Opinion Piece - Ranking the Netflix Top 10 Based on Their First 10 Minutes
Before getting into the bulk of the post, I wanted to share this site again. The Black Lives Matter protests remain ongoing, progress is slowly being seen, which means this is not the time to slow down. These actions are working and only if we educate ourselves, support those who need that help and listen to those whose voices are silenced do we stand a chance of seeing this kind of racist bullshit come to an end. It is no longer enough to not be racist, you should be anti-racist, or this cycle of hatred will continue forever. To quote David Lynch "fix your hearts or die".
Due to everyone being stuck inside all the time over the last ten weeks, we've all come to rely on the streaming platform Netflix. It's been a household name for years, but it's rarely felt this vital. I, however, find it quite frustrating. For every high quality film they produce or distribute (Marriage Story, Uncut Gems and Anima are just three highlights from last year), they unload a truck full of absolute trash onto their service too, there to be lapped up by ravenous consumers. It's a fascinating dichotomy and one whose specifics I would love to explore, but Netflix are frustratingly coy about their stats, unless they're bragging about record breaking numbers. That changed recently with the introduction of their Top 10 feature, which changes daily and displays the ten most watched things in your country. I find it fascinating to read whenever I'm on the platform, as it really paints an intriguing picture of the people who use Netflix. As such, now felt like a great time to try and examine what people have been watching. Like I said, it changes daily, so here's what the top 10 looked like in the UK last Saturday, the 6th of June 2020:
Oof. Watching the third season of 13 Reasons Why made me embarrassed that I once called the first season one of the best shows of 2017. Season one was entertaining and kept me compelled, but I've since been clearly educated on why the mental health depictions in the show are horribly damaging and the second season lost the gripping edge the first season had while apparently doubling the problematic depictions. The first ten minutes of season three are no improvement, managing to combine all the very worst things about the show into smaller, more insulting packages. It starts with an in-episode trigger warning, as a limp attempt to get in front of inevitable controversy, followed by a framing device that only serves to remind us that there is still very little story left to explore, in which characters get to spout off cringey dialogue at each other. This is all compounded by an intensely vague collection of references to events that the rest of the season is presumably going to explore at a painfully slow pace. In short, it is about as awful as I remember. It worries me in that it's so bad, I'm tempted to watch the last two seasons and drunkenly attempt to review them. Who knows, we'll see how bad lockdown gets, but 13 Reasons Why remains a show whose popularity is upsetting, insulting and an awful sign for the future of humanity.
13 Reasons Why was bad, but Get Hard is a close second for sure. I think the only thing it has going for it is that I didn't watch enough to get into the parts that are (I'm told) seriously insulting. Instantly, I was impressed by how dated the film is. I watched ten minutes and heard both Fancy and I Love It, two songs that instantly conjure images of the start of last decade, a decade in which films like this would still release in a cinema and not straight to Netflix. In that sense, I suppose its home on Netflix makes sense. People like Will Ferrell and Kevin Hart, it doesn't matter if they make a film that's bad, because no one has anything better to do with their time. It's exactly the kind of comedy I hate and general audiences like, a comedy in which all the jokes punch down to people of other races, genders and sexuality than those making the jokes. In short, it is gross. The closest Get Hard has to a redeeming quality is Alison Brie. On the one hand, it makes me sad she was lowered to starring in this, but then again, there's a scene in the first ten minutes of this where she wears some very skimpy lingerie. That doesn't give the film much credit though because it's fairly cheap titillation and, as a Community fan in 2014, I was familiar with the scene as soon as the film came out. Get Hard probably isn't the worst film on Netflix but I don't want to watch all of it to find out for myself.
Again, I understand completely why The Addams Family is on the top ten. Parents are stressed with their kids home all the time, no new films are coming out and it's a brand most parents will recognise and therefore trust. Clearly though, the parents have been putting it on and walking away because if I had kids, I wouldn't let them watch an animated film that looks this ugly. I have no previous experience with any iteration of The Addams Family, so my feelings are entirely based on the product in front of me and that product is hideous. All of the character designs look like first drafts of early 2000s Dreamworks characters, which is not a good thing at all. There's also the issue that all the voice acting is done by celebrities as opposed to voice actors, meaning that I just felt like I was sitting and listening to Charlize Theron and Oscar Isaac for ten minutes. They're both great actors but they are not voice actors and do not suit their roles. Overall, a complete waste of my time, which I suggest absolutely no one partakes in.
