You Have Been Watching

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Share your latest viewing here.

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Watched that Mr. and Mrs. Smith series, and overall I thought it was pretty good. Especially when their relationship becomes more tricky and it becomes a bit of an exploration of how relationships fail.

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njerry

I really enjoyed Afterlife so had high hopes for Ghostbusters Frozen Empire, unfortunately it’s an absolute mess of a film.

It has way too many characters. You’ve got the og Ghostbusters, the Afterlife cast, most of who have nothing to do but show up anyway. And then you’ve got James Ancaster who is actually quite good but it’s a role that could have been given to one of the already established characters. Then you’ve got Kumail Nanjiani whose entire plot line is just dumb and should have been written out after the first draft.

McKenna Grace was the real star of Afterlife but here she’s just a sulky teen, who is meant to be a genius but for the sake of moving the plot forward they have her do one of the dumbest things ever and it’s just silly.

And the whole Frozen Empire thing feels like an afterthought for the last 15-20 minutes of the film. The villain was a cool design but a total waste of time.

I wouldn’t be so annoyed if I didn’t like Afterlife so much..This Feels like a massive fumble that probably kills any hope of a third.

Last Sunday, I finally got to see Godzilla Minus One.(I watched the subtitle version.)

It was excellent!!!

That was one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. It had a great story and the performances were top notch. It rightly deserved the Oscar it received for VFX. I would normally be screaming for more kaiju action but I genuinely cared about the characters so I honestly didn’t feel cheated. And when Godzilla is on screen, HE’S FUCKING THERE.

This movie is vastly superior to Gareth Edwards’s 2014 movie. That one was absolute garbage. (While I did watch the terrible Godzilla x Kong, I’m pretty much skipping the Monsterverse movies.) I would put Minus One on the same revered level of the 1954 original.

This was just a great movie.

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Dave, Uncle Retrospective, lorcan_nagle

Inside No. 9 finished this week. It’s been a great series and I’m amazed they’ve kept it going (with such a high level of quality) for so long now. The final episode put a nice bow on everything while also being a fun self-referential story in its own right. I’ll miss this show.

Saw The Colour Out of Space. It was fucking great.

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Uncle Retrospective

Took the family to see Inside Out 2 today. We all really loved it, particularly the kids for whom it felt very relevant for stuff they are both going through at the moment – just perfect for their ages (11 and 13) really.

There are quite a few big laughs, the animation is as great as you’d expect and there are some nice little inventive and unexpected touches too. One of the best kids films I’ve seen in a while.

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Ben

Glad to hear that, my partner is a huge fan of the first one and it’d be a real disappointment if the second one wasn’t good.
We’re too preggers to go to the movies right now, but will definitely catch it when it comes out on D+.

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Uncle Retrospective, Ben, Dave

Randomly, I put an old episode of Top Gear (which I’ve not watched since halfway into the Matt LeBlanc era, I think) on for a bit of background noise this morning. It was from 2004, so the second or third series of the Clarkson/Hammond/Dawes-then-May revival. Strange to think that’s 20 years old now. They were looking at a Peugeot and talking about how the front looked odd because of new crash safety regulations and I was looking at it thinking “what are you on about, it just looks like a normal car”.

It’s easy to forget just how good a show Top Gear was in that specific period. After the previous team went to Channel 5 and Clarkson came back to reboot it but before Hammond’s crash which gained the show lots of attention and a bigger budget and a fancy studio revamp. When it was just three car journos with a moderate budget, some really good editing and fun ideas. I started watching it at the tail end of that first season with Dawes; just happened to catch the end of an episode and despite not driving then (or even now) really enjoyed what they were doing, which at that point was mainly just reviews of road cars and the odd sports car. It’s a sign of really good journalism and TV production when you can make a niche subject compelling to someone who has no prior interest in it and they did that. It’s a real shame they let their egos take over and became completely self-indulgent and ridiculous in later years.

Yesterday, I watched Monkey Man.

I really enjoyed it. Dev Patel wrote, directed, and starred in it. I think he did a very good in all his roles. He brought a very arty style to the action genre. I look forward to seeing his next directing project.

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Uncle Retrospective, lorcan_nagle

Started watching The Three Body Problem. I’m two episodes in now, and it’s very well made and pretty interesting, but maybe less so than I expected, from the huge success of the novels and the hype around the series. Up to now, it’s just “aliens are messing with us!” in fairly random ways. There are probably some relevations, twists and turns coming though, I expect.

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lorcan_nagle

Supacell

This starts off slow but then goes into some really interesting territory for the superpowers genre. It takes some very smart pot shots at it too.

Namely, gaining a superpower will not improve your life, solve all your problems, make you rich or immune to injury and great at fighting.

Unfortunately, it goes off the rails badly in its final episode, with a number of creative decisions that I disagree with. It also leaves a lot unresolved with no guarantee of a second series.

If there was a second series of it, would I go for it? I don’t know, as that last episode threw away a lot of what made it good.

Having rewatched the original three Beverly Hills Cop movies recently in preparation (that third one really is as bad as you remember), I watched the new one, Axel F.

It’s actually a little better than I expected – obviously not up there with the first one, but probably on a par with the second.

It takes a little while to get going but is one of those rare films that actually gets better as it goes along, and by the final act it really recaptures the 80s action-movie vibe that it’s trying to recreate.

Eddie Murphy is obviously older now but there are moments when he really feels like his old self, and it’s good to see a lot of the supporting cast back too. Plus I like that so much of the action seems to have been done practically, seeing real cars smashing into each other is always going to beat cartoony CGI.

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Martin Smith, Todd

Christian wrote:

Started watching The Three Body Problem. I’m two episodes in now, and it’s very well made and pretty interesting, but maybe less so than I expected, from the huge success of the novels and the hype around the series. Up to now, it’s just “aliens are messing with us!” in fairly random ways. There are probably some relevations, twists and turns coming though, I expect.

Finished it, and it caught me enough that I’m really looking forward to the next season. Where the cast is concerned, I thought Liam Cunningham (the Onion Knight) was absolutely fantastic as a Warren-Ellis-esque brilliant manipulative bastard boss and Benedict Wong great as his right hand. The other Oxford five were a bit bland; I liked Will best of them.

As for the way the story developed (don’t read on if you haven’t seen it):
– The idea of a video game as recruitment tool was pretty nice.
– Cutting the Judgement Day with nanofibers seemed a bit over the top to me, but it did look fantastic, and I appreciated the emphasis on the innocent victims (which also made Auggie’s constant complaining later somewhat relatable).
– What we know of the aliens is definitely keeping me interested; they do seem like a genuinely alien race for once, which is nice.
– The sophons are a great concept, and that moment when they cover the sky was spectacular. That’s when the series really took off, for me.
– And it really does take off from that moment. We’re suddenly knee-deep in a very public war against an alien invasion, and it’s all become proper sci-fi instantly, what with a space probe being propelled by nukes and a deep-frozen brain sent out to mee the Enemy. I was genuinely surprised that it didn’t work out, too – this was a big part of this season’s storyline, and they developed Will’s character a lot in the process. And all of that just to throw him away? I doubt that it’ll be the last we’ve seen of him.
– I also liked the idea of the Wallfacer a lot. It actually makes a lot of sense in the scenario, almost too much so – but this is something I also like about the series: We don’t see any political arguing between the different countries and people being dumb/incompetent all over the place. Everything we see being done is actually very smart and competent. We could use more of that in TV shows.

