Life of the Lintee Bean

I’ve been watching a lot of movies and TV shows instantly through NetFlix. My tastes run toward the suspense, thriller, and horror genres. I’ve made a lot of poor choices. Several of the shows I deleted after a few minutes, as they weren’t worth watching to the end.  However, I did stumble across a couple of surprises.

One surprise was the movie “Isolation”.  I didn’t hold out much hope for this one, honestly. It’s a horror movie, and the film’s description mentioned cows given fertility drugs and giving birth to mutant offspring. I know something of cows.  I didn’t grow up on a farm, but I grew up in a rural community and I’ve been around cattle. They’re really not that scary. Cows don’t generally run fast or jump high or eat people. They don’t even have sharp claws or fangs. I had trouble imagining anyone running for their life from a mutant cow. However, the movie was surprisingly good.  Not great, by any means, but I watched the entire thing and actually kind of paid attention and enjoyed it.

Another surprise movie was “Good Neighbors”. It was set in Canada, and I think I recognized at least one of the actors.  It had a rather dark, twisted plot. However, the cats in the movie were excellent.  I’m serious. I actually watched the credits at the end of the movie to find out the names of the cat actors. (There were six cats that played the three cat roles in the film.) Even if you don’t care for cats, the plot is strange enough I think it warrants a watch – if you like dark movies about serial killers.

Beginning to suspect I may have seen every horror, suspense, and thriller movie that’s worth seeing, I’ve moved on to TV series. I’m watching a lot of documentaries on crimes solved using forensics. I also watched the series “I (almost) got away with it” about criminals that escaped prison and lived on the run for years, evading capture. I’m learning a lot. I don’t anticipate the need to run from police – but if I do, I’m now armed with an arsenal of information on countries without extradition treaties and means of getting fake identification. I also know about activities to avoid if I want to remain undetected – like dealing drugs, becoming an enforcer for a gang, and singing karaoke.

I do like fictional crime dramas as well as documentaries. However, when I watch crime dramas, it drives me nuts when the actors don’t follow proper procedure. I realize we have to fit these dramas into the time allowed and so liberties are taken. We can’t wait weeks for DNA results, for example. However, they should at least put on gloves before handling evidence! When they search a house, I think they should speed it up. Hostages and evidence are never in the living room or kitchen on the first floor –  let’s just skip those rooms and go immediately to the creepy attic or basement.

One thing I can say – almost any movie or show I’ve seen on NetFlix is better than the videos I need to watch for my professional continuing education credit. Those are what I should be watching, but they’re an entirely different kind of horror.

Submitted for publication in the Greeley Citizen