Things you just watched on netflix/streaming video...spoilers all over the joint...

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MichaelC

MichaelC

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  • #25,721
    So Arcane is an animated series on Netflix. They have been working on season two for some time and it looks like it's going to release soon. But it will also be the last season of the series. I really liked the first season. It's a good story. Visually it is stunning. The artwork is absolutely beautiful. If it ends with season two, that's ok as long as it's a complete story. Looks like it's coming November of 2024.

    nerdist.com

    ARCANE to End with Season 2, Series Shares New Teaser Trailer and Images of Final Season

    Netflix and Riot Games shared a new trailer and images as it announced Arcane's long-awaited second season will also be the show's last.
    nerdist.com nerdist.com

    here's a trailer for season two


    View: https://youtu.be/AEbfiLaOdJA?si=s32B2_tqGutFnsfu
     
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    Bagheera

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  • #25,722
    Killer Joe is a hidden gem of film noir. William Friedkin directed Matthew McConaughey in a tense hitman story.

    In Texas, a father and son concoct to kill their ex-wife/mother for a life insurance payout. They hire a police detective who moonlights as a hitman (the titular Killer Joe) to do the job. Things don't go as planned.

    The film flopped in 2012 because it earned an NC-17 rating. There's not nearly as much sex and violence as most R-rated films, at least not graphically. The acting and tension, though, are dialed up to 11. If you like films like A Simple Plan, To Live and Die In LA, and others like them, you should definitely watch this (it's on Prime).
     
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    Daedalus213

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  • #25,724
    Galaxy of Terror, on Shudder. One of those movies that was generally in my awareness- probably from a misspent youth combing TVTropes and IMDB- but never saw. It's a knockoff of Alien, trying to copy its beep-boop-analog-spaceship aesthetic, with some weird mystical space opera stuff thrown in there too. Also, it's about eighty minutes long, so it's a good encouragement to push my cardio workout to 40 minutes.
    It has all the stuff I love from a Roger Corman-produced cheapie. Ambitious while aware of its limitations. Reasonably good acting and world-building if you don't mind a world of cheese. Set design that's a highlight even if it's mostly paper-mache and scale models. Creature and gore effects that are obviously cheap but inventive at the same time. It also has that great hey, it's that guy before he was famous! thing. There's an opening titles credits card that has both Sid "Captain Spaulding" Haig and Robert "Freddy Kreuger" Englund. (Shoutout to Haig, who plays an almost entirely silent guy who wields crystal shurikens. His only line, as far as I remember, is "I live and die by the crystals!")

    And James Cameron was a production designer! While it's obvious the aesthetic is stolen from Alien, you can see the iterations that he was going to bring to Aliens just a few years later.

    Sadly, it also has the stuff I hate from Corman cheapies, specifically, totally gratuitous sexual assault by monsters. One of those things where I'm saying "oh, this is such a fun cheesy movie, I can't wait when my kids are old enough to see- oh. Oh. Yeah, that... that sorta takes a turn."
     
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    Carhole

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  • #25,727
    rtrefz said:
    My wife and I finished Shogun tonight. The cinematography was beautiful. I sort of ignored the plot (there are a lot of machinations) but was grooving on all of the cultural differences. I now want to watch the original.
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    You’ll enjoy it. The rerun is good for many of its stylistic choices and a different take on, well, all of the protagonists and I felt that the handling of Anjin San was well wrapped via his exposé, though in the OG shows a more accurate depiction throughout, and thankfully there are more characters kept intact. They both stand well apart as well, which I suppose is my way of saying that the gist of the book works both ways. It’s good TV.

    I’m now champing at the bit for Ten Cent to release their adaptation of The Dark Forest (book two of three-body, or History of Earth’s Past to be accurate) because I do not think that the Netflix version of Three Body caught the gravity of events from the books and way too many characters got consolidated or culled, so if Ten Cent’s production is faithful it’ll have some slow episodes again but I’m looking forward to the realization. Sadly, it does t go into production for two. More. Years.
     
    Kilkenny

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  • #25,728
    Bagheera said:
    Killer Joe is a hidden gem of film noir. William Friedkin directed Matthew McConaughey in a tense hitman story.
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    Speaking of Friedkin... This reminds me that I need to find out if Sorcerer is available anywhere. People keep saying that it's fantastic.
     