So yeah, it was well worth watching and I’ll be aboard for the next season!

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Uncle Retrospective, lorcan_nagle, Dave

Finished off The Bear season 3 tonight. I really liked the first season and thought the second was OK, but in the third the show totally falls off a cliff. It’s not coherent and feels massively padded (with a lot of empty soap opera shit), while also ramping up the pretentiousness to the point where it becomes actively annoying. It totally disappears up its own arse by the end and the final episode is one of the worst season finales I can remember watching. What a shame.

Ben wrote:

Supacell

This starts off slow but then goes into some really interesting territory for the superpowers genre. It takes some very smart pot shots at it too.

Namely, gaining a superpower will not improve your life, solve all your problems, make you rich or immune to injury and great at fighting.

Unfortunately, it goes off the rails badly in its final episode, with a number of creative decisions that I disagree with. It also leaves a lot unresolved with no guarantee of a second series.

If there was a second series of it, would I go for it? I don’t know, as that last episode threw away a lot of what made it good.

I just watched the first ep of this, and liked it a lot. It’s a very slow start, but it does some excellent character-building and really ramps things up at the end. Too bad it doesn’t end well, but I’m in for this season anyway.

Catching up on season 2 of We Are Lady Parts, which C4 half-burned off a couple of months ago in double airings (bit concerning for its potential future). Anyway, episode 2 has a great song about Malala Yousafzai. Full disclosure, I was playing Picross on my Game Boy while watching it, so I didn’t fully clock what I assumed was a lookalike in the little music video bit for the song. Turns out, it was the actual real Malala. Which is cool.

Yeah I felt the same about The Bear unfortunately. The episode in the hospital with Jamie Lee Curtis, might be the most cringy self indulgent bullshit I’ve ever seen. It felt like an SNL parody of the show.

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Dave

I watched Dune: Part Two tonight.

Denis Villeneuve is a brilliant and gifted visual director. He knows when to back the camera up and show the scale of things.

But fuck, this is one boring movie. None of the actors seem to have any chemistry whatsoever with each other, especially Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya. I know the the source material is not light by any means, but all the gravitas seems to come from the visuals, not the actors’ performances. There is a lot of talent in the cast but it does not show up in this movie. Chalamet being cast as Paul was the biggest mistake. He lacks the believable charisma to be the great leader everyone would follow.

At this point in my life, I have seen three adaptations of Dune but never read the actual novel. And to be really honest, I really have no interest in doing so.

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lorcan_nagle

I agree on Chalamet being the weak link but otherwise I thought it was a great movie and much better than part 1, in that it was able to payoff all of the first part’s setups and provide all of the real meat of the story.

Visually I thought it was stunning, as always with Villeneuve, and I thought the rest of the movie was really well-cast with lots of standout performances (especially Bardem).

I hope they make a third movie sooner rather than later.

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Sean Robinson, lorcan_nagle

I watched Douglas Is Cancelled, the new Steven Moffat miniseries, and really enjoyed it. It’s only four episodes, the first two of which set you up to expect a fairly light and frothy satire on cancel culture etc., but then it becomes something a bit deeper and more complex in the back half.

It’s entertainingly written (and feels quite theatrical in that it’s almost exclusively built around People Talking In Rooms) and there are good performances all round too. Karen Gillan and Alex Kingston are two of the leads, alongside Hugh Bonneville, so it’s a bit of a Doctor Who reunion too.

rest of the movie was really well-cast with lots of standout performances (especially Bardem).

Yeah, Bardem was great. And I love Josh Brolin in pretty much anything.
This movie makes me want to re-watch No Country For Old Men again.

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Dave

Christian wrote:

Ben wrote:

Supacell

This starts off slow but then goes into some really interesting territory for the superpowers genre. It takes some very smart pot shots at it too.

Namely, gaining a superpower will not improve your life, solve all your problems, make you rich or immune to injury and great at fighting.

Unfortunately, it goes off the rails badly in its final episode, with a number of creative decisions that I disagree with. It also leaves a lot unresolved with no guarantee of a second series.

If there was a second series of it, would I go for it? I don’t know, as that last episode threw away a lot of what made it good.

I just watched the first ep of this, and liked it a lot. It’s a very slow start, but it does some excellent character-building and really ramps things up at the end. Too bad it doesn’t end well, but I’m in for this season anyway.

Just to add, I was actually fine with the ending.

All in all, it was a fun show taking some of the concepts from Heroes and setting that in South London with an all-black cast. Worth watching if you like that kind of thing.

The movie Falling Down is a story about a dehydrated man.

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njerry

I saw Kinds Of Kindness tonight. It was interesting and imaginative, well-acted and often quite funny, but I’m not sure it was particularly coherent as a film overall. It made for a decent little trio of short stories though.

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lorcan_nagle, Todd

I saw Poor Things the other day and it is very weird that this movie got a lot of Oscars. Not because it’s not a good movie, but… I mean, like 30% of it is ugly sex. What, do the Oscars think they’re the Palme d’Or now?

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Sean Robinson, Dave, Todd, lorcan_nagle

The Lincoln Lawyer 

This is an entertaining series from Netflix, but damn, are most of his clients idiots.

As it’s based on stories by Michael Connelly, I can imagine, Bosch, Jerry, Crate and Barrell running around in the background, in Hollywood Homicide.

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njerry

I’ve started on The Gentlemen. It’s pretty much as expected, good Guy Ritchie fun.

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njerry

Ice Road

Save for an inability to kill off its main villain at least half an hour earlier than it did, along with killing one too many of its heroes, this was a good film. Characters were good, pacing was good, evil  mining company execs are perfect villains.

[Sean Robinson]

So after repeated attempts at finding Transformers Prime on multiple streaming services, I checked Amazon again and found a Season One DVD set at a great price.

Knowing nothing but great word of mouth I was pleased that Peter Cullen does the voice of Optimus (wasn’t 100% sure), and hey, Jeffrey Combs! Ernie Hudson! More too, just not familiar with every name.

Right away Im put in a good mood from the first episode and know I’m going to enjoy this.

Watching a ton of stuff, and realize as I type that I was only half way on Babylon 5 before getting distracted (very much enjoying that and will get back to soon).
Brooklyn Nine-Nine I’ve passed the halfway point (loving that too), plus more waiting.

• This reply was modified 4 months, 3 weeks ago by Sean Robinson.

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lorcan_nagle, Uncle Retrospective

Prime is my second-favourite Transformers show after Beast Wars.  Has some fantastic storylines and great action.

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Sean Robinson

The Gentlemen was very enjoyable throughout. Good show. And nice to see Kaya Scodelario.

