What movies and TV shows are you watching?
What’re you watching now?
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The Vast of Night on Amazon is a tight little sci-fi movie. Set in the 1950s, it follows two teenagers, a switchboard operator and a radio DJ, who learn of a phantom radio signal and decide to investigate it while most of their small New Mexico town is gathered at a high school basketball game. The movie basically unfolds in real time over 90 minutes as they broadcast the signal to the DJ’s audience and field calls about what it might be. A former soldier calls in with a convincing story that the signal may be coming from the sky–but far higher than any human aircraft can fly. The movie was made on a really low budget but it manages to build an eerie mood and a sense of dread despite limitations. I really enjoyed it.
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Been watching a few films due to, well, having more time:
Killer Elite – Great cast, but a bit of dud.
The Man With The Iron Fists – A Shaw Brothers homage in every respect, including some seriously bloody and crazy crap went down in those films, this has to be one of the most bonkers films I’ve seen in ages. It is demented, over-the-top but somehow it works and it has a great cast.
Vice – From the makers of The Big Short, this lacks the breezy style of its predecessors, being a far darker tale. Not that it could have been any other way given its subject. It’s certainly a necessary film, certainly one to watch but it’s not I would rush to re-watch.
Ready Player One – This was a fun, clever film from Spielberg.
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Recently watched Always Be My Maybe on Netflix, which was a sweet if slightly formulaic romcom with a very fun extended cameo halfway through. (I won’t spoil it if you don’t know but it was a lot better than most gratuitous cameo gags in these kinds of movies.)
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Recently watched Always Be My Maybe on Netflix, which was a sweet if slightly formulaic romcom with a very fun extended cameo halfway through. (I won’t spoil it if you don’t know but it was a lot better than most gratuitous cameo gags in these kinds of movies.)
I really enjoyed it. It was fun and entertaining. It managed to avoid some typical rom-com tropes and stuck the landing.
It’s a good movie to watch if you don’t want anything heavy or or deep.
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I’m halfway through Staged, a very amusing lockdown comedy featuring David Tennant and Michael Sheen playing themselves as they get corralled into trying to rehearse a play via Zoom while the theatres are closed.
The charisma and likeability of the two leads goes a long way to making this enjoyable, and there are loads of little asides and (presumably partly improvised) bickering between them that put me in mind of The Trip.
It’s also a show with a few surprises, one of which involves a major A-list movie star which I won’t give away but provides some of the funniest stuff in the series so far, along with the running gags around the credits.
With plenty of observational humour about lockdown it’s a fun tonic, and the format of six 15-minute episodes makes it nice and digestible. Recommended.
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I’ve read Celeste Ng’s debut novel.
I’m watching the new series of What We Do in the Shadows. I’m trying to make it last.
I’ve watched the first four episodes since yesterday.
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I’ve watched the first four episodes since yesterday.
You have some of the finest episodes of the entire series ahead of you. Watch out for some new characters, like that Daytona fellow. And don’t get Colin Robinson overload.
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I love it.
I know a few energy vampires. They leave me wanting to keel over. Do you thinking wrapping myself in tinfoil would work to deflect them?
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Do you thinking wrapping myself in tinfoil would work to deflect them?
An interesting thing about tin foil is that it is reflective and shiny on one side and kind of not-so-reflective and not very shiny on the other side. People seem to think that these different sides have different properties, and proceed to wrap things accordingly. Shiny side out or shiny side in, as it were. As if the one side would trap heat better, somehow… What I’ve learned is that this isn’t actually true. No… They’re made this way simply because of the cumbersome manufacturing process. What they do, you see, is put the sheets in the rolling presses – that’s what they use, rolling presses – two and two together. This produces two different sides, one shiny and one matt, on both sheets. And the reason they do this, all the tin foil companies do this you see, isn’t to give the foil any special properties. No, no… Heh. The reason they do this, you see, is because if they didn’t… If they didn’t, the foil would just get stuck in the presses. And that would just be a terrible waste. Just terrible.
