Netflix Minute Grab Bag

Netflix Minute is a weekly feature highlighting a title from Netflix's catalog of instant view films. If you want to spend a night snuggled up with a bag of popcorn and don't want to drive to the video store, this is for you.

Last week, I missed my normal mark for a weekly Netflix Minute post. I'd like to think that's because I didn't have too much to say about the prospective movie, so I consequently decided that I'd run a special version of this feature highlighting a handful of recent viewings with a bit more brevity than usual. So, join me after the jump to hear my thoughts on Christopher Nolan's Insomnia, Martin Scorcese's Shutter Island, and Joaquim Dos Santos's Superman/Shazam!: The Return of Black Adam.

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Years before his popular success with the rebooted Batman franchise, Christopher Nolan was doing much the same experimentation with different psychological aspects woven into thrilling stories. Memento is probably the most well known of these earlier movies, prospering from a narrative structure that is rooted in the protagonist's total lack of memory. Nolan later directed Insomnia, a film starring Al Pacino that dives into a L.A. homicide detective's investigation of a murder in Alaska.

While the murder at hand drives the plot forward, the protagonist has to deal with his own demons from the past. The persisting Alaskan sun keeps Detective Dormer awake perpetually, driving his regret for past mistakes deeper and deeper into his conscious mind. The core of this plot may be slightly contrived, but the degrading state of the protagonist increases the stakes to a state that this detail is easily forgotten. Add in a strong cast of performers including Hilary Swank as a greenhorn Alaskan cop and Robin Williams as the prime suspect, and you've got a pretty solid thriller.

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The trailer for Shutter Island made me a little wary about possible horror elements, but I decided to hop on the DiCaprio train while it was still fresh. Luckily, the trailer overstated these aspects of an otherwise psychological thriller and left me a little more receptive to the haunting scenes in the island's mental facility. The plot rises from the disappearance of a patient at the hospital for the criminally insane and the subsequent dispatch of federal marshals Daniels and Aule to investigate. Before long it becomes clear that much more is going on in this institution than meets the eye and Teddy Daniels has his own hidden reasons for being there.

I couldn't help but be taken in by the film by the killer cast of actors who outperformed Leonardo DiCaprio, one of my favorite authors. Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley, Jackie Earle Haley, Emily Mortimer, Max Von Sidow, and Michelle Williams fill out the list, fleshing out a world that might be a little unbelievable with proper pushing. Unfortunately, the cast can't fully save a plot that's dependent on exposition to explain its own cleverness, which ultimately results in a slow falling action and unsatisfying resolution. Being drawn in by so many promising attributes earlier in Shutter Island made it that more disappointing when I couldn't see them pay off to their fullest.

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Unlike the latest DC Universe films I've watched (Batman: Under the Red Hood, Green Lantern: First Flight, Superman/Batman: Public Enemies), Superman/Shazam!: The Return of Black Adam is a collection of short vignettes telling stories of Captain Marvel, Spectre, Jonah Hex, and Green Arrow. The title story starts things off, offering an origin story for Captain Marvel while welcoming Superman to help form his moral compass as a new superhero.

My unfamiliarity with Spectre and Jonah Hex didn't really affect my enjoyment of their stories in either direction, though the short stories admittedly don't offer much context for people seeking a deeper story. The hour-long film wraps things up with a story of Green Arrow, one of my favorite superheroes and thus putting a nice bow on the whole thing. The length of the film reduced my expectations quite heavily at the start, which probably helped form my positive outlook at the end. If you want some popcorn action scenes featuring some solid superheroes, check this out. If you want the depth of a 200-page comic book crammed into an animated movie, you'd do better to check out some other entries in Warner Premiere's catalog (specifically Batman: Under the Red Hood).