What Are You Watching? New Season!

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Time for a new ‘watching’ thread!

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So I watched The Vast of Night… it’s a really cool indie sci-fi movie… very stylistic with great long shots… some weird choices sometimes, but it works overall. I think it’s on Amazon Prime… recomended, it’s probably a movie that will get some attention like Ex Machina did. It’s the same type of indie movie.

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Christian, Will_C

I’ve had an episode of a Canadian crime series calles Cold Squad in my YouTube watch later list for ages and finally got around to it today. It’s a decent enough show. That episode was notable for having an early role for Tom Cavanaugh (off Ed and Flash), with a really terrible haircut.

Anyway, the show’s decent enough so I looked to see if it’s available anywhere and it turns out Amazon Prime has it. Well, some of it. Only seasons 5 onwards. It’s such a baffling thing and I’ve seen them do it with other shows too. Why wouldn’t license the whole series?

Jumping in at season 5 isn’t too bad, there’s not much backstory to the show, given it’s broadly a crime of the week format. This season is from around 2001 and it has very brown palette that is surprisingly evocative of the time. Lots of beige suits, generally desaturated colours, like a conscious rejection of the bright colours and styles of the 90s and Y2K fashion in particular.

The other notable thing – and why the show was on my radar in the first place – is that the squad commander is played by Garry Chalk, the voice of Optimus Primal. Always fun to find the Beast Wars cast in live action roles.

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lorcan_nagle

Private School – a curious little film. Released in 83, it’s near the tail end of that late 70s/early 80s sub-genre of sleazy sex comedies, typified by Porky’s, that faded out in favour of cleaner comedies (the gradual cleaning up of Hollywood comedies thru the 80s is an interesting thing in itself). Private School’s main idea is to *gasp* give its female characters agency and personality rather than just use them as lust objects for men.  It still does use them for that though (and not just teenage boys) and it’d be a stretch to say that Phoebe Cates, Betsy Russell and Disney’s Pepper-Ann are the main characters, as much as the film wants to think they are.

Partly this is because the film’s too lightweight to create anything of heft for any of its characters – the film’s plot is more a string of set pieces than a story. It sketches in a thin idea of Cates and Russell being rivals for the attention of Matthew Modine, but their motivation is flimsy at best – the inciting incident is Modine and his friends perving on Russell in the shower, so she moves to Cates’ room to tease them more, gets disrobed, the guys fall out the window and somehow Cates sees this as a slight against her, rather than her boyfriend and his mates being sleazy letches.

Even so, the main issue is that these set pieces tend to be typical sub-Porkey’s fare that focus on the boys trying to perv on the girls: the aforementioned peeping through windows, dressing up as old women to somehow wander the dorms, “Bubba” luring Russell over to his dorm on the pretence of Modine being there, but instead stacking the room with his buddies while he connives to get Russell naked. It’s unremarkable smut and rarely funny, but the real problem is that it’s from the standard genre POV of the boys as heroic horndogs and the women as objects of titillation, which doesn’t really work when the women are supposed to be carrying the narrative. It requires Pepper-Ann (Kathleen Wilhoite)’s character especially to be endlessly forgiving of her boyfriend while he goes off committing borderline criminal offences towards all her classmates. And yet it’s Betsy Russell’s character she’s dead set against. That last examples ends with Bubba being lightly beaten by Wilhoite and Russell (stripped down to her underwear and aghast at being perved on) and then just goes nowhere with it. Seemingly Wilhoite’s character was happy to forgive Bubba again in time for graduation. It’s all a bit weird.

Perhaps the oddest thing about Private School though is that it features Sylvie Kristel (off 70s erotic smash Emmanuelle, so clearly hired for her name – and sex – appeal) and then just has her in a tepid little cameo as the school sex ed teacher who falls in a pool. Just as with its cast, Private School has the ingredients to do something interesting and distinctive, it just doesn’t seem to have any idea how to pull it off.

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DavidM, Todd, lorcan_nagle

I watched the Russian movie Sputnik last night. It’s a sci-fi horror film set in 1980s Soviet Russia about a scientist who must figure out how to separate a deadly alien parasite from a cosmonaut. The story is heavily indebted to Alien but is different enough that it never feels like a retread. This is old-fashioned storytelling and movie-making executed to perfection. The story has an emotional heft to it, too, that feels earned. Great creature design and action sequences too. I think pretty much everyone here would enjoy this.

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Uncle Retrospective, DavidM, lorcan_nagle, Dave

[Will_C]

I watched a bunch of movies (well, the only 5 that are streaming anywhere) by wuxia master King Hu. Writing about them in the order I liked them:

Legend of the Mountain (1979) – Masterpiece. One of my favorite movies now. A copyist in 11th century China moves to a remote mountain fort to translate a Buddhist sutra said to be able to give release to the dead. Little does he know the fort is inhabited by ghosts, all vying for control of the sutra. This is a wuxia film more in tone and approach than plot; the ghosts don’t fight each other physically but by using ceremonial drums (yes, it’s as cool as it sounds). The reason this film is so great, though, is its photography. After seeing five of his films, it’s clear Hu is a master of shooting nature. Maybe the master. I’ve never seen anyone come close to capturing the colors in the natural world that he does. A deep respect and love for nature is key to Hu’s spirituality which is explored in the story of the undead seeking a return to the natural order.

A Touch of Zen (1971) – This is widely seen as Hu’s masterpiece, and it’s certainly in the same league as Legend of the Mountain. The story concerns a slacker artist who’d rather study philosophy and military history than advance his career and the fugitive noblewoman who moves into the dilapidated, assumed-to-be haunted house next door. The noblewoman has been sentenced to death because her father offended a superior and she and a small band of loyalists have fled to the outer edges of the kingdom to evade capture. They’re soon found out, though, and the slacker must use his wide-ranging knowledge to help them come up with a plan to defeat the 200 soldiers on their tail.

It’s an exciting tale, with shades of Seven Samurai, and features more of Hu’s gorgeous nature photography, but it doesn’t become GREAT until the final thirty minutes, after the main plot has concluded, when a band of magical Zen monks loyal to the noblewoman appear. They intercede on her behalf to rescue her young son and the sequence is just transcendent. I mean look at this:

Come Drink with Me (1966) – This movie isn’t as good as the first two but it’s very fun. It was a pretty big influence on Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, I think.

Dragon Inn (1967) – This is maybe his most famous film but aside from the photography I didn’t find it very satisfying. It’s all plot, no character. Still, the photography elevates it somewhat.

The Fate of Lee Khan (1973) – Similar issues as Dragon Inn, only it takes place almost entirely inside of an inn. So the opportunities for Hu’s breathtaking photography are limited. There’s an incredible fight scene in the last ten minutes though. Probably the most visceral of all five movies.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 4 months ago by Will_C.
• This reply was modified 4 years, 4 months ago by Will_C.

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DavidM, lorcan_nagle

I just watched Nocturne (1946). It’s a film noir starring George Raft as a police lieutenant investigating the murder of a music composer. It’s a good film but I was surprised at how intentionally funny of the lines were. Raft‘a deadpan delivery with a twinkle in his just made me laugh out loud.