And I am now watching that new Justified season. It’s great to see Raylan again. I don’t know if I needed to see him do the dad-to-a-teenager thing, but apart from that the show is a good watch. The guy who played the Corinthian in Sandman and the bad guy in Logan is the villain here, and he’s doing his charming wild Southern psycho thing pretty neatly.

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Todd

We tried Those About to Die, the big Roman series with Anthony Hopkins being pushed on Amazon at the moment, but didn’t even make it through the first episode. It’s dreadful, a transparent attempt to do a Game of Thrones esque show but with terrible clunky writing and an overly rapid editing style that means you just can’t get your bearings with it. Flashy crap, I’m not sure what Hopkins is doing in it.

Hopkins is deep into his show up in anything phase.

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Dave, Todd

Hopkins is 86 years old! It’s amazing he’s still so active.

Watching A Serious Man. Seriously, still such an amazing movie.

 

When the truth is found to be lies…and all the hope within you dies…don’t you want somebody to love.

A Serious Man may be my favourite Coen movie.

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Arjan Dirkse

Saw The Creator yesterday and liked it quite a bit. It was a bit like watching an anime – some great big ideas, visually spectacular, fast pace… but not exactly subtle and it doesn’t take the time to explore the characters and the world in depth; you have to suspend your disbelief and just go along a lot of the time. And there are problems with the plot and whatever if you’d take the time to think about it, but who the hell wants to do that? It’s a beautiful movie, and it’s got a lot of heart, and that really makes it work.

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njerry, Dave

[Andrew]

I attended a preview screening of near final Transformers One last night – a friend of mine won a contest and we attended along with a hundred or so TF super-fans. I’ll honour the NDA (!) and not spoil anything, but we’re allowed to share reactions.

It’s decent fun, and very much a kids’ film – I enjoyed it more than the first Michael Bay film (the only one of that series I’ve seen) but not as much as the 1986 film (obv). There’s a lot of fanservice (and the fans in the theatre hooted and hollered on cue!) and while it’s a new continuity it is an origin story with some crucial touchpoints for the old continuity we know.

The first act is a bit slow (my pal fell asleep for a few minutes!), but the rest is much more propulsive and engaging.

• This reply was modified 4 months, 2 weeks ago by Andrew.

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lorcan_nagle, Todd, Martin Smith

I saw that Amazon Prime had Remington Steele as part of their free for members. I haven’t watched the show since it first aired in the 1980s. I’m about halfway through the first season and I have to say it holds up surprisingly well. I forgot how much fun the show was.

It’s amazing to see 29 year old Pierce Brosnon in the series that would make him a global star. He was perfect casting as the title character. Stephanie Zimbalist was also excellent and they had real chemistry. (There was behind the scenes acrimony as the show went on but she eventually made peace.)

It’s really amazing to see how groundbreaking the show was at the time. Back then, comedies were half hour and dramas were one hour. This was an hour long comedy/drama. It is so common and standard nowadays but back then, it was pretty radical. It was executed so well. It also started the will they/won’t they involving the leads. There was also the ongoing mystery of who the man who became RS really was. Secrets and revelations slowly doled is another common trope.

The show is just a lot of fun and very entertaining. I’m enjoying it a lot.

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Al-x, Sean Robinson

I loved the show back then. It was such a neat concept, too.

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Todd

[Andrew]

Andrew wrote:

I attended a preview screening of near final Transformers One last night – a friend of mine won a contest and we attended along with a hundred or so TF super-fans. I’ll honour the NDA (!) and not spoil anything, but we’re allowed to share reactions.

It’s decent fun, and very much a kids’ film – I enjoyed it more than the first Michael Bay film (the only one of that series I’ve seen) but not as much as the 1986 film (obv). There’s a lot of fanservice (and the fans in the theatre hooted and hollered on cue!) and while it’s a new continuity it is an origin story with some crucial touchpoints for the old continuity we know.

The first act is a bit slow (my pal fell asleep for a few minutes!), but the rest is much more propulsive and engaging.

• This reply was modified 4 months, 2 weeks ago by Andrew.

A friend of mine saw it yesterday at the London preview and said it was great.  I might actually pay to see it

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Andrew

My parents signed up to a cheap month with Discovery+, so I’m sharing their password to watch the Olympics. Fuck me this app is bad. I’m running it on my PS4, which should be more than capable of you know, loading menus and navigating through them, and it’s laggy, buggy, poorly laid out. I don’t know how they justify charging as much as they do for this shite.

 

Kinda binge-watching Hello Larry just to see if it was as bad as people say.

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Todd

JRCarter wrote:

Kinda binge-watching Hello Larry just to see if it was as bad as people say.

I know that I watched it when it first aired, but I genuinely don’t remember it outside brief flashes.

From Wikipedia:
First season
Larry Alder (McLean Stevenson) is a radio talk show host who left Los Angeles after being divorced, and moved to Portland, Oregon, with his two teenage daughters, Diane (played in the first season by Donna Wilkes and in the second season by Krista Errickson) and Ruthie (played by Kim Richards). The supporting cast consisted of producer Morgan (Joanna Gleason) and engineer Earl (George Memmoli).

The first five episodes, shown at a later primetime slot, centered on Larry at the radio station and his smart-aleck remarks to callers. In these early episodes, Larry is described by Fred Silverman as “a buffoon, the cliché TV father”. After that point, a “complete turnaround in the direction of the series” was made, concurrent with a move to an earlier time slot, to put the emphasis on the relationship between Larry and his daughters.

In its new earlier timeslot, Hello, Larry aired immediately after NBC’s hit Diff’rent Strokes. In the hope of raising the popularity of Hello, Larry, crossovers were created between the two series. By episode 10, “The Trip: Part 2”, Larry Alder and Phillip Drummond were revealed to be old Army buddies (with Drummond’s company becoming the new owners of Larry’s radio station). Some contemporary articles have incorrectly stated that Hello, Larry was a spin-off of Diff’rent Strokes, with the crossover episodes constituting a backdoor pilot; in fact, the Diff’rent Strokes episodes were broadcast while Hello, Larry was already on the air, and the relationship between Larry and Drummond was the result of retconning in both series.

Second season
The trend to focus on Larry and his daughters continued into the second season, with Morgan and Earl being seen less frequently. The show’s opening theme lyrics in the second season were changed; the line “the calls are comin’ in, you’d better start to grin” in reference to Larry’s radio career gave way to “you’re raising them just fine, but keep an open mind” when the stories became more focused on the Alder household.

In addition, various supporting characters were added in the apartment building where Larry and the girls lived; these included a neighbor, Leona (Ruth Brown), who usually did not approve of Larry’s parenting; Tommy (John Femia), a purportedly worldly wise teenage boy who became a love interest for Ruthie; Larry’s widowed father (Fred Stuthman), who moved in with the younger Alders; and former Harlem Globetrotters player Meadowlark Lemon as himself, running a local sporting-goods store in the series (believed to be an attempt to boost ratings with African-American audiences who had tuned in for Diff’rent Strokes). None of these changes, nor a two-part episode in which Larry’s ex-wife Marian (Shelley Fabares) tried to reconcile with him, were enough to save the show.

