This week in Netflix Instant Watching

Before the customary beginning-of-the-month flood of titles hits Netflix Instant Watching today, I want to highlight a few titles that appeared on IW this past week or so. The streaming additions front has slowed lately, but all heck will break loose when "Star Trek" comes to Instant Watching (it may already be there as you reads this). But some of the notable ones made available recently include...

*Iron Man 2: When people complain about Netflix not having any good movies to watch, they're usually complaining about a lack of recent blockbusters. Well, it's been out for a while and on pay cable for a few months, but if you don't have EPIX or you missed this last year, this is a pretty cool add. I have yet to see it myself, so while I am not subscribing to Netflix for big hit movies, I'm excited to be able to catch it this way.

*Louie Season 1: Here's a great TV series add for streaming. Those of you who "cut the cord" and ditched cable for this service, well, here you go: A complete season of a great modern television program, out in essence the same time as the DVDs. I already saw all these when they aired, so it's not a huge deal for me, but it is cool that it's there. I find that I feel conflicted about things like this, though. Since I still do pay a lot for cable, I kind of wonder if it's really in my best interests as a Netflix subscriber that the company is paying money for material I already have access to. Then again, I missed "Mad Men" and am looking forward to catching up from season 2 on when it starts streaming later this month. So I guess the ideas is not to get too hung up on specific titles but be glad that this kind of content is available.

*Life of Reilly: I've wanted to see this filmed version of the late Charles Nelson Reilly's acclaimed one-man show for some time now, and when it appeared on YouTube recently in official, legit form, I had an inkling it would wind up here.

*Cinema Paradiso and Switchblade Sisters: I include these to highlight Netflix's recent Miramax deal. It includes a lot of familiar titles we've all seen already, maybe some multiple times, but there is a nice diversity to the influx of movies included in this package. What illustrates that better than this week's addition of a prestigious foreign film and a drive-in cult classic?