Movie/TV recommendations

[Patrick R]

One was a PBS game-show, the other was a Saturday morning cartoon.

[Bjorn]

Sorry, I worded that poorly, I'm just shocked the cartoon didn't have a better song given how catchy the game show song was (and I'm pretty sure the game show song predates the cartoon show).  I don't think I ever watched the cartoon. 

[Brannigan]

yea the cartoon was a while after the game show

[Ben X]

No love for the Mel Gibson Hamlet? (Not sure I ever watched it myself.)

 

Re. The Guest and You're Next, these are both now on my watchlist, but only because of many hearty recommendations - they both look like derivative crap!

[elvaq]

In addition to the Branagh, there's the 1948 one with Olivier and a 2009 BBC TV movie with David Tennant and Patrick Stewart.

 

I have seen too many filmed Hamlets at this point but these were my favorite two.

 

Also Lion King

 

 

No love for the Mel Gibson Hamlet? (Not sure I ever watched it myself.)

 

Re. The Guest and You're Next, these are both now on my watchlist, but only because of many hearty recommendations - they both look like derivative crap!

 

You're Next is pretty dang good, I'd say. Really enjoyed it. Also heard that The Purge series is surprisingly good, can anyone corroborate?

 

Watched the Carrie remake the other night after entirely too much wine and pizza. Watchable but also skippable. Meh

[BusbyBerkeley]

I've not seen The Purge movies but aside from that wonderfully hook-y premise I've heard they aren't very good.

Seriously though The Guest is fucking good as hell. Highly, highly recommended.

[Gwardinen]

I have seen too many filmed Hamlets at this point but these were my favorite two.

 

Also Lion King

 

No joke, this is why I'm asking. I saw the Lion King musical theatre show on Tuesday and it reminded me that I fucking love the Lion King. So I decided I should finally check out the thing that it's based on.

 

Also somewhat coincidentally I rewatched O recently, which is a modern retelling of Othello, so that contributed too.

[Patrick R]

I guess I can be an opposing voice and say that I can't believe The Guest wasn't DTV because everything about it, from the acting to the writing to cinematography, is super low-rent. But people really really really like that 80's-esque score.

 

You're Next is pretty good but it is one of the ugliest looking movies I've ever seen. Adam Wingard is a pretty pedestrian director.

[brkl]

Hamlet 2000 with Ethan Hawke.

 

Haven't actually seen it, but I would love to. I guess Ethan Hawke gets on most people's nerves, though.

[juv3nal]

Strange Brew is Hamlet, sorta.

[Ben X]

Yeah, the first Purge was not very good. I didn't see the second one.

[tegan]

Does anyone have a recommendation for a good adaptation of Hamlet?

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8rxZDB8LNw

[Erkki]

So my Jarmusch binge took me to finding some cool stuff, not all by Jarmusch. La Samourai was clearly a huge inspiration for Ghost Dog. Leningrad Cowboys Go America had Jarmusch in a minor role, It also feels like something I should have definitely seen before, having been aware of Leningrad Cowboys forever (as a kid I even saw them perform), but I actually hadn't seen the movie that created them. I'd say it's worth watching - a road movie about a fictional Finnish or Russian (not sure) band with weir haircuts going to America since they're not wanted back home. Fishing with John seems kind of cool, but I only watched the first episode so far. I also saw the earliest Jarmusch films, as I hadn't seen any of the ones before Night on Earth fully.

 

Permanent Vacation (his first) -- this movie already shows some of Jarmusch's characteristics, but it's a bit boring and it doesn't feel like it has anything much to say. However, his next movie Stranger Than Paradise is really something already, showing immigrant's lives in American cities. Turns into a road movie about 1/3 in. Down by Law really seems to focus on showing off the actor's skills, where 3 of the main characters are low-lives who end up sharing the same prison cell. Mystery Train ties 3 completely different stories together by having their protagonists end up staying at the same shitty Memphis hotel.

