Re: Recent movie/TV playlist

1281
Almost didn't bother with The Last Duel, but glad I did. Scott's best since... I dunno, Gladiator? They surely knew they were going to lose money on this, an expensive reworking of Rashomon against a backdrop of Andrei Rublev meets Assassin's Creed. The writing is occasionally a bit on the nose, but hey. Feels like it was made 20 years ago and all the better for it.

Re: Recent movie/TV playlist

1282
TC wrote: 10/11/21, 14:13:09 Invasion - appleTV+ show. watched the first three episodes last night. construct is, we're following the lives of a few different people in different parts of the world while an alien invasion is happening, but no one knows (yet?) that what's happening is an alien invasion. seems at first like localized events or incidents, eventually people start realizing something is happening globally. first three episodes are intense.
sam neill was in the first episode, and the reason i decided to check it out, but it appears like they killed him in the first episode. the show definitely doesn't pull punches, there are real stakes here.
i'm into it so far, hopefully it doesn't drop the ball. recommend checking it out if you're looking for something else to watch. caveat: s1 isn't over yet, so not sure if it pays off.
Yeah, this went pretty well. I understand it got picked up for a second season, and the way s1 went, it is deserving. Pretty cool show, quite enjoyed.

Re: Recent movie/TV playlist

1283
Dr. Brain - AppleTV+ korean show, apparently based on a korean webtoon which i haven’t read. Only six episodes, but it was super interesting. Kind of confusing at the beginning to understand what was happening, but did come together pretty quickly. Got increasingly absurd as it went along, from a law enforcement and scientific perspective, but it was all played very straight forward, which enhances the presentation. Part sci-fi, part murder mystery, part horror, part action - i say check it out.

Re: Recent movie/TV playlist

1284
Censor - saw all the hype for this film but managed to not read/see anything about it, just watched it blindly. god damn is this a good film. very much deserving of the praise. i believe this film to align with our tastes here and think you will enjoy it. you should watch it. that's all i am going to say about it. it's really great.

Re: Recent movie playlist

1285
TC wrote: 28/07/20, 16:11:13
TC wrote: second season was great. holy fuck that ending. some very clever foreshadowing in that episode too. can't wait for S3. probably going to re-watch S1 now that i've seen where this goes just to see how they built the characters again. recommended show.
not surprised at all every major cast member got an emmy nom.
season 3 was 100mph from the drop. extremely difficult to jump in after a large gap. was struggling a bit initially. there were some dips mid-season as family stuff was happening, but that is also its own excitement/drama. they absolutely nailed the ending of this season. i wasn't sure it was going anywhere, but goddamn was it.

Re: Recent movie/TV playlist

1286
Louis CK: Sorry - fucking great. happy he's still killing it. he's going to go down as one of the best ever.

Jim Florentine: Bite The Bullet - i like Jim. i've seen him live before and had a good time. he's always a great guest on podcasts and interviews. but his stand up just doesn't do much for me. especially watching it the day after watching Louis' new special. I hope he does well, but I don't remember one joke two days later.

Yellowjackets - i'm digging this show, but still can't really tell where this is going after six episodes. it's reasonably enjoyable. essentially a girls' high school soccer team gets thrust into a lord of the flies situation for 18 months (i think?) and we follow the surviving members around present day adulthood. we spend about half the time in "flashbacks" showing what happened in the wilderness and the other half with them as adults dealing with some unknown entity digging up their past. starting to feel stretched very thin. hopefully something happens soon.

Elves - interesting premise with some decent shots and amusing scenes. disposable "holiday" horror series so far.

Re: Recent movie/TV playlist

1287
Don’t Look Up - new Adam McKay film that is ridiculously stacked with name actors you recognize dropped on Netflix so we checked it out. I thought it would be more darkly humorous, but it was mostly just dark. Way too real and kind of depressing. It was interesting, but should/could have been hilarious. Don’t know what happened here, other than huge, Hulk-sized ham fisting of social commentary. Lots of great acting on display, though.

Being The Ricardos - really well done show that is set over one week of production on I Love Lucy yet also manages to give a decent bit of back story to how Lucy & Desi met, how the show came to be, etc. well cast, well acted. If you are remotely interested in the subject matter, you should dig this. They changed a lot of the timelines and sensationalized some of the (already) sensational real stories, took some liberties with dialog, etc., but still an entertaining flick. Although i can’t help noticing it’s yet another nicole kidman role where she is a messiah type character for everyone else involved. This new era of her career has an odd trajectory.

Re: Recent movie/TV playlist

1289
She Dies Tomorrow - well, this was interesting. It’s not really horror, so don’t expect that. It’s also very short. While it’s interesting and well done, the issue is that it doesn’t really go anywhere with the concept and there are a lot of holes left open. Which, maybe was the point? Shrug.