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    Kilkenny

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  • #25,730
    MichaelC said:
    It's on Criterion to stream if you have a subscription. It's on Prime to rent.
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    Thanks for the reminder to look there - I'd forgotten that I have access to their academic Criterion On Demand site (which is for film/media studies & related) through my uni. I just have to be on the VPN to use it from home. It's only 480p there though.
     
    Tom Foolery

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  • #25,732
    Mrs. F and I started watching Brats, thinking that it would be a nice walk down memory lane, being that we both more or less came of age in the 80's. It sort of is, but for the most part it has been about how Malcolm Gladwell's David Blum coining of the term "Brat Pack" and his articles around how it was affecting Hollywood, and the fallout among the young actors who were considered part of that group. Not really what we were looking for, and my wife lost interest after the first 30 minutes, so we kicked out. It's pretty interesting how much Gladwell's Blum's article(s) affected them, to the point where some would simply avoid being in a movie with another member of the group.

    I am surprised at how well Ally Sheedy has aged, being that I had a bit of a crush on her, back in the day.

    Edit: David Blum wrote the article, not Malcolm Gladwell.
     
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    MichaelC

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  • #25,733
    Oh yeah, I watched that. I already had some idea of what it was about as I had already seen Andrew McCarthy on Michael Rosenbaum's Inside of You on YouTube.

    In the 80s I had no idea that term was a kind of perjorative for them. I had thought it was simply a play on the next gen Rat Pack. You can look that up if you are not familiar with it.

    So it was interesting to learn they were not friends, they just worked in a few movies together. Unlike the Rat Pack who I believe were friends and hung out together. Though maybe I am wrong about them as well.

    It was also interesting to see who people thought were included in the Brat Pack and some being surprised as in "I was? I don't think I was!"
     
    Tom Foolery

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  • #25,734
    MichaelC said:
    In the 80s I had no idea that term was a kind of perjorative for them. I had thought it was simply a play on the next gen Rat Pack. You can look that up if you are not familiar with it.
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    I thought so, as well. I grew up listening to the Rat Pack because that's how my folks rolled, so I just assumed (because I did not read the David Blum piece) that is was just a clever play on words, not a perjorative. But it became pretty clear that's how Andrew McCarthy, Emilio Estevez, and Ally Sheedy took it. Not sure about the others, as I said, we bopped out about 30 minutes into it.
    MichaelC said:
    So it was interesting to learn they were not friends, they just worked in a few movies together. Unlike the Rat Pack who I believe were friends and hung out together. Though maybe I am wrong about them as well.
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    I found that part pretty fascinating as well, as I had always assumed they were friends because of all the photos of them together, like the Rat Pack. A quick internet search suggests that the Rat Pack were close friends, at least with regards to what we consider to be the main members, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr, and Dean Martin. I would guess at that level of fame, it would be hard to tell who was your friend, and who is just there for the exposure, so among those three (and the others, like Errol Flynn and Humphrey Bogart) it would be pretty easy to tell that none of their careers would be bolstered by being seen with eachother. It must be lonely at the top.
     
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    Tom Foolery

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  • #25,735
    Let the rest of the movie play in the background while I worked, today. I will say, because the "Brat Pack" were kids, I can see why they were hurt by the name and the article. If they had been more mature, they would have embraced it like the Rat Pack did. Also did some editing, because it was David Blum who wrote the article.
     
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    Papageno

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  • #25,736
    GaitherBill said:
    Dark Matter on Apple Tv

    Cool show based on the book.

    Has shades of Primer if you’ve seen that movie.
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    This is streaming its penultimate episode today. It's a pretty cool series, though it glosses over some stuff like how do "our Jason/Jason Prime" and for a while Amanda and the numerous "alt-Jasons" (two of whom die at the hands of Jason2/Abductor Jason) spawned as a result of their world-hopping survive so long and even stay in hotels sometimes with no official identities nor presumably day jobs/income? Still, can't wait to see how it's resolved.

    rtrefz said:
    The Mask was ok. Jim Carrey was a perfect choice for the lead and I like the Tex Avery homages. Still, it's Jim Carrey doing his schtick, which I'm not a huge fan of.
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    What a coincidence. I watched The Mask for the first time in years the other night. I don't mind Carrey and enjoyed the movie then and now. The CGI definitely looks a bit dated at this point though. Still I find bits of it inspired, like picking a Desi Arnaz song from the 1940s to mesmerize/distract the whole police force outside of the park gate when they have him dead to rights.
     