It had a good mystery and good performances. A fun way to spend 90 minutes.

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Will_C

Watching X-Men First Class. It’s ok but they really should have made an entire movie out of Magneto: Nazi Hunter.

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Uncle Retrospective, JRCarter, Andy, Will_C, Andrew

Sooo… with all the controversy, I got curious and watched Mulan… it’s… ok. It’s not amazing, but it’s not the turd everyone’s saying… HOWEVER, one huge caveat is: I’ve never seen the animated one, so I’m coming at it from the “asian epic story” angle, rather than a childhood favorite cartoon.

I’m aware it seems to be different from the cartoon, thank god there’s no musical bits (if there’s any in the cartoon, and my guess is yes), so I can’t really coment on whether people are right or not to be disappointed by the differences.

That said, as a movie of that particular kind, which there are quite a few… it’s a bit bland I must say… there’s a distinct dissonance in that everything you’re seeing in terms of design, costumes and whatnot is telling you “chinese epic flick”, but the story very much oozes “disney” from every pore.

It’s too sanitized, too “clean”, no blood, no real violence, etc… but the dialogues also ring untrue to this type of movie, the music is off as well, to westernized in a lot of points, and the plot is very… uhmm I guess generic, by which I mean it lacks that distinct asian flair. Costumes are okay, some of the set designs are great, the VFX goes from mediocre to decent.

The real problems are the action: The action is bland as fuck. The editing is pretty bad, with quick cuts that don’t really give you a sense of wtf is going on, which is also a HUGE departure from these types of movies. The pace and editing are very uninspired indeed.

So I guess in the end it just feels like a very expensive, yet cheap, imitation of a proper chinese epic. One word review: meh.

Anyways, it’s not garbage either, but it’s certainly NOT worth the 30 bucks tag (on top to the subscription to D+), in case anyone was in the fence about paying for it. There you go…

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Todd, DavidM, Ben

Dave wrote:

Watching X-Men First Class. It’s ok but they really should have made an entire movie out of Magneto: Nazi Hunter.

Wasn’t there a plan at some point to do an X-Men: Origins – Magneto movie?

The more subtitles, the better.

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Andy, Todd

Yeah, that’s what I mean – I think the ideas for the Magneto solo movie ultimately got folded into First Class.

If X-Men: Origins – Wolverine hadn’t been such a bomb…

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Todd

Well… I mean, it didn’t do amazing numbers, but it did better than First Class on a slightly lower budget… so I don’t know if that had anything to do with it.

I seem to remember at the time there were plans for a whole series of “X-Men: Origins” movies (presumably why that umbrella title was used for the first Wolverine) but the lukewarm response to that first one likely played a big part in changing that direction.

I do think that a big part of the appeal of X-Men is the team/character interactions, so probably the right call overall.

You have to be careful there too, while critical acclaim doesn’t = dollars exactly you have to look at what the secondary market and appetite for more is for a movie with a 57% viewer score (used because we know critics can be out of step with the public sometimes) compared to 87%. There’s a danger you are building on sand there if nearly half the audience wouldn’t be enthused to watch more.

We can never know how another Origins would have fared but financially Days of Future Past did build on First Class rather than continue a downward trend.

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Dave

I dunno, perosnally I just think they realized it was an ill-conceived idea… Sure, WE might’ve liked a Magneto movie, but it’d still be a movie about a villain and I don’t know if that’s really viable as a merchandise asset… I mean, we’re talking about a guy who hates the human race… =/

But anyways, it doesn’t really matter, I think they used all the good concepts and ideas for Magneto in the other movies… I don’t think we lost all that much.

Jon wrote:

Sure, WE might’ve liked a Magneto movie, but it’d still be a movie about a villain and I don’t know if that’s really viable as a merchandise asset… I mean, we’re talking about a guy who hates the human race… =/

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Uncle Retrospective, Todd

Martin Smith wrote:

just doesn’t seem to have any idea how to pull it off

 

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Uncle Retrospective, Sean Robinson, lorcan_nagle, Martin Smith, Dave

DavidM wrote:

Martin Smith wrote:

just doesn’t seem to have any idea how to pull it off

 

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DavidM, Todd, lorcan_nagle

Went to Lovecraft Country, ended up in The Goonies!

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DavidM, Todd

Just got finished binging on the BET Black Panther animated series. Always thought “Who is the Black Panther?” would have been the best basis for a movie.

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Todd

I’m three episodes into Lovecraft Country and still undecided.

The first story was mostly incomprehensible, maybe I missed a bit of plot exposition (there was certainly plenty of it) that would tie it all together, but it mostly seemed like too many random elements jammed together just because.

The second story (the haunted house) worked much better as a coherent horror story, all the different elements were properly chilling but also logical rather than scares-for-the-sake-of-scares, and I liked the resolution.

And then the second thematic strand, the blatant racism everywhere, is a powerful story in its own right but I’m not sure what it adds to the basic horror elements, or indeed vice-versa.

It feels like the show has a lot of good ideas, but maybe really needed a few less.

DavidM wrote:

It feels like the show has a lot of good ideas, but maybe really needed a few less.

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Andy, Uncle Retrospective, Todd, DavidM, lorcan_nagle

DavidM wrote:

It feels like the show has a lot of good ideas, but maybe really needed a few less.

A lesser few.

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DavidM

Anonymous wrote:

DavidM wrote:

It feels like the show has a lot of good ideas, but maybe really needed a few less.

A lesser few.

Well less is more, so I’d say a few fewer.

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Dave

[DavidM]

A few less has been proper idiom for at least 200 years.

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?corpus=26&smoothing=3&content=a+few+less%2C+a+few+fewer&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&direct_url=t1%3B%2Ca%20few%20less%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Ca%20few%20fewer%3B%2Cc0

 

Also, GRR Martin is American so I pay little attention to anything his characters say

• This reply was modified 4 years, 4 months ago by DavidM.

DavidM wrote:

I’m three episodes into Lovecraft Country and still undecided.

The first story was mostly incomprehensible, maybe I missed a bit of plot exposition (there was certainly plenty of it) that would tie it all together, but it mostly seemed like too many random elements jammed together just because.

The second story (the haunted house) worked much better as a coherent horror story, all the different elements were properly chilling but also logical rather than scares-for-the-sake-of-scares, and I liked the resolution.

And then the second thematic strand, the blatant racism everywhere, is a powerful story in its own right but I’m not sure what it adds to the basic horror elements, or indeed vice-versa.

It feels like the show has a lot of good ideas, but maybe really needed a few less.

I did not like episode two at all. It was just a long series of weird shit that made no sense at all. The other three episodes have been fine or good, so I’m still optimistic about the rest.

huh… weird… I’ve really enjoyed them all, tbh. I also think the racial themes are very well woven into the story, as the explore a very interesting idea. The one thing I was not a fan of in ep2 was the “poetry” thing at the begining and end… the modern music/elments are a bit jarring, but it doesn’t kill it for me.

