Movie/TV recommendations

[Ben X]

I seem to have missed it. Thankfully I own it on DVD and have seen it a about a billion times.

[JonCole]

Guys holy shit Broadchurch. Binged it in two days on Netflix. So good. Highly recommended, probably the best thing I've watched all year.

[BadHat]

Anyone following the Eric Andre Show? Maybe I'm just a sucker for absurdity and non-seqitors but I like it so god damn much. It's into season 3 and hasn't declined in quality at all, but maybe that's the benefit of only having ten minutes to fill per episode.

[Mawd]

Anyone following the Eric Andre Show? Maybe I'm just a sucker for absurdity and non-seqitors but I like it so god damn much. It's into season 3 and hasn't declined in quality at all, but maybe that's the benefit of only having ten minutes to fill per episode.

 

I've watched a little of it. It's pretty fun. I think Hannibal's my favourite member in the show.

[namman siggins]

Anyone following the Eric Andre Show? Maybe I'm just a sucker for absurdity and non-seqitors but I like it so god damn much. It's into season 3 and hasn't declined in quality at all, but maybe that's the benefit of only having ten minutes to fill per episode.

Hannibal Burgess as Morpheous is the best thing ever.

[Nachimir]

Oh hell yes. I mainlined all of seasons one and two, then went looking for other stuff. They're

and I find it really hard to not laugh at the worst bits. A friend told me there's also not a single prank from the series that they don't regret. 

[Merus]

Hannibal Burgess as Morpheous is the best thing ever.

 

Is that Hannibal Buress? Because he's really good in Broad City, to the point where I expect he's just really good everywhere.

[namman siggins]

Yeah. My phone added a g. I liked when Hannibal took over the show.

On another point: the crème de le crème of movie podcasts has a new episode out

http://www.factualopinion.com/the_factual_opinion/2014/12/jughandle-earlobes.html#more

[thefncrow]

I really love The Eric Andre Show in a way I cannot at all explain.  Trying to reduce that show down to a description to tell someone I know just makes me realize that the description I could come up with makes it sound like something I would probably really fucking hate.

 

And Hannibal Burress is just all around amazing.  I've yet to watch Broad City, which I've heard is outstanding, but I managed to catch his stand-up set a few months back and was impressed as hell.

 

Also, he was at a Cavaliers game last week for some reason as press for some reason, and jumped into the Cavs' coach's post-game interview to ask "Even though you guys lost the game, is there still a part of you that thinks, ‘hey man, it’s just a game, life is pretty chill otherwise'?”

[Bjorn]

Weren't there some people here praising Under the Skin awhile back?  Can someone explain to me why they liked it, because I'm at a complete loss after watching it (and I've lost my movie picking privileges for a couple of weeks). 

[Gormongous]

Weren't there some people here praising Under the Skin awhile back? Can someone explain to me why they liked it, because I'm at a complete loss after watching it (and I've lost my movie picking privileges for a couple of weeks).

I'm on my phone, so I can't type anything too deep, but I thought it captured a truly alien experience, and thereby that presented rape culture in a way that was comprehensible and threatening for men. Not to mention the mesmerizing, headache-inducing presentation. I like the book a bit more, for working factory farming and consumer culture into the thematic offering, but they're both powerful works for me.

[Ben X]

Oh wow, The Eric Andre Show is available to stream online for free AND doesn't tell me to piss off because I'm not American! I like it already!

[Nachimir]

Weren't there some people here praising Under the Skin awhile back?  Can someone explain to me why they liked it, because I'm at a complete loss after watching it (and I've lost my movie picking privileges for a couple of weeks). 

 

I knew nothing about it in advance. I really enjoyed the slow burn, the

 

WTF reveal, and its attempt to get inside an alien psychology. Kind of like getting inside the mind of a cat or something.

 

It surprised me that I liked it, because I absolutely hate use of symbolism on centre stage for art/film/etc, but that's how I interpreted

 

the men wading into oil. It's symbolic of them being seduced, getting sucked in and destroyed by this thing, whatever it is, that consumes them. Ultimately it's a bleak story that leaves a lot unexplained, and I like that a lot. As horror stories go, it's not a particularly original one, but I love the way it's told. It tells the story through mundane feeling everyday events and places, without needing jump moments or a sudden insect face or SURPRISE DEMONIC VAGINA! It's not important what exactly the creature is or how exactly it kills. The focus is on what leads victims there, rather than what happens to them. The section of plot with her running away from the other creature serves just enough to illustrate that they have motives beyond killing and eating, without laying their psychology bare. It's the social horror of mundane conversations and everyday desire treading a path straight to death's door, and a repeated situation that outwardly looks plausible but has all kinds of little things wrong with it. It does a really fucking good job of using all of that to tell a horror story while getting away from some typical horror tropes.