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    Papageno

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  • #25,737
    jandrese said:
    For what it is worth the first season of the Office leans heavily into cringe humor just like the UK version. It changes a fair bit in the second season and gets a lot better IMHO.
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    Re: The Office (US version), I remember watching its shot-for-shot remake of the UK version's first episode and thinking "They have to change something here real quick or it's toast." Something about how Ricky Gervais portrays the character David Brent makes one understand that he's such an idiot he can't help himself*, and thus you pity him a bit. The same lines coming out of Steve Carell's Michael Scott's mouth just make you think he's an irredeemable asshole.

    *although, eventually, even David Brent redeems himself somewhat toward the end of the series' run, IIRC.
     
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    Diabolical

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  • #25,738
    Papageno said:
    This is streaming its penultimate episode today. It's a pretty cool series, though it glosses over some stuff like how do "our Jason/Jason Prime" and for a while Amanda and the numerous "alt-Jasons" (two of whom die at the hands of Jason2/Abductor Jason) spawned as a result of their world-hopping survive so long and even stay in hotels sometimes with no official identities nor presumably day jobs/income? Still, can't wait to see how it's resolved.
    Click to expand...

    If it makes any difference, I'm about 90% certain it's glossed over in the book as well. But by that time I'd turned off my brain and was just powering through to the end.
     
    Ecmaster76

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  • #25,739
    Oh man Godzilla Minus One was really good. They really did a great job of balancing between the humans and the kaiju while threading the needle of nerding out with WW2 era hardware without glorifying the war itself.

    I liked how Godzilla had an anatomically accurate-ish saurian body and movement on the island but post irradiation took on the characteristics of the classic man-in-rubber-suit design

    I think in some ways that Shin Godzilla is still the more powerful, profound, and unique work but Minus One is a perfect reboot as a pure kaiju film


    Anyone know, at the end, what was up with the corruption creeping up Noriko's neck? Godzilla's mutilated body beggining to regenerate wasn't a huge surprise but they seem to also be working some human infection into the inevitable sequel. Godzilla Zero maybe?
     
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    Papageno

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  • #25,741
    GaitherBill said:
    Hooboy Dark Matter episode 8 is a doozy.

    Jennifer Connelly is on point.
    Click to expand...

    ...both acting-wise and um, everything else-wise. I'm starting to think that, like Dorian Gray from the story, she's got a portrait hidden in a secret attic somewhere... How can she still look this good 25 years after Dark City?
     
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    dio82

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  • #25,742
    Skoop said:
    Never heard of it until your recommendation.

    It really is quite good. The principals are perfect for their roles and they perform them just right. Well done all around.
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    I occasionally use a paraphrase of this at work :eek::

    CIA Boss: What did we learn, Palmer?
    CIA Officer : I don't know, sir.
    CIA Boss: I don't fuckin' know either. I guess we learned not to do it again.

    The entire exchange at the end is just comedy gold and the big payback for some directionless lulls in middle of the film.
     
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    Louis XVI

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  • #25,743
    dio82 said:
    I occasionally use a paraphrase of this at work :eek::

    CIA Boss: What did we learn, Palmer?
    CIA Officer : I don't know, sir.
    CIA Boss: I don't fuckin' know either. I guess we learned not to do it again.

    The entire exchange at the end is just comedy gold and the big payback for some directionless lulls in middle of the film.
    Click to expand...
    Just an incredibly funny scene. My favorite bit:

    CIA Officer : He was trying to board a flight to Venezuela. We had his name on a hot list, the CB people pulled him in, uh. Don't know why he was going to Venezuela.

    CIA Superior : You don't know?

    CIA Officer : No, sir.

    CIA Superior : We have no extradition with Venezuela.

    CIA Officer : Oh. So what should we do with him?

    CIA Superior : For fuck's sake, put him on the next flight to Venezuela!
     
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    dio82

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  • #25,744
    Louis XVI said:
    Just an incredibly funny scene. My favorite bit:

    CIA Officer : He was trying to board a flight to Venezuela. We had his name on a hot list, the CB people pulled him in, uh. Don't know why he was going to Venezuela.

    CIA Superior : You don't know?

    CIA Officer : No, sir.

    CIA Superior : We have no extradition with Venezuela.