DavidM wrote:

Also, GRR Martin is American so I pay little attention to anything his characters say

I’ve read (some) his books in both the original American and in Swedish. A lot of it didn’t survive translation. I guess it’s the same for you english sods.

I just watched I’m Thinking Of Ending Things, the new Charlie Kaufman film on Netflix, and I thought it was pretty great – even if I’m still sorting it out a little bit in my mind. Very funny in places but also quite disturbing too.

 

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Andy, lorcan_nagle, Todd

Been working far too much lately. Colleagues calling in sick etc. Anyway, been unwinding by rewatching some classics this week.

Heat: A movie as incredibly tense as this master stroke might not be the best movie to watch to “unwind”, but it’s still a treat. All actors at their best, and no matter how many times I watch this the sound design is blowing my mind.

Prisoners: Gyllenhaals acting is sorta forgettable. Not bad, not at all, but standing next to Danos and Jackmans performances anything is forgettable. For anyone who hasn’t seen this movie, go in blind. Don’t spoil yourself. It’s far too good.

Batman Returns: This IS the best Batman movie of all time. I don’t care if he murders people. It somehow works anyway.

I also watched Man With A Movie Camera, I think I got the recommendation from somewhere around here a while back. Not a rewatch, but a classic nonetheless. Just some guy with a movie camera filming people around Moscow in the 1920s. Very, very good for unwinding.

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Andrew, Uncle Retrospective, Will_C, lorcan_nagle

Sky have got a new documentary series on at the moment about F1, called Race to Perfection. Considering they’ve had a dedicated F1 channel for 7 or 8 years now, I’m surprised it’s taken this long (and even then it seems to have been commissioned by and for the Sky Documentaries channel). With complete access to F1 media’s archives and connections to so many people in the sport, they could have done anything really – deep technical analyses of old cars and technological innovations, career retrospectives, in-depth reviews of old seasons. Instead the best we get is the odd five minute chat or, during lockdown, watchalongs of highlights of old races.

This is supposed to be the answer to that, I guess. A premium, seven part series, the first episode of which is over 90 minutes long, with deep dives into the archive and interviews with loads of F1 greats. It should be brilliant.

It’s not. This first episode is… well, I’m not even sure what it’s trying to be. It chronologically covers the history of F1, from the beginning to the present, but there’s no rhyme or reason, let alone narrative. With no narration or clear through line it’s just a random collection of anecdotes: Alan Jones winning his world championship in 80, then the Senna-Prost rivalry, a quick detour to Mansell losing one race in 92, then suddenly it’s about Hakkinen winning in 98. Now Schumacher faking a crash in 06. What’s connecting those? Why are there yawning omissions. Nothing about Schumacher’s titles, just him losing to Hakkinen and then the fake crash. Then the multi-21 incident in 12 or 13. There’s almost a theme about people pushing the rules to win, but it’s not, because it just ends talking about how great Hamilton is.

I’ve rarely been left thinking “what was the point of that?” so strongly after a documentary. Next week’s episode seems to actually have a theme – title deciding races – so hopefully that’ll be stronger. But so far it feels like another waste of potential by Sky F1.

I watched Iron Man 3 again today. It’s good. Maybe better than good. I love how Stark is flipping between being an absolute dick and being humanised by having PTSD panic attacks. Some pretty epic one-liners too.

It’s been a lot of rewatches lately. Maybe I should make this into a series of things. I could perhaps rewatch some great classic every day for thirty days or some shit. What should I go for though? Interview with the vampire? The Room? Requiem for a Dream?

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Uncle Retrospective

Anonymous wrote:

I watched Iron Man 3 again today. It’s good. Maybe better than good. I love how Stark is flipping between being an absolute dick and being humanised by having PTSD panic attacks. Some pretty epic one-liners too.

It’s been a lot of rewatches lately. Maybe I should make this into a series of things. I could perhaps rewatch some great classic every day for thirty days or some shit. What should I go for though? Interview with the vampire? The Room? Requiem for a Dream?

What We Do in the Shadows
Caddyshack
Young Frankenstein
Blazing Saddles
Big Trouble in Little China

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Andy

Midsommar – I’ll preface this by saying I did not like Hereditary as a movie, it felt like 2 vastly different movies haphazardly smashed together. One was a compelling and occasionally horrifying look at grief and metal illness. The other was a silly horror movie cliche. I mention this simply because my view of Midsommar is certainly, in some ways, colored by my thoughts about Hereditary. To its credit, Midsommar is a much more consistent and complete film. It’s also often a beautiful looking film. That said, it’s not nearly as interesting as Hereditary. It deals with some of the same themes, but Hereditary, at it’s best moments, was visceral and wrenching with at least a sequence or two that were incredibly unsettling and impossible to forget. Midsommar, at it’s best, is just kind of nice to look at. I didn’t really know anything about the movie going into it, but 10 to 15 minutes into the movie I was able to predict the entire plot and all of the beats. There weren’t any moments that surprised me or even made me jump or go “well that was creepy”. The only question I had was if the main character would be the final sacrifice or go native as those seemed the most obvious options but even then I was pretty sure which it would be and was right. That’s not to say that unpredictability is a bad thing, but I didn’t particularly find the characters or their plight that interesting or harrowing. I didn’t care what happened to any of them. So without a hook that really grabbed me, it was a very long 2 1/2 hours to get to a pretty obvious places. I won’t say it was a bad movie. It was well made it plenty of respects. But ultimately it just kind of bored me. And for a horror movie, that’s probably one of the more damning thing I can say. Even my girlfriend, who is terrified very easily by almost anything, watched the entire movie without hiding or looking away and said afterwards, “that wasn’t scary at all”.

I watched the new episodes of Archer. They’re pretty solid. I really hope they keep this theme and quality up.

Archer is going to be fired, right? They have to fire him… right?

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lorcan_nagle

[Todd]

Christel and I finished watching Taco Chronicles last night.

This was a fantastic series. Each episode focused on a different type of taco and presented its history, how they’re made, the culture around it, and places where it is served. Each half hour episode packed a lot of information and was packaged very well. The episodes are, for the most part, in Spanish. (American Tacos was in English.)

It’s a great series and I highly recommend it. And you will probably crave tacos after watching it!

@JACOWBOY – IIRC, you live in Mexico City. What are some your favorite taco places?

• This reply was modified 4 years, 3 months ago by Todd.

I watched the new Netflix Southern Gothic crime movie The Devil All the Time yesterday. It has a great cast and looks good but the story has too much going on for one movie and as a result the characters feel very surface level. I think they should’ve cut the serial killer married couple and just made it about Tom Holland, Bill Skarsgard, Robert Pattinson, and Sebastian Stan’s characters. Still, it’s well made and worth checking out for the performances and the tense final 30 minutes. It just could’ve been great had it been more focused and delved deeper.

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njerry

[Todd]

Todd wrote:

Christel and I finished watching Taco Chronicles last night.

This was a fantastic series. Each episode focused on a different type of taco and presented its history, how they’re made, the culture around it, and places where it is served. Each half hour episode packed a lot of information and was packaged very well. The episodes are, for the most part, in Spanish. (American Tacos was in English.)

