Movie/TV recommendations

[syntheticgerbil]

The Mindy Project has been picked up by Hulu after Fox didn't renew it and it's still really good and I like it a lot.

The first episode of Season 4 was rough, I hope it gets better.

 

My biggest issue of the show is it seems to never have any idea who is part of the regular cast. Everyone keeps disappearing or being retooled. Luckily the best characters seem to stay untouched though, so I keep watching.

[brkl]

So far Noah has surpassed my expectations easily. The first episode knocked it out of the park. The one with the dating app has been the weakest so far, but it's been pretty damn strong. The dating app is a soft topic and Jon's interviews were no different in those cases. Also, you are presuming that Trevor didn't want to promote that product and only did it for money. The vibe I got was that the product got promoted because they felt it had value.

[Merus]

I feel like these daily topical news shows generally require a couple of weeks to really see where they're ending up.

[miffy495]

The first episode of Season 4 was rough, I hope it gets better.

 

My biggest issue of the show is it seems to never have any idea who is part of the regular cast. Everyone keeps disappearing or being retooled. Luckily the best characters seem to stay untouched though, so I keep watching.

 

I'll hold out and see if 4 is accepted as being significantly better than 3. Seasons 1 and 2 were amazing, but 3 really felt like a let down to me. The only exception to this was the sub-plots around "An American Tale", which I thought were hilarious.

[elmuerte]

Just saw Terminator: Genisys. I am satisfied. It's not a great Terminator movie. It's not on the level of T1 and T2. I liked the story, I liked the action and humor, and it's ratio. The fan service was clearly present. But, it was mostly just another modern Hollywood action movie. Just like most action movies it's just non-stop action. There is no rest, there's no reflection.

I'm still not sure if I like T1 more than T2 or the other way around. T1 is just a different genre than T2, and the others. So, my current ranking is: (T1,T2), Terminator: Genisys, Terminator 3, ... the other one.

The best part of this movie is that they haven't fucked with the story line. They made it properly open and vague to fit in the story of T1 and T2 where T3 and the other one were breaking what was previously established. So props to the writers to not fuck up something with is seriously easy to fuck up.

 

I need a new Future Shock.

[Erkki]

The Martian is really good! Everything seems believable (mostly, I'd be curious to see comments from someone at NASA), and visually it's gorgeous. There were even several important female and black characters.

[Merus]

My housemate had minor quibbles - there's a couple of big scientific problems with the film that you kind of gloss over because it's the premise, and most of the little things are more 'astronauts/NASA wouldn't do that' rather than 'physics wouldn't do that'. Most of the time, though, what underlies those critiques is the idea that Hollywood's happy to use science as grist for the mill but they don't give a shit about the science, or the scientists, except for how they can be used. The Martian clearly does care about the people they're portraying and what they do. It's like how few nerds are really willing to nitpick the MCU: they changed so much shit, but the people involved clearly care about getting what's important right.

 

Still, as far as wek know, storms on Mars never get that strong, and Mars soil is toxic, not just inert.

[Ninety-Three]

I'm with Merus, The Martian earns so many brownie points for clearly giving a shit. As for nitpicks (this is the book version, but I assume the movie adopted these details, they're pretty big):

I suspect 175 kph winds at 0.006 atm aren't enough to turn an antenna into a spear, but I hate the math around wind so I'd rather give it to them than do the math. Also, I was surprised to find myself thinking that the character was stupid at one point. When he explained the hydrogen-burning plan, my first thought was "What about the unburned hydrogen?" It didn't ruin the moment because I didn't do the math and trusted the answer was "The Hab ends up with a 0.2% hydrogen atmosphere, below combustion density, and the author's not mentioning that because it's boring". It seemed like a character with more brains, knowledge and time than I really should have seen it coming.

[BadHat]

Holy shit Rick and Morty.

 

Rick and MORTY, you guys.

 

RICK AND FUCKIN' MORTY.

[Merus]

Ninety-Three:

 

Both come through intact, but the pacing for the hydrogen burning is set up to get laughs. Here's clever science man, doing clever science thing - wait, he's just blown himself up.

[brkl]

Huh, that episode did nothing for me.

 

Holy shit Rick and Morty.

 

Rick and MORTY, you guys.

 

RICK AND FUCKIN' MORTY.

[Cordeos]

I just finished Transparent it is a really good show. The characters are not the classic trope ridden drama characters and the man child character is properly represented as possibly the worst of them.

 

I tried starting Twin Peaks, but oh my the acting is bad, does it get better after the pilot?

[SuperBiasedMan]

Twin Peaks is a very flawed piece of work but one of the greats in my opinion. If you can accept some junky elements it's well worth watching. Plus you've got a podcast companion in Twin Peaks Rewatch (they always have a separate spoiler section so new viewers can listen to most of the episode safely).

[Ninety-Three]

 

Holy shit Rick and Morty.

 

Rick and MORTY, you guys.

 

RICK AND FUCKIN' MORTY.

 

Huh, that episode did nothing for me.

 

 

Same here.

 

I spent the first half of that sequence wondering where the punchline was going to be, and once I realized there wouldn't be one, I spent the second half becoming increasingly bewildered at the question of "Okay, how are they going to reset the status quo?" I like Rick and Morty entirely because it's funny, so I have no idea what they think they were doing shifting the tone like that.

[BadHat]

Well, I mean...