As we start to get towards the middle of the list, we move towards a series of entries that are incredibly forgettable. I watched all of these on Saturday, am currently writing about them on Monday and even with the complete lack of things happening in my life, I am still struggling to remember much about The Last Days of American Crime. There are notes I wrote down about it, with the only thing ringing any bells being general attempts at badassery and gestures towards Michael Bay-esque "Bayhem". I recall it being needlessly violent, taking a moderately interesting setup (there's a signal jamming all desires to commit crime that is about to be deployed) and turning it into what could easily be a live action adaptation of GTA Online. Much as I've been having a blast playing that over the last few days, compelling cinema it is not. As soon as I finish writing this paragraph, I will probably forget about The Last Days of American Crime for the rest of my life. A signal has been deployed that will block it from my brain in a couple of seconds, clearly. Three seconds, two seconds, one second... Gone.
More forgettable than American Crime but less egregiously bad is Jack Reacher: Never Go Back. It's the second Jack Reacher film, though I imagine many watching the film had no idea about that. People refer to events that happened before but having also not seen the first film, I have no idea if they're events the audience should be familiar with or not. It often felt like watching a middle film in a cinematic universe, having to pin together bits of history from passing expressions and not in a good way. Interestingly, this film also avoids something that many of the other entries on this list do. American Crime and Jurassic World both make excuses to fit an action setpiece into their first ten minutes which, being on a set mission to only watch ten minutes of each of these, I appreciated. Jack Reacher does not. There's a scene which attempts to show us how badass Reacher is, but it's just Tom Cruise saying some vaguely threatening lines in an aloof manner. After that, the rest of the ten minutes is just setup for the rest of the film. Whether the action is good or not, I have no idea, but I was not grabbed by the film surrounding it.
Space Force has been pitched as a sort of The Office U.S. reunion. Creator Greg Daniels created both shows and Michael Scott himself Steve Carrell is the star. The stage would seem set for return to form for two of the people who created one of the most popular sitcoms ever made. Alas, they're missing a secret sauce; Michael Schur. Schur is the co-creator of The Office but has also gone on to make shows that are much better, like Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Parks and Recreations and of course, The Good Place. Schur has an ability to create ensemble sitcoms that breed comedy and heart into a combo I struggle to resist. As such, it seems like Space Force is missing that. It's also strangely political, despite feeling apolitical. Even in ten minutes, many references are made to "Tweeter-in-Chief", though none of the other characters are given political alignments. It feels targeted, yet limp. Crucially, I also did not laugh once. Admittedly, this is clearly an episode that needs to setup the stage for the comedic events that will transpire but still, ten minutes of no laughter in a comedy is a very bad sign indeed. Most shocking of all, this first episode was directed by Paul King! Paul King, as in, the director of Paddington and Paddington 2! How can the man behind such joyous films create something that feels so soulless? Again, Space Force is something I can believe gets better, but the initial ten minutes were a poor introduction for me.
This was my first introduction to Queer Eye. I know, scandalous, how could it be so? Queer Eye has swept the world with its makeover magic and ability to make all cry, but as I discovered watching it, this is definitely a reality TV show. For many, I am sure, this is no obstacle, but I do not like reality TV. I have a couple of exceptions to the rule but Queer Eye does not do it. I would also say that the first ten minutes were very anxiety inducing for me, consisting of five men storming into another man's house and creating a mess. The show gets a slight pass for it, because I can see it's coming from a good place but regardless, not for me. Clearly, Queer Eye is pure of heart and maybe the rest of the episode would have convinced me otherwise, but this is not the kind of show for me.
It's shocking that Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is this far up the list, but it does so for two reasons. First, people are idiots and they watch bad things. Second though, as much as the rest of Fallen Kingdom shits the bed, I like the opening. It's a cold open, in which we see characters we've never met attempting to salvage some pieces of dinosaurs from the wreckage of the last film. The conclusion ends up making me chuckle instead of feel gripped but the fact is, the tension leading up to it is really, really strong. The weakest bits of Fallen Kingdom are the story bits and while they creep in at the end of this ten minutes, they aren't in it enough to ruin some action that is silly and fun and little else. The first ten minutes also has one of Jeff Goldblum's two scenes, which immediately bumps the value prospect up a bit. Like I said, the film isn't great, but it's an opening that could trick you into thinking otherwise.