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Uncle Retrospective

For reasons I don’t quite understand, I’ve decided to rewatch 24

The first season starts fairly strong, but falls apart completely in the second half, when their original plan had clearly run out. For a show all about a ticking clock, the last third of the season is lacking any urgency.

They have no idea what to do with any of the characters, which results in awful storylines like Teri getting amnesia for a few hours, and several episodes that mostly come down to the characters doing paperwork. David Palmer is TOO perfect a politician, constantly doing the right-but-difficult thing and, against all odds, being repeatedly rewarded for it.

Dennis Hopper was a good get for the eventual big bad reveal, but he’s very wooden in the role, and hampered with an awful European accent (Zeljko Ivanek, unsurprisingly, does a decent job with the accent; Misha Collins, unlikely casting for Ivanek’s brother, is mostly just there to look cool).

The season is notably absent of some of the elements that would become hallmarks of the show: there are no middle-eastern villains (as there are no notable middle-eastern or Muslim characters at all), and there are no real torture scenes.

Also, I get the real-world reasons why (it was November 2001), but it’s very odd that a character blows up an airplane in the first episode, and nobody working at a Counter-Terrorism Unit even mentions it for the rest of the day.

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Todd

We went to the cinema to see the first Raimi Spider-Man tonight as they’re re-releasing them all here over the summer like they did in the US a while back.

Obviously it’s great, but you pick up a lot of loving detail on the big screen, and I think that weirdly the effects hold up a little better than they do watching at home.

What I was really struck by on this viewing was how often Raimi includes shots that have you literally seeing through Peter’s eyes – not just the really obvious stuff like the glasses scene or designing the costume but also in the framing of some shots like him first testing his webs or when he first properly web-swings. Combined with so many close-ups of his eyes and reflections in his eye-glasses, it all serves to really put you in Peter’s place and make you empathise with him even when he’s in costume, which obviously works both ways and gives the audience some of the thrill of ‘being’ Spider-Man too.

I think it’s similar to how they did the in-helmet stuff with the early Iron Man movies, it really makes you feel like you’re right in there with him and also sharing in the experience and the fantasy of becoming the character.

My son wants to see the other Raimi movies at the cinema (and maybe a couple of the other later Spideys too), so we’ll have to see how many we can fit in over the coming weeks.

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Uncle Retrospective

I watched the first season of 24 and thought it was okay. Anything with Jack’s daughter was a waste. Yeah, it really did drag toward the end. It was like everyone got bored and tired and was trying to figure out how to end the thing.

I started to watch Season 2 but missed and episode or two. I think I was watching it live and not taping it. I gave up on the show and never watched any bit of the series again.

Conceptually, it really was a groundbreaking series. A real-time series would make for a great binge series, though I really can’t imagine any streamer doing a 24-episode series. Apple+ did Highjack, which I think was 7 episodes in real time.

I was a big fan of 24 at the time, I think it was a fun show provided you didn’t overthink it too much and just went with the thrills and twists. It was one of my first big binge-watches on DVD – it was compulsive in that format as it always had killer cliffhangers that provided that “just one more episode” factor.

In terms of season structure, that first season suffers the most – if I remember right, it was only initially commissioned up to episode eight (with the initial failed assassination attempt on Palmer) and they only really had the storyline properly planned out up to around 1pm (when Jack rescues Kim and Teri from the compound) and after that you can definitely feel the season spinning its wheels before getting around to the (at its time pretty shocking) finale. The amnesia stuff is really awful, I don’t know what they were thinking with that.

I think subsequent seasons had a better full-day plan in terms of the overall plots, and I think the second, third and fourth seasons are all pretty good – and the fifth is maybe the best they ever did.

But after that it becomes a case of diminishing returns and all the ideas feel a bit recycled and familiar, and it ends on a bit of a whimper. Even the (relatively) recent revival series set in London ended up a bit flat.

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Todd, Uncle Retrospective, paul f

We watched Hit Man on Netflix last night. I knew nothing about it going in but really enjoyed it, it’s a fun crime/romcom mash-up that manages both elements really well. The leads are genuinely likeable, there’s a genuine chemistry between them, and the plot has a fair few unpredictable twists that I enjoyed. It’s fairly light stuff but done well.

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Todd

24 really was a fun experience back then. You had to learn to let go of any thoughts about story or character logic and just enjoy the wildness of the ride, and once you were able to do that it was just such a fun watch. And it gave Kiefer a well-deserved comeback.

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Uncle Retrospective, Todd, Dave

paul f wrote:

Misha Collins, unlikely casting for Ivanek’s brother, is mostly just there to look cool

I’ve not watched 24 but I have seen Supernatural; surely Collins is there to look vaguely perplexed most of the time?

[paul f]

Martin Smith wrote:

paul f wrote:

Misha Collins, unlikely casting for Ivanek’s brother, is mostly just there to look cool

I’ve not watched 24 but I have seen Supernatural; surely Collins is there to look vaguely perplexed most of the time?

He mostly wears sunglasses, points guns at people, and doesn’t talk much.

• This reply was modified 4 months, 1 week ago by paul f.

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Martin Smith

24, Season 2

Definitely better as a whole than the first season, though there’s still plenty that doesn’t work in retrospect. All of the Palmer stuff is better, and the lack of a “who’s the mole” storyline was refreshing.

Here’s all that torture! And more than I remembered! The situation they go to justify it is ridiculously extreme (there’s literally a nuclear bomb that will explode in the next hour if they don’t get the information), and still it feels oddly casual.

I watched a bunch of NYPD Blue recently, and this show’s treatment of torture is very reminiscent of that show’s treatment of police brutality, where the detectives would regularly beat confessions out of subjects, but only when they “knew” the suspects were guilty. And, of course, being a TV show, they were always right. And like how politicians and pundits used 24 situations to justify actual torture, cops loved NYPD Blue for how the police were depicted.

Speaking of NYPD Blue, one of the plotlines that doesn’t work at all is bringing in Lourdes Benedicto from that show as a new CTU employee with a mysterious past with Michelle, which they draw out for ages. They eventually reveal that she had an affair with Michelle’s brother, which ruined his life, but the original plan was that she was a predatory lesbian who sexually harassed Michelle and offered to promote her in exchange for sex. This is absolutely how Benedicto is playing the role in her first few episodes, and it’s probably for the best that they abandoned it, even if the eventual reveal doesn’t work.

While the season is better-paced overall, there are still issues. The plotline with the sisters takes so long to pay off, and by the time it does the twist (the white woman was the evil terrorist, not her Arab fiancé) is incredibly obvious. It also doesn’t make much sense (why did she schedule her wedding to be on the day she was helping terrorists detonate a nuclear bomb in the city?).

One element that doesn’t work at all is the Kim storyline. I get giving her her own separate thing so she’s not just getting kidnapped again, but a storyline in which see seems to get arrested about five times in one day isn’t better. People talk about the cougar as the low point, but the resolution to that episode, where Johnny Drama tries to trap her in his cabin and convince her the world has ended is much worse. It’s all bad.

