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Bone Tomahawk - watched this again last night. It’s such a great film. I really love it. Also watched the deleted scene that was included, which was an alternate (really, additional scene) ending. They made the right choice ending it where they did in the theatrical. While it did help understand what Kurt was saying to Chickory when he said “have a talk with him”, it took the umph out of the thing. Ending on that rock was perfect.

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TC wrote: 31/01/22, 07:20:57 Peacemaker - four episodes into this. gone is the tongue-in-cheek humor of The Suicide Squad, which i quite liked. it's been replaced with massively shoe-horned woke-ism every step of the way. cramming nearly every conceivable social issue into this show seems to be the goal. i'm blown away we haven't been lectured on trans-gender children, CRT, or voting laws yet. while i like gunn's stuff typically, this feels like it was taken over by people that are incapable of executing his more subtle humor and satire and replaced with the writers of far-left leaning blog sites. it's ultimately just disappointing, given the potential here. still watching as there are moments of humor and some great violent scenes, but it's approaching that line of just being so irritating i bail, like SNL of the last five years or so. ironically, what they're showing is in contrast to what they're saying - the black characters in the show are the ones who are deceitful, lying, manipulative, and two-faced. they spent several minutes of one episode furthering the myth that Louis CK exposed himself to random people. i just don't understand who this show is for. sad.
watched the last couple of s1 of this and am left with the same confusion. it's an entertaining show, some great humor and great kills. then randomly out of nowhere comes a super-woke comment, aside, or speech. gunn clearly has an appreciation for the type of humor that gets people canceled, given his past troubles on twitter, so seeing him buy so completely into a woke agenda is disorienting. then, seemingly conversely,
someone makes a big speech about climate change and how we're destroying the earth, and they get shot in the face.
so again, tone is oddly all over the place and not sure what this show is trying to accomplish with the speechy agenda moments. thankfully, they're few and far between in the back half of the season. also, the final episode cameos were pretty great. that was unexpected and well done with what they had. i guess there's going to be another season, so we'll see where that goes. also, cheers to gunn and holland on their engagement.

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Space Force - i thought i posted about s1 in here, but guess not as i can't find it. s1 was kind of hit and miss, but was mildly amusing. malkovich is great, of course. i wasn't sure it deserved a season 2, but s2 did indeed drop on friday. i'm four episodes in, and the show is just kind of "there". it's not overly funny, it's not overly clever, it's not overly smart. we get to watch an alum of Silicon Valley rip off one of the main gags from that show when he draws up a whiteboard with a lot of math, trying to figure out where he stands with his crush, very clearly echoing the SV "tip to tip" chart. it's just weird. i don't know how this show thinks it can stand out in an age where we get really great shows. it's very middling. steve carell fans will watch i guess, but they will be largely disappointed i imagine. haven't had one real laugh, only mild smirking reactions to this so far, which is how i feel about the show in a nutshell.

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TC wrote: 21/02/22, 09:26:27 Space Force - i thought i posted about s1 in here, but guess not as i can't find it. s1 was kind of hit and miss, but was mildly amusing. malkovich is great, of course. i wasn't sure it deserved a season 2, but s2 did indeed drop on friday. i'm four episodes in, and the show is just kind of "there". it's not overly funny, it's not overly clever, it's not overly smart. we get to watch an alum of Silicon Valley rip off one of the main gags from that show when he draws up a whiteboard with a lot of math, trying to figure out where he stands with his crush, very clearly echoing the SV "tip to tip" chart. it's just weird. i don't know how this show thinks it can stand out in an age where we get really great shows. it's very middling. steve carell fans will watch i guess, but they will be largely disappointed i imagine. haven't had one real laugh, only mild smirking reactions to this so far, which is how i feel about the show in a nutshell.
Finished it. The “cliffhanger” ending - yeah, of course this is what’s going to happen. Why not. People seemed to like that non-comedy “Don’t Look Up”, we should do that too. I would bet this doesn’t get renewed.

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Suspicion - watching this AppleTV+ show. Watched the first two episodes when it dropped, just watched the next two last night. Damn is this show well done. I can’t really talk about it without spoiling something, as it’s so convoluted and interconnected that i don’t know what small thing means something in the plot down the road. I was pretty sure i knew how it was going to go until that last scene of e4. Holy shit i did not see that coming. But now i have another thought i’m pretty confident about. We’ll see. It’s billed as an Uma Thurman show, but she’s rarely in it. So far it’s been a couple glorified cameos. But the rest of the cast does a great job. The main (i guess?) antagonist (i guess?) is a guy that was one of the dothraki blood riders on GoT, and he’s great. Really, if you like crime/drama/thriller type shows, you should check this out. So far so good.

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Free Guy - pretty amusing concept here, with some great and amusing effects. reynolds and waititi hamming it up, with and excellent cameo or two. if you don't like reynolds or FPS video games, this probably isn't for you. but it was about what i expected, which was a light and amusing film.

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Severance - AppleTV+ show starring Adam Scott, John Turturro, Patricia Arquette, Christopher Walken, many others. i was holding off of watching until i accrued several episodes but am now caught up, which is 3 episodes in. it's a very surreal sci-fi/drama wherein willing participants have their work consciousness "severed" from their non-work consciousness. this show will spawn a lot of theories about what's really happening, what work they are actually doing, etc. - lots of links online already to this effect - but i'm content to just continue watching until the end of the season, then go compare these things to my hypotheses. regardless, i highly recommend this show. it's the kind of low-key dread i have been craving from a show lately. some very amusing moments as well so far, and Walken only showed up in the last episode. no real idea where this is going yet.