This was a fun surprise! I'd seen the trailers for White Lines and it looked like the kind of disposable trash that Netflix specialises in. The type of series you binge in one day and forget the very next day. Probably decent, but nothing special. That could still be the case, but I enjoyed the first ten minutes, it demonstrates really efficient storytelling. Little action happens, it's all setup, but it is gripping setup for a story that shows real narrative promise. We're given some narration to ease us into the stranger parts of the story, multiple characters in multiple locations are presented with introductions to their story and it had a pace I dug the hell out of. Truly, my one major complaint was the aspect ratio. It had much more space at the bottom of the screen than the top, which I initially assumed was for subtitles, but then they overlapped with the part of the screen that action was taking place on. For someone like me, who cares about things like that, it was very distracting and I don't know if I would be able to get over it, though I'm aware that won't be a commonly held complaint. Ten episodes of this maybe seems a tad excessive for me to jump on it right away but credit where credit is due, White Lines used those opening ten minutes to get me interested in what comes next.
Organising the middle of the list was hard, trying to sort the fairly mediocre from the rather mediocre, but my top pick was not difficult to choose at all. Jeffry Epstein: Filthy Rich is not an easy watch, but it's an incredibly gripping one that feels essential. Formally, I wish it did something to differentiate itself from the rest of Netflix's true crime slate, but the fact remains that it is a formula that works, every single time. For those who don't know, Epstein was a multi-millionaire socialite who had many famous friends including Donald Trump, Prince Andrew and the Clintons, who recently died in incredibly suspicious circumstances in prison. The reason he was in prison was because of numerous allegations of rape and sexual assault, many of which were from underage women and immediately, the series makes it very clear that we should not doubt these accusations. Epstein was scum, but shielded by his rich friends and in a sick way, the documentary is hard to look away from. It's like a slightly more palatable version of last years Leaving Neverland, the documentary about Michael Jackson and the allegations that surround him. Though a very upsetting watch, even just from the first ten minutes, Filthy Rich had to make the top spot because it is the thing I am most likely to watch the rest of. We owe it to the survivors to watch this documentary and acknowledge the monster that so long loomed behind some of the most influential figures in modern western society. I reiterate, this won't be an easy watch, but it feels absolutely essential.
Due to everyone being stuck inside all the time over the last ten weeks, we've all come to rely on the streaming platform Netflix. It's been a household name for years, but it's rarely felt this vital. I, however, find it quite frustrating. For every high quality film they produce or distribute (Marriage Story, Uncut Gems and Anima are just three highlights from last year), they unload a truck full of absolute trash onto their service too, there to be lapped up by ravenous consumers. It's a fascinating dichotomy and one whose specifics I would love to explore, but Netflix are frustratingly coy about their stats, unless they're bragging about record breaking numbers. That changed recently with the introduction of their Top 10 feature, which changes daily and displays the ten most watched things in your country. I find it fascinating to read whenever I'm on the platform, as it really paints an intriguing picture of the people who use Netflix. As such, now felt like a great time to try and examine what people have been watching. Like I said, it changes daily, so here's what the top 10 looked like in the UK last Saturday, the 6th of June 2020:
- 13 Reasons Why
- Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich
- The Addams Family (2019)
- White Lines
- Space Force
- Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
- The Last Days of American Crime
- Get Hard
- Jack Reacher: Never Go Back
- Queer Eye
10. 13 Reasons Why
Oof. Watching the third season of 13 Reasons Why made me embarrassed that I once called the first season one of the best shows of 2017. Season one was entertaining and kept me compelled, but I've since been clearly educated on why the mental health depictions in the show are horribly damaging and the second season lost the gripping edge the first season had while apparently doubling the problematic depictions. The first ten minutes of season three are no improvement, managing to combine all the very worst things about the show into smaller, more insulting packages. It starts with an in-episode trigger warning, as a limp attempt to get in front of inevitable controversy, followed by a framing device that only serves to remind us that there is still very little story left to explore, in which characters get to spout off cringey dialogue at each other. This is all compounded by an intensely vague collection of references to events that the rest of the season is presumably going to explore at a painfully slow pace. In short, it is about as awful as I remember. It worries me in that it's so bad, I'm tempted to watch the last two seasons and drunkenly attempt to review them. Who knows, we'll see how bad lockdown gets, but 13 Reasons Why remains a show whose popularity is upsetting, insulting and an awful sign for the future of humanity.
