Jacob Recommends
June 2021
If you are having one of those evenings where you want to watch something but can’t decide what, allow me to make some recommendations of what you can check out on streaming.
Rocks (2019, UK, Netflix)
Rocks is a coming of age drama about a London teen who is forced to fend for herself and her brother after her mom walks out.
Rocks was my favourite film of 2020, the film strikes a very naturalistic tone, with highly improvised dialogue. This allows the young performers to really be themselves and jive with each other in a way that feels so genuine.
This authenticity is balanced with a compelling story with some truly dramatic moments which the lead, Bukky Bakray, delivers a pitch-perfect performance for,I was very impressed with her.
Rocks is a perfect slice-of-life film that still has dramatic heft, and one of the sweetest child performances you will ever see, I cannot recommend it highly enough.
Greenland (2020, USA, Amazon Prime)
Greenland is a disaster film about a family trying to find safety during a planet-theratining meteor strike.
Most disaster movies embrace the label of ‘naff, but enjoyably so’.Greenland however, attempts to play it straight which really could have backfired but here has worked well.
For most of the film I was on the edge of my seat, this is due to the authentic feeling of the situation. The automated messages on phones, emergency broadcasts on TV with all of the creepy noises, the scenes of people being evacuated and fighting to survive, it all felt believable and was very unsettling and nerve wracking.
Of course if you want the kind of fun set-pieces you’d expect from a Gerald Butler disaster movie there are also plenty of those and they are well made.
Genuinely one of the best disaster movies of recent times, if you love the genre give it a watch.
O.J.: Made In America (2016, USA, Disney+)
O.J: Made in America is a documentary about the infamous life of O.J Simpson. It is a LONG documentary which has been split into 5 episodes, each 90 minutes long. It’s an epic but it’s telling an epic story.
For me this does a better job of any other piece of media of telling the O.J story, it covers all of his life (up to the release of the doc so it is a tad out of date now that he is out of jail) and really manages to explain the importance of the O.J story.
If you have a bit of spare time and want to really understand and get to the bottom of one of the most fascinating real-life stories of recent decades then check this one out.
