Streaming Netflix and Drinking Alone in Your Apartment This Weekend? Here’s What to Watch and Drink
Each week Yahoo Tech’s Alyssa Bereznak will help you pick the best of Netflix, old and new. She will also recommend drink pairings. Please note: Any pairing can always be substituted with a large bottle of wine.
I hope you’ve burned off all those empty calories from last week’s Mean Girls-inspired cosmopolitan-fest. This week, I tip my fedora to the noir genre and its many subsets. So c’mon, you boobs and broads: Let’s watch some bad guys get the bracelets.
1. Chinatown, paired with a boulevardier.
Jack Nicholson’s wrinkled forehead is put to good use in this 1974 Roman Polanski film. Private detective J.J. Gittes (Nicholson) is hired to spy on the cheating husband of Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway), but soon finds himself entangled in a much more serious scandal. This ultra-cool crime thriller is set in none other than 1930s Los Angeles and features all the things that make the noir genre great: the sound of a sleepy jazz trumpet, scenes featuring mysterious shadows, dames wearing red lipstick, the use of the word “dame” …
And of course, our anti-hero Nicholson doesn’t mind a healthy dose of brown spirits, either. That’s why I recommend dipping your bill in a bitter boulevardier, which is made of bourbon, Campari, and sweet vermouth. It might be hard to swallow. But so, my friends, is this crazy sham we call life.
2. Double Indemnity, paired with a martini.
In many ways, Double Indemnity represents American film’s peak noir. So even if you’ve never seen it, you’ve probably heard the story before: A weak, insatiable dude (Fred MacMurray) is seduced by an unloving femme fatale and persuaded to murder her (poor!) husband so they can cash in on his insurance policy.
The best part of this film? The 1940s detective banter that reaches similar incomprehensibility as some conversations on The Wire. I’d suggest a drinking game in which you take a sip of your martini every time you hear a phrase you don’t understand, but I don’t want to be responsible for any trips to the emergency room.
3. Pulp Fiction, paired with a boozy “Martin and Lewis” milkshake.
Quentin Tarantino’s 1994 campy neo-noir flick pays homage to the genre with a crisp, dark humor, fresh format, and star-studded cast: John Travolta, Uma Thurman, Samuel L. Jackson. Bruce Willis, Christopher Walken, and Steve Buscemi. Not to mention it’s got a killer soundtrack.
Obviously you should wash all this brilliance down with a Martin and Lewis (read: vanilla) milkshake, much like the one Mia Wallace (Thurman) ordered while out on the town with her husband’s criminal employee Vincent Vega (Travolta). Their dialogue and subsequent dance scene at the old Hollywood-themed diner Jack Rabbit Slims is one of the most memorable moments in the film for me. Go ahead, indulge. In the scene and the shake (enhanced with a bit of alcohol for your streaming pleasure).
And hey, go ahead and get yourself a Quarter Pounder with Cheese, too.
4. American Psycho, paired with a very fine chardonnay.
Christian Bale plays Wall Street jerk turned serial killer Patrick Bateman, in this 2000 psychological thriller by Bret Easton Ellis. And he does it so well that Bateman’s plastic smile and sick sex murder games are almost more disturbing than Hannibal Lecter’s craving for human flesh.
But one thing Bateman knows — aside from how to efficiently murder hookers and co-workers without staining his bijou robes — is what it takes to drink and dine like a king in New York, even if he could never get that table at Dorsia. Aim high and buy yourself a nice bottle of chardonnay to drink alongside this one. Absolutely no two-buck Chuck! You don’t want a stomach full of cheap alcohol when the blood of his many victims starts to splatter.
And, remember, if anyone asks what you were doing, just tell them you were returning some videotapes.
5. Zodiac, paired with an Aqua Velva.
We come full circle with Zodiac, a 2007 David Fincher thriller about a serial killer on the loose in San Francisco during the ’70s. Meek cartoonist turned amateur detective Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal) establishes communication with the suspected killer after cracking his cryptic symbol-based codes.
Like all of Fincher’s films, Zodiac is dark and moody and devoid of any real color. That is, aside from a few San Francisco stop signs and the bright blue glow of Graysmith’s favorite cocktail, an Aqua Velva. It just so happens that it’s also my drink of choice for the film. The AV is made of vodka, gin, Sprite, and a citrus-flavored liqueur called Blue Curaçao. It’s exactly the type of thing you’d expect an Eagle Scout to drink as an adult, but it’s enough to help you swallow the fact that this film is actually based on a true story.
Do you have a pairing suggestion? Send it to Alyssa Bereznak here. And follow her on Twitter. Please, she begs you.
