It’s Oscar weekend, and Netflix has some worthy contenders Train for Dreams again Frankenstein which you should check out.
If you’ve already streamed those great movies, however, Watch With Us has some great pictures for you to enjoy.
Thematic action drama Hotel Mumbaiwhich is surprising Jack Black-led children’s film A House With a Clock on Its Walls and an Oscar-winning biopic Ray were recently added to Netflix in March and all deserve a spot on your weekend binge-watching list.
‘Hotel Mumbai’ (2013)
On November 26, 2008, a terrorist organization known as Lashkar-e-Taiba attacked 12 different locations in Mumbai, India. One of those places was the Taj Mahal Palace hotel, where guests and staff were held hostage for several days. Hotel Mumbai is a dramatization of those events, placing fictional characters in a real event that resulted in the deaths of 175 people.
Among the hostages are rich foreign visitors Zahara (Nazanin Boniadi) and her husband, David (Armie Hammer), and the working-class waiter Arjun (Dev Patel), who must all come together to stay alive. That becomes difficult as the hours and days drag on, and the terrorists do not want to let them go. Will Zahara, David and Arjun make it out alive?
Hotel Mumbai is an engaging action game with enough features to keep you emotionally invested. Even though it’s fiction, the characters feel real enough to make you care about what happens to them. Others have explained Hotel Mumbai as exploitative to use a real-life tragedy as entertainment, but the film shows enough respect for the event, people and culture it portrays to avoid offending anyone.
Hotel Mumbai is streaming on Netflix.
‘The House With a Clock on Its Walls’ (2018)
Eli Roth, a family-friendly film director? It happened in 2018 with The House With a Clock in Its Walls, an adaptation of the 1973 children’s novel of the same name. When little orphan Lewis (Owen Vaccaro) spends his first night in his new home, hearing what he believes is the clock ticking behind his walls. Turns out he’s right, and his new guardian, Uncle Jonathan (Jack Black), and next-door neighbor Florence (Cate Blanchett), they want to find it again.
But they may regret what they find as the clock is said to be of supernatural origin and related to a witch far worse than Elphaba. Will the trio open Pandora’s box and unleash unknown horrors on an unsuspecting world?
A House With a Clock on Its Walls as zany as its title. Set in a deliberately exaggerated universe where there are wars and the dead can be resurrected, the film is vaguely scary but never really scary. Like all orphan tales, it serves as a metaphor for growing up and finding one’s place in an old world that looks terrible to a child. Black and Blanchett clearly enjoy playing characters that would be at home in Harry Potter or Lemony Snicket.
A House With a Clock on Its Walls is streaming on Netflix.
‘Ray’ (2004)
The Oscars are this weekend, so now is as good a time as any to watch one of the best Oscar-bait films of the last 25 years, Ray. As you can tell from the title, Ray is a biopic of Ray Charles (Jamie Foxx), which chronicles his poor upbringing as a singer in Florida to his rise in the music industry in the 1950s and 1960s. As he achieved worldwide success with hits such as “Hit the Road Jack,” Ray struggled with drug addiction, relationship problems, and illegal activities. Can Ray overcome his inner demons to become the icon he’s always longed to be?
However, the answer is yes, because they are making a movie based on his life. But it’s all about the journey Rayan over-the-top musical biopic revived with a strong cast and some classic tunes. Foxx deservedly won best actor for his enigmatic portrayal of one of the 20th century’s greatest actors, but equally delightful is the film’s strong female cast, including a future Oscar winner. Regina King as well as-Scandal Kerry Washington. The downside of watching this movie is that you’ll be whistling “Georgia on My Mind” for days after watching it. I’m not complaining.
Ray is streaming on Netflix.
