As a huge movie fan, I tend to watch so many Netflix movies that my eyes look worst than Bob Costas eyes during the Olympics. Although no Shirley Temple movies made my cut, here are four must-watch movies you can enjoy from the Netflix movie list.
1. The Way
This movie is a great story about a man, Tom, who travels to France to collect the body of his son who dies while attempting to walk “El Camino de Santiago,” a pilgrimage to the shrine of the apostle St. James the Great in Spain. Not having the best relationship in the world with his son, Tom then feels the need to finish what his son started and attempts the pilgrimage himself. During his journey, he crosses interesting characters along the way and is visited by his son from time to time in his imagination. At the end of his journey, he feels his son has forgiven him. This movie is very entertaining and, overall, a great story.
2. Schooled
This eye-opening documentary looks into the NCAA and how they expose student athletes to the billion dollar industry that is college sports. Former student athletes, teachers, and NCAA employees talk about how a student athlete is exploited by universities as they ripe the benefits while the athletes struggle to put food on their own plates. This is a must-watch if you are any kind of a sports fan, especially of college sports.
3. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
As a history buff, this is one of my favorite movies of all-time. A young innocent boy, Bruno, moves into a new home after his Nazi commander father is relocated on orders during the WWII era. Bruno wanders off into the woods of his backyard against his mother’s orders and unknowingly stumbles across a concentration camp fence. On the other side of the fence is a boy named Shmuel, who he befriends. Intrigued with this big game, Shmuel gets to play and wear striped pajamas, and after multiple trips back to see Shmuel, Bruno decides to break into the camp to play with his new friend. Shmuel brings Bruno an extra pair of striped pajamas and Bruno is able to change into them and sneak right in by digging a hole into the ground.
SPOILER ALERT!
The shocking ending is the best part of this movie. As they “play” Shmuel’s game, Bruno is thrown in the mix with all of the other Jewish prisoners. Upon discovering that Bruno is missing, his father sends out a search team to look for Bruno. As Bruno follows a crowd into a chamber, the search team finds Bruno’s clothes he left behind when he changed into the striped pajamas and a hole leading into the camp and the team assumes the worst. Sadly, Bruno suffers the same fate thousands of Jews had to suffer in the concentration camp and they are all burned to death. Coincidentally, Bruno’s own father was the man in-charge of the concentration camp.
4. Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead
This film has changed the way I look at food and medicine forever. This documentary follows Joe Cross, an Australian businessman, on a 60-day journey as he attempts to change his health forever as his lingering health problems seems to get worse. He adapts a diet of strictly fruits and vegetables, known as juicing, which involves turning the vegetables and fruit into juices. His journey begins painfully as his body attempts to adapt to his new lifestyle. As time goes on, he starts to lose weight and his health issues seem to go away. Along his journey, he meets an overweight truck driver named Phil and convinces him to start juicing. He also begins experiencing the same results as Joe. In the end, Joe stops using medication and is able to subdue all of his health problems just by juicing. Although I do not have health problems, I did begin to juice after watching this documentary and I still do.
And there you have it, my top four must-watch movies on Netflix. You really can’t go wrong with any of these films.