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I read that in monotonous monotone. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
It’s not even the words. You can tune out the words by simultaneously replaying cartoons or recalling funny quotes from WWDITS in your head. Maybe not Colin unless it’s Colin the dog from Spaced.
I don’t know what it is. Their supervillain power is absorbing energy.
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I’ve been rewatching some classic SF shows during the apocalypse. First Babylon 5, then Farscape, and I’m into series 3 of Battlestar Galactica now.
I love science fiction.
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You might like The Peacekeeper Wars.
I now get Todd’s troll reference and I’ve watched out for the Daytona volleyballs fellow.
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I now get Todd’s troll reference and I’ve watched out for the Daytona volleyballs fellow.
Surely, you haven’t reached the point where I have to get my own dry cleaning yet?
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Well in that case, step 1 is a painstaking mission to collect all the BattleTech novels…
Is step 2 the MechWarrior series, or are they considered part of step 1?
I’ve rad all the MechWarrior novels as well, so I guess so.
Wait, you’ve only just now discovered my BattleTech obsession? I spent the weekend playing it online with some of the writers!
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Well in that case, step 1 is a painstaking mission to collect all the BattleTech novels…
Is step 2 the MechWarrior series, or are they considered part of step 1?
I’ve rad all the MechWarrior novels as well, so I guess so.
Wait, you’ve only just now discovered my BattleTech obsession? I spent the weekend playing it online with some of the writers!
We discussed the concept on the old old board, around the first SFL I think, but I didn’t know you were obsessed to the point where you’ve read all of it.
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You’re crazy.
That’s a top shelf compliment coming from me.
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It was late night TV when I was young and I used to watch it on sleepless nights. I don’t remember much. It was sexier than Prisoner: Cell Block H, woth which it competed for that 02:40 time slot, but not better.
They both got the same graveyard slot in the UK. I actually thought initially that Lexx was some kind of soft porn show because they put it on so late but really it was just low budget sci-fi with a Baywatch aesthetic.
I watched the one episode, that was enough.
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You’re crazy.
That’s a top shelf compliment coming from me.
Would it be better or worse if I shared a photo of my copy of the BattleTech colouring book?
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Would it be better or worse if I shared a photo of my copy of the BattleTech colouring book?
Depends. Are you good at colouring?
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Would it be better or worse if I shared a photo of my copy of the BattleTech colouring book?
Depends. Are you good at colouring?
I paid like a tenner to get a POD copy of the book, there’s no way I’m colouring it in when I can print out the pages and use them instead
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It was late night TV when I was young and I used to watch it on sleepless nights. I don’t remember much. It was sexier than Prisoner: Cell Block H, woth which it competed for that 02:40 time slot, but not better.
They both got the same graveyard slot in the UK. I actually thought initially that Lexx was some kind of soft porn show because they put it on so late but really it was just low budget sci-fi with a Baywatch aesthetic.
I watched the one episode, that was enough.
So you sought it out when you thought it was a soft porn show, but never watched it again after you found out it wasn’t?
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Would it be better or worse if I shared a photo of my copy of the BattleTech colouring book?
Depends. Are you good at colouring?
I paid like a tenner to get a POD copy of the book, there’s no way I’m colouring it in when I can print out the pages and use them instead
From what I’m hearing, he’s terrible at coloring.
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Just watched Game Night. It’s been a while since I saw one of these high-concept adult comedies that’s any good, but this was a lot of fun.
Plenty of decent gags that land, some fun comedy setpieces and some twists that play with your expectations for a movie like this. Better than I expected.
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I spent the weekend playing it online with some of the writers!
I read some of them. My favorite writers were Stackpole and Charrette. were either of them the ones you played with?