    CIA Officer : Oh. So what should we do with him?

    CIA Superior : For fuck's sake, put him on the next flight to Venezuela!
    Click to expand...
    It is just this whole dynamic of inversion of expectations, that is so fundamentally funny.

    Something horrible happens, boss is (y):biggreen:(y), "thank god horrible thing happened"

    But something that one would think that is good, boss is like :eek::oops:, "Jesus Christ, stop that!"
     
    Louis XVI

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  • #25,746
    I watched One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest for the first time in a long while last night. It’s still a great movie, though some parts definitely don’t hold up. For example, our hero/loveable scamp/symbol of human individuality being ground down by society was in jail for….statutory rape; he was 38 and the girl was 15. Yuck!

    I’d always seen the movie as a struggle between the noble individual and the oppressive Man, which I’m sure is how it was intended. But this time, I also saw it as a much darker, Freudian version of Inside Out. McMurphy was unbridled id, struggling with Nurse Ratched’s superego (“how will your mother feel when she finds out what you’ve done?”). The rest of the inmates were a combination of ego, struggling to mediate between id and superego, and archetypes of various Inside Out-style emotions (Christopher Lloyd was anger, Brad Dourif was anxiety, etc.). Anyway, it’s fun that the movie is open to such a variety of interpretations.
     
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    Carhole

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  • #25,748
    crombie said:
    Last Sentinel has been on my list for awhile, but I don't always enjoy 2 hour movies unless they really draw me in. I should have listened to my gut. This just drug on with a resolution to what happened but still felt like it went at least 30 minutes too long.
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    That one was definitely a slow burn. I did like the plot overall and some of the post-apoc themes were well handled. Sifting through the plastic flotilla for goods stuck in my mind as a ‘things already happening’ kinda gut punch.

    Sooo… wow, nice job on Darth Matter. I cannot wait to see how it’s wrapped (non book reader or first run viewer here). I thought that things were really picking up in e7 and then oh no, the plot goes exponential! Loving it. What solid acting, too. Another notch in ATV+ original “must see” productions’ belt. Now if they’d just release Severance S2 already!
     
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  • #25,749
    Carhole said:
    Now if they’d just release Severance S2 already!
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    I was looking for info about that last week. Apparently, because of the writers and actors strikes, and then various scheduling issues, filming of the last chunk of the season didn't start until January and then wrapped in April. Apple showed a teaser clip at WWDC a couple of weeks ago. No release data announced, but guessing late summer or the fall.
     
    Hound of Cullen

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  • #25,753
    Shudder has a Korean film called "Exhuma" which starts with a baby that won't stop crying. A pair of shamans are brought in and diagnose him with grave sickness. So the shamans team up with a geomancer and an undertaker to dig up, re-consecrate, and cremate the remains. Things don't go as planned.

    I thought it was enjoyable, more from a "here's a dip into some South Korean culture that you've never heard of" than as a horror story. Of the western films it feels most like, I'd pick "The Exorcist." There's nothing Catholic about it, but the feel of the supernatural intruding on everyday life was similar. And the focus was more on the characters in our little team than it was on the haunts.

    I liked how the two shamans start off not really liking the other two, but, by the end they've all grown close.

    It was a bit over-long, as is common with a lot of movies these days. One "chapter" had an awful lot of running back and forth. that easily could have been cut. But, overall, I enjoyed it.
     
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  • #25,754
    Papageno said:
    Re: The Office (US version), I remember watching its shot-for-shot remake of the UK version's first episode and thinking "They have to change something here real quick or it's toast." Something about how Ricky Gervais portrays the character David Brent makes one understand that he's such an idiot he can't help himself*, and thus you pity him a bit. The same lines coming out of Steve Carell's Michael Scott's mouth just make you think he's an irredeemable asshole.

    *although, eventually, even David Brent redeems himself somewhat toward the end of the series' run, IIRC.
    Click to expand...
    There were a couple episodes after the main two seasons. One was a christmas episode about an office party, where David Brent is actually a half-way decent guy, and ends up not traumatizing his date. I think he kind of redeems himself perhaps.

    Then there's a second mini-series where they go on the road because David wants to tour with his music. It's just really sad in that uniquely British way. He's not quite an asshole, but he's also still completely oblivious to social norms and refuses to receive feedback or evaluate himself realistically. You end up feeling really sorry for him, while still being annoyed at him. Which is how most people in the show feel.

