V For Vendetta (2005, R)

NOSTALGIA WARNING.  Ok, maybe "nostalgia" isn't quite the correct word, but I should warn you that -unlike every review I've posted so far- this is not my first viewing of this film.  In fact I watch this movie every year on Nov 5 (if you've seen the movie and/or are familiar with Guy Fawkes Day, you'll understand the significance).  But the point of my warning is that I have some pre-existing affection for this film and so you should take my advice with a grain of salt.  But you should anyway, so I guess I'll just try to list the good and bad things about the movie as well as I can.  Also, please be aware that this film is not currently available to stream on Netflix: I watched it on DVD.

This movie is based on a graphic novel by Allan Moore (League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen, The Watchmen; I know people tend to say this about all book-to-film adaptations [except American Psycho, the film of which does a better job of telling a/the story, I think], but the print version is far superior to the films for both of these) and the screenplay was written by the Wachowski Brothers (The Matrix).  Good start, right?  Hugo Weaving (The Matrix, Lord Of The Rings) plays the title role of V, the mysterious anti-hero/vigilante/terrorist who perpetually wears a full black cloak (think Soloman Kane) and a metal Guy Fawkes mask.

CQ (2001, R)

I had gotten through all of my "homework" movies that were going to lose the streaming option, and there were 4 of the time-sensitive movies that I wanted to see more than the others.  I knew I wouldn't get a chance to see more than one or maybe two before midnight when they dropped off (it was the last day).  I chose poorly.

The title of CQ was not thoroughly explained, though in one of the main character's dream sequences he saw a computer screen flashing between "CQ" and "seek you"... that's as good as I've got for you, folks, sorry.  The setup is that the main character Paul is a film editor (second-unit director: cuts and pastes the film stock into the proper order, with visually effective timing/etc based on the daily shots filed by the first-unit director), and American in Paris in 1969-1970, working on a sci-fi spy film taking place on the moon in the far future: the year 2001!

Luther (2010, NR)

I know this is a television series rather than a movie, but I watched the whole thing over the weekend and I really liked it so I want to tell you about it.  What I like about television series is that they can develop characters far more thoroughly than a two-hour film can.  Either the BBC consistently creates fantastic television (which I tend to believe) or I've just been incredibly lucky with the series I've watched so far (Sherlock, Jekyll, Party Animals, Luther, Doctor Who: I strongly recommend them all).  One of the factors I like so much about these British shows is that the seasons/series tend to be roughly 6 episodes.  I like shorter runs because it makes it easier to watch the entire story and it's far less intimidating to start (for example, I really want to watch all of The X-Files, but in the back of my head I know it will take me a long long time to finish and so I keep putting it off).  Also, the shorter year's-worth of programming tends to allow more quality per episode compared to pumping out a new episode every week for months on end.  Sort of interesting is that American shows call a year's-worth a season and the collection of all seasons as a series compared to British shows calling the year's-worth a series (I'm not sure what they call the combined series; perhaps one of my UK readers could help me out with that)... you could note that the British shows tend to make one solid story arc across the entire series (also with a solid story per episode) whereas American shows tend to be more episodic and disconnected.

Idris Elba (The Losers, Prometheus) played the title character, the flawed but very clever DCI (Detective Chief Inspector) John Luther.  I would describe this show as a cross between CSI (Crime
Scene Investigation), Sherlock and The Shield.  It's a procedural crime drama with a new case each episode like CSI, it has the individual intelligence and character arc from Sherlock (specifically the currently-running BBC series), and it has some of the moral ambiguity of The Shield.