What It’s About: a series of professional and romantic setbacks almost causes a talentless LA. Artist (Mark Ruffalo) to face his own worthlessness

Who It’s For: talentless L.A. artists

This review may be hard to take for those of you who think Mark Ruffalo is perfect. He’s pretty great, I agree. He picks good scripts, he says smart things in interviews, and he’s the sort of male actor whose casting gets people with Tumblr blogs very excited. I enjoy that in movies he seems simultaneously tortured and extremely relaxed, clever but also possibly a little slow. I read a long time ago that he had a brain tumor and got surgery for it and then went back to making movies. That’s impressive, but is it possible that his brain surgery made him better at movies? I think Apartment 12 was made before the surgery.

What It’s About: Your friend Billy Zane plays a composer in a wig falling victim to the manipulative charms of a young girl who can’t sing and doesn’t take off her bra.

Who It’s For: Music industry professionals. This is the most accurate on-screen portrayal of the recording industry since Alvin & the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel.

Sometimes Netflix has no faith in me. “Best Prediction For You: One Star.” Why would you even think that, Netflix? Blue Seduction stars Billy Zane and it’s called Blue Seduction! It sounds like four-star material to me.

What It’s About: An Abercrombie model with the ability to time travel tries to solve his ex-girlfriend’s murder, killing scores more on the way.

Who It’s For: Mothheads, which is the name for Butterfly Effect superfans that I just made up.

Don’t you hate it when you keep forgetting to watch a movie, for 416 straight weeks? I’m such a bonehead sometimes. I have totally and consistently flaked on ever seeing the first Butterfly Effect, released a little over eight years ago. It’s a horrendous oversight, I know.

What It’s About: A team of Navy SEALs must escape from an Iranian sub and free a captured chemical weapons expert.

Who It’s For: Billy Warlock.

I was drawn to this week’s Queue Review selection by its cast (Gary Busey, Billy Dee Williams, and Billy Warlock; two Billies!) and its title: Steel Sharks. To what could that title refer: perhaps submarines, or bullets, or the unrelenting drive of American Special Forces, or Gary Busey’s teeth? I would have to watch to find out. Little did I realize how topical the film I’d selected was. Yes, Netflix says this movie was made in 1997, but it just as easily could have been made tomorrow.

Each week, Netflix Watch Instantly adds hundreds of new titles. Four or five are movies you want to watch, some are bad TV shows or camp classics, and most make no sense at all. Those in the latter category are puzzling: not bad enough to be good and certainly not good enough to be interesting. In this column, comedian Max Silvestri will review a new film on Netflix Watch Instantly and ask, what is this?

What It’s About: A creature suspiciously similar to the Predator is hunting soldiers in either South America or Louisiana.
Who It’s For: Somebody working on a YouTube montage of railing kills, as this movie has at least one of them. (A railing kill is when a disposable bad guy gets shot and goes flying over a railing. Only the BEST movies have them.)

Each week, Netflix Watch Instantly adds hundreds of new titles. Four or five are movies you want to watch, some are bad TV shows or camp classics, and most make no sense at all. Those in the latter category are puzzling: not bad enough to be good and certainly not good enough to be interesting. In this column, comedian Max Silvestri will review a new film on Netflix Watch Instantly and ask, what is this?

What It’s About: A young boy turns 11 on 11/11/11, so despite there being over 10,000 live births every day in the United States, that means he is the devil.

Who It’s For: People disappointed by how little The Number 23 focused on 9/11.

Each week, Netflix Watch Instantly adds hundreds of new titles. Four or five are movies you want to watch, some are bad TV shows or camp classics, and most make no sense at all. Those in the latter category are puzzling: not bad enough to be good and certainly not good enough to be interesting. In this column, comedian Max Silvestri will review a new film on Netflix Watch Instantly and ask, what is this?

What It's About: A corrupt elderly caregiver is sentenced to give more care to the elderly at a nursing home, which is filled with different types of characters and lessons.

Who It's For: The guy who has to cut the sizzle reel for the writer/actor's funeral video.

When I first spoke with the Grantland folks about Netflix Watch Instantly, I stressed that I wanted to focus on a very certain kind of title. Yes, campy genre films offer many things to talk about, and so too do terrible mainstream movies, but nothing interested me as much as the profoundly and deeply mediocre things I write about here. They exist in a spooky Middle Place. (You'd need a tesseract to travel there alone.) Movies, from everything I've read, are very hard to make. Not difficult necessarily, but they absolutely require many different people saying yes, many different times. "Is this script good enough? Should we cast the guy whose face and neck look like that to play someone handsome? Can I please have more money so we can do a scene near a lake?" Mediocre movies are fascinating, because why would anyone bother?

What It's About: Two parents still reeling over the tragic death of their young child find a genie and wish for cash.

Who It's For: Delusional orphans and Louis Gossett Jr. superfans.

While I rarely trust the opinions of the Netflix user community, sometimes the member reviews are exactly what draw me in. It certainly worked in the case of The Lamp. "5 Stars: They had me at Louis Gossett Jr! Wonderful cast, wonderful story and something the whole family can learn from." You had me at they had me at Louis Gossett Jr.! Mr. Gossett Jr. is a notorious deal-closer in Hollywood. They say only two men's names can get a project green-lit regardless of the content or the cost: Steven Spielberg, and Louis Gossett Jr. "Say no more. Sold." That is what the fat cats in Tinselwood say when someone pitches them a movie starring Louis Gossett Jr.

What It's About: When an undercover CIA agent's assassination target is almost assassinated by other CIA agents, he decides to try and save the guy for no reason.

Who It's For: People clinically addicted to the sound of silenced pistols firing blanks.

Benjamin Franklin said that nothing is certain except death and taxes. But that was before Wesley Snipes. If you hate taxes like Wesley hates taxes, the only thing that is certain is death. (Though I sometimes think Mr. Snipes believes he IS Blade, a Daywalker he has played in films. Therefore, not even his death is certain.) 2010's Game of Death does not address Snipes's recent tax troubles. It focuses mostly on death.

Each week, Netflix Watch Instantly adds hundreds of new titles. Four or five are movies you want to watch, some are bad TV shows or camp classics, and most make no sense at all. Those in the latter category are puzzling: not bad Enough to be good and certainly not good enough to be interesting. In this column, comedian Max Silvestri will review a new film on Netflix Watch Instantly and ask, what is this?

What It's About: After his more fertile child dies during a sex accident, a terminally ill stand-up comedian demands that his remaining son grant him a dying wish: leave the priesthood and get married.

Who It's For: People fed up with films that paint humor, familial love and human sexuality in a positive light.

What was this movie? I was enchanted by the summary on Netflix: "After learning that he's dying, a man has one last request for either of his two sons: Get married! But when one of them dies trying, it's up to his brother — an aspiring priest — to fulfill his father's wish before it's too late." One of them dies trying? An aspiring priest? A nonsensical concept plus an all-star cast full of such notables as Danny Aiello, Joe Piscopo, Mario Cantone, and Gilbert Gottfried meant The Last Request seemed perfect to write about. The credit sequence, a dream in which our main character Jeff is being chased by boob-sharks, solemnly declares, "...And introducing T.R. Knight as Jeff." What an introduction! T.R. Knight used to be on Grey's Anatomy, a show I have never seen. Apparently the show is famous because in each episode one of the main characters dies or has an abortion or both, so it's high stakes.