It was more the game designers than the fiction writers, but I was in a chat with Blaine Lee Pardoe who’s been working on the game since the beginning and has being doing fiction since the 90s (IIRC his first novel was Highlander Gambit) and Jennifer Brozek, who’s a more recent fiction writer. The staff vs writers game (that Pardoe and Brozek took part in) was at stupid o’clock on Sunday night/Monday morning my time and I needed to be in work first thing so I skipped that one.
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Knives Out
I think maybe I let the hype ruin this for me. I was expecting something revolutionary and amazing, based on all the word of mouth I skimmed when it came out. But it turned out to just be fine.
It has a good cast and some nice plotting, but I wasn’t blown away by the mystery really and think the dynamic between Marta and Benoit towards the middle could have been expanded into something really great.
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.I was expecting something revolutionary
That was the thing about it, it wasn’t revolutionary. It was a throwback to the old whodunnits that outside of basic cable, you really don’t see movies like it anymore. It’s a simple and formulaic, just like whodunnits before it. It had fun, quirky characters and good dialogue.
As I said before, it wasn’t a deep or profound. It was just escapist fun.
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I saw Knives Out last week and expected a fun murder mystery with a twist at the end, and that’s what I got, so I was satisfied.
Then I read some of the reviews on IMDB, and Jesus Christ, something has to be wrong in your head if you feel the need to give a move a really low score because one of the characters who is not an asshole is also not white. I had not even seen that angle before looking at the reviews.
I gave it the score 8/10, like a normal person would.
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something has to be wrong in your head
I believe the correct term is “fucked in the head”.
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I watched the Peter Rabbit movie with the child on Friday (her choice). I’d avoided it as I knew James Corden was in and the trailer made it look like the premise for the movie was “what if a rabbit was a cunt?”. While I’m not in any rush to watch it again I did laugh out loud several times at the ridiculous slapstick in it. It kept the child quite for am hour and a half too so that’s also a bonus.
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“what if a rabbit was a cunt?”.
Dreamworks should be all over that.
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I watched a couple PTA movies yesterday: There Will Be Blood (which I’d seen a long time ago) and Inherent Vice.
There Will Be Blood is a fucking masterpiece. I couldn’t wrap my head around it the first time I saw it but this time I was all in. Like Phantom Thread, Jonny Greenwood’s score is key, propelling the movie along like an opera. You don’t even have to follow the plot to feel something watching this movie, although you should as its central character Daniel Plainview is one of the greats of American cinema. He is America, the demon of capitalism come to life, completely unfettered and with nothing but disdain in his heart for common people. But he has a human side, too, represented in his love for his adopted son H.W., although that love always comes second to his need to horde power and subjugate his enemies. The movie is rife with religious themes, too, and can be read as the origin of America’s unholy alliance between capitalism and Evangelical Christianity–the unique strand of conservatism that runs this country.
I liked Inherent Vice a lot too. It’s one of those mysteries like The Big Sleep where the labyrinthine plot is beside the point and in fact crumbles if you look at it even a little bit closely. It’s really a mood piece, perfectly capturing the drugged-out paranoid feel of one of Philip K. Dick’s late psychedelic novels like VALIS (without the sci-fi). Joaquin Phoenix and Josh Brolin are excellent, Brolin in particular is very funny as a hard-boiled cop with delusions of becoming a movie star.
I’ve now seen all of PTA’s movies except Punch-Drunk Love, which I’ll watch next. I’m gonna watch Magnolia again soon too which I haven’t seen since I was about 14. I didn’t know what to make of it then (although I liked parts of it very much, like Tom Cruise and John C. Reilly) but I’m betting I’ll like it a lot more now. Then again, maybe I’ll take Christian’s view of the film. Who knows!
