The Hidden Gems of Netflix - Part 2: Dig a Little Deeper...

Oh, the time I have lost to Netflix.

Time I could be dedicating to finishing my second novel. Perfecting my cocktail flinging skills, painting an abstract masterpiece, or... well, literally anything else productive really.

Instead, hours and hours of my time (alongside vast swathes of the general populace's as well) is used burning through box-sets, classic movies, new releases, and quirky oddities hiding in plain site.We are living in a time when entertainment is literally accessible at the touch of a button, available at every fingertip, every taste and palate catered for and NETFLIX is blazing the trail with the boldest new content and turning entertainment norms upside down and inside out.Now less an on-demand video service, it is as much as a living, breathing studio of its own right—challenging the status quo, upsetting Apple carts, and industry norms and throwing out content like it is Christmas day and we are all well behaved good little boys and girls.Following on from my previous article—"The Hidden Gems of Netflix"—here then are five more hidden gems that you have probably passed by a thousand times looking for something to eat 90 minutes of your time—and never gave a second look. All I ask is, go back, give it a shot, and you may well find your new favourite movie.

These are the Further findings of the Netflix archaeologist...

'The Invitation' (2015)

DIRECTOR:Karyn KusamaPrometheus's Logan Marshall-Green spearheads this haunting, lingering thriller that deals with the human condition when dealing with loss and remorse.The Invitation starts with an omen. Driving toward his ex-wife's dinner, he will meet friends he has not seen since the tragic death of his son. To meet his ex-wife and new husband, at his former home, Marshall-Green's Will hits a coyote on the road. He and his girlfriend sit paralyzed in shock for a few moments, before he has to get out the car and put the poor animal out of its misery. His evening already one of gloomy memory, sadness, and confusion is now also tainted by his hands being covered in blood as well.

Upon arriving at his old home, he is met by his ex-wife Eden, her new husband David, and all his old friends. Silent fragments of his once life flit in and out of sight. His mind preoccupied on the past, the mercy killing and the weird arrival of David's friend to the dinner party all move toward stoking the fire of paranoia, uncertainty, and resentment.The ghost of his son forever on his mind, having asked to walk around the house, he realises at once something is not as it seems.

Soon, the party is in full swing and David reveals—with his friend Pruitt (a wonderfully dark, intense John Carroll Lynch) cajoling him—that he, Eden, Pruitt and house-guest Sadie are all part of a Cult that believes in the freedom of the spirit on the relinquishing of one's emotional baggage and neuroses. The group have an agenda to sign up new members to the fold—but as far as Will can see, the changes in his wife's personality is a troubling fingerprint that there is a larger agenda at play.

The film is a slow-burning revelation. It turns the screw at a terrific pace and reveals just enough at just the right moments, allowing the viewer's mind to play games and fill in blanks with assumptions and its own ideas of what will happen next.

By the time the penny is ready the drop the film's pace has gathered a good pace and soon, without even trying, it has ramped to a level where everything needs to get out of the way or be caught in the wake.

This film lingers long after the final scene. By the time the credits roll the idea has become more than just one house and the world opens up in scary, plausible and destructive ways... you are left with a feeling of falling far and long into a black precipice and the world just closing up on you.

Highly recommended if you are patient and like films with impact and characters that unfold like grand origami designs before your eyes.

It haunted me, and films that have that power are potent indeed.

'Violet & Daisy' (2011)

DIRECTOR: Geoffrey Fletcher

Starting with a shoot out in a tenement building instigated by the eponymous characters dressed as nuns, wonderfully brought to life by Lovely Bones's Saoirse Ronan and Sin City's Alexis Bledel and culminating with a series of revelations and relationships shifted and changed irreparably forever, this is a film that comes out of leftfield quickly, and soon nestles into your heart and finds a home.

A quirky, quasi-romantic comedy—rest assured, the lead characters are in love, platonic or not. There is a palpable connection between the two that is pure love—not to mention the burgeoning relationship between their next mark, James Gandolfini and green assassin Saoirse Ronan—and comedy, because—well—it's funny as hell. Slapstick levels of set pieces, and brilliant little moments of fantastical comic interplay.

The film has its moments of repose, and the tone and pace do settle in weird places occasionally, but on the whole, it bristles with emotive and captivating little bursts of life that capture and hold you and keep you riding along until the final scenes.

