Paddleton Serves Up An Emotionally Affecting Portrait of Male Friendship

Michael (Mark Duplass) and Andy (Ray Romano) are an unexpected pair of buddies. They're apartment neighbors, with Andy living above Michael, and they've gradually become friends who bond over classic martial arts move, homemade pizzas and a game they created called Paddleton. Once the movie Paddleton begins, though, that friendship is threatened by Michael contacting a life-threatening disease that can't be cured. Death is unavoidable and now these two pals are looking to make the best of whatever time they have left, which will include a road trip to procure some extremely rare medicine for Michael.

Set It Up Is A Delightful Romantic Comedy With Two Awesome Lead Performances

Netflix is coming up on the third year anniversary of their big push into creating original films, an initiative that began with Beasts of No Nation. In that time, Netflix has gotten a whole bunch of movie stars like Brad Pitt and Will Smith to headline their various high-profile motion pictures, but aside from Bright (which really became more of a cosplay staple and internet punching bag than anything else), none of these movies have really garnered all that much attention, a pity for gems like Blue Jay, Mudbound or 6 Balloons. But two weeks ago today, Netflix released their first original film to really take the public by storm and it was one not based on exceptionally well-known source material or starring big names or even carrying a bunch of splashy visual effects.

Mute Silences All of It's Potential

In their 28 month long period of doing feature films, Netflix has released a bunch of high-quality smaller-scale films like The 13th, Blue Jay and Mudbound that show the streaming service is quite capable of putting out some top-notch cinema. If only such quality extended to their attempts to release more high-profile blockbuster fare, as those (admittedly few) attempts have fared quite poorly. Bright was, of course, a disaster and now comes another subpar bigger-budgeted effort from the studio in the form of Mute, which hails from director Duncan Jones, a man responsible for two of the best science-fiction films (Moon and Source Code) of the last decade.

Woah! Why Haven't More People Been Talking About The Intimate And Powerful Netflix Movie Blue Jay??

So far, Netflix's forays into the world feature films haven't been as successful as their TV shows and they've easily being overshadowed by Amazon's various box office and awards hits like Manchester By The Sea and Love & Friendship. But 2016 showed the company was capable of releasing some high-quality feature films such as The 13th (one of the year's best movies) and now Blue Jay helps solidify the idea that Netflix may just get a handle on the motion picture side of the entertainment equation yet. I have no clue why Blue Jay hasn't garnered more attention but make no mistake, it's quite the gem of a motion picture.