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There Will Be Blood is a fucking masterpiece. I couldn’t wrap my head around it the first time I saw it but this time I was all in. Like Phantom Thread, Jonny Greenwood’s score is key, propelling the movie along like an opera. You don’t even have to follow the plot to feel something watching this movie, although you should as its central character Daniel Plainview is one of the greats of American cinema. He is America, the demon of capitalism come to life, completely unfettered and with nothing but disdain in his heart for common people. But he has a human side, too, represented in his love for his adopted son H.W., although that love always comes second to his need to horde power and subjugate his enemies. The movie is rife with religious themes, too, and can be read as the origin of America’s unholy alliance between capitalism and Evangelical Christianity–the unique strand of conservatism that runs this country
This is exactly what I took from it too. I agree, it’s a fantastic film. Daniel Day Lewis is obviously brilliant but I remember Paul Dano being great in it too.
I haven’t seen it since it was first released, but I was blown away by it and thought it conveyed its messages brilliantly.
(Also, “bastard from a basket” became a regular silly insult in my friendship group afterwards. But you had to do the voice.)
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There Will Be Blood is a fucking masterpiece.
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Oh yeah, Dano’s great. Just as committed to his portrayal of a deeply weird dude as DDL.
When I was watching Krzysztof Kieslowski’s movies a couple months ago I came across this Stanley Kubrick quote from his introduction to a book of Kieslowski’s screenplays:
I am always reluctant to single out some particular feature of the work of a major filmmaker because it tends inevitably to simplify and reduce the work. But in this book of screenplays by Krzysztof Kieślowski and his co-author, Krzysztof Piesiewicz, it should not be out of place to observe that they have the very rare ability to dramatize their ideas rather than just talking about them. By making their points through the dramatic action of the story they gain the added power of allowing the audience to discover what’s really going on rather than being told. They do this with such dazzling skill, you never see the ideas coming and don’t realize until much later how profoundly they have reached your heart.
I think that idea applies equally to PTA. His characters and plots perfectly embody the themes he’s trying to get across. That’s the goal of all storytellers but few achieve so fully as filmmakers like PTA and Kieslowski.
@lorcan_nagle I hadn’t seen that clip before. It made me laugh out loud, thanks for that!2 users thanked author for this post.
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I didn’t like any of the characters.
Not sure you’re supposed to like any of them. But I get your problem, it’s hard to enjoy a movie without being able to connect with its characters.
I’m rewatching Twin Peaks in between rewatching all the Robin Hood movies deemed worthy of my attention (and some perhaps not so worthy of it).
Currently on Season 2. Truman and Albert hugging it out. Holy fuck, this is good.
This is the best television series ever made. One day, something will probably top it but as it stands it really, really hard to imagine something being better than this. I know this was my opinion before this rewatch so I guess I’m just re-re-cementing it but I am actually blown away. Again.
I thought this was the best television series ever. Aaaand it’s better than I remembered.
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The superb owl is not what it seems.
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I didn’t like any of the characters.
Not sure you’re supposed to like any of them. But I get your problem, it’s hard to enjoy a movie without being able to connect with its characters.
I’m rewatching Twin Peaks in between rewatching all the Robin Hood movies deemed worthy of my attention (and some perhaps not so worthy of it).
Currently on Season 2. Truman and Albert hugging it out. Holy fuck, this is good.
This is the best television series ever made. One day, something will probably top it but as it stands it really, really hard to imagine something being better than this. I know this was my opinion before this rewatch so I guess I’m just re-re-cementing it but I am actually blown away. Again.
I thought this was the best television series ever. Aaaand it’s better than I remembered.
There’s a whole swath of S2 where Lynch was not involved and you could really tell. When I did my rewatch prior to the debut of The Return, it really was a chore to get through a lot of those episodes.
I still maintain that Season 3 (The Return) Episode 8 is the single greatest hour of television ever produced. If you disagree, that’s only because you’re wrong.
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I still maintain that Season 3 (The Return) Episode 8 is the single greatest hour of television ever produced. If you disagree, that’s only because you’re wrong.
I agree
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There’s a whole swath of S2 where Lynch was not involved and you could really tell.
It is known. I’m not sure it’s going to be such a chore for me this time around though. I kind of expect it, and there are a lot of scenes and characters in those episodes that I look forward to.
