Tag: Netflix

Daredevil’s battered body

I really like Netflix’s take on Daredevil and have been waiting–maybe too long–to write anything about my binge view that first week.  The series is gruesome in the unflinchingly dark psychology of its murderous Kingpin (bone-chillingly brilliant Vincent D’Onofrio)–and probably too explicit for some–though in my view, it stops short of glorying in his violence.  It is pretty darn smart in its pacing, maybe one of the better uses of the all-at-once-available season I’ve seen.

It is also doing something interesting with how it depicts its hero’s body.  Continue reading Daredevil’s battered body

Stretching the Rayburn Family to the Brink… and maybe its viewers, too (Bloodline, part 2)

Netflix’s Bloodline ultimately plays a storytelling gambit not unlike its antagonist’s approach to getting what he wants from his family: How many times will you reengage with Danny Rayburn before you finally lose patience and just let yourself off the hook?

Revealing a key event of the season’s ending during the first episode was a risk that wagered heavily on the pilot stoking viewers’ initial curiosity and establishing empathy with its characters  Several intense images and sounds of the Rayburn brothers struggling against the elements–the swampy morass of the mangroves and the choppy surf of the Gulf during a pounding rainstorm–with one of them apparently passed out or dead gave us a glimpse of a high-stakes “what” without any of the “how” or “why.” The tactic would act either as provocative inducement to keep on watching or as eye-roll-inducing gimmick that even the near-immediate goodwill produced by seeing Kyle Chandler on the small screen could not sustain. Continue reading Stretching the Rayburn Family to the Brink… and maybe its viewers, too (Bloodline, part 2)

Netflix’s Bloodline Addictive despite Initial Indications to the Contrary

I turned it on reluctantly.  I’d read one so-so review and a seen one not-so-tantalizing trailer promising a drama about family secrets in a manner I found overdrawn.  It seemed a little, well, hokey.

Still for the past several days, I find my imagination returning to Netflix’s latest (meant to be be binged) streaming TV series Bloodline.  After watching the first two episodes back-to-back, I resolved to limit myself to one episode a day so I can roll them around a bit, can continue to feel their presence after they’ve gone, like either a good friend or a bad whiskey (though I confess which I’m not exactly sure).

Continue reading Netflix’s Bloodline Addictive despite Initial Indications to the Contrary