    But both are worth watching if you like the style of The Office (UK). David Brent is just such an amazing charicature of a person, and is really some of Ricky Gervais' best work.
     
    Quarthinos

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  • #25,755
    My wife had been told that Doctor Who was good, and we have Amazon Prime, so we tried to watch it. I don't know who was in charge of Prime Video's cataloging, but Doctor Who is a mess. There's Classic Doctor Who, which is before it was "cancelled" by the BBC in the 90s, and then there's just Doctor Who. But figuring out which actor is playing Doctor in a particular season requires external help. Eventually we settled on Season 3, which is good enough (although not sure why I had to pay $12.47 for something about twenty years old, when I'm already paying for Prime). Along the way we also went down the BritBox hole and got a free trail...

    Has anyone else watched the first season of (old school) Doctor Who? That show is dire. I guess the 60s were a very different place in England versus the US, because I'm pretty sure I Love Lucy is better than that tripe. We watched the first three episodes before we got frustrated with the high school level of acting (England does have stage actors, but I guess they didn't work for the BBC back then!) I thought damsels could have a role other than "distressed" back then, but I guess not. And season 1 of Who has two different damsels both in different types of distress, and I think Boris Karloff had better lines as Frankenstein's Monster! Episode four of Season 1 is the first appearance of the Daleks, so I might try and convince my wife to finish at least that arc, because the newer seasons we're watching have just started the Dalek invasion of 1930s Manhattan, and I'm (morbidly..) curious if there's actually anything in the original Dalek storyline that ties to the more current ones. BTW, the very first Doctor is a complete ass, and not in the more likeable way the more recent Doctors are.
     
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  • #25,756
    Quarthinos said:
    My wife had been told that Doctor Who was good, and we have Amazon Prime, so we tried to watch it. I don't know who was in charge of Prime Video's cataloging, but Doctor Who is a mess. There's Classic Doctor Who, which is before it was "cancelled" by the BBC in the 90s, and then there's just Doctor Who. But figuring out which actor is playing Doctor in a particular season requires external help. Eventually we settled on Season 3, which is good enough (although not sure why I had to pay $12.47 for something about twenty years old, when I'm already paying for Prime). Along the way we also went down the BritBox hole and got a free trail...

    Has anyone else watched the first season of (old school) Doctor Who? That show is dire. I guess the 60s were a very different place in England versus the US, because I'm pretty sure I Love Lucy is better than that tripe. We watched the first three episodes before we got frustrated with the high school level of acting (England does have stage actors, but I guess they didn't work for the BBC back then!) I thought damsels could have a role other than "distressed" back then, but I guess not. And season 1 of Who has two different damsels both in different types of distress, and I think Boris Karloff had better lines as Frankenstein's Monster! Episode four of Season 1 is the first appearance of the Daleks, so I might try and convince my wife to finish at least that arc, because the newer seasons we're watching have just started the Dalek invasion of 1930s Manhattan, and I'm (morbidly..) curious if there's actually anything in the original Dalek storyline that ties to the more current ones. BTW, the very first Doctor is a complete ass, and not in the more likeable way the more recent Doctors are.
    Click to expand...
    (HBO) Max has all the new Doctor Who up through the end of Jodi Whitaker's time, and Disney+ has the newest season.
     
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  • #25,757
    cwbecker said:
    (HBO) Max has all the new Doctor Who up through the end of Jodi Whitaker's time, and Disney+ has the newest season.
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    Giant if, but IF you can put up with ads there's a couple of different ad-supported streaming services Pluto and Tubi to name a couple have a rotating "channel" of classic Who on it as well.
     
    Backstop

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  • #25,758
    Just started A Gentleman in Moscow on Paramount. Two eps in and so far it hews pretty close to the book. Except... except... one of the earliest scenes at the barber's chair is Rostov getting his big ol' Hercule Poirot mustaches shaved off.

    The Count resumed his place in the chair.
    ‘A clean shave,’ he said to the barber. ‘A clean shave, my friend.'”
    Click to expand...

    But in the show he just gets the curly handle-bar parts trimmed off, and keeps a full chevron or walrus mustache. It seems like a quibble, but it's an important point later in the book and also is supposed to attract the attention of another character from across a busy dining room. Just feels weird that such they'd switch the plot point to "he gets the last 20mm of his mustches cut off.
     
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