Another missed opportunity is bringing back Nina. It feels obligatory, and doesn’t add anything to the storyline; it just feels like they’re spinning their wheels for a few hours. I also don’t believe Jack wouldn’t just kill her as soon as he could.

I forgot to mention in my first post that, especially for the early 2000s, this is the most mobile phone-heavy show ever. In some episodes, 80% of the scenes have characters using their flip-phones.

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Uncle Retrospective, lorcan_nagle, Todd

paul f wrote:

I watched a bunch of NYPD Blue recently, and this show’s treatment of torture is very reminiscent of that show’s treatment of police brutality, where the detectives would regularly beat confessions out of subjects, but only when they “knew” the suspects were guilty. And, of course, being a TV show, they were always right. And like how politicians and pundits used 24 situations to justify actual torture, cops loved NYPD Blue for how the police were depicted.

You know, I haven’t watched a proper cop show in ages, but Brooklyn 99 is the only one I can think of that actually adresses how problematic cops are, with Diaz leaving the force. (And 99 did its best there, but this is a sitcom and in its own little world all the cops were actually lovely and goofy, after all).

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Ben, Uncle Retrospective, lorcan_nagle

paul f wrote:

this show’s treatment of torture is very reminiscent of that show’s treatment of police brutality, where the detectives would regularly beat confessions out of subjects, but only when they “knew” the suspects were guilty. And, of course, being a TV show, they were always right.

I might be misremembering, but I think one of the later series of 24 (day 4 maybe?) does explore a scenario around torturing someone for information who is actually innocent.

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paul f, lorcan_nagle

Christian wrote:

You know, I haven’t watched a proper cop show in ages, but Brooklyn 99 is the only one I can think of that actually adresses how problematic cops are, with Diaz leaving the force. (And 99 did its best there, but this is a sitcom and in its own little world all the cops were actually lovely and goofy, after all).

Law & Order will do episodes now and then about bad cops who cross the line etc but it never feels entirely genuine, given it’ll have its hero characters (especially Stabler) dance around that line a lot all the time. I’d love it if they did a season with a detective was genuinely either corrupt or guilty of brutality/similar and faces the consequences for that (though it’d be hamstrung by the case of the week format to do it without it feeling like it came out of nowhere).

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paul f, Todd

The Wire kinda approached that with Prez being stuck in office work after the disastrous attempt to intimidate the tower block gangs in series 1, and the fallout from McNulty and Freamon faking the serial killer in series 5.

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Ben, Todd, Uncle Retrospective

I’m rewatching Great News lately. Really carries the spirit of 30 Rock. Cruelly overlooked. But remember when being a Netflix original series like this had cachet?

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Todd

Martin Smith wrote:

I’m rewatching Great News lately. Really carries the spirit of 30 Rock. Cruelly overlooked. But remember when being a Netflix original series like this had cachet?

It wasn’t a Netflix original; it aired on NBC in the US but Netflix picked up the UK rights, presumably off the back of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (which filmed its first season for NBC, before they cancelled it and Netflix picked it up before it aired).

paul f wrote:

It wasn’t a Netflix original; it aired on NBC in the US but Netflix picked up the UK rights, presumably off the back of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (which filmed its first season for NBC, before they cancelled it and Netflix picked it up before it aired).

Netflix still brands these shows as “Netflix Originals” even when they just have exclusive rights in other regions (see stuff like Better Call Saul).

paul f wrote:

Martin Smith wrote:

I’m rewatching Great News lately. Really carries the spirit of 30 Rock. Cruelly overlooked. But remember when being a Netflix original series like this had cachet?

It wasn’t a Netflix original; it aired on NBC in the US but Netflix picked up the UK rights, presumably off the back of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (which filmed its first season for NBC, before they cancelled it and Netflix picked it up before it aired).

Huh, I didn’t know that. It’s even baked right into the opening titles. Weird thing to do.

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Ben

Someone helpfully put up all eight episodes of the first season of New Zealand panel show Guy Montgomery’s Guy Mont-Spelling Bee on Youtube in one video, so watching that before they’re removed:

They filmed a second season a year ago, but there’s no sign of them airing it yet; he filmed an Australian version that’s starting next week.

24 Season 3

There’s a decent setup here, but this season is a mess, full of false leads and so many annoying new characters. It picks up a lot in the second half when they move past all of the Mexico/Jack undercover stuff, and actually get to the virus threat, but it doesn’t make up for the wheel-spinning first half.

The season has a bunch of stupid episode ideas, like “Jack plays Russian roulette” or “there’s a baby in CTU,” that feel like they’re just filling time, and the somehow season-long Palmer storyline with his brother having an affair and the woman’s husband dying is just boring, like an extremely drawn-out episode of Scandal.

Chloe is the only new character who works. She’s as annoying as the other new characters, but Mary Lynn Rajskub is a great comedy actress and plays it well, especially once they start putting her in scenes with Jack. Zachary Quinto’s character is just an asshole and gets nothing to do, the other new guy (Gael?) is a complete blank who I forget exists whenever he’s not on screen, and Wayne Palmer is one of the least convincing politicians in TV history. I’ve liked James Badge Dale in everything I’ve seen him in since, but he’s so dull here as Jack’s partner.

Kim now working for CTU is better way to keep Cuthbert on the show than try giving her her own storyline again, let down by her being entirely unconvincing at delivering tech jargon nonsense. I’m not surprised they felt the need to clear house and get rid of 90% of the cast for the next season.

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Uncle Retrospective, lorcan_nagle

paul f wrote:

Chloe is the only new character who works. She’s as annoying as the other new characters, but Mary Lynn Rajskub is a great comedy actress and plays it well, especially once they start putting her in scenes with Jack.

She’s brilliant, and remains a highlight of the show. She plays that character brilliantly.

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Uncle Retrospective

Ah 24, series 1, aka US Inter-Agency Eternal Turf Wars, oh and Jack’z kid gets kidnapped multiple times in one day.

Yeah, not a fan.

Started on the new season of Umbrella Academy. I’m just happy to be with those guys again.

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Andrew

24: Season 4

Now this is much better, with a few exceptions.

The new female CTU boss, played by Alberta Watson, is shown as ridiculously awful, consistently making the wrong choices, with almost no redeeming characteristics. She mostly exists to justify Jack’s torture of suspects, by having her authorize torture of innocent people (Logan Marshall-Green and Lana Parilla), with no involvement from Jack, so the characters we like can say “no, that torture is bad, this torture that Jack does is necessary”. And if we didn’t get that she’s bad, she’s mean to Chloe, the only other returning character at the start of the season.

The most damning thing about Watson and Parilla’s characters is that the show doesn’t even bother killing them off; they just leave and go home in the middle of the season. The other new characters are better though, such as Gregory Itzin as President Logan, Tzi Ma as Chinese agent Cheng Zhi, and Kim Raver as Jack’s girlfriend.