It’s a great series and I highly recommend it. And you will probably crave tacos after watching it!

@JACOWBOY – IIRC, you live in Mexico City. What are some your favorite taco places?

• This reply was modified 4 years, 3 months ago by Todd.

I don’t have a favorite spot I’m afraid… I usually eat tacos off a street stand when I’m in the mood… or go to a taco restaurant (called taquería) if I want something a bit more fancy or specific, but I’m not super picky about the place.

I’ll try to watch that… see if it’s accurate… =P

Jon wrote:

don’t have a favorite spot I’m afraid… I usually eat tacos off a street stand when I’m in the mood… or go to a taco restaurant (called taquería) if I want something a bit more fancy or specific, but I’m not super picky about the place.

I’ll try to watch that… see if it’s accurate… =P

A lot of the places they show are taquerias or hole in the wall places. They do go to some upscale places but the series seems to favor the street level or “common man” experience.

Last night I watched Tokyo Story and The Cars That Ate Paris, both very different but excellent films.

Tokyo Story, directed by Yasujiro Ozu, is often called the greatest movie of all time, and while it’s not my personal favorite, it is very, very good. It tells the story of an elderly couple who visit their children in Tokyo only to sense that their kids see them as a burden. It’s only their daughter-in-law Noriko, the wife of their son who died in WWII, who goes out of her way to show them a good time. The story is simple and never gives in to sentimentality but its emotional effect is devastating. The most heartbreaking aspect is probably how polite all of the characters are to each other, even the children who are too absorbed in their lives to pay much attention to their parents. The film really lays bare how codes of politeness often act as emotional barriers between the people who should be closest of all.

I wanted to watch something lighter afterward so I put on The Cars That Ate Paris by Peter Weir. The people of a small village named Paris in the Australian countryside engineer car accidents so they can loot the wrecks. Any survivors are given to the loony town doctor for experiments–except the protagonist, a shy young man named Arthur who survived a wreck unscathed. Him, they decide to recruit. It’s a weird, darkly funny movie that also works in some subtle critiques on colonial racism. Some strong Wicker Man vibes in parts of the film. What’s not to love?

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DavidM, lorcan_nagle

Last night, I watched The Ace of Hearts (1921).

It was really good. The story was based on a book but it’s one that could be adapted to work today.

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Will_C

Ahead of the mini-sequel charity thing on Friday, I watched both 90s Father of the Bride movies.

The first one is fine, though the whole central concept feels very dated, even for a 30-year-old movie, possibly as it’s based on a 70-year-old movie. The voiceover is incredibly overused, and is jammed in anywhere where the characters on screen aren’t talking, and into a few places where they are. It’s hard to feel much sympathy for Martin’s character, and there’s barely a plot.

Diane Keaton also doesn’t get enough to do aside from being the normal one, aside from the one funny scene where she’s bailing him out of jail.

The sequel is better, even it plays the schmaltzy emotional stuff at the end up far too much. It’s funnier, it uses Martin Short better, and it feels like more of a story. Kieran Culkin doesn’t get much to do, probably as he’s not a cute kid anymore, but Diane Keaton gets a lot more to do, and does well with it. The voiceover is less obtrusive, even if it does start with a very odd framing device where Steve Martin is talking directly to the camera and telling us the story, which is never returned to.

Twenty minutes into The Mummy (the 2017 Tom Cruise one).

Man, this movie is really, really bad. It lacks all the charisma and sense of adventure that the original had.

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lorcan_nagle

So there’s an american re-make of Utopia that just came out of the blue on Amazon… I watched the first 3 episodes… it’s… okay I guess… the first episode is pretty terrible, tbh. I don’t remember much about Utopia ’cause it’s been a long time… but I guess it’s different enough, even though the characters are basically the same… I do remember that the brit one was beautiful, the colors and shot compositions I mean, and this one ain’t so much.. the 3rd episode looked much better though.

I dunno, I guess I’ll finish it and then watch the old one again… but I’m guessing the OG one will be better.

I just rewatched the original Utopia. It’s still good, but a plot about an invented pandemic that’s actually a cover for a conspiracy to get people to take a vaccine that will doom the human race plays very differently now than it did seven years ago.

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Christian, Dave, Todd

Well the remake is basically the same…

I’m sure they didn’t make it this year, but it’s a bit… I dunno… irresponsible maybe? to release a series like that this year… =/

Although hey, the OG one went pretty much unnoticed when it aired, so there’s no reason to believe this one will do better, unless it trends because of the topic… we’ll see…

Point Break remains one of the best action movies ever made. And the rare one, outside of Asia at least, that hones in on the natural beauty of its settings. A perfect film. I have no idea why it was remade, it doesn’t even look dated (not that “looking dated” justifies a remake of a great movie).

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Uncle Retrospective, lorcan_nagle

Will_C wrote:

I have no idea why it was remade,

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Will_C

It barely made any!

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lorcan_nagle

I’m glad that posting about Utopia hasn’t been underway long, because I actually have a lot of thoughts about it and the remake haha.

Now, I didn’t watch the original as it was airing. I think I saw the first two episodes before I dropped off it. Just didn’t seem like my thing at the time and I didn’t go back and catch up on it before the Amazon show premiered. So, that’s what I saw in its entirety first. And….I really liked it. I liked it enough that I rewatched it almost immediately, with my brother this time (just to rationalize it). I think it’s one of those really madcap black comedies that hits that sweet spot for me. A bit sloppy near the end, but it straddles such a fine line between it’s absurdist aspects and its more dire and scathing and depressing beats – skillfully I might add. So, I enjoyed it.

And I’ve just finished finally going back to watch the first season of the original. And that was pretty good too. It’s still not really my thing, mainly because the biggest difference between the two shows is the tone. The original is more intense and serious about the story, which is great…and it helps to improve on some character beats that the remake kinda lets flounder a bit. Namely Grant, Alice, and part of Michael’s. But never really hooked me as much. And to give some credit to the remake – I feel like it plays with and executes a lot of the main gimmick better.

The whole idea of Utopia as a story, and as a comic, just feels more tethered to the characters and the story of the remake than it ever does in the original. How the plot goes around it and how the characters interact with it…as a comic. Which is funny because in the remake it barely resembles a real comic, while the original kinda looks like it could be a heavy-indie style thing. I also thought that the remake had better group dynamics and gave the characters a little extra energy and helped sell them as a group. But, like I said, the remake does get a little long in the tooth with the gags near the end, and it could have used some of the stakes the original landed really harshly.

Overall, I can see why the original has it’s cult fanbase….but I really like where the remake has started and I hope it gets a second season.

8/10

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Todd, Sean Robinson

Well I finished the first season of the new one, I’m gonna go back and rewatch the OG one…

We are watching The Boys, only just started season 2 – really enjoying it (haven’t read anything about it here in fear of spoilers); I’m re/reading the comic (I had a few trades for many years but hadn’t read all of them) and the show is… much better.

