* I call the Mini the "electronic brain" of our home theater system. It's small, hooked up to the Internet wirelessly via WiFi, and it stores all of our iTunes music, videos, and digital pictures. We use the Sony HDTV as the monitor, and use a wireless keyboard and mouse to control it from the couch/man chair. The Mini's SuperDrive(TM) is our DVD player. Forgive me, but the Mini deserves an emoticon! :-)
No, for the real story behind why I love Netflix so much, I have to go back to 2002, when I was a newbie just starting my MBA program. I mistakenly took an elective course during the summer semester that really was intended for MBA students in their last or second-to-last semesters. The course was on entrepreneurialism, and was taught by an adjunct professor who was the President of Waterside Capital Corporation, a VC firm in Virginia Beach. To get a passing grade in the course, I had to estimate the break-even point in customers/subscribers for the Netflix DVD mailing service, which was in its infancy at the time. I had about two quarters of data to use to try to make any meaningful estimates, and I'm sure my calculations were completely off from reality. Luckily, the prof figured I did enough in the class to pass, and ever since then, I've had a warm fuzzy feeling for Netflix.
Let's go back to the first point I made above, that Netflix has an unparalleled library of old, hard-to-find movies. A little while ago, WSJ ran an obit for Donald Westlake, an author and screenwriter of some regard. Westlake penned detective novels with a certain humorous side to them, often under the pseudonym Richard Stark, and that was why he was lauded by the WSJ.
As they wrote the obit, the Journal did mention several of the movies that were made from the Richard Stark novels. Among them were Point Blank (1967) with Lee Marvin and The Hot Rock (1972) with Robert Redford. He also did the screenplay for The Grifters (1990), one of my less-favorite John Cusack films (although it was not without merit; if you've seen it, you'll know there's an unforgettable yet very brief scene with Annette Benning), and Payback (1999), the Mel Gibson movie I really wanted to like better than I did. Lucy Liu as dominatrix... Rowr!
I knew that I could find Point Blank and The Hot Rock on the list of available titles through Netflix, and that those titles would be impossible to find at a Blockbuster. Have I mentioned I adore Netflix? What I didn't know, couldn't possibly have known, when I put those two movies on my queue, was how remarkable they both are. Let's look at Point Blank first.
Now, I've seen enough old films to know and understand that Lee Marvin is one of the Top Ten all-time Hollywood tough guys. Scroll down in that list; you'll find him! But watching Marvin perform in Point Blank has to be one of his toughest of tough-guy roles!
At first, I have to admit I was worried that Point Blank would be another weird, creepy, go-nowhere mid- to late-sixties movie. When it started, it had a ton of flashbacks, which normally don't bother me. However, this movie had a similar look and feel for the first 15-20 minutes or so as did the immortally bad Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970), the movie that made Roger Ebert be a film critic rather than a writer/director. I was overjoyed that Point Blank got better and better the longer Marvin sought out the man who shot him and took his money.
One thing I noted was that Marvin never carried his gun in a normal manner. He never had a holster for it, never tucked it away in the small of his back, and practically never held it by the grip; rather, he carried it with his hand around the chamber of the gun. Who does that?! You can see what I'm talking about in the movie poster:
The other remarkable thing about Point Blank is just how many famous actors made an appearance. Archie Bunker is in it! John Vernon, who later was immortalized for all-time in the role of Dean Wormer in Animal House (1978), was in it. James Sikking, who is most famous for his work on "Hill Street Blues", played a sharpshooter. Even Kathleen Freeman, who played Sister Mary Stigmata (AKA, the Penguin) in The Blues Brothers (1980), is in it. What a hoot!So, if you ever want to know just why Lee Marvin was voted as the Number 1 Hollywood Tough Guy of all time, check out Point Blank!
The other Westlake film, The Hot Rock, was also interesting, but for different reasons. I have to say that I like Redford as an actor, but not at the same level of intensity as my regard for Paul Newman. Just the fact that Newman is in a movie is enough to make me like it! That's true even if he makes a small appearance in otherwise clunkers of movies like Message In a Bottle (1999) or Nobody's Fool (1994); Melanie Griffith - UGH! Newman had the special charisma where everything he touched was better simply because he was involved. And those blue eyes!
Ah, but I digress. What I meant to say above is that I haven't seen that many Redford movies that don't have Newman in them. The Hot Rock is one, and we also recently watched The Horse Whisperer (1998). I did mention earlier that Westlake was known for his comedic stylings when it came to crime dramas. The Hot Rock, as it turns out, is meant to be a comedy on par with more famous movies of the era, like The Pink Panther (1963) or, more accurately, The Return of The Pink Panther (1975).
The Hot Rock also has several actors who later went on to star in other vehicles. The movie poster might be hard to make out, but standing on Redford's left is George Segal, who I always associate with the role of Jack Gallo in the TV series "Just Shoot Me!" Ron Liebman, the guy to Redford's right on the poster, has done a ton of work in Hollywood. And the most famous cameo of all was performed by Zero Mostel of The Producers (1968 Mel Brooks original) fame. The actor who caught my eye, though, and who forced me to stop the movie and rewind to make sure it really was him, was Christopher Guest! He played a cop in the precinct house on which our foursome of jewel thieves land a helicopter (What? Did they think the cops wouldn't notice a helicopter landing on the roof?!), and he only had two lines or so, but it marked his first credited performance in a major motion film. How about that?Something else about The Hot Rock also sent shivers down my spine as we watched it. The film was released in 1972, so they probably filmed it in 1970 or so. As they filmed the helicopter scene (on the way to the precinct house on the west side of Manhattan), they flew right past the World Trade Center (WTC) twin towers in lower Manhattan. The creepy thing is that the towers weren't finished yet! One tower still had construction going on at the top 5-10 stories or so, and the other tower had about a third of the tower yet to go. Just knowing that those two buildings no longer exist, and all the death and destruction that went with them, really freaked me out while watching The Hot Rock.
I did mention that The Hot Rock was meant to be a funny crime caper, and the only thing I'll say about that is our definition of what's funny sure has changed since the late '60s and early '70s. I'm guessing my dad would find it funny, but then again, he always thought "Three's Company" was hysterical (sorry to throw you under the bus like that, Dad). This movie, while funny at times, doesn't have the same zing as Peter Sellers achieved in the old Blake Edwards Pink Panther movies.
If you get the chance, and if you have a subscription with Netflix, definitely check out those two movies. They're worth the time!
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