I have been a fan of Ronan for a long while and here she is the films beating heart, her character of Daisy is a firecracker, completely besotted by her wild-child partner, she coasts on her coat-tails and follows her seemingly blindly before the penny drops dramatically and the situation becomes unnervingly on edge between the two. Gandolfini acts as both the impetus for change and the push the plot requires to hurtle toward a heartfelt, poignant ending. But along the way the story takes twists and turns and the characters round out in pleasing and surprising ways that leave you satisfied and uplifted.

Stylishly directed by Geoffrey Fletcher, the film has a grainy quality that captures perfect colours and the wonderful shades and tones of the main characters wild, lavish, and chaotic lives.

I really enjoyed it, it burst with many flavours, it fills the screen with incident and curiosity, and it has a trio of central performances that keep you watching and beguiled, especially with the sadly departed Gandolfini playing against type and turning in a performance that showed a brand new side to the man, closer to his Romance and Cigarettes guise than his Sopranos identity, but with some genuinely beautiful little nuances that elevate not only his own performance, but the performances of the actors around him and the film as a whole.

It's sad as well, that we never saw more of this in his time on the big or small screen. So enjoy it here and drink it all in.

'Personal Shopper' (2016)

DIRECTOR: Olivier Assayas

With her burst out appearance in Panic Room firmly cementing her as a talent to watch, Kristen Stewart has since then enjoyed something of a muddled, mixed career. Her turn as Bella in the Twilight saga being something of a high, her almost phoned in turn as Snow White was somewhere far too close to the bottom for it to be comfortable (especially considering the cost of that films budget.) She has the chops to be a special talent and she has pedigree. She just needs the right projects to be channeled correctly.Thank god then for Personal Shopper.Somewhere between a psychological thriller and a low key ghost tale, Stewart plays Maureen, a woman who is troubled by an irregular heartbeat that could potentially kill her at any time, and that has already claimed the life of her twin brother.

The two siblings are also mediums, connected to the next plain of existence and in tune with the afterlife. Having made a promise that should one die the other would contact them to prove they made it to the other realm, Maureen is on a mission to connect with her brother in the Parisienne house he once lived in, so the new owners are ghost free and welcomed without the spirits haunting them.To supplement her income as a medium, she also works as a personal shopper for a rich, spoilt catwalk model—who is so self obsessed and full of her own drama that she doesn't see the imminent danger she has put herself in.

The film floats between subtle and atmospheric scenes of old, dark houses with presences both foul and fair and the day-lit streets of London, Paris, and European vistas that are both beautiful and starkly in contrast to her evenings.

Stewart throughout is a revelation of nuance and poise, weather-beaten in her mind as she desperately tries to make contact with her brother, but driven in an elegant, beautiful way that works as a mirror to her glitzy, celeb employer. That she carries her bosses look better and more naturally than the model herself but never once realises her own beauty is intrinsic to the denouement of the film, and that Stewart plays it so low-key and with such control is astounding.

Any fears of her phoning in the performance are dispelled early and she grips your attention vice-like and endears as a character from first frame to last. She effortlessly steers the film toward its ambiguous but satisfying conclusion, and there are some wonderful supporting performances bolstering her up. But this is her film, make no mistake.She simmers when the second thread of story starts as she is contacted via phone by an unknown puppet-master who she believes may be her brother, but soon reveals itself to be something entirely more sinister—and she reveals a cool, impenetrable sexuality in the third act as certain threads left dangling suddenly tie themselves off and change the character's direction entirely.

I was gripped throughout. Subtle touches are sprinkled through the movie that lift it from melodrama into a new realm of sanguinely haunting and lingering mood that it stays on your mind a fair while after credits finish and the story and performances are perfectly driven by assured and mature direction that allows the actors to take responsibility and turn in a gangbuster show.

Maybe not for everyone, and slow-burning enough that it may lose some of you along the way, but the patient and the brave will leave rewarded with something quite new and something quite different.

Refreshingly so. A rocket up the arse of what cinema, and indeed Ghost stories can and should be.

'Berlin Syndrome' (2017)

DIRECTOR: Cate Shortland

Berlin Syndrome is one of those films that just seems to be hewn from the rawest and most potent of elements. It's a movie that defies the standard dramatic textbooks and instead winds itself serpentine around your arteries the longer it goes on, twisting over nerve-endings and prodding home on all those receptors you have in your body that make skin shock into goose flesh and hairs stand straight up when the atmosphere and air becomes ghostly cold and untenable.

It is, in many parts, almost insidious with its central performances dynamic and leaves you feeling like a voyeur to the terrible goings-on even as it hopes to entertain you.

A thrilling and frenetic prospect for sure.