Aside from that we rewatched Gone Girl after listening to the Rewatchables episode on it (a really good episode!). It’s one of only three movies I saw twice in theatres (for a convoluted reason), and one that I was impressed with at the time and it still works. Fincher’s last movie (he has a Netflix film due this month), a great Affleck performance, what should have been a breakout role for Rosamund Pike, and even the bit players really show up – it’s dark, beautiful, and funny.

(We’ve since listened to the Rewatchables episode on Se7en, so might be rewatching that next.)

My kids have got into The Fresh Prince Of Bel Air recently (after they were taught the theme song as part of a school music class), so we’ve been watching the whole thing in order on Netflix.

Just eight episodes in and they’re already doing a clip show with lengthy repeat sections from previous episodes – is this a record?

The show is as much fun as I remember anyway, and there’s a fair bit of stuff about race relations and the civil rights movement that has sparked some good discussions after episodes.

There are also some cameos from fairly big names that I didn’t remember. Richard Roundtree and Don Cheadle turn up early on, and Hank Azaria.

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lorcan_nagle

So yeah, I binged the OG Utopia in the past couple of days… and yes, I can confirm, it’s muuuuch better. It’s darker, the plot is tighter (shorter seasons) and it’s more “realistic” so to speak, so it’s more poignant in a way. Also, in technical terms, while the US version did make an effort, the UK one is just better, in terms of photography, shot composition and music… I mean, shit, it’s beautifully shot with great locations, super-saturated color palettes that make it look very different to most other shows.

In terms of actors, I guess the 4 civilian characters (Becky, Grant, Wilson & Ian) are ok in both versions, the rest of the cast is just better for the UK one… particularly Jessica Hyde… they kinda ducked it up when it came to her in the US version, which is a big problem when the show sort of revolves around her. Arby is also MUCH better in the UK one…

In terms of plot, the problem with the US one is that it uses several plot elements that are a bit more exagerated and therefore ridiculous, it’s very much an american production in that way, and like I said, the UK one is waaaay more scary in how more realistic it feels, as it’s more sober and more feasible.

The only flaw with the UK one is how they “ended” it, as it ends on a pretty meh cliffhanger and they got cancelled, it would’ve been better to give it a proper ending and have it exist as a 2 season show. Considering the cliffhanger, maybe it would’ve been best to finish that one, with a relaunch on Amazon, instead of rebooting it.

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Christian

Just watched Joint Security Area, Park Chan-wook’s first big hit (it’s from 2000). At first I thought it was going to be a straight forward procedural about two murders that take place in a North Korean outpost along the border between North and South Korea, but a lengthy flashback in the middle of the movie transforms it into something much more meaningful and moving. Song Kang-ho plays one of the main roles and as usual he absolutely kills it. Between this, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Secret Sunshine, Memories of Murder, The Host, and Parasite, he’s one of the most reliable actors working today. One of the great everyman actors.

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lorcan_nagle

Jon wrote:

I mean, shit, it’s beautifully shot with great locations, super-saturated color palettes that make it look very different to most other shows.

Yup Utopia was always a visually stunning show. Channel 4 does not have budgets anywhere near the likes of HBO so there was a lot of talent on show there rather than big bucks to make it look so good.

We’re four episodes in and I’m loving the new season of Archer. It really feels like the series did in the first few seasons but the post-coma status quo is keeping it fresh. While the “coma” seasons were amusing, I’m glad they’ve returned to their roots.

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Rocket, lorcan_nagle

I watched Utopia in one day (Sunday) and loved it.

I didn’t know anything about the original until my brother texted me he was re-watching it (like 2 weeks ago).
I would very much like to see that, but not currently on Netflix Canada or other legal means.
I can wait for it to come around again, I suppose.

The re-make grabbed me right away (and ‘black comedy’ would be a good description).

A friend interrupted me real early and asked me who was in it.
I said John Cusack gets first billing, but wasn’t in episode one. Neither was Rainn Wilson.
Then I texted later ‘the Riddler is in it’ (Cory Michael Smith) and ‘that woman from The Wire’ (Sonja Sohn).
Honestly thought everyone worked well.

Funny, serious, brutal, and they straddled that line perfectly.
(and honestly, killing so many people in a row? Change it up every time!)

As to what it’s really about? Well, it’s believable.
(I’ve already pegged a few co-workers that should NOT watch this. They might be there without watching…).

Hindsight and all, but (like a lot of other stuff) if that was going on, no one thought of social distancing?
But would’ve been creepy if they did nail that!

Recommended!

Sean Robinson wrote:

Hindsight and all, but (like a lot of other stuff) if that was going on, no one thought of social distancing? But would’ve been creepy if they did nail that!

In the OG one they do mention it… well not social distancing, but staying home… it’s just one scene but hey, it’s there… =P

Jon wrote:

In the OG one they do mention it… well not social distancing, but staying home… it’s just one scene but hey, it’s there… =P

Yeah, there’s a scene where the minister goes on TV and says that everybody should stay in their homes, etc, but a few days later when the characters are in public places that seems to have been mostly ignored.

paul f wrote:

Yeah, there’s a scene where the minister goes on TV and says that everybody should stay in their homes, etc, but a few days later when the characters are in public places that seems to have been mostly ignored.

Which sounds pretty realistic. UK lockdown 2020:

 

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Dave, Todd

The Trial of the Chicago 7

I’ve always liked courtroom dramas, and this is a good one. I’m not at all familiar with the actual events, so I’ve no idea how much was changed, but it does a decent job of dramatizing events.

There’s a few Sorkin-y touches, but not as many as I expected. It definitely felt like a more cinematic film than Molly’s Game, which I enjoyed but didn’t love.

The cast is stacked, to the point where some of the actors, like Joseph Gordon-Levitt, feel a bit wasted. Sacha Baron Cohen is the one who probably gets the most to do, as Abbie Hoffman, and manages to make it work despite being clearly fifteen years too old for the role (he was originally cast back in 2007). Yahya Abdul-Mateen is great as Bobby Seale too, and you feel like there could be a full movie just focused on him.

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lorcan_nagle, Todd

paul f wrote:

The Trial of the Chicago 7

Has it had a cinema release? Didn’t think it came out until 16th.

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lorcan_nagle

Has it had a cinema release? Didn’t think it came out until 16th.

Yeah, cinemas now; Netflix in two weeks.

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lorcan_nagle

So I was honestly excited for Raised by Wolves after seeing the trailer.

I should’ve stopped watching when I first realized I wasn’t enjoying.
I’m willing to give things a fair chance, but it doesn’t get better just because you want it to.

Too dark, visually and story-wise.
It’s anti-religious theme just seems abusive and ignorant.
We get it, religion is the real devil.
Apparently in our future, religious people dress like bad ’50’s TV, get terrible haircuts, and proceed with exterminating the atheists, culminating in destroying the earth.

Tiring to get hit over the head with it.
Not sticking up for the pro-religious side, just make a better and more respectful argument.

Maybe there was an ambitious idea at the start, but could’ve been so much better.
Seemed like it was on a cheap budget as well.
I actually apologized to some of the people I got to watch.
The ones not really into the genre, but got them to enjoy BSG and The Expanse.