9. Get Hard
13 Reasons Why was bad, but Get Hard is a close second for sure. I think the only thing it has going for it is that I didn't watch enough to get into the parts that are (I'm told) seriously insulting. Instantly, I was impressed by how dated the film is. I watched ten minutes and heard both Fancy and I Love It, two songs that instantly conjure images of the start of last decade, a decade in which films like this would still release in a cinema and not straight to Netflix. In that sense, I suppose its home on Netflix makes sense. People like Will Ferrell and Kevin Hart, it doesn't matter if they make a film that's bad, because no one has anything better to do with their time. It's exactly the kind of comedy I hate and general audiences like, a comedy in which all the jokes punch down to people of other races, genders and sexuality than those making the jokes. In short, it is gross. The closest Get Hard has to a redeeming quality is Alison Brie. On the one hand, it makes me sad she was lowered to starring in this, but then again, there's a scene in the first ten minutes of this where she wears some very skimpy lingerie. That doesn't give the film much credit though because it's fairly cheap titillation and, as a Community fan in 2014, I was familiar with the scene as soon as the film came out. Get Hard probably isn't the worst film on Netflix but I don't want to watch all of it to find out for myself.
8. The Addams Family (2019)
Again, I understand completely why The Addams Family is on the top ten. Parents are stressed with their kids home all the time, no new films are coming out and it's a brand most parents will recognise and therefore trust. Clearly though, the parents have been putting it on and walking away because if I had kids, I wouldn't let them watch an animated film that looks this ugly. I have no previous experience with any iteration of The Addams Family, so my feelings are entirely based on the product in front of me and that product is hideous. All of the character designs look like first drafts of early 2000s Dreamworks characters, which is not a good thing at all. There's also the issue that all the voice acting is done by celebrities as opposed to voice actors, meaning that I just felt like I was sitting and listening to Charlize Theron and Oscar Isaac for ten minutes. They're both great actors but they are not voice actors and do not suit their roles. Overall, a complete waste of my time, which I suggest absolutely no one partakes in.
7. The Last Days of American Crime
As we start to get towards the middle of the list, we move towards a series of entries that are incredibly forgettable. I watched all of these on Saturday, am currently writing about them on Monday and even with the complete lack of things happening in my life, I am still struggling to remember much about The Last Days of American Crime. There are notes I wrote down about it, with the only thing ringing any bells being general attempts at badassery and gestures towards Michael Bay-esque "Bayhem". I recall it being needlessly violent, taking a moderately interesting setup (there's a signal jamming all desires to commit crime that is about to be deployed) and turning it into what could easily be a live action adaptation of GTA Online. Much as I've been having a blast playing that over the last few days, compelling cinema it is not. As soon as I finish writing this paragraph, I will probably forget about The Last Days of American Crime for the rest of my life. A signal has been deployed that will block it from my brain in a couple of seconds, clearly. Three seconds, two seconds, one second... Gone.
6. Jack Reacher: Never Go Back
More forgettable than American Crime but less egregiously bad is Jack Reacher: Never Go Back. It's the second Jack Reacher film, though I imagine many watching the film had no idea about that. People refer to events that happened before but having also not seen the first film, I have no idea if they're events the audience should be familiar with or not. It often felt like watching a middle film in a cinematic universe, having to pin together bits of history from passing expressions and not in a good way. Interestingly, this film also avoids something that many of the other entries on this list do. American Crime and Jurassic World both make excuses to fit an action setpiece into their first ten minutes which, being on a set mission to only watch ten minutes of each of these, I appreciated. Jack Reacher does not. There's a scene which attempts to show us how badass Reacher is, but it's just Tom Cruise saying some vaguely threatening lines in an aloof manner. After that, the rest of the ten minutes is just setup for the rest of the film. Whether the action is good or not, I have no idea, but I was not grabbed by the film surrounding it.
