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CONSTANTINOS PSILLIDES picks three Netflix movies to NOT stream

Netflix is notorious when it comes to original productions, in the sense that it is almost always a coin toss between a major hit or a disastrous miss. Let’s go on a trip the wild side, in the land of ‘movies to be avoided’ where the only thing that grows is Adam Sandler money plants. And while you are reading this, spare a thought for lil’ ol me: I make it a point to watch every movie/series that I suggest here so going through this had me rethinking my stance on torture; maybe waterboarding is not so bad after all.

365 Days: This Day

Here’s my one sentence review of the movie 365 Days that came out last year. Ready? It makes Fifty Shades Of Grey look like a George Lanthimos movie. For the life of me I couldn’t understand why anyone would like it, especially its core audience, women. The plot is unbelievably misogynistic, bordering on rape: a ruthless, sex-obsessed mafioso called – I swear I’m not making this up – Massimo imprisons (!) a young woman he likes for a whole year (365 days, get it?) to force her to fall in love with him. Instead of ending like it was supposed to, with him in jail and her seeing a therapist to process her trauma, she ends up falling in love with him. I mean, what woman wouldn’t? Right? The hook of the movie was that they would have sex anywhere, all the time. That’s it. That’s movie sex with moans, thrusts and mouths opened in silent ecstasy. Boring as… well, you know.

Anyway, the movie was so successful that a sequel was made called 365: This Day. Was it as bad as the original movie? Nope. It was worse. The producers unleashed upon the world a movie with an even dumber plot. Our heroine is frustrated because she doesn’t like to be dominated by her man. You know, the same guy who is a violent mafioso and put her in jail for a year so she would love him. Apparently, they tend to be domineering. Who knew? Anyway, she now turns her affections to a garden boy. Also, there’s now a brother thrown in the mix. And lots of boring, movie friendly sex.

I cannot possibly stress how bad and cringey this movie is. Watching your parents sex tape is preferable to this excuse of a money grab.

The Last Thing He Wanted

I like both Anne Hathaway and Ben Affleck and I don’t believe they deserve the hate they get. But even I cannot defend this incredible mess of a movie. The Last Thing He Wanted is the story of a journalist in the 80s working in the shadow of the Iran-Contra affair trying to expose the government’s involvement in arming paramilitary groups in Central America. While the premise sounds great, the movie fails spectacularly. It is a mess of a plot, almost impossible to follow and with so many twists and turns one would think the writers changed their mind about characters halfway through shooting. The plot is so thick, no exposition dump in the world can save it; had this been spread over a series it might be preferable but someone decided to shove the whole thing in a two-hour movie. It didn’t work.

Drive

Have you ever seen a movie and be like “man, no big deal, I could do that”? Well, that’s exactly what the producers of Drive did, but instead of forgetting it and going about their day like the rest of us, they got millions in funding from Netflix. They binge-watched the Fast and the Furious franchise, followed it with the Ocean’s Eleven movies and hey presto, a high-octane heist movie. It fails on every single level. The acting is bad, the plot is beyond dumb and the stunts are sub-par. It makes FF look like arthouse cinema.