Everyone have a good Easter? Everyone back at work/school feeling miserable about their lives again? Homework, deadlines and double shifts quickly obliterating those memories of chocolate egg shaped goodness? Not to sound too much like a motivational speaker, but it’s time to turn that lopsided scowl upside down. It’s April, which means a whole menagerie of new TV and movies are stampeding onto Netflix.
Well, actually the next week or so is mainly about movies, but there’s the odd TV series that might catch your eye. Here are the choicest morsels hitting Netflix in the US and UK in early April.
Frozen (UK)
Let it go! Let it go! It’s time to just admit. Let it go! Let it go! That Frozen was a massive hit!
Okay, that’s all the exuberance I’ve got the energy for this week. Still, even as a grown adult I feel pretty comfortable admitting that Disney’s dip back into porcelain princess territory is a genuine cinematic classic. Characters, story and setting are sometimes drawn in broad strokes and keen eyed cinephiles might be able to tell how much things were reworked during development, but this movie proved the Mouse House can still pull it out when they’re willing to. The story of Anna and Elsa was a genuinely modern tale, and also the songs were awesome (Shut up, they were!).
When: April 1
Boogie Nights (US)
Mark Wahlberg is a star, he’s a star, star, star, in this raw yet absorbing story of the 70s porn industry. Wahlberg plays a young nightclub waiter who is headhunted by an LA porn director.
Next thing he knows, the high school dropout has renamed himself Dirk Diggler, because obviously, and is the biggest thing in porn (that wasn’t meant to be a double-entendre, but it’s staying in anyway). For an industry that’s probably pretty cynical, director Paul Thomas Anderson manages to make us care about his characters and their fates, despite some of their terrible life choices.
When: April 1
The Princess Bride (US)
If you really stop to think about it, The Princess Bride shouldn’t really work. Is it a romance? Is it a fantasy adventure? Is it a Mel Brooks style comedy or a Disney Princess style story? Somehow it manages to be the perfect, oven baked mixture of all these things.
There’s the hero saving the love of his life, the evil Prince, plus Mandy Patinkin has the greatest catchphrase in movie history. Also, Andre the Giant is in it. Nobody can hate that guy.
When: April 1
Z Nation – Season One (UK)
I have a confession to make. I don’t like The Walking Dead – I don’t actively dislike it that much either, it’s just a slog that inevitably wears me out before the end of season two. If the Cultured Vultures editor-in chief is to be believed though, Z Nation might be the so-bad-it’s-good zombie show I’ve been waiting for.
Anyone who’s seen the trailer can tell Z Nation isn’t the Ulysses of its medium, but terrible television has a charm of its own and I have high hopes for this one.
When: April 9
Amazon Prime
For the sake of impartiality, here’s a select menu of what’s coming to Amazon Prime Instant Video near the start of the month.
The Big Lebowski (US)
It’s one thing to describe a film as a director’s greatest work, but when said directors are Joel and Ethan Coen you need to sit up and pay attention. The story of The Dude and his bowling team is vintage Coen brothers, a caper with hilarious escalation and excellent dialogue. Jeff Bridges and John Goodman give performances that will be remembered long after they’ve passed on, and The Dude is a cultural icon nearly 20 years after the fact.
When: April 1
Outlander – Season Two (UK)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3VtNOjrqeQ
Season one of Outlander was an unexpected joy, and as things move from Jacobite Scotland to France the next run will hopefully not disappoint. Following World War Two nurse Claire Beauchamp as she is blasted back in time to 18th century Scotland, the show manages to weave in a surprising amount of both humour and malevolence.
Exactly what Claire, now married to the implausibly perfect Jamie Fraser, plans to do once she’s in France has only been hinted at. Will she try to change history? Or get back to the future? Will her future still be there if she goes back to it?
When: April 10
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