Netflix Instant Watcher Showdown: 3 movies, 10 minutes...AKA the "are you getting grabbed?" challenge

Me and Boofie have a huge backlog of movies in our Instant Watch queue. Most of these movies look interesting and we added them to our massive list because we figured we'd watch them at some point. Mostly we haven't watched anything from the list (Boofie has discovered FEARnet so it has been all horror movies, all the time!)

If they could just set up a TV channel with all of these Netflix movies playing on random shuffle, we'd work through the list with no problem. It is strange how it is much more difficult to make an affirmative choice about what you're going to view on the tube...we find ourselves watching Old School on TBS for the millionth time because it is easy to just flip on a cable channel and let the cable box overlords choose for you.

In an attempt to lessen the pressure of the time commitment involved, I came up with a little game that we'll be playing with our Instant Watch queue. We select 3 films at random from our list. It has to be a film that neither of us has seen already. We watch each one for 10 minutes and turn it off. 10 minutes - that's it. I set a timer and we shut it off mid-scene (unless at 9:59, there's boobs on the screen - then I'll be "accidentally" fumbling with the remote to buy time while Boofie yells at me)

Whichever movie grabbed us the best after the 10 x 3 Showdown gets a movie night all of its own.

The best part? We're already 10 minutes in! Holy crap - I've saved myself a truckload of time already.

Here's how last weekend's selections turned out:

Movie #1 was Gomorrah.

I'd been wanting to watch this italian mafia film for quite some time now; Boofie was not really interested, but she humored me. (You may be surprised to learn that this movie didn't win the 10x3 showdown.) These are my notes of the first 10 minutes:

• Fat tanning dudes
• Weirdo euro dance music
• Is this a movie about a grocery delivery service?
• Starts off with a bang but then slooooows down
• Thumbs down from Boofie

Movie # 2 was Jekyll.




Ok, technically it is not a movie - it is a BBC series, but whatever. Here's my notes for 10 minutes of Jekyll season 1 episode 1.

• Looks like TV production values
• Decent looking lady - british face, big calves
• Nice work on the exposition
• Uh oh, crowded british teeth!
• Where's Mr. Hyde?
• why did we just cut to family drama with a slutty-mouthed mom?

Movie # 3 was Outland, a 70s sci-fi cowboy movie starring Sean Connery. I'm talking about the real Sean Connery, not this one.




Notes for Outland as follows:

• Whoa, lots of green text to read!
• Special effects - not bad considering the era; the space station must be miniature models but it looks good
• why are they doing manual labor in space? where are the robots?
• Has a "grab ya" event in the first few minutes
• Why did we just cut to family drama?

Outland ended up winning the battle. We watched the rest of the movie the next day. It was predictable and twenty minutes too long. The dad from Everybody Loves Raymond played the villain. The creepy evil art dealer dude from Beverly Hills Cop had a small part. I give it a C-minus.