 

the show is no stranger to drama, really, only so far it's mostly taken the form of throw-away bits with little to no resolution. Like evil Morty from season 1 (this is totally going to come up again with Rick's escape in S3, seriously how can it not), or Rick nearly killing himself over Unity in S2. Even things that are just presented as really dark gags, like the reality switch in Rick Potion No. 9 are treated with permanence, since Morty brings it up again later in a pretty serious way. So like... I don't think this is really a huge left turn for the show, tonally? The side characters on Earth were already kind of useless (whoa haha his name is principle VAGINA? whaaaaaaaat let's have another joke about that one lol), and they were more or less just paying lip service to the setting all season anyway (entire Earth transported to a galactic sing-off; nobody seems bothered about vampires at school in the Tiny Rick one; etc), so it seems like they're just doubling down on the weird scifi elements and scaling back the quaint family sitcom bits (Beth and Jerry need to have their marriage validated again, oh nooooooo!), which really was kind of overdue and seemed like it was only included in the first place to give the show some grounding run on sentence.

[Ozzie]

I tried starting Twin Peaks, but oh my the acting is bad, does it get better after the pilot?

 

I don't think it's bad, but exaggerated in a Lynchian and soap opera manner. Twin Peaks is somewhat a soap opera, therefore it takes a lot of cues from the style of acting typical for the genre. Also, the guy who plays the Sheriff isn't the best actor, or the one who plays James...but I feel that in the Lynch directed episodes both actors work well within their constraints. Otherwise lots of excellent actors are part of the cast, like Ray Wise, Grace Zabriskie, Sherilyn Fenn, Sheryl Lee, Richard Beymer, Peggy Lipton, Piper Laurie, Al Strobel...actually, too many to list.

Also, I second the recommendation for Twin Peaks Rewatch!

[Trip Hazard]

That's what I got from Twin Peaks as well, that it was deliberately melodramatic in order to mimic a shitty day-time soap opera. Not a UK soap opera, mind you. In those, the acting is usually fairly competent and the storylines usually hew more closely to reality. Somebody is being blackmailed because they cheated on their spouse? Check. Somebody is pregnant, and they're not sure if they should keep it? Check. A fire burns down the local pub, and nobody is quite sure how it began? Check. A train is derailed and kills several characters whose actors have recently expressed a desire to move away from TV and work in theatre? Check. 

 

In isolation, some of these things might be halfway believable, but when mad shit is happening EVERY SINGLE DAY, everybody would flee the town in terror, sure that it and themselves were under a curse.

 

(Sorry, I don't much care for soap opera)

 

Anyway, I've been watching Peaky Blinders and it's (largely) amazing. The depiction is Birmingham in 1919 seems to be very authentic, although I'm no historian/time-traveller, the casting is spot on and the acting is almost entirely wonderful. The actress who plays Grace does an okay job, but she's definitenly the weakest link in the chain. In addition, I'm not sure how

some of her tattling to the police could have gone unnoticed by Thomas, thoughtful and prudent as he is. It actually annoys me a lot

 

 Has anybody else seen it?

 

Edit: and the soundtrack is great

[twmac]

Yup, I also liked Peaky Blinders.

 

What bothered me more is the resolution of the barmaid and Thomas's arc. It was far too clean and ignores a much more interesting outcome.

[brkl]

How are the later seaaons? I know someone here didn't like the second one. I loved the first.

[BigJKO]

Well, I mean...

 

the show is no stranger to drama, really, only so far it's mostly taken the form of throw-away bits with little to no resolution. Like evil Morty from season 1 (this is totally going to come up again with Rick's escape in S3, seriously how can it not), or Rick nearly killing himself over Unity in S2. Even things that are just presented as really dark gags, like the reality switch in Rick Potion No. 9 are treated with permanence, since Morty brings it up again later in a pretty serious way. So like... I don't think this is really a huge left turn for the show, tonally? The side characters on Earth were already kind of useless (whoa haha his name is principle VAGINA? whaaaaaaaat let's have another joke about that one lol), and they were more or less just paying lip service to the setting all season anyway (entire Earth transported to a galactic sing-off; nobody seems bothered about vampires at school in the Tiny Rick one; etc), so it seems like they're just doubling down on the weird scifi elements and scaling back the quaint family sitcom bits (Beth and Jerry need to have their marriage validated again, oh nooooooo!), which really was kind of overdue and seemed like it was only included in the first place to give the show some grounding run on sentence.

 

I'm with you. That was a fantastic season finale.

[syntheticgerbil]

 Has anybody else seen it?

I got really annoyed at

rape being used like 3-4 times to further the plot. It's really uncalled for in such a short show and not very creative. Also the love triangle introduced in series 2 was really contrived and pointless soap opera junk. Then we spend all of this pointless screen time on mumbly one note yet inexplicably famous Tom Hardy (I seem to be the only one who despises him) instead of all of the other better actors and actresses around him that could really use more fleshing out, because again it's such a short show.

 

I'll keep watching but almost everything in series 2 spoiled me on the show. I remember being so excited after the greatness of series 1, as there are a few amazing scenes in there, and feeling so let down.

[Trip Hazard]

I haven't seen any of series 2! *sticks fingers in ears/eyes/nose*

[syntheticgerbil]

Oh, don't read any of that at all.

[Bolegium]

I just watched Girlhood.

 

It was sooo good that I got off my lazy arse to actually visit the forum for once and make a post about it. I should also probably get around to watching Sciamma's other films.

 

Since i'm here I might as well make a shout out to 'Magic Mike XXL' (yep it's actually really good and basically a self-aware 'fuck you' to the first film), and 'A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night' too (sorry Patrick R, haha).

Also i'll have the chance to see 'Dope' and 'The Lobster' in a cinema soon, and hopefully 'Victoria' gets screenings in Sydney, cos it sounds amazing.

 

Another movie that's also amazing: Girlhood.

[Bjorn]

I've been super enjoying the new Muppets show, much more than I had anticipated.  A friend of mine has written an impassioned defense of it after getting frustrated with seeing some hate on it from various corners of her social media.