Netflix Brooklyn Favorites

I don’t know about you, but every time I browse through the “Local Favorites for Brooklyn, NY” sections of Netflix, I’ve maybe seen 4 movies out of like 20 (especially with the Instantly Viewable ones, eeek!!). I consider myself to be a fairly knowledgeable/avid movie watcher, but I’m just wondering who exactly these Brooklyn people are that are watching these. Do people just instantly watch things for show to make Brooklyn seem “cool”? Or maybe I’m actually just the movie buff equivalent of Marmaduke: The Movie, and just don’t know it.

Well at the potential risk of looking like a complete ignoramus, fellow Brooklyners, wouldja help me out with this? Here’s a bunch of movies I’ve never seen, heard of, and want to know more about that have been deemed “Brooklyn Favorites”:

1) Medicine for Melancholy
This is totally a movie that like all of my friends and exes would make fun of me for being a typical “Anna” movie- which is why I can’t believe I’ve never seen it. I guess the “plot” is just about these 2 people who have a one night stand and wander around San Francisco drinking coffee the next day just talking and talking and talking. Which, is, pretty much always something I want to watch: people having long-ass conversations within a scenario that forces a specific kind of fleeting intimacy.

2) Girlhood
This one’s a documentary about 2 teen girls who are in and out of the juvenile justice system of Baltimore. It came out in 2003, which is like: how, as a Women’s Studies college major, did I ever miss this? Looks really good, but probably really depressing, which actually come to think of it, is perhaps one main reason I manage to avoid watching a few documentaries that literally everyone’s seen (Food Inc., I’m looking at you….or I guess avoiding looking at you).

3) Slaves of New York
This is a James Ivory production, but it takes place in 80s New York and starts Bernadette Peters and Chris Sarandon. Whuuuaaa?? It’s about bohemian artists or something, and it’s a comedy. Kind of After Hours-sounding, right? This could either be really awesome or really awful.

4) Adanggaman
This film from 2000 is a multinational production from a French director about 17th century west African wars and how they affected burgeoning slave trade (not to be confused with the movie Slaves of New York…eeeeesh!). Again, how the hell was it that I didn’t see this in college? Maybe it’s racist and weird? Or maybe the opposite such that it’s the movie “the man” doesn’t want you to see? Someone must know.

5) The Vanished Empire
This is directed by “noted Russian director Karen Shakhnazarov” (who?), and is about a Soviet kid in the 70s who trades “his family’s intellectual and ideological heritage” for black market stuff from the West. I don’t know if they just mean like symbolically, or if maybe he has like an original copy of Das Kapital that he’s ripping out page by page for some blue jeans? Either way, I can’t believe I haven’t heard of it! If there’s one thing I have nostalgia for is this one episode of Head of the Class where they go on a trip to Soviet Russia to battle some other students in an academic decathlon, and every conceivable stereotype is joked about, including references to Rocky IV. Also, period pieces are awesome.

6) Jeanne Dielman
Ok, I fibbed a little, I actually have seen part of this. But you know why only part? Because my old roommate cleared out his whole day to watch THREE AND A HALF HOURS LONG OF A WOMAN CLEANING AND HAVING SEX A COUPLE OF TIMES WITH NO DIALOGUE.  This is a favorite? On INSTANTLY WATCH, no less! Really? Who HAS this much time? Enlighten me please as to why I should watch this as opposed to reading an article or something on it.