Movie/TV recommendations

[Ben X]

Ooh, it's on Netflix UK, so I'll try and watch it while avoiding all the spoilers Netflix shove in your face at every opportunity. (Adding to your list? Have a synopsis! Buffering? have a screen-filling, seemingly random grab from the film! Paused the film for two seconds? Have a synopsis again just in case you missed it!)

 

I recently saw:

 

Lucy, which was more interesting than the Black Widow/Bourne film I was expecting and moves more in the

Akira/2001 Space Odyssey

direction, but still has a load of Besson tropes and is quite messy and directionless.

 

Sin City 2 - similar opinion to the first one, which is it generally loses the comic/cool timing of the original comics, the copious voice-over feels overdone to the point of a Zucker Brothers film, and makes some strange minor changes, always for the worst. Okay, and probably more enjoyable if you haven't read the comics, but just like those, the films start to feel very repetitive very quickly.

 

22 Jump Street. Enjoyable and I was chuckling throughout but, despite ramming jokes about their self-awareness of it into the ground, is basically a re-run of the first film, while ironically less interesting and trope-defying in an attempt to be a little different from the first. The credit sequence is phenomenal, though.

[miffy495]

In my periodic poll to see what British comedians I enjoy are up to, I noticed that Matt Berry has been in two shows I haven't seen, Toast of London and House of Fools.  Has anyone watched them?  Are either of them worth tracking down?

 

[tegan]

 

 

 

 

 

Eeeeeeeeeeeeee

[tegan]

By the way, I watched Godzilla the other night. Almost everything about it is fantastic. It does terrified awe with the same grace that the original Jurassic Park did, it manages to cut back and forth between nightmarish Apocalypse Now scenarios and super fun monster action without ever feeling disjointed, and the music in particular does a great job of keeping the idea that this is a fifties monster movie intact despite all the modern trappings. I have only a few complaints:

 

1) Lieutenant Thickneck is the most boring goddamn protagonist. I mean, you need to have a human protagonist because you can't have too much Godzilla or you spoil him, but this guy is just the worst. Bryan Cranston's character has very clear motivation and pathos and goals, which makes it a whole lot worse when his son takes over and he has nothing to do and no reason to do it.

2) I don't normally bring up the Bechdel Test on here, but this movie comes so tantalizingly close to passing it. Nurse Wife and Work Friend have a conversation about evacuating the city, but it turns out they're only interested in making sure that Nurse Wife's son makes it out okay. Of the four main female roles (Dead Mom, Science Assistant, Nurse Wife, and Work Friend), only one of them has any dialogue not directly relating to either Lieutenant Thickneck or the kid.

[BusbyBerkeley]

Blue Ruin was added to Netflix streaming this week and it's one of my favorites of this year. Has a similar kind of tone to early Coen Brother's films like Blood Simple. Dude starts off a bloody chain of events that he is absolutely not prepared for. Check it out!

[syntheticgerbil]

I ended up seeing Mood Indigo the other day because Alamo opened another theatre that showed it a week after my vacation ended thank god. I don't know if I can really judge it though because it's the version that is missing 30 minutes that everyone was mad about. It was enjoyable even though there was so much going on and I really liked how the visuals matched up constantly with the tone, where the stop motion animations, color, and pace were in tune. Very much just an absurd film but in a good way. I tried for a while to figure out what was chopped in that 30 minutes, because the last part where the movie became very dark and sombre seemed to be very abrupt, which sucks.

 

I'm guessing by the reviews it's forever going to be an uneven film, but I am so glad it was made.

[Bjorn]

I watched Lars von Trier's Nymphomaniac (Vol. 1) last night.

 

It was fabulous, and I can't think of anything to say about it that won't make me sound like an insufferable fanboy, even though it's the only one of his movies I've seen.

[Ben X]

I'm planning to watch that soon. I hear that Vol 2 is not nearly as good, though.

[Ben X]

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D more like Agents of C.O.M.P.L.E.T.E.A.N.D.U.T.T.E.R.D.O.G.S.H.I.T amirite

 

Has anyone been watching this? Does it get worth watching at any point in the first season? The first 2 or 3 episodes were dreadful...

[JonCole]

I heard that when Agents intersected with the Thor and Captain America movie plotline events, it got a bit better.

 

I feel like that show suffered a lot from the 22-episode network season length. If it was a tighter 13 episodes or something, they wouldn't need so much filler crap. I'll probably end up picking it back up and finishing the season.

[Bjorn]

I'm planning to watch that soon. I hear that Vol 2 is not nearly as good, though.

 

The preview for Vol 2 makes it look much more violent than Vol 1.  1 is dark at times, and depressing, but also thoughtful and funny and sweet and strange. 

