Although I’m a Joss Whedon fan, I found “In Your Eyes” wasn’t as enjoyable as his usual writing. For one thing, the woman is very weak. Was this a writing exercise where he challenged himself to make two people who were very bad at surviving in the world fall in love? However, I enjoyed seeing how the director handled having two people on different sides of the US talking to each other–until I realized that it’s precisely the same as shooting actors on a telephone call. Seriously, these people just needed Skype or a nice Bluetooth headset.
Instead, I recommend the strange indie sci-fi feel of “Frequencies” (2013) and “The One I Love” (2014) on Netflix streaming. Both start a little slow, but they’re fun what-if stories with relationships at their core and I enjoyed not knowing where they were headed. “Frequencies” takes the idea of two people with opposite extremes of frequencies, which determine success and luck, and explores predestination. “The One I Love” asks what would happen if a struggling married couple really could start over by having the couple vacation to a cottage that holds an idealized version of their mate.
I particularly enjoyed “Coherence”, but that’s no longer available on Netflix. If you have Amazon Prime it streams for free. That’s a fun mind-bender like the movie “Primer,” which came out in 2004. In “Coherence”, a neighborhood falls into a twilight-zone-esque alternate place where other instances of themselves exist and unknowingly interact. It’s really fun to realize how early this shift has taken place, and I thought it held together well.
The first episode of “Black Mirror” was off-putting, but my brother assures me the other episodes are better. I’ll try a few more.
Have any recommendations for me?
