- “Straight Outta Compton” tells the story of N.W.A.’s rise to fame and controversy in the hip-hop world.
- “BlackBerry” is a film that dramatizes the rise and fall of the iconic Canadian smartphone company.
- “Liar Liar” follows a lawyer who can’t lie for 24 hours, leading to comedic chaos in his personal and professional life.
Even though the weather’s getting cooler, the movies on Netflix are starting to heat up for U.S. subscribers, with The Whisper Man still holding court at the top of the streamer’s charts. If you’re into documentaries, maybe you’ve already checked out the wild-ride story of Australian Olympic breakdancer Rachael Gunn in Untold Raygun: Breaking Badly.
Sometimes, though, you might be looking for something highly rated, an older movie you’ve never seen, or one you’d watch again, and luckily, Netflix brings loads of those every month. This week (September 7 to 13), I’m highlighting four, including a hip-hop origin story, a tech-giant origin story, an untruthful comedy, and my No.1 pick this week—one of the greatest sci-fi horror movies of all time.
Straight Outta Compton
The Oscar-nominated story of N.W.A.’s rise
In the summer of 1988, I was a 14-year-old wallowing in Morrissey and The Smiths when I heard N.W.A.’s Straight Outta Compton for the first time. I’d never heard anything so raw and honest in my life, and it opened me up to a world of music I didn’t know existed. N.W.A. would, of course, rise to stratospheric heights, but it was a bumpy ride, as brilliantly depicted in F. Gary Gray’s 2015 biopic, Straight Outta Compton.
The Oscar-nominated film is a must-see for hip-hop fans, dramatizing the story of how the gangsta rap pioneers from Compton—including Eazy-E (Jason Mitchell), Dr. Dre (Corey Hawkins), and Ice Cube (played by Cube’s own son O’Shea Jackson Jr.)—rose to fame and pissed off the establishment with their controversial lyrics in notorious songs like F*** tha Police and the titular Straight Outta Compton, which detailed the realities of life in their neighborhood. The film is a roller-coaster that culminates with Dre leaving to found Death Row Records, Cube going solo, and Eazy-E’s tragic AIDS diagnosis.
BlackBerry
Canada invented the smartphone, then Steve Jobs happened
Since writer/director Matt Johnson has been having a moment this year with breakout hits like his own unique and hilarious Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie and, most recently, the incredible Anthony Bourdain biopic Tony, I thought now would be a great time to revisit the film that put him on the mainstream directorial map, BlackBerry.
We all know the rise-and-fall story of the iconic Canadian company that was once the undisputed king of handheld communications devices, but Johnson’s film brings it to life. From the scrappy Waterloo, Ontario office where engineers Mike Lazaridis (Jay Baruchel) and Doug Fregin (Johnson) are barely surviving, along comes Jim Balsillie (played by It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’s brilliant Glenn Howerton in one of his best performances), a corporate bully who takes over and rockets the company forward … until, you know, that guy in the black turtleneck came along with his little “i”. BlackBerryis still 97% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes and worth every minute.
Liar Liar
A dodgy lawyer can’t tell a lie for 24 hours for the love of his son
Jim Carrey spent the ’90s proving that a rubber face and a full-body commitment to the bit could carry an entire movie—Ace Ventura, The Mask, and Dumb and Dumber are some of my favorites, and more than prove the point. 1997’s Liar Liar, however, would be Carrey’s last big comedy before ascending to full thespian with films like The Truman Show and Man on the Moon.
But let’s bask in Liar Liar’s Fletcher Reede right now. Carrey is delightfully smarmy as an L.A. attorney who lies to judges, to colleagues, and—worst of all—to his five-year-old son Max (Justin Cooper). After Fletcher misses Max’s birthday party, Max makes a wish on his candles that his dad can’t tell a lie for 24 hours.
The effects are brutal (and hysterical) on Fletcher’s work, love life, and his interactions with pretty much everyone. Plus, he’s in the middle of a big divorce case where lying is pretty much necessary to win. It’s peak Carrey before he gets all serious, which you can also check out on Netflix in the documentary Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond.
Alien
The beginning of a legendary sci-fi franchise
Alien was the first movie I ever took my wife to when we first started dating. It had returned to theaters for a brief time in the early 2000s, she’d never seen it, and when she asked me if it was scary, I said something like, “Naw, it’s actually kinda fun.” When she finally started talking to me again, she did agree that it’s still one of Sigourney Weaver’s best performances, and that it was nice to see a woman in such a kick-ass role.
The rest is history, of course, and the monster franchise has spawned an empire of sequels, prequels, crossovers, and spinoffs. But this one is still special. It follows the crew of the deep-space towing vessel Nostromo that’s on its way home to Earth when an anomalous signal diverts them to a distant moon. There, they find an abandoned alien vessel with something deadly on board that finds its way onto the Nostromo and starts hunting the crew. It’s a fight for survival as Ellen Ripley (Weaver) takes on the highly evolved Xenomorph and tries to get off the Nostromo alive.
A well-rounded week of great movies
The Netflix movies gauntlet is set for the week—a rap dynasty, the rise and fall of a tech titan, a rubber-faced lawyer who can’t lie, and Ellen Ripley doing her thing. Check for more streaming suggestions on How-To Geek, but if you want to dig through Netflix with surgical search precision, try using its handy secret codes.