 

I do feel like movies that are about sex and sexuality have a lower bar to cross for me to be considered good, because of their relative rarity.  We've got thousands of movies which are essentially dissertations on the nature of violence and murder, but so few that are about the hows and whos and whys of sex.  And of those, the ones exclusively exploring a woman's sexuality are even fewer. 

[Roderick]

I liked Agents of SHIELD, it really scratched that Marvel itch. At its core it's better version of Warehouse 13. Once it gets going, it's a fun and soapy thing, especially when it intersects with the movies. Don't expect anything grand, it's a lot of goofy fun and that's great.

[Ben X]

So, what, around halfway? Or are you saying that the first few episodes were great fun and I was just taking them too seriously?

[miffy495]

Everything I've heard from people that watch it is that it spun its wheels until Winter Soldier came out, and then when shit went down in that movie they were free to start doing cool shit in the show. The problem was that the show started months before a movie that had a big revelation that the show had to wait for before it could get going. My intention is to marathon it once DVDs come out and try and get a big-picture view of the show.

[lizzyinthesky]

Yah, agents of SHIELD got enjoyable once WInter Soldier hit and the big plot twister that revealed 

Hydra had infiltrated SHIELD up to the highest levels and Fury and Cap decide to burn it all down and start over.

Huge gamechanger for the show, but they were kind of put in a situation where they had to wait for that movie to happen.

 

Also Bill Paxton is in most episodes of the back-half of that season and Kyle MacLachlan and Lucy Lawless are becoming recurring characters this season. I am hopeful.

[Ben X]

I watched a couple of episodes later on, from where

Sif (pronounced jif)

shows up. They weren't amazing telly or anything but they were better than the first two or three. It still has a load of dreadful dialogue and supposedly brilliant people doing incredibly stupid things, but it was better. It looked nice and had well choreographed/directed action, too.

 

Apparently the next episode, ep 17 "Turn, Turn, Turn", takes place after Cap 2 and immediately raises the quality plus fixes a load of previous character/plot annoyances. 

[Hermie]

Yeah, the show took a better turn after the Winter Soldier reveal. It's still cheesy as hell, but more coherent. I'm enjoying it the same way I am Psych, early Buffy, Eureka or Doctor Who (Or, well, the Marvel movies). There's even a plot twist I genuinely gasped at. 

[Professor Video Games]

Over the weekend I watched the whole first season of Bojack Horseman, a new-ish Netflix animated series. The first few episodes are kind of terrible, but there was something compelling about the characters and story arc that I couldn't put my finger on (despite the premise of washed up hollywood actor being a bit cliche) and I stuck with it. It really finds its groove in the second half of the season and has some genuinely good episodes. Also I really love the title sequence. Has anyone else watched it?

[deleted user]

_

[brkl]

I love the title sequence, but I've only watched it because Netflix has slim pickings.

[Bjorn]

Probably late to this conversation, but went and saw Guardians of the Galaxy last night.  That was great!  It might be my favorite of the Marvel movies so far, probably in part because I have no familiarity with any of the characters, so no preconceived notions.  It's also just really fun, which is actually what I want out of the Marvel Universe movies.  The Nolan Batman trilogy kind of stomped my interest in "serious" superhero movies into the ground for awhile. 

 

Oh yeah, and end credits spoiler:

 

I really want to rewatch Howard the Duck now, as I haven't seen it since I was a kid, probably in junior high.

[dium]

Over the weekend I watched the whole first season of Bojack Horseman, a new-ish Netflix animated series. The first few episodes are kind of terrible, but there was something compelling about the characters and story arc that I couldn't put my finger on (despite the premise of washed up hollywood actor being a bit cliche) and I stuck with it. It really finds its groove in the second half of the season and has some genuinely good episodes. Also I really love the title sequence. Has anyone else watched it?

 

Yes. I really like it. I wasn't sold on the first few episodes either... all the jokes felt cliched and routine, like a bad multi-cam sitcom losing the laugh track and trying to be "edgy". I'm thankful that my girlfriend wanted to stick with it, because every episode was significantly better than the one before it.

[tegan]

Halloween time! I rewatched The Monster Squad and Sweet Home. Both hold up surprisingly well, outside of Monster Squad being surprisingly filthy (and holy shit; kids smoking in movies. What the hell, eighties?) and Sweet Home's baffling casting decision of trying to pass off a 26 year old woman as a kid.

[tegan]

Oh man, they're making a Parasyte movie. I had no idea.

 

[Gwardinen]

Just watched Palo Alto. It's actually pretty well acted, especially considering most of the people in it are quite young. But it's gorram depressing at times. Pretty relentlessly focusses on the things teenagers do wrong, and the toll it takes. There are only about two good decisions in the whole film.