Anyways, sorry for being negative, just honestly trying to save you the time.

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paul f

Watched The Dark Knight with the kid the day before yesterday. It holds up as a great Joker movie, as well as a good Harvey Dent movie. The Batman side of it… eh. I don’t know, I don’t often love Nolan’s action (maybe Tenet’ll be different), and overall the screen always lights up when the Joker shows, but everything else is a bit bland.

Also watched Knives Out yesterday, finally. Good whodunnit movie, even though I kind of expected the whodunnit part of it to be more complex. Overall, it was just great fun to watch that cast going at each other.

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Todd, Will_C, Andrew, lorcan_nagle, Dave

Sean Robinson wrote:

So I was honestly excited for Raised by Wolves after seeing the trailer.

I should’ve stopped watching when I first realized I wasn’t enjoying.
I’m willing to give things a fair chance, but it doesn’t get better just because you want it to.

Too dark, visually and story-wise.
It’s anti-religious theme just seems abusive and ignorant.
We get it, religion is the real devil.
Apparently in our future, religious people dress like bad ’50’s TV, get terrible haircuts, and proceed with exterminating the atheists, culminating in destroying the earth.

Tiring to get hit over the head with it.
Not sticking up for the pro-religious side, just make a better and more respectful argument.

Maybe there was an ambitious idea at the start, but could’ve been so much better.
Seemed like it was on a cheap budget as well.
I actually apologized to some of the people I got to watch.
The ones not really into the genre, but got them to enjoy BSG and The Expanse.

Anyways, sorry for being negative, just honestly trying to save you the time.

Yeah I don’t know about the show… it’s just too… aimless for me…

I don’t share your critisisms because it’s not like they portray the atheists better than the religious… they’re all just a bunch of twats albeit for different reasons.

The acting was rather good in general, I specially enjoyed Father, but yeah, the plot is… well I don’t know if it even is anything at all, to be honest. The finale left me SUPER cold… lots of weird setups and no payoffs. It’s a really weird show, and I’m actually surprised it was green-lit, even more surprised it’s getting a second season.

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Sean Robinson

Dave wrote:

My kids have got into The Fresh Prince Of Bel Air recently (after they were taught the theme song as part of a school music class), so we’ve been watching the whole thing in order on Netflix.

Just eight episodes in and they’re already doing a clip show with lengthy repeat sections from previous episodes – is this a record?

The show is as much fun as I remember anyway, and there’s a fair bit of stuff about race relations and the civil rights movement that has sparked some good discussions after episodes.

There are also some cameos from fairly big names that I didn’t remember. Richard Roundtree and Don Cheadle turn up early on, and Hank Azaria.

Clerks: The Animated Series did a flashback episode as their second episode. Of course, ABC screwed up the joke by airing the fourth episode as the first episode, so the second episode was flashing back to an episode that never aired as they cancelled the entire thing afterwards.

I’ve been catching up on the latest series of Frankie Boyle’s New World Order and I haven’t laughed at something as much in ages. It’s nice to have a show that feels current and has some room for proper discussion as well as jokes and humour, and the (appropriately socially distanced) guests have all been pretty good this series.

Dave wrote:

I’ve been catching up on the latest series of Frankie Boyle’s New World Order and I haven’t laughed at something as much in ages. It’s nice to have a show that feels current and has some room for proper discussion as well as jokes and humour, and the (appropriately socially distanced) guests have all been pretty good this series.

It’s one of the rare shows that I think works better socially distanced and without an audience than with. The big pentagonal table gives it a bit of gravitas that it didn’t have before.

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Dave

Re-watched Children of Men over the weekend. I never really understood what all the fuss was about when it first came out, and still don’t. The characters are wafer-thin, so I never once cared what happened to any of them, and then we don’t even get a satisfactory answer anyway because of the open ending. There’s not even much of a back-story beyond “women stopped giving birth one day.” Some insight into the geo-politics of the world might have helped give things some depth, but Cuaron isn’t interested in that, he just wants to dazzle with a series of “done-in-one” scenes that are more distracting than they are useful to telling the story.

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lorcan_nagle

Steve Sensible wrote:

Re-watched Children of Men over the weekend. I never really understood what all the fuss was about when it first came out, and still don’t. The characters are wafer-thin, so I never once cared what happened to any of them, and then we don’t even get a satisfactory answer anyway because of the open ending. There’s not even much of a back-story beyond “women stopped giving birth one day.” Some insight into the geo-politics of the world might have helped give things some depth, but Cuaron isn’t interested in that, he just wants to dazzle with a series of “done-in-one” scenes that are more distracting than they are useful to telling the story.

Well, it’s acclaimed because of its masterful world building through, yes those great long takes, but also and more importantly through the camera work, which is fairly unique (not counting the director’s other mexican movie which employs the same dynamic). Cuarón & Lubenz are a formidable team, but I mean the star here is more Lubenz as usual, since he’s one of the best Directors of Photography.

It’s actually puzzling that it didn’t win a ton of oscars, but I reckon that’s because it’s a “sci-fi” movie, and those tend to get the shaft.

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Uncle Retrospective

Criterion Channel has a collection of 70s horror films up for October and I’ve watched three so far, all very entertaining.

It’s Alive – A woman gives birth to a monster baby that immediately kills everyone in the delivery room except her and escapes into the night to wreak havoc. Low budget, somewhat cheesy, but the actor who plays the baby’s father gives an incredible performance that elevates the whole thing. Throughout the movie he wants the monster baby dead as much as everyone else and refuses to think of it as his own flesh and blood but when he finally confronts it and sees it for the scared, wounded creature it is… well, he plays it in such a way that I suddenly felt like I was watching a very different, much more serious and consequential film.

Let’s Scare Jessica to Death – The strongest of the three. The title’s an odd choice because there’s no plot to scare Jessica, the protagonist, to death. Not sure why the director or producers chose that, and maybe the confusion it undoubtedly caused led to the movie’s lukewarm reception back in the 70s.

It plays like a New England take on The Wicker Man due to its gentle folk music score, oddball locals, and idyllic rural setting. Jessica, fresh off a six month stay in a mental hospital, and her husband Duncan ditch NYC for an apple farm in Connecticut, where they find an alluring female drifter living in the old farm house. Of course, they invite her to stay with them, not much minding that she looks just like the farmer’s daughter who died 100 years earlier!

This is an eerie, beautiful movie with inventive scares. Not a lot of horror movies can do what this one does effortlessly: balance beauty and terror. Often it’s one or the other. There are more than a few images in this movie that have been burned into my brain.

Sisters – I’m not a big Brian De Palma fan, his movies tend to leave me cold, but Sisters, his first foray into horror/psychological thriller territory (not to mention Hitchock homage), really worked for me. A journalist witnesses a man being murdered in her neighbor’s apartment but by the time the police get there, the blood has been cleaned up, the body hidden inside a convertible sofa. So it’s up to the journalist (Jennifer Salt) and a PI (Charles Durning) to prove the owner of the apartment, a French Canadian model played by a never-sexier Margot Kidder, covered up the murder to protect the real culprit–who, according to the journalist’s theory, is Danielle’s psychotic twin sister.