5. Space Force
Space Force has been pitched as a sort of The Office U.S. reunion. Creator Greg Daniels created both shows and Michael Scott himself Steve Carrell is the star. The stage would seem set for return to form for two of the people who created one of the most popular sitcoms ever made. Alas, they're missing a secret sauce; Michael Schur. Schur is the co-creator of The Office but has also gone on to make shows that are much better, like Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Parks and Recreations and of course, The Good Place. Schur has an ability to create ensemble sitcoms that breed comedy and heart into a combo I struggle to resist. As such, it seems like Space Force is missing that. It's also strangely political, despite feeling apolitical. Even in ten minutes, many references are made to "Tweeter-in-Chief", though none of the other characters are given political alignments. It feels targeted, yet limp. Crucially, I also did not laugh once. Admittedly, this is clearly an episode that needs to setup the stage for the comedic events that will transpire but still, ten minutes of no laughter in a comedy is a very bad sign indeed. Most shocking of all, this first episode was directed by Paul King! Paul King, as in, the director of Paddington and Paddington 2! How can the man behind such joyous films create something that feels so soulless? Again, Space Force is something I can believe gets better, but the initial ten minutes were a poor introduction for me.
4. Queer Eye
This was my first introduction to Queer Eye. I know, scandalous, how could it be so? Queer Eye has swept the world with its makeover magic and ability to make all cry, but as I discovered watching it, this is definitely a reality TV show. For many, I am sure, this is no obstacle, but I do not like reality TV. I have a couple of exceptions to the rule but Queer Eye does not do it. I would also say that the first ten minutes were very anxiety inducing for me, consisting of five men storming into another man's house and creating a mess. The show gets a slight pass for it, because I can see it's coming from a good place but regardless, not for me. Clearly, Queer Eye is pure of heart and maybe the rest of the episode would have convinced me otherwise, but this is not the kind of show for me.
3. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
It's shocking that Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is this far up the list, but it does so for two reasons. First, people are idiots and they watch bad things. Second though, as much as the rest of Fallen Kingdom shits the bed, I like the opening. It's a cold open, in which we see characters we've never met attempting to salvage some pieces of dinosaurs from the wreckage of the last film. The conclusion ends up making me chuckle instead of feel gripped but the fact is, the tension leading up to it is really, really strong. The weakest bits of Fallen Kingdom are the story bits and while they creep in at the end of this ten minutes, they aren't in it enough to ruin some action that is silly and fun and little else. The first ten minutes also has one of Jeff Goldblum's two scenes, which immediately bumps the value prospect up a bit. Like I said, the film isn't great, but it's an opening that could trick you into thinking otherwise.
2. White Lines
This was a fun surprise! I'd seen the trailers for White Lines and it looked like the kind of disposable trash that Netflix specialises in. The type of series you binge in one day and forget the very next day. Probably decent, but nothing special. That could still be the case, but I enjoyed the first ten minutes, it demonstrates really efficient storytelling. Little action happens, it's all setup, but it is gripping setup for a story that shows real narrative promise. We're given some narration to ease us into the stranger parts of the story, multiple characters in multiple locations are presented with introductions to their story and it had a pace I dug the hell out of. Truly, my one major complaint was the aspect ratio. It had much more space at the bottom of the screen than the top, which I initially assumed was for subtitles, but then they overlapped with the part of the screen that action was taking place on. For someone like me, who cares about things like that, it was very distracting and I don't know if I would be able to get over it, though I'm aware that won't be a commonly held complaint. Ten episodes of this maybe seems a tad excessive for me to jump on it right away but credit where credit is due, White Lines used those opening ten minutes to get me interested in what comes next.
1. Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich
Organising the middle of the list was hard, trying to sort the fairly mediocre from the rather mediocre, but my top pick was not difficult to choose at all. Jeffry Epstein: Filthy Rich is not an easy watch, but it's an incredibly gripping one that feels essential. Formally, I wish it did something to differentiate itself from the rest of Netflix's true crime slate, but the fact remains that it is a formula that works, every single time. For those who don't know, Epstein was a multi-millionaire socialite who had many famous friends including Donald Trump, Prince Andrew and the Clintons, who recently died in incredibly suspicious circumstances in prison. The reason he was in prison was because of numerous allegations of rape and sexual assault, many of which were from underage women and immediately, the series makes it very clear that we should not doubt these accusations. Epstein was scum, but shielded by his rich friends and in a sick way, the documentary is hard to look away from. It's like a slightly more palatable version of last years Leaving Neverland, the documentary about Michael Jackson and the allegations that surround him. Though a very upsetting watch, even just from the first ten minutes, Filthy Rich had to make the top spot because it is the thing I am most likely to watch the rest of. We owe it to the survivors to watch this documentary and acknowledge the monster that so long loomed behind some of the most influential figures in modern western society. I reiterate, this won't be an easy watch, but it feels absolutely essential.
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