The terrorist plotline in the first half is better than the past seasons, mostly due to Shohreh Aghdashloo, easily one of the best actors to be on the show. Even when the material isn’t great (and it isn’t), Aghdashloo elevates it. It loses something without her in the second half. The big surprise of the season is probably that Jack’s new girlfriend’s rich British estranged husband isn’t a villain, and is a pretty nice guy, who Jack gets killed.

It is funny how many times this season does the “that terrorist plot was just a cover for this other terrorist plot” twist. Marwan has concocted the most ridiculously elaborate one-day scheme in history. The train crash was a cover for kidnapping the Secretary of Defence, which was cover for melting down nuclear power plants, which was cover for blowing up Air Force One, which was just a step in his plan for stealing a nuclear warhead.

The climax of the season feels like they painted themselves into a corner with no way to stop Marwan and the nuke; the return of Mandy the sexy assassin comes out of nowhere and doesn’t fit with anything else in the season. I was never a fan of the big conspiracy stuff hinted at with her and Nina that never went anywhere; I’m glad this is the last we see of her.

This season had a side-project, 24: Conspiracy, a series of 24 one-minute “mobisodes” that came out concurrently with the episodes and are set on the same day. I don’t believe anyone from the actual show was involved in any way; it feels like a mandatory workplace training video. It’s awful.

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Dave

paul f wrote:

The other new characters are better though, such as Gregory Itzin as President Logan,

He gets even better next season, too.

[Ian Smith]

Watched the second season of Interview with the Vampirethat just went up on the iPlayer and it’s just as good as the first. It’s really well written, especially the way it plays with the fact that this is a story that’s being told, sometimes from different points of view. And the acting is top notch, especially Sam Reid as Lestat, who actually isn’t in this season very much but is fantastic when he shows up.

Its a bit of a shame this is kind of buried away on the BBC in the uk because I think it’s one of the best shows on at the moment that people don’t talk about.

• This reply was modified 4 months ago by Ian Smith.

[Ian Smith]

Ian Smith wrote:

Watched the second season of Interview with the Vampirethat just went up on the iPlayer and it’s just as good as the first. It’s really well written, especially the way it plays with the fact that this is a story that’s being told, sometimes from different points of view. And the acting is top notch, especially Sam Reid as Lestat, who actually isn’t in this season very much but is fantastic when he shows up.

Its a bit of a shame this is kind of buried away on the BBC in the uk because I think it’s one of the best shows on at the moment that people don’t talk about.

• This reply was modified 4 months ago by Ian Smith.

It’s much more visible in the UK, on BBC, than in the US, on AMC.

I started watching No Activity after getting bored waiting for Colin From Accounts season 2 on iplayer. It’s pretty good so far, one of those show’s that’s designed to be static and limited in terms of location and characters, so almost entirely down to the writing and performances, which are all decent.

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Dan

I watched the new Planet Of The Apes movie tonight. Having enjoyed the recent trilogy quite a bit I was surprised to find this one so disappointing – it’s all quite boring and small-scale, and there aren’t any characters you can really get behind. The technical wizardry is about the only thing it really has going for it.

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njerry

I was quite surprised to hear recently that, with the end of the Good Fight (I’ve still not seen the final season), the Kings had set up another Good Wife character in their own show: Elsbeth Tascione, the quirky lawyer played by Carrie Preston in, erm, Elsbeth. It’s good for Preston – she’s deserved a starring role for ages and Elsbeth is a fun character. But how does quirky lawyer’s lawyer work as a series lead? Seemingly by putting her in a murder mystery series! Well, I say “mystery”, the format is basically just Columbo so the viewer knows who the killer is and the show is about Elsbeth (secretly now a justice department agent and assigned to the NYPD as an outside observer) quirkily working out how to prove it. It kinda works so far. Seems to have a decent roster of celebrities coming in to play murderers doomed to be out-witted. As ever though, I suspect it’s already been cancelled in the US.

Another surprise is that Canada has set up its own Law & Order, though specifically Criminal Intent (which is also broadly Columbo, weirdly). Unusually for a regional L&O, it’s actually got original scripts, rather than just rehashing American ones (which felt utterly pointless when the UK did it, would be even moreso for Canada). Nice cast in it, including one of my faves, Kathleen Munroe, and Ronnie from Schitt’s Creek as the Captain. Surprisingly though, given the Canadian TV industry seems to usually consist of the same 40ish actors rotating through every show in production, I’ve never seen the guy playing the other lead detective in anything. His character is broadly Goren but that’s fine, L&O is built on archetypes. It’s a good show, filling a niche that’s been vacant for ages. And even better, this has already been renewed for a second and third season.

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Sean Robinson

Martin Smith wrote:

I was quite surprised to hear recently that, with the end of the Good Fight (I’ve still not seen the final season), the Kings had set up another Good Wife character in their own show: Elsbeth Tascione, the quirky lawyer played by Carrie Preston in, erm, Elsbeth. It’s good for Preston – she’s deserved a starring role for ages and Elsbeth is a fun character. But how does quirky lawyer’s lawyer work as a series lead? Seemingly by putting her in a murder mystery series! Well, I say “mystery”, the format is basically just Columbo so the viewer knows who the killer is and the show is about Elsbeth (secretly now a justice department agent and assigned to the NYPD as an outside observer) quirkily working out how to prove it. It kinda works so far. Seems to have a decent roster of celebrities coming in to play murderers doomed to be out-witted. As ever though, I suspect it’s already been cancelled in the US.

No, it was renewed! I don’t think they’ve announced any of the murderer-of-the-week cast for S2 yet.

I enjoyed it, though I was hoping for a few more links to the other TGW-universe shows. Aside from name-dropping Cary in the first episode, there’s basically nothing. I’m hoping we get a few familiar guest stars in the future.

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Martin Smith

Dave wrote:

I watched the new Planet Of The Apes movie tonight. Having enjoyed the recent trilogy quite a bit I was surprised to find this one so disappointing – it’s all quite boring and small-scale, and there aren’t any characters you can really get behind. The technical wizardry is about the only thing it really has going for it.

Ah, that’s a shame. But it’s an entirely new team, after all? The guy who directed the Maze Runner movies and also different writers…

paul f wrote:

I enjoyed it, though I was hoping for a few more links to the other TGW-universe shows. Aside from name-dropping Cary in the first episode, there’s basically nothing. I’m hoping we get a few familiar guest stars in the future.

I’d love to see Eli again, though given the different location and story focus, I’m not sure how he’d fit in apart from being a murderer.

24: Season 5

The best season!

I think this was the first thing I saw Jean Smart in, and I didn’t appreciate how great she was at the time. I’m glad she’s finally getting the attention she deserves these days (still annoyed at how Prime Video are treating Hacks over here, S3 aired in the US months ago).

Gregory Itzin is great as Logan, especially in the scenes with Smart. Even before the big twist, he’s clearly a massive dick, as seen in his treatment of his wife.

The new CTU people are pretty good too; I only knew Sean Astin from LOTR at this point, and he’s good as a guy clearly in over his head as the new boss. We also get a young Kate Mara as a junior Chloe-type; it’s a shame she never returned.