Yeah, the premise is convoluted but it doesn’t matter when it’s executed with such style, including clever usage of split screen and a downright ingenious dream sequence that begins like a black-and-white documentary before morphing into bizarro horror reminiscent of Carnival of Souls.

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Todd, lorcan_nagle

Will_C wrote:

It’s Alive – A woman gives birth to a monster baby that immediately kills everyone in the delivery room except her and escapes into the night to wreak havoc. Low budget, somewhat cheesy, but the actor who plays the baby’s father gives an incredible performance that elevates the whole thing. Throughout the movie he wants the monster baby dead as much as everyone else and refuses to think of it as his own flesh and blood but when he finally confronts it and sees it for the scared, wounded creature it is… well, he plays it in such a way that I suddenly felt like I was watching a very different, much more serious and consequential film.

Oh man, It’s Alive was one of my favorite horror movies growing up. Especially the second one. Watching that on late night spanish television is one of my earliest movie-watching memories. The third…eh, but honestly it’s worth checking them all out if you enjoyed the first.

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Will_C

Watched two horror movies recently, so here’s what I thought of each.

 

The Car – I’ve heard of this one for a long time, and it was one of the inspirations for the Futurama werewolf parody episode way back when, but only  decided to check it out when it got added to Netflix. And it was wonderful. I’ve read that it was inspired by road rage exploitation movies like Death Race 2000, and honestly it stands alongside that one quite handily. Over the top, blustery, showboaty, and completely unashamed. It’s almost got a proto-Lake Placid style charm – feeling almost like a very campy creature feature than a supernatural film about a demonic car. The performances are a delight, the script is wacked out, and the tone is a joy if you want pure B-Movie cheesy goodness. Overall 8/10.

Tales From The Hood 3 – After the really awful second movie in this franchise from two years, I wasn’t excited at all when a third film was announced. And I was right not to be. It’s really damn bad. It’s slightly better than the second one, but that’s not saying much. That one was borderline unwatchable in its unbearable mix of incessant lecturing and low-ambition scares. This one drops the moral backbone…but doesn’t add anything to replace it. It’s just 4-5 really generic and cliche stories that feel like very low-rent episodes from Shudder’s Creepshow series – and that’s not a compliment, that series is pretty bad. And it’s a shame nonetheless, because the morality of the second movie wasn’t why it was bad. The first movie was all about mixing classic horror anthology gimmicks/premises with hard-hitting lessons about life on the streets. ie. “Tales from THE HOOD“. The second just had really bad writing, and with the third dropping it entirely it feels really empty. There’s no heart to this one, and one wonders why it was even made. Overall 4/10. It’s boring as hell, but maybe you can leave it on as background noise.

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Todd

Elvis Dutan wrote:

The Car – I’ve heard of this one for a long time, and it was one of the inspirations for the Futurama werewolf parody episode way back when, but only  decided to check it out when it got added to Netflix. And it was wonderful. I’ve read that it was inspired by road rage exploitation movies like Death Race 2000, and honestly it stands alongside that one quite handily. Over the top, blustery, showboaty, and completely unashamed. It’s almost got a proto-Lake Placid style charm – feeling almost like a very campy creature feature than a supernatural film about a demonic car. The performances are a delight, the script is wacked out, and the tone is a joy if you want pure B-Movie cheesy goodness. Overall 8/10.

I remember watching that as a child back in the late 1970s in the early days of cable TV. I’m going to have to watch it again.

[JRCarter]

Watching the 1931 Spanish language version of Dracula, just to see how it compares to the Tod Browning version.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 3 months ago by JRCarter.

The good news: Warrior season 2 has started… the bad news, it’s the last season, and what’s more, it seems it’s the last Cinemax series of that kind… man that sucks, they had some really great shows… I hope Amazon or Netflix picks it up at least.

So I decided to go all in and check out Hubie Halloween, and well…it’s definitely the best Adam Sandler-Netflix movie. That doesn’t mean it’s altogether good, far from it, but it definitely has more of an actual movie quality to it than previous efforts like The Ridiculous 6, Murder Mystery, or The Week of.

To try and put it short, it feels like a holiday special made for a character that doesn’t exist. It has this oddly chipper and soft-handed sitcom tone, and a feel-good atmosphere that wouldn’t be too out of place in an early 00’s Nickelodeon family film. Which makes it kind of endearing in parts. It’s inept, for sure, the characters are flimsy, the gags are pretty standard and tired, and the story overstays its welcome a bit by the end – but it never really loses that earlier sensibility and that’s really what keeps most of it afloat.

It’s also what clashes really heavily with the more overt Happy Madison-style jokes and humor. This and The Wrong Missy are definitely Sandler and co. trying to go back to basics with their comedy stylings, and while it’s way more toned down in Hubie Halloween – it still feels really jarring and out of place in moments – because outside of those beat it’s relatively family friendly.

This won’t make any new fans for Sandler, and I’m not really sure it’ll please his old ones either, but it is a happy-go-lucky and kinda genuinely good-natured holiday film. And on that basis, I had a good enough time. Might rewatch it later on in the month when the days get shorter and the nights colder.

Overall 5/10

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Todd

Two more 70s horror movies from Criterion Channel:

Death Line – British cannibal film that predates Texas Chain Saw Massacre by a few years. Donald Pleasance stars as a real prick of a cop investigating a series of disappearances at a London tube station. Turns out that in the 1890s there was a cave in the tunnels near the station, trapping a group of male and female tunnel workers. The sole survivor of the inbred cannibal clan that followed is now searching the tunnels for food and a mate. It works both as a procedural and a horror film–the scenes set in the cannibal’s home/meat locker are genuinely harrowing. The special effects are grisly and realistic, even by today’s standards.

Season of the Witch – I’ve only seen a couple other George Romero films so far (Night of the Living Dead, The Crazies) but I think this one’s my favorite. A middle-aged housewife in the suburbs, feeling stifled in her marriage and fearing growing old, develops an interest in witchcraft. She frequently suffers terrifying nightmares of a home invasion by a knife-wielding man in a demonic mask. The intruder’s shadow falls across window curtains every way she turns, before he smashes through her door and calmly follows her wherever she runs. It doesn’t help that the decor of her house brings to mind the dance academy run by witches in Argento’s Suspiria. A great movie with a lot on its mind, as ahead of its time as Night of the Living Dead was.

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Todd

I’ve been watching a lot of Fresh Off The Boat the past few days, as Comedy Central UK have taken the pandemic as an excuse to catch up or burn off (depending on how cynical you are) the show. They’ve been years behind the US but have now shown three series without break.

Anyway, it’s built up on my DVR so I’ve been going through it this week. It’s a fun show and there’s been a good addition in season 4 with Matt Oberg as Louis’s new colleague.