Most notably, Dick Tremayne.
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I’ve now seen all of PTA’s movies except Punch-Drunk Love, which I’ll watch next. I’m gonna watch Magnolia again soon too which I haven’t seen since I was about 14. I didn’t know what to make of it then (although I liked parts of it very much, like Tom Cruise and John C. Reilly) but I’m betting I’ll like it a lot more now. Then again, maybe I’ll take Christian’s view of the film. Who knows!
God, I hope so. It’s so lonely here!
(Also didn’t care much for Punch Drunk Love.)
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Finally saw Midsommar. It was just the right kind of messed up.
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Finally saw Midsommar. It was just the right kind of messed up.
The old man… what a way to go. Death goals?
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I watched Toy Story 4.
What did you think? It turned out better than I expected.
(But poor Réjean.)
Awful child. Poor Evel Keanu. Was Forky supposed to be endearing? He seemed content enough to find purpose in the bin. He was out-creeped by the servile ventriloquists and the voiceless Gabby dolly. That sequence felt like there were pieces missing or they changed their mind at some point. It was either a selection of vignettes or they remixed various pick ‘n’ mixes from the previous films.
Woody was cheerily determined to deal with being made obsolete. I liked the Tom Hanks typewriter reference and there are some beautifully animated sequences such as the lights at the fairground. Did not like what they did with Bo Peep. It was an incredibly depressing watch. The exchange with Jessie was sweet.
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Recent watches:
Artemis Fowl
This is a fun, two hour kids film, with a fun cast. It is not revolutionary, you won’t be that surprised but as part of Disney+, for a few quid, you can do far worse.
Bad Boys
Never saw this so got around to it. It’s an OK movie, full of all the things that Michael Bay would be known for, plus some moments that are of its time – casual sexism and homophobia being among them.
Polar
It takes a special amount of talent to fuck a film up this badly. This is a goddamn mess. On paper? It sounds cool, older assassin has to off a load of younger ones because his boss doesn’t want to pay out his pension. In execution? Oh, where to start? I know. Matt Lucas. Matt Lucas plays the villain, a fat, psychopathic fuck – but because it’s Matt Lucas, it does not work. At all.
The assassins sent after him? Are such nasty pieces of work you immediately want them offed, but the film decides it wants to be edgy by showing lots atrocities – it’s kind of like a crime comic trying to imitate Garth Ennis’ gross out humour and failing to understand that it doesn’t work because they’re all total bastards. When they do get offed, it’s all too fast.
There was one cool sequence where Polar uses a set of motion controlled machine guns, that was very cool, but it can’t redeem the film. And the final resolution is weak, with the fastest recovery from a person being being hooked on heroin you’ve ever seen.
It’s a total waste of time that we only stuck with to see how it played out. Well, it played – and bled – out. Badly.
Oh and the camera pervs more than Bay on max setting.
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Matt Lucas plays the villain
… The BBC regular? That Matt Lucas? Fucking hell, that sounds like a right fucking awful idea.
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Btw, this is what I think of when you abbreviate Paul Thomas Anderson as PTA.
(Set to start at 36 seconds in)
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Dirty Cops
This is a French comedy set in the early 80s about a pair of cops sent undercover to run a Parisian sex shop so they can get in with the mafia and arrest them for money-laundering. And… well, it’s very French. It is funny in places but nothing gut-bustingly so. There’s a lot of tits, which I guess will be enough for some people. Mainly it tries to be deep and poignant, which doesn’t really work. It ends up sentimentalising early 80s porn production, which is an odd choice, really.
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Sounds like it should have been called There Will Be Tits.
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I’ve now seen all of PTA’s movies except Punch-Drunk Love, which I’ll watch next. I’m gonna watch Magnolia again soon too which I haven’t seen since I was about 14. I didn’t know what to make of it then (although I liked parts of it very much, like Tom Cruise and John C. Reilly) but I’m betting I’ll like it a lot more now. Then again, maybe I’ll take Christian’s view of the film. Who knows!
