Netflix Friday - Volume 107

Some Netflix film tips for the weekend! And there is something for everyone, since I picked a movie for all the different genres.

Action: The Lost City of Z (2016)
British explorer Percival Fawcett (Charlie Hunnam) disappeared whilst searching for a mysterious city in the Amazon in the 1920s.
 

Drama: Schindler’s List (1993)
In German-occupied Poland during World War II, industrialist Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson) gradually becomes concerned for his Jewish workforce after witnessing their persecution by the Nazis.
 

Comedy: Senior Year (2022)
A cheerleading stunt gone wrong landed Stephanie (Rebel Wilson) in a 20-year coma. Now she’s 37, newly awake and ready to live out her high school dream: becoming prom queen.
 

Animation: Apollo 10 ½
A coming-of-age story set in the suburbs of Houston, Texas in the summer of 1969, centered around the historic Apollo 11 moon landing.
 

Romance: How Do You Know (2010)
After being cut from thd U.S.A. softball team and feeling a bit past her prime, Lisa (Reese Witherspoon) finds herself evaluating her life and in the middle of a love triangle, as a corporate guy (Paul Rudd) in crisis competes with her current, baseball playing beau (Owen Wilson).
 

Horror: Dark Shadows (2012)
An imprisoned vampire, Barnabas Collins (Johnny Depp), is set free and returns to his ancestral home, where his dysfunctional descendants are in need of his protection.
 

Science Fiction: Mute (2018)
A mute bartender (Alexander Skarsgård) goes up against his city’s gangsters (Justin Theroux, Paul Rudd) to find out what happened to his missing partner
 

Crime : Papillon (2017)
Wrongfully convicted for murder, Henri Charriere (Charlie Hunnam) forms an unlikely relationship with fellow inmate and quirky convicted counterfeiter, Louis Dega (Rami Malek), in an attempt to escape from the notorious penal colony on Devil’s Island.
 

Thriller: Taken (2008)
A retired CIA agent (Liam Neeson) travel across Europe and relies on his old skills to save his estranged daughter (Maggie Grace), who has been kidnapped while on a trip to Paris.
 

Documentary: Our Father (2022)
After a woman’s at-home DNA test reveals multiple half-siblings, she discovers a shocking scheme involving donor sperm and a popular fertility doctor.
 

Family: The Karate Kid (2010)
Work causes a single mother (Taraji P. Henson) to move to China with her young son (Jaden Smith); in his new home the boy embraces kung fu, taught to him by a master (Jackie Chan).

Movie Review - Our Father

Director: Lucie Jourdan

Genre: Documentary

Runtime: 97 minutes

Year: 2022

Starring: Donald Cline, Jacoba Ballard, Debbie Pierce, Jan Shore, Robert Colver, Dianna Kiesler, Liz White, Angela Ganote, Julie Harmon, Matt White, Shereen Farber, Mark FarberHeather Woock, Liz Shepher-Stidman

Description: After a woman’s at-home DNA test reveals multiple half-siblings, she discovers a shocking scheme involving donor sperm and a popular fertility doctor.  

Review: “Our Father” is a horror story taken from real-life. At the center of the film is Donald Cline, a doctor who from 1979 runs a fertility clinic in the American city of Indianapolis.

Cline helped women to get pregnant, because their husbands are infertile and they have the wish to be come parents. But what those women didn’t know is that he used his own sperm and therefore impregnated many women in his clinic.

When one of the donor children, that was born because of Dr. Cline’s help, wants to know if she has any siblings, she takes an at-home DNA-test. She finds seven siblings online. With that already being a bit strange, since a sperm donor is only to be used for the max of three times. And it does not stop at seven. We here from donor children and their mothers, but also people who worked for or with Dr. Cline and sociologists.  

The whole clue of the documentary is pretty clear from the start, but along the way more and more is revealed about his practices. It’s a very disturbing story and I was really invested in it. “Our Father” could have zoomed in on the shady practices a bit more, on how it’s not been outlawed in all of the US yet. Because Dr. Cline was never prosecuted for his actions. There was a lawsuit, but he didn’t get the needed punishment.

Rating: 3,5/ 5