Netflix Binge: The Woman in the Window & The Mitchells vs. the Machines

Netflix offers up a lot of content to keep those bingewatches going. But quantity does not always equal quality. This month, I watched two movies that were sold to Netflix after being delayed by the pandemic. One was great, and the other was...so bad that it was kinda great. So let's see which one you might be in the mood for when it's time for your next lazy day on the couch.

The Mitchells vs. the Machines: Yes this is an animated movie, but don't fear, it's filled with an absurdist humor that works for every age group. And frankly, the voice cast alone is fully worth a watch/listen. Written and directed by Mike Rianda and Jeff Rowe, this is a movie about a dysfunctional family that is forced to come together and put aside their troubled family dynamics during a global crisis. What's the crisis? Robots have taken over the world and are preparing to destroy the entire race. The Mitchells are the only people who can stop them. 

Is that high stakes? Sure. Is there much hilarity and insanity? You bet. Despite all that overarching action and the desperate mission to save humanity, this is a sweet and wonderful family movie that really hones in on the idea of what it means to find your "people" in the world and feel completely misunderstood by your family. Our heroine is Katie Mitchell (voiced by Abbi Jacobson), an aspiring filmmaker who cannot wait to leave her family in Michigan and get to film school in California. Her father (Danny McBride) never says the right thing and is wildly unsupportive of her creative ambitions, while her mother (the magnificent Maya Rudolph) is wildly supportive but still doesn't really "get" this daughter of hers. Katie loves her little brother Aaron (voiced by the co-director himself, Mike Rianda), who is obsessed with dinosaurs, so their bond is over being nerds, but their interests wildly differ. 

Of course, when a Zuckerberg-esque tech billionaire launches robots that are meant to help humans but then immediately turn on him and all of humanity, Katie and her family have to band together to save the world. I won't go into any further detail, but let's just say there are a lot of jokes about tech billionaires and the dangers of artificial intelligence and how we are all doomed. The action set pieces should immediately entertain all millennials, particularly one sequence with some dive-bombing Furbys, a.k.a the most terrifying thing ever portrayed on screen. And most importantly, the one and only Olivia Colman is the voice of the AI system, and oh lord is she brilliant. Honestly, you have not lived until you've seen a screaming mobile phone voiced by Olivia Colman have a temper tantrum. 

The animation is extraordinary and weird, and the whole thing has a climactic musical number that is utterly bizarre and fabulous. This is a silly, exuberant, joyful film about finding your place in the world, repairing relationships with your family, and figuring out what's important in life. All while battling some very demented robots. What's not to love? 

The Woman in the Window: This movie is based on the novel by AJ Finn. I read the novel last April and it was an absolute page-turner and a welcome distraction in the midst of everything else that was going on in 2020. The movie was supposed to come out in October 2019, but had to undergo re-shoots after some negative test screenings, and was delayed to May 2020. Obviously that ended up being a bust, so it finally premiered this month on Netflix and hoo boy. If this is what they thought was fit to release, I can't imagine what they left on the cutting room floor.

The film is meant to be a psychological thriller about a woman named Anna Fox (Amy Adams) who is agoraphobic and confined to her Harlem brownstone. Unable to leave her house, she spends her days watching Hitchcock movies (natch) and watching what her neighbors get up to across the street (an obvious nod to Rear Window). When the Russell family moves in across the street, she befriends Jane Russell (Julianne Moore) and her son, Ethan (Fred Hechinger), but Mr. Russell (Gary Oldman) doesn't seem too keen on being neighborly. And then, Anna thinks she sees a murder, and things quickly spiral.

This is an extraordinary cast (Brian Tyree Henry, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Anthony Mackie all show up as well), being directed by Joe Wright, with a screenplay adapted by Tracy Letts. These are all fantastic elements but somehow the sum is so much lesser than its parts. I already knew the various twists of the story, so I started out by enjoying the decisions the director had made with certain shots or focusing on certain story beats as I knew that they would all come back in the grand finale. But gradually I found myself waiting for this movie to end. Every actor seemed to be dialed to 11 and it became clear that the homages to Hitchcock were becoming an out-and-out parody. 

And then the movie ended. And that climax in the final fifteen minutes was HYSTERICAL. It's not meant to be--you're supposed to be terrified--but oh, I giggled like a loon. It felt like the filmmakers had collectively given up and decided that the thing could no longer be saved. There are frenzied and disjointed cuts, Amy Adams has to do about twenty insane things, and it is SO BAD that I immediately told people to watch it because it felt destined to become some sort of camp classic. So yeah. This is a terrible movie. But consider watching it just for those final moments when everything coalesces into one gloriously awful whole. Or otherwise, spare yourself and just read the novel to enjoy its twists and turns with the safety of your own imagination. Either way, you're gonna have some fun.