God, I hope so. It’s so lonely here!
(Also didn’t care much for Punch Drunk Love.)
Don’t feel lonely anymore because I’m with you, man! I mean, I didn’t hate Magnolia when I watched it last night, too much about it works for it to be a bad film, but by the same token too much stuff doesn’t work for it to be a very good one. I get that it’s meant to be melodramatic and wear its heart on its sleeve but the characters and events are often too histrionic to have any real impact. The parts that hit hardest for me were probably Jason Robards’s monologue about regret, the quiz boy’s rant against Jimmy Gator and the game show audience, and Melora Walters’s smile at the end. And Tom Cruise is just fantastic, Frank T.J. Mackey is probably his best role ever. But most of the characters are paper thin and PTA really has to overplay his hand as writer-director to stir emotion in the viewer. Often the movie felt hollow to me. And the singing felt like a gimmick.
The movie also sidesteps the casual racism John C. Reilly’s cop exhibits in the beginning and turns him into a hero at the end which wasn’t cool back in 1999 and lands extra weird in 2020.
Ah well. 7 out of 8 is not a bad record at all. And all his other films I love (and at least Magnolia is an interesting failure). I’d rank them: There Will Be Blood, Phantom Thread, The Master, Boogie Nights, Inherent Vice, Punch-Drunk Love, Hard Eight.
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I woke up real early and decided to watch a movie before I get job hunting.
Watched Gemini Man. This movie is… A lot better than I got from reviews. Not super good, but decently entertaining.
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May you kill enough Job to feed the tribe til the morrow.
Blessed be the Hunt.
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Now we know why Anders has been studying Robin Hood. I didn’t realise the Merry Men were hiring.
Unless it’s the Wild Hunt.
You’re not away with the fairies are you Anders?
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You’re not away with the fairies are you Anders?
I might be. But please, no homophobic slurs.
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Don’t feel lonely anymore because I’m with you, man!
YES!!!!!!!
And yeah, for exactly that reason:
the characters and events are often too histrionic to have any real impact. […] But most of the characters are paper thin and PTA really has to overplay his hand as writer-director to stir emotion in the viewer. Often the movie felt hollow to me.
If PTA wasn’t hitting me with an emotional sledgehammer all the time, the movie might’ve been good.
And I agree he’s a great director; I wouldn’t be annoyed by Magnolia so much if he wasn’t. I mean, he’s even a great director in that movie, he’s just a great director doing it ALL WRONG.
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Finished watching the first season of Sense8 last night.
I frickin’ loved it. Dont know why it took me so long, but glad I did (and looking forward to season 2).
Only 2 seasons? Shame…Also did a rewatch of Chernobyl recently and it’s very worthy of rewatching.
Catching up on this thread I want to rewatch Twin Peaks (doubt I have the time in near future) and There Will be Blood.
Also need to go through PTA’s list (some missing).3 users thanked author for this post.
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Also did a rewatch of Chernobyl recently and it’s very worthy of rewatching.
I imagine it now functions as cheery escapism.
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I’m watching for Tim.
He can’t see me. I’m now non-cheery-functioning.
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No…
…Bat!!!
But I did feel invisible this morning and then I disappeared here but then you watched out for me. And now I have to go out and fetch my own dry cleaning.
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Can’t you get your familiar Gizmo to do that?
As much cleaning as I’ve had to do this year we might as well give him the nomer “unfamiliar”
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Also did a rewatch of Chernobyl recently and it’s very worthy of rewatching.
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Can’t you get your familiar Gizmo to do that?
As much cleaning as I’ve had to do this year we might as well give him the nomer “unfamiliar”
Don’t feed him after midnight. Oh wait, wrong Gizmo.
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Lol latest Agents of Shield.
Yay latest Doom Patrol.
Comic shows are great
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Ah Season 4 is where it gets to a steady pace of reliable goodness.
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