But on the other hand, the show has suffered one of the worst examples of a character becoming vastly unlikeable since JD in the later seasons of Scrubs. Evan, the youngest of the family’s kids has always been the precocious child genius character, which is a tricky thing to get right. Up til now, they’ve done well with it, but in season 4 he veers hard into being a blight on the series. Which is possibly a mean thing to say given the actor/character is only 10 or so (and to be clear, I don’t think it’s the actor’s fault particularly) but he’s become a real drag on the series; crossing the line into prissy, domineering, condescending and just plain unlikeable, to the point that it kinda breaks the show a little that the other characters put up with it as much as they do. He’s sort of become late era Monica off Friends crossed with Urkel.

We started watching the new series of Ghosts on iplayer but then my daughter joined in so we went back to the start and watched both series 1 and 2 through in the space of about a week.

It’s a really fun sitcom with a great, simple premise and a nice ensemble of actors who bring the silliness of Horrible Histories to a slightly more grown-up sitcom (although it’s suitable for all ages, the odd innuendo aside).

Most of all, there’s real heart and affection in the way it treats its characters – and I’ve been surprised to find a few moments quite moving amid the silliness.

Hope more is on the way at some point.

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Steve Sensible

Watched Mortal Engines with the kid. Too much plot, too little development of the characters and the situations they’re in. Great design work though, and overall fun to watch.

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paul f

Catching up with Sex Education season 2, which is a lot of fun although always completely unrealistic. A weird hybrid school of no real location where not a single teen is shy of speaking about every aspect of their sex life.

Was amused that large chunks are filmed at the shopping centre about 500 metres from where I grew up. Their cinematography somehow making it look a lot more upmarket than it is. Everything looks lovely in that show and it always seems to be incredibly sunny even though it’s mostly filmed in South Wales.

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Andrew, Uncle Retrospective, lorcan_nagle

Finally finished The Haunting of Bly Manor, the sorta-second season to Mike Flanagan’s Haunting anthology on Netflix….and boy, was it a struggle.

I’m not going to try and judge it for what it’s not trying to be. Like, I could go and say that it isn’t this chilling and scary and suspenseful watch. It’s not aiming to do any of those things, at least, not in a way that makes them the focus. That would be unfair. It’s very clear early on that it’s more trying to be a very 80’s style version a gothic supernatural romance. Like Crimson Peak but with a lot more Depeche Mode. And some of the time it actually really feels like that and nails that tone. Most of the time it doesn’t.

And a lot of that is because of execution. It’s just really messy and tonally voided. While the first season/series was about to really develop a rich and substantial atmosphere and tone, the way Bly Manor presents itself is just so conventional and standard that it really feels like a struggle for it to make any impression at all. It’s flat, it’s dull, and it’s bland. The characters, the arcs, and the storyline and how it unfolds just feel like checklist items and not the result of wanting this to be as layered or as complex as the first, or as this desperately seems to want to be.

It’s also really corny, again in some places this works, in a lot of other places it doesn’t. Especially near the end, and with the framing device/narration. I figure my friends across the pond will have a great time scratching their ears out at some of these accents.

Overall, it’s not terrible – just supremely forgettable. Might be worth a comfort watch on a rainy/slow day, but nothing more than that. 6/10.

I just finished watching Armando Iannucci’s The Personal History Of David Copperfield and thought it was an absolute delight – a beautiful film filled with joyful moments and performed by an outstanding ensemble cast.

It’s a really visually lush film that shows how much he’s growing as a director (after Death Of Stalin hinted at the kind of beautiful period imagery that we get a lot more of here).

If you need a couple of hours of light in your life at the moment then you could do a lot worse than this.

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Steve Sensible

Ah, cheers, I’ll try and catch that, I think it’s still in theatres here right now.

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Dave

Christian wrote:

Ah, cheers, I’ll try and catch that, I think it’s still in theatres here right now.

It’s definitely worth seeing. It’s funny, smart escapism, and it would look absolutely amazing on a big screen.

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Dave

Yeah, he’s become a great visual stylist. I wish I’d seen this in a cinema.

Is anyone else watching Season 4 of FARGO? I watched Eps 3 and 4 yesterday, and am just amazed at the depth of characterization, the details of the setting and time periods, and the clarity of the plot twists. I wish that the other series I’m currently watching, LOVECRAFT COUNTRY, had put some more effort into at least one of those elements (character, accurate setting, clear storytelling).

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Will_C, Todd

njerry wrote:

Is anyone else watching Season 4 of FARGO?

I’ve only watched the first episode so far. I thought this season got off to the slowest start yet, which is why I haven’t got round to watching any more. Will catch up at some point soon though…

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Will_C

njerry wrote:

Is anyone else watching Season 4 of FARGO? I watched Eps 3 and 4 yesterday, and am just amazed at the depth of characterization, the details of the setting and time periods, and the clarity of the plot twists. I wish that the other series I’m currently watching, LOVECRAFT COUNTRY, had put some more effort into at least one of those elements (character, accurate setting, clear storytelling).

I haven’t watched the latest episode but I have been enjoying it. I do agree with Steve that it did have a slow start. The first two episodes were pretty much setup and things started moving with Ep 3. A create set of characters.

I have been impressed with Chris Rock’s performance. I’m enjoying his mature, serious acting.

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Will_C

njerry wrote:

Is anyone else watching Season 4 of FARGO?

Yeah I am….mostly because there was a bunch of speculation a year ago that it was apparently going to be a big homage to the New Gods. And at the time I was really skeptical about that, but then some comics folks started saying the same thing after the first couple of episodes and I have to say, after checking it out and catching up, it tracks. It really tracks. It’s not a one-to-one adaptation, but it really is using a lot of the same archetypes and figures in this story and it scratches such a sweet spot for me. It even has a Granny Goodness for godsakes.

So far, it’s pretty wonderful I have to say.

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I somehow managed to never watch The World’s Ende until yesterday. It was awesome. I’d probably rate it higher than Hot Fuzz and just below Shaun.

Also, how are you people watching Fargo already? Season 4 isn’t on Netflix Germany yet!

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garjones

The Martian is the most science fiction movie ever made.

Prove me wrong.

 

Elvis Dutan wrote:

there was a bunch of speculation a year ago that it was apparently going to be a big homage to the New Gods

I hadn’t heard that, but of course the trades that the rival gangs would make in order to maintain the peace between them reminded me of my favorite issue of Kirby’s NEW GODS.

Christian wrote:

Also, how are you people watching Fargo already? Season 4 isn’t on Netflix Germany yet!

It is being released in weekly installments on the FX cable channel here in the US; four episodes so far, with the final one scheduled for November 29. I imagine you’ll be able to see it on Netflix after that.

Christian wrote:

I somehow managed to never watch The World’s Ende until yesterday. It was awesome. I’d probably rate it higher than Hot Fuzz and just below Shaun.

I adore The World’s End and it’s my favourite but it is also basically made for me. Pegg and Frost are a tiny bit older than me, the 90s soundtrack is exactly what I listened to at that age, the questions about ageing/maturing (as they are not the same thing) exactly what me and my mates face today.

Objectively Shaun is the best film but sometimes things just hit a very personal chord.

I watched Hot Fuzz in the cinema on LSD and am yet to recover properly.

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