Not everything works; Julian Sands escaping custody to seize control of a Russian vessel right at the end feels completely unnecessary, like they needed to have a few more gunplay scenes in case people got bored by all the Evil President antics.

It’s very silly how quick CTU are to release people from custody and have them immediately return to their jobs. Almost everyone who works there seems to be either arresting their fellow employees or being arrested themselves, with no paperwork needed for any of it.

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Dave

Have thrown on Pulp Fiction.
Just had the opening scene, but I love this movie.

Technically his best movie is Inglorious Basterds, and he should’ve won the Oscar for that. He was on his A-game there in an creative and good way, but it is so easy to throw this on.

As he’s not doing The Movie Critic as his last movie, I’m hoping for something in the True Romance vein.
_____________

“I’m the foot fucking master”

Quotable as fuck.
They’re just about to enter the apartment…

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Andrew

Sean Robinson wrote:

Have thrown on Pulp Fiction.
Just had the opening scene, but I love this movie.

Technically his best movie is Inglorious Basterds, and he should’ve won the Oscar for that. He was on his A-game there in an creative and good way, but it is so easy to throw this on.

As he’s not doing The Movie Critic as his last movie, I’m hoping for something in the True Romance vein.
_____________

“I’m the foot fucking master”

Quotable as fuck.
They’re just about to enter the apartment…

I would still like to see Kill Bill Vol. III.

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Sean Robinson

So then I put on The Thing.
I watched the credits and there’s a “Stewart BC” crew.

What the fuck? Apparently I can drive there in just under 4 hours (so 2 and a half for me).

The Thing went through several directors and writers, each with different ideas on how to approach the story. Filming lasted roughly twelve weeks, beginning in August 1981, and took place on refrigerated sets in Los Angeles as well as in Juneau, Alaska, and Stewart, British Columbia.

How in the fuck did I not know that? Absolute shame…

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njerry, Todd

Sean Robinson wrote:

How in the fuck did I not know that? Absolute shame…

Maybe you’re not the real Sean Robinson. Maybe you’re an alien pretending to be Sean Robinson.

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Christian, Sean Robinson

I started digging in to the BBC iPLayer, frustrasted about the content shown, since the BBC has the most amazing archives of tele-plays, drama and comedy.

Digging in under the surface there are multiple Denis Potter works, Alan Bleasdale’s The Blackstuff and Boys from the Blackstuff, Tutti Fruiti, Alan Bennet’s Talking Heads – there might be more, though I’, disappointed there’s no obscure 80s alt-com work, maybe they aren’t that funny?

Todd wrote:

Sean Robinson wrote:

How in the fuck did I not know that? Absolute shame…

Maybe you’re not the real Sean Robinson. Maybe you’re an alien pretending to be Sean Robinson.

Exactly what an alien replacing Todd would say

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Todd, Christian, Sean Robinson, njerry

Dan wrote:

I started digging in to the BBC iPLayer, frustrasted about the content shown, since the BBC has the most amazing archives of tele-plays, drama and comedy.

Digging in under the surface there are multiple Denis Potter works, Alan Bleasdale’s The Blackstuff and Boys from the Blackstuff, Tutti Fruiti, Alan Bennet’s Talking Heads – there might be more, though I’, disappointed there’s no obscure 80s alt-com work, maybe they aren’t that funny?

I think some of the Beeb’s 80s comedies are on UKTV’s various channels and streaming service (which recently got renamed to something stupid).

So now it’s The Road Warrior (1981).. Seemed like a good choice, but wow, I have Mel Gibson on my TV. That’s it’s own distraction.

Anyways, felt compelled to point out as Jason Vorhees wore a burlap sack in Friday the 13th part 2, and then his iconic hockey mask in part 3 (1982), The Lord Humungus is first with the hockey mask, and wore it better.

“The Ayatollah of rock n rolla!”

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Uncle Retrospective

lorcan_nagle wrote:

Todd wrote:

Sean Robinson wrote:

How in the fuck did I not know that? Absolute shame…

Maybe you’re not the real Sean Robinson. Maybe you’re an alien pretending to be Sean Robinson.

Exactly what an alien replacing Todd would say

Says the alien who replaced Lorcan…

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lorcan_nagle

24: Season 6

The worst season!

This is just all over the place. The scale is all wrong; they detonate a nuclear bomb in a California city in the fourth hour, and people have stopped talking about it by the afternoon. Giving Jack an evil father and brother is a terrible idea. It’s very soap opera-y, in a bad way. It definitely feels like Jack’s annoying nephew was going to be revealed as his son at some point and they just cut it out.

Wayne Palmer as president makes no sense. I’ve like Woodside in other roles, but he has none of the gravitas needed to pull this off, especially in the shadow of Dennis Haysbert. The only memorable thing he does as president is get blown up (but not dying until after the season ends, as FOX had a rule forbidding the show from killing a sitting president). Even the entire plotline where the Vice-President wants to attack the middle east, and the President is trying to prevent the attack is just a worse version of the second season.

This is also the season of “Islamaphobia is bad (sometimes).” The show tries to address some actual issues, but also has awful storylines like Kal Penn as a young terrorist in the suburbs. They also add a middle-eastern character to the CTU team, undermined slightly by her being played by Marisol Nichols, who is very clearly hispanic.

It’s also very silly that they won’t even bother making up a fake middle-eastern country name, so everyone keeps just referring to “Fayed’s Country” in a way that never once feels natural.

The entire conspiracy this season is a complete mess, involving some mix of Islamic extremists, Russians, and Jack’s immediate family, with it never being clear who’s behind what. That’s not even getting into the “kill the president” conspiracy, which never goes anywhere.

I quit/paused my NYPD Blue watch when Ricky Schroder joined that show, so I was not happy to see him show up here, still awful. Equally bad is casting Regina King as the Palmers’ never-mentioned sister and then giving her nothing to do (it feels like she was supposed to have a bigger role, given she’s credited as a regular, but they couldn’t think of anything for her to do).

There was another series of webisodes made to go with this season. It’s better than the first batch, in that they actually have a budget for props, extras, locations, etc, and were allowed to film on the set of the main show, but it’s otherwise completely unrelated and pointless.

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Ian Smith, Martin Smith

Todd wrote:

lorcan_nagle wrote:

Todd wrote:

Sean Robinson wrote:

How in the fuck did I not know that? Absolute shame…

Maybe you’re not the real Sean Robinson. Maybe you’re an alien pretending to be Sean Robinson.

Exactly what an alien replacing Todd would say

Says the alien who replaced Lorcan…

Exactly what they want you to think!

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Todd

I watched the first episode of that new Batman: Caped Crusader. Pretty cool. I love stories that do super-heroes as period pieces and combining that with Timm’s Deco sensibilities is a winner. Nice updates/changes to the usual crowd for it as well.

Only issue is Prime Video’s entire existence, which is somehow shittier than I remembered. I watched on a smart TV and did you know there’s no way to turn off autoplay on those? Ridiculous. Also the first time I’ve used it since they brought in mid-programme ads, which was an unpleasant surprise.