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Titane - what the actual fuck is this? I saw people saying how great it was and to go in cold, so fine - I did. I knew nothing other than the official synopsis of “After a series of unexplained crimes, firefighter reunites with long-lost son” or something like that. Jesus fucking christ i was not prepared for whatever this was. If you make it through the first 37 minutes, which seem to be aggressively attempting to make people leave/turn it off, the rest of the film is a piece of cake. Not that I would recommend it, but it at least calms down a hair. It really makes no sense to me, and not in a fun Enemy way. I don’t even know how to describe this to someone… Homicidal stripper fucks a Cadillac, immolates her dad and step-mom (I guess?), masquerades as a long-missing boy and befriends the boy’s father, lactates oil, fucks a fire truck, attempts to seduce the boy’s father shortly before giving birth to a machine baby and dying in a puddle of oil. I mean, I guess those are spoilers but I don’t see how it would change your viewing experience to know any of that. It’s nonsense, and not in any fun Tetsuo way. And/or I’m too dumb to be left feeling anything for this film.

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Pieces Of Her - toni collette led netflix show (limited series?), apparently based on a book. halfway through this now (4 episodes) and it's quite interesting. they keep you confused the first few episodes as to what is actually happening in this crime drama, and it works well. even now that we "know" what's happening, i'm not sure where this is going. if you like toni, this is very recommended. i'll let you know how i feel once completed.

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TC wrote: 22/05/20, 06:50:49 Upload - this amazon show was pretty great. hell of a cliffhanger ending. hope they get picked up for s2, and produced it quickly.
well, we did get a season 2, it dropped last week, and it started immediately following the events of s1. easy binge watch as it's 7 episodes of around 30 min/ea. it's a really good show. amazing how much the lead guy looks like tom cruise. i recommend the show. don't know if s2 was as good as s1, but they set up a nice s3. i hope they get it.

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The French Dispatch - ugh. i assume you have to really love wes anderson for this to click with you. i acknowledge that there is some accomplished shot design and cinematography involved in this - i especially enjoyed the "still frame" shots where people were frozen - but i couldn't bring myself to give a shit about any of the characters or what was happening. didn't help that a lot of the film was french spoken by people speaking so quickly - to someone who immediately responded - that it was difficult to read the subtitles to completion for what was just said. i love Isle Of Dogs and The Grand Budapest Hotel was enjoyable, even The Darjeeling Limited was interesting, but i can only watch people walk across the screen for so long before there has to be something else there.

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Script was silly but the direction is mighty, reaching new levels of visual complexity and attention to detail for Anderson, and one has to give it props for that.

Top 5 for 2020 as it stands:

1/ Licorice Pizza
2/ The Last Duel
3/ House of Gucci
4/ The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun
5/ Red Rocket

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Neon Demon - have seen this several times but rewatched again last week. while i love the film, i still feel like refn is best suited to long-form TV. Too Old To Die Young was fucking monumental. giving him room to breathe enhances his work. that being said, i think ND ranks high on my list of his films. probably above drive, which i think is vastly overrated. it's fine, but it's not everything people make it out to be, imo.

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Eternals - this film is not good. i was hate-watching it by the halfway mark. couldn't wait for it to be over. so many issues with the writing of this thing, and at least half the main cast is very hateable. i enjoyed seeing the stark step-brothers again, but goddamn was this film bad. nothing about this was enjoyable. the writing ignores some of the tenets set forth in other MCU films and is very clumsy at best. seriously, this film is not good.

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Hail Satan? - this is a doc about the concerted effort to use satanism as a point/lever to try to further the separation of church and state. it's well done and the subject matter stays true to the intent of the movement, doesn't try to sensationalize "satanism" etc. yes, one of the main girls loses her shit due to trump derangement syndrome that became so prevalent a few years ago and goes way overboard, but that's why she was removed from a leadership position. if you're at all interested in professional trolling as a way to highlight the hypocrisy of the laws in this country, this is the documentary for you.

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battle of the startup docu-dramas:
Super Pumped - the story of travis kalanick and uber. it's been a really great show so far. extremely engaging and in my experience very telling of how the silicon valley startup world works and how the culture is. acting has been fantastic, JGL is spot on. very much recommend this show if you are remotely interested. finale is sunday night.

WeCrashed - based on a podcast i guess about the rise and fall of wework & adam neumann. lots of high-caliber cast in this, and it's well done, but goddamn do you kind of just want everyone involved to fucking die. it's so gross, but also really kind of happened that way. i can't wait to see them taken down, crash and burn style. contrasted with the above, where you kind of feel bad for TK, this will leave you yelling at the screen, praying for adam's death every waking moment. his wife is full of nonsense too. you would hope that the couple ends up spending many years in prison for how they essentially stole money from investors, but nope. they're currently living in the hamptons next to cousin gweneth paltrow with their nearly $2bil payout. of course, investors bear the blame here too and have paid the price with their wallets. somehow this show still has several episodes left. oof.

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Antlers - didn’t know anything about this, was a blind watch. I quite enjoyed it. Fat damon and keri russell lead this bleak thriller/horror. Some great effects, great plot and creature work. Recommend taking it for a spin.