Re: Recent movie/TV playlist

1290
Hellbound - no, not the fantastic Hellraiser sequel, the korean Netflix show. only six episodes, but quite enjoyable. i thought from the look of it and description it would be goofy, but it's quite the indictment of religion. i enjoyed it. with that ending, i guess they're setting up a completely different s2? fine by me.

Re: Recent movie/TV playlist

1291
No Time To Die - Needed about an hour cut out of it. I fell asleep during it and when I woke up 45 minutes later the plot hadn't really moved forward any. I can't really say I cared that much for any of the Daniel Craig Bond films, but this is probably my least favorite.

Gunpowder Milkshake - Tarantino rips off other filmmakers and turns them into his own works. This film is a rip off of a Tarantino rip off. There are a lot of people in this movie who should have known better. Yet I don't know, it's so ludicrous at times that I couldn't help getting a kick out of parts of it. But I hate myself for doing so. This movie is the girl you sleep with because it seems fun at the time, but you'll hate yourself in the morning and know you'll have to take antibiotics afterward.

Venom: Let There Be Carnage - I think by this point I was starting to become numb to action films. Woody Harrelson was really underused. Mostly it was just big cgi monsters fighting each other.
Just cut them up like regular chickens

Re: Recent movie/TV playlist

1293
TC wrote: 29/12/21, 07:05:28 I was planning on renting the new bond as soon as it was available until i heard how woke/bad it was. Which is really disappointing. I really liked casino royale and skyfall, and think craig was a great bond.
I didn't really think it was that "woke" to be honest, and whenever someone uses that term my bullshit meter goes up. Yes, the new 007 is a woman. But she's barely in it and gives the title back to Bond the minute he comes back. Bad pacing and a meh story was this film's problem.
Just cut them up like regular chickens

Re: Recent movie/TV playlist

1294
Station Eleven - i've waited to start discussing this until i was sure of my opinion on it. it's a very strange show and took a few episodes to be sure it wasn't just goofy. it's bizarre in the way good original sci-fi can be - see Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, though not nearly as absurd. if you start watching, you'll be questioning if you should continue around episodes 3-4, but i recommend sticking with it. while the season is not over yet, it's cemented my opinion so far that it's a very strong show and i'd recommend watching. they are doing some very interesting things with the construct. it's well-written and well-executed. solid cast. lots of dark humor as well. many, many timelines that do eventually all sync and/or tie together. very curious to see if they can stick the landing on this.

Re: Recent movie/TV playlist

1295
Memories Of Murder - had heard good things about this and i really like his later films, so wanted to check out this early entry from Bong. it's really crazy and all over the place, but i loved it. i don't know if that's because of or in spite of the crazy. in tone it reminded me a lot of the UK Life On Mars series, but with a lot more over the top korean sensibilities. you could tell that this director was going places. if you haven't seen it, it's on Hulu. recommended.

Re: Recent movie/TV playlist

1296
Cobra Kai - Season 4 - as we covered back on page 58, s3 ended in kind of insane land where many teens should now be living at juvi. S4 picks up immediately after the events of s3. I don’t really understand how much time passes during a season - two weeks? Five days? A school year? - and that creates some issues with this season especially. A kid that has been in your class for what i assumed was maybe a week is doing the skills demonstration? He’s also able to strike your best guy? Anyway, was a good season. Brought back the guy who i guess was the villain in Karate Kid 3? I don’t know, didn’t watch that one, but there were enough flashback scenes for me to grasp i guess this guy has existed in the canon of this franchise. He was fine, definitely more enjoyable than Krese. Thankfully, we didn’t get Krese fight scenes this year - those were so painful to watch last year. Guys biggest opponent is clearly arthritis. But, these two guys - ‘nam vets? How old are they supposed to be again? They’d have to be in their 70s at minimum, but in the flashback scenes they looked older than 20, so… Anyway, forgetting about all that, this season was enjoyable. Had some laughable moments. But there’s just no way to recapture why s1 was so great. Watching this, i feel the same way i do watching the CW superhero shows - there is so much teen drama that is both annoying and ridiculous, just in this show, all their issues somehow end up getting solved by and with karate. And i’m still watching because i’m invested. But if all those kids tried the roof jump and fell to their death like lemmings, i’d be fine with that too.

Re: Recent movie/TV playlist

1297
All The President’s Men - i have seen this several times before, but not in a long time, and my wife didn’t recall ever seeing it, so we put it on last night. Have to say that the movie relies way too much on viewers having external context. Meaning, if you go into this not really knowing anything, it would be extremely difficult to follow. It jumps all over the place, timeline-wise, and doesn’t really end where the story ends. Lots of names and terms tossed about with the assumption the viewer knows who and what they are. Yes, it’s well-acted obviously, stacked cast, but it’s just something i noticed last night - that as a story, this adaptation just isn’t very good.