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lorcan_nagle

Well, you can always just PAY MORE to get rid of those ads!

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Martin Smith

24: Redemption

Weirdly, not on streaming, so I had to watch my DVD copy.

24 is in an odd position to do a movie, as the problem Jack has to deal with needs to be small enough to be taken care of in two hours, but still feel like it deserves a movie. So, we get Jack trying to save a bunch of kids in Africa from being taken to serve as child soldiers.

One of the problems with the movie is that it relies on the acting talents of lots of children who are clearly unexperienced. Most of them are just required to act scared, but anytime one of them needs to show affection towards Jack it feels forced on both sides.

I’d always remembered Robert Carlyle as the villain of the movie, as he’s their big name guest star, but he’s just the friend who heroically sacrifices himself, and isn’t very interesting.

I’d forgotten how much of the movie was setting up the next season, with Jon Voight, Cherry Jones, Colm Feore, and co. It feels out of place, and definitely hurts the pacing. It leaves the movie feeling like an extended prologue to the next season rather than its own thing, and watching the season immediately after the movie confirms that.

24: Season 7

Another reset season, completely getting rid of the LA setting and CTU. It’s definitely better than the previous season, but at this point the show can’t help feeling like a parody of itself at times. All of the super-defensive “no, it’s good and necessary that Jack tortures people” stuff (and there’s a lot of it) is grating.

The midseason reveal of Jon Voight as a key player would work better if Redemption hadn’t already set him up, making me wonder for the first twelve hours when he was going show up. Once he does arrive though, he’s in fine scene-chewing form.

Bringing Tony back was a decent idea, but he’s barely in a lot of the season. I guess they didn’t know what to with him and were stalling until the eventual “no, psych, he really is a bad guy (maybe)” twist. The final episode where the one guy responsible for all of the terror attacks of the past three seasons inexplicably shows up in person so that Tony can try to take his revenge is very silly.

The new FBI characters are okay. The dynamic of “Jack suggests doing something illegal to get results, Renee reluctantly agrees, Larry gets angry at them” gets real old, real fast. Janeane Garofolo as a new Chloe is pretty obvious casting (Rajskub replaced Garofolo on Larry Sanders a decade earlier), but she doesn’t get much to do. The scenes in the final hours when they finally put them together are fun though.

Another part of the “playing the hits” aspect of the season is that, after mostly avoiding it for many seasons, we’re back to another “mole inside the agency” subplot, and it’s the most obvious person.

The one new character who doesn’t work at all is the president’s daughter, who becomes her new chief of staff halfway through the day, immediately orders a murder, and then tries very poorly to cover it up. It’s awful.

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Uncle Retrospective

Tarantino on casting Bruce Willis

I saw Alien: Romulus today and quite enjoyed it.

As always with these things it often feels as much like a remix as a sequel, and there were a couple of connections/reprises from the other movies that didn’t feel quite necessary. But it had the Alien/Aliens atmosphere down pretty well, a few decent setpieces and a couple of good scares, and after a slightly lukewarm start I felt like I enjoyed it more the longer it went on.

(I saw it in a Dolby screen with a big bassy sound system which really accentuated some of the moments nicely, and gave you a nice look at the production design, which captures the feel of Alien and Aliens really nicely).

I did find it felt quite videogamey in places though, the basic structure of the film and the way it progresses feels like any number of space survival horror games of the last couple of decades. Although they were all influenced by Alien in the first place so I guess it comes around.

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Christian

Dave wrote:

I saw Alien: Romulus today and quite enjoyed it.

As always with these things it often feels as much like a remix as a sequel, and there were a couple of connections/reprises from the other movies that didn’t feel quite necessary. But it had the Alien/Aliens atmosphere down pretty well, a few decent setpieces and a couple of good scares, and after a slightly lukewarm start I felt like I enjoyed it more the longer it went on.

(I saw it in a Dolby screen with a big bassy sound system which really accentuated some of the moments nicely, and gave you a nice look at the production design, which captures the feel of Alien and Aliens really nicely).

I did find it felt quite videogamey in places though, the basic structure of the film and the way it progresses feels like any number of space survival horror games of the last couple of decades. Although they were all influenced by Alien in the first place so I guess it comes around.

I was very mixed on it. I loved David Jonsson as Andy, and Cailee Spaeny was pretty good in the lead, but all of the other characters were incredibly bland and forgettable.

I liked a lot of the horror-y stuff, especially the very silly/disgusting third act stuff linking back to Prometheus. I hated all of the Ian Holm bits though, it felt ghoulish and unnecessary.

The callback to the famous line from Aliens was one of the worst moments in recent cinema history, just awful.

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Dave

paul f wrote:

The callback to the famous line from Aliens was one of the worst moments in recent cinema history, just awful.

Yeah, that was a clunker and should have been cut.

I felt mixed about the Ian Holm stuff – I think they could have got away with it if they had showed less and done it a little more artfully (like they seemed to be doing at the start with angles that didn’t reveal much) but in the end I think they showed far too much, too brightly lit, and it didn’t look good in places. The scenes towards the end of the movie on the monitor were better in that sense, less distracting certainly.

Just watched the opener of the new season of Only Murders In The Building. Fun episode but I do wonder how much is left in the tank now, this was pretty self-referential and in-jokey with quite a lot of reliance on cameos, and I don’t know if there’s that much more they can do with the show in general. Having said that the last season took quite a big swing and turned out great, so I’ll be happy to be pleasantly surprised if this season pays off.

That’s been my fear as well. Having Meryl Streep in last season felt like it might be a bit “well, they’re just padding it with stars now” rather than focusing on story, but that season was good. This first episode was fun (and I especially like that they’ve acknowledged how damn mumbly Mabel is), but I do hope they decide end the whole thing on a good note rather than run it into the ground.

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Dave

Watching the current season of The Boys. Good fun, as always.

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lorcan_nagle, Todd

24: Season 8

The final proper season, and it’s not a surprise. At this point when they add people like Katee Sackhoff (fresh off of BSG) or Anil Kapoor (just made a star in America by Slumdog Millionaire) to the cast, it feels like the actors would be better off somewhere else.

It doesn’t help that Sackhoff is stuck for half the season with a truly awful storyline where a dirtbag is blackmailing her into aiding in a robbery. She’s eventually revealed as a villain, and by that point I was just glad she wasn’t going to be around much longer.

The other big cast addition is Freddie Prinze Jr. He’s boring, though he does look a lot like current-era Chris Evans here. It’s just hard to care about any of these people.

There are some good moments, a young Rami Malek has a small but memorable arc as a reluctant suicide bomber, and it picks up in the final episodes when Jack goes full Taken after his girlfriend is murdered, roughly 45 minutes after their first kiss.

It barely feels like 24 though, Jack’s not trying to stop any threat, he’s just going on a murder spree for six hours. Although it’s very funny that they just flat-out repeat the “Jack attacks President Logan but it’s actually just a ruse to plant a bug on him” sequence from Season 5.

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Martin Smith, Uncle Retrospective, Dave, lorcan_nagle

Are you going to watch Live Another Day next or leave it there?