Netflix discoveries

I am addicted to movies and TV. When I was a kid, I can remember my Mom yelling at me that I made a better door than a window because when I walked past a TV screen I was completely zombieized. I still am.

I have learned to manage my addiction and have become a functioning adult in spite of TV. I made it through graduate school and manage to hold down a job, but I scour movie reviews and watch trailers compulsively. Months ago we have disconnected our TV from the antennae and have no cable. I have not been able to quit cold turkey though. I still get my fix through Netflix.

Here are some of my Netflix faves:

Stranger than Fiction


Harold Crick (Will Farrell) hears a voice narrating his life. As he fights against the plot that is driving him to his death, he makes his life more musical, falls in love, and finds a purpose for his life. OK, I read too many movie reviews. I love the part where he gives the baker a box of flours or when he introduces himself at the publisher as a character from the author's book. There are lots of little things that are funny like when the author (Emma Thompson) smokes her cigarettes she holds her hand like a bird's beak and puts the butt in a kleenex.

Sweet Land


This is about a German girl who goes to marry a Norwegian bachelor farmer she has never met in Minnesota. He picks her up at the train station with his talkative friend and takes her to the church for the wedding. But no one will marry them because she is German. I love it when she yells at him in German when he won't let her move in.

Wonderfalls


Jaye is probably crazy. Inanimate objects talk to her and make her help people. But the instructions are not clear and solutions are complicated. Like when she runs over her dad's foot. Or when she steals her therapists monkey. Or sets up her lesbian sister with the UPS guy. Or breaks the headlight of the priest come to save the cheese obsessed nun. Oh, and Fatsquatch. A TV show but probably would be PG-13 with some bad language and sexual situations.

Battlestar Galactica


This show is on SciFi and is amazing. As a disclaimer, it pushes the envelope on violence and sexuality. It mixes Star Trek with 24. Humans and a robotic race called Cylons are at war, and the Cylons are winning. In the first episode, humanlike Cylons have infiltrated the 12 colony planets and destroy them with nuclear bombs. They overpower the fleet by disabling their new computer systems. The only humans left are refugees and a single battleship, Galactica, that was being mothballed and did not have the upgraded computers. They are on the run from the Cylons and trying to survive and find a safe haven. Each show builds on the previous and all characters in the large cast are important.