 

But I can see how it's an acquired taste. I liked Upstream Colour and Stalker for similar reasons.

 

It's also interesting film making because:

 

Johannson drove the van around with the director in the back, picking up strangers on the streets and improvising conversations with them. Only later was it revealed to them what was going on, and not many people in the film are actors. They're all men who were willing to get into that van with a stranger. The disfigured one later coached Johannson on things she could say to seduce a man with a condition like his.

[Ben X]

The disfigured one later coached Johannson on things she could say to seduce a man with a condition like his.

 

Just to clarify:

 

he was someone they cast, not just happened to pick up on the street, though he hadn't done any acting before (iirc from the special features).

[Argobot]

I really liked Under the Skin's presentation of female and male sexuality. It takes a very adult —adult in the sense of well-considered, not gratuitous — look at both and presents them in a very unapologetic way. It's definitely a strange movie (so many people in the theater I saw it in walked out) but it struck a good balance between being smart and not taking itself too seriously. I wish there were more movies that are baffling to grapple with.

[namman siggins]

I really enjoyed Sarah Horrock's take in Under:

http://mercurialblonde.tumblr.com/post/90441248533

More about transgender and gender politics.

[Bjorn]

I really enjoyed Sarah Horrock's take in Under:

http://mercurialblonde.tumblr.com/post/90441248533

More about transgender and gender politics.

 

Thank you for that, it's the best thing I've read about Under the Skin so far. All three of us were pretty perplexed by it last night, and read several different reviews/essays on it after watching it and none of them particularly helped us.

And thank you to everyone else for your thoughts as well. I can see how each of you found those themes, and appreciated them. And there are individual scenes in it that are incredible. But as a whole, it just didn't stitch together for me. I usually have a pretty high tolerance for slow, drawn out movies, but not this time.  I can at least appreciate why other people enjoyed it now, even if it didn't work for me. 

[namman siggins]

May I also recommend this podcast

http://www.factualopinion.com/the_factual_opinion/2014/05/seventy-four-seventy-five-1.html

They talk about Under and have a more critical view on it. Starts at 0:29:00

I'm in-between with that film: both the cast and Horrock ring true to me; I need to re-watch the film again to get a better standing on it.

[miffy495]

So my birthday was on Friday. My SO got me the entire run of the Adam West Batman show on Blu Ray. My Christmas break is now set in stone.

[BadHat]

I saw Kevin Smith's latest one, Tusk, and... I don't even know.

[Erkki]

The Hobbit was not bad, but there are all kinds of things wrong with it. It's still based on a children's book, but made into a violent war movie.

[brkl]

It has about 40 minutes of a good movie in it after the dragon dies and before the battle begins.

[Mawd]

I saw 'The Drop' today starring James Gandolfini and Tom Hardy. It was well polished and pretty good although I don't think I'd watch it again unless I had access to cable one day and absolutely nothing better to do. 

 

I'm keen to see Nightcrawler, Mr. Turner, Big Hero 6, Birdman, The Imitation Game (although I hear they awkwardly navigated Turing's sexuality), Unbroken, Mortdecai (mostly for Jeff Goldblum -I don't really care for Johnny Depp since I haven't seen something good from him in some time), Foxcatcher (reeeeally want to see), The Theory of Everything, Ex Machina, and Inherent Vice.

I don't movie that much any more but the promotional booklet at the indie cinema I went to really sold most of these to me.

 

The Hobbit was not bad, but there are all kinds of things wrong with it. It's still based on a children's book, but made into a violent war movie.

 

I uhh, threw out all assumptions of what it was going to be from what it was based upon some time ago. This third movie was essentially Dwarf Fortress: The Movie and I enjoyed it pretty well.

I thought they killed the dragon off a little too swiftly although I suppose the makers know most people are going to end up binge watching them all while hung over on a Sunday (or maybe that's just the students I know?) so pacing for each individual film matters less.

 

[brkl]

The dragon should've been killed at the end of the previous movie. Having him around for this one made no sense and gutted the end of the last movie, which had a completely stupid action sequence to make up for no dragon killing.

[Mawd]

Yeah I would have preferred he karked it in the second film.