here's my brief thoughts on this month's netflixes.

death of a president - this is a fake documentary about the current president getting assassinated and interviewing the relevant people at the time. i read about this one and saw great potential in terms of a lesson of what would happen.. on the chain of command, media frenzy, public reaction, etc. but that's not what i got. sure it touches that sort of thing but perhaps i didn't quite like the fictionalized world they created. some scenes were powerful, especially towards the beginning when there are protesters, but otherwise i was disappointed with the film.

blame it on fidel - this movie was so good. all of the actors were great. i wasn't interested in this but it kept popping up in my recommendations until i finally watched it. wow. it really puts you in the place of children. once you grow up, you forget how children think and feel. this takes you there. how frustrating it can be when parents make decisions that change your life and you were happy the way things were. the little girl is a bitch but as you begin to understand where she's coming from, you sympathize with her and there's no easy answer to family life and personal sense of wanting to do something important in this world.

the bridge - this is a documentary on those that commit suicide by jumping off the golden gate bridge. parts of it were familiar, as if i've seen this before. perhaps i've seen the footage before but not this particular documentary. it was all very deja vu. i know people jump but to watch them do it... woh. you just want to shout at them to stop. and then there's the list of names at the end of people that jumped in one year alone. i scanned the names to see if i recognized anyone, no. it puts the human aspect to it. but what was amazing in itself were the friends and family of those that jumped who opened up and were part of the documentary. it helps but we'll never understand why they jumped nor be able to prevent it in the future. we all get to low points in our life but some don't turn around. all we can do is try to be there for people when they need us.

the bronze screen: 100 years of the latino image in hollywood - i watched this for a brief tutorial on hollywood latino cinema. boy is it ever a brief glimpse. i'm not even sure if i got anything out of it. i feel like i don't know much on the subject, that there's several films i have yet to see, but i'm not completely clueless. it was nice though to see footage of some stars in their hey day and to see them mingling together off screen.

the rules of attraction - this is one of those books that i read so i wanted to see the film version and that's the only reason why. the book wasn't good and neither was this movie. cinematically boring as well except for one interesting shot where a split screen on two characters becomes one.

fracture - this was not on my list of things to see but twiddle thumbs really wanted to see it. wow, it was pretty good. not something i'd watch over and over again but if it comes up on tv, check it out.

family guy: blue harvest - the makers of this were obviously more pleased with the results than i was.

shoot 'em up - a total guy movie. watch it just to see how much "has this ever been done in an action movie?" scenes you can pack in one film. the funny thing is the protagonist is a male action hero version of twiddle thumbs with all of his "you know what i hate" shit. if only twiddle thumbs could exact revenge, this would be it! hahahahaa

x-men 3: the last stand - i didn't feel a pressing need to see this since i disliked the first 2, but eventually one day i had to complete the trilogy. this was probably the easiest to watch. i really disliked the others and can't remember what happened. i might remember this one for a few minutes.