future as her late grandmother…
7. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind (2019)
Directed by and also starring renowned actor Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years a Slave), The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind is a British drama that was one of the candidates for the Oscars last year and is based on an inspiring true story.
The film, based on the memoir by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer, sees a curious 13-year-old Kamkwamba (Maxwell Simba), accustomed to fixing radios and other bits and bobs, attempt to build a windmill to save his village in Malawi. It’s the perfect feel-good movie for these strange times.
6. Mercury 13
Mercury 13 is the gripping and award-winning Netflix documentary based around the brave women of the Mercury 13 project, who led a campaign to put women in space.
In the late 1950s, the thirteen women, who were part of a privately funded programme to undergo the same training as NASA astronauts, set out to not just pressure the Whitehouse that women also deserved to go into space, but even underwent the same physiological tests of their male counterparts in secret.
5. CAM (2018)
This webcam thriller may sound familiar. After all, there are countless teen movies inspired by social media, but CAM is the real deal. A genuinely disturbing and suspenseful trip into the psyche of the webcam show culture.
Starring Madeline Brewer (The Handmaid’s Tale), in one of her most notable performances to date, Alice aka ‘Lola’ is well on the way to climbing her way into the top 50 of her camgirl website, before something strange and incomprehensible takes over her feed. Don’t expect to get all the answers here – the best thing about CAM is its ambiguity and nail-biting tension.
4. Beasts of No Nation (2015)
Cary Joji Fukunaga’s Beasts of No Nation is a beautifully shot and brutal look at one boy’s journey into horror in civil war. By far one of the most gritty, but stunning portrayals of war in recent years which leaves you almost breathless.
The film is based on the story of Agu (Abraham Attah), one of many child soldiers fighting for a dangerous guerilla group led by Idris Elba’s ‘Commandant’, in the civil war of a country which is never named.
3. I Lost my Body (2019)
This recent Oscar nominated animated feature from France is both fiercely inventive and beautiful, and perhaps one of the most underrated films on this list… with a soundtrack by Dan Levy which is to die for.
Beautifully animated, I Lost my Body is a stunning and adventurous tale of one man’s severed hand as it works its way across Paris to find his body again. It’s also a love story, and an all-round celebration of life. Wonderful.
2. The Little Hours (2017)
Jeff Baena (I Heart Huckabees) brings the Italian novel ‘The Decameron’ by Giovanni Boccaccio to life with The Little Hours, a spoofy medieval tale that will shock you at times but also make you smile with genuine goof. It’s more than just nuns behaving (very) badly… It’s an ode to freedom.
With an all-star cast of comic actors including Alison Brie, Aubrey Plaza, Kate Micucci, Dave Franco, Molly Shannon and John C. Reilly, it was filmed on location in Tuscany, and will surely brighten up your evening.
1. Love, Death + Robots (2019)
OK, technically not a film… Created by David Fincher (Mindhunter, Gone Girl) and Tim Miller (Deadpool), this Netflix original series is an anthology of animated stories FOR ADULTS, and is guaranteed to be impress you (probably more than anything else you’ve seen recently) because of how engaging, psychedelic, batshit, and well, intellectual they are. You’ll be left feeling totally grossed out, but at the same time, enlightened!
The creator’s description pretty much sums it up – ‘Sentient Dairy Products, Rogue Werewolf Soldiers, Robots Gone Wild, Sexy Cyborgs, Alien Spiders And Blood-thirsty Demons From Hell Converge In An 185-minute Genre Orgy Of Stories’… sold yet?
For more info on the upcoming watch parties, check out the Facebook event.
Feature photo: Concourse Film Trade
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