 

Night on Earth I had seen multiple times before on local television. I think this might actually be one of the most popular Jarmusch films in Europe? I don't remember seeing any of his other's on TV. It's really good, but again I'm left wondering if it really has anything meaningful to say? That taxi drivers all over the world might be assholes?

The first one, played by Winona Ryder is perhaps the least assholish, except by knowingly blasting music while her client is trying to have a phone call. The second one isn't even a real taxi driver, and expects his clients to put up with his total lack of driving skill. The third one tries to prove to his clients that he is better than them. The fourth one first taunts his client before even picking him up, then treats him like a stereotype and completely ignores his actual presence in the car, The final one, while he does tell a really touching story, diminishes the stranger's problems by comparing them to his own, even getting two of the 3 friends to kind of turn against the most wasted and troubled one.

 

Anyway, while already then Jarmusch had a rather distinct style, it's safe to say that his style took a turn to even more weirdness with Dead Man in 1995 and everything that followed (Ghost Dog, Broken Flowers, Limits of Control, Only Lovers Left Alive). I loved Dead Man and saw it 3 times the first week it was in cinemas, and pretty much became a Jarmusch fan (although I didn't really start following his career yet as my access to movies was limited then). Somewhy it took me so long to get around to his earliest stuff, but I'm really happy to have finally found the time to watch those movies.

[Erkki]

Oh, and I almost forgot, I actually wanted to post about some other movies (I saw a lot of movies last week). Well, for some I can just confirm that some movies mentioned here multiple times already were really good: Gone Girl (it blew my mind, but I don't really watch mystery movies so maybe I'm just susceptible) and The Guest (is very predictable for the first 1/3, but quite well done nevertheless).

 

Gone Girl left a big enough impression that I looked up some other Ben Affleck movies, which I didn't really know about. Gone Baby Gone was his debut as a director, I think, and is in some ways remarkably similar to Gone Girl, although it never gets to being as suspenseful, IMHO. The Town is different, a really good story about bank robbers. So turns out Affleck is a really good mystery director, which came as a very positive surprise to me. I guess I just ignored a lot of Hollywood movies over some recent years.

[Patrick R]

Gone Baby Gone is good, but Gone Girl was directed by David Fincher, not Ben Affleck.

[Erkki]

Wow, how did I even think it was? I don't really know.

[miffy495]

I actually thought that The Town was really obnoxious and predictable, except that it introduced me to Jeremy Renner. That guy was awesome.

[TychoCelchuuu]

I don't understand why anyone likes The Town. It's like if you took the style out of Heat and replaced it with bad melodrama.

[Henroid]

So everyone knows that The Colbert Report is no more right?

 

They (Comedy Central) got Larry Wilmore to fill the slot with a new TV show. I was really skeptical of the idea, because any time he appeared on The Daily Show it wasn't really all that entertaining or enlightening. Luckily I was proven wrong about my skepticism because The Nightly Show is actually pretty decent. He's gone with a one-topic-a-night, roundtable format. If anyone is a fan of TDS / CR, TNS is a pretty good inclusion into all that kind of political talk.

 

Just to point it out ahead of time, the roundtable isn't just a bunch of people agreeing with each other. So far, every episode I've seen, there's been at least one person among the group that differs in a big way from the general consensus / opinion.

[deleted user]

_

[Brannigan]

Pretty sure he showed up in the venture bros special but colbert is taking over the late show from letterman.

 

I do really enjoy the nightly show when I have time to actually sit down and watch it.  Keeping it 100 is a pretty great segment.

[Roderick]

I've been pretty invested in Last Week Tonight with J. Oliver, since it's an easy 15 minutes to watch on Youtube whenever I feel like it.

 

I watched the last, celebrity-studded episode of the Colbert Report. Man, some of those people were really awkward in there. Still, a goofy send-off for the character.

[Mawd]

That sucks, Colbert Report owned multiple bones. Hopefully this will give Steven more time to appear in The Venture Bros, which has recently come out with an incredibly crazy special bringing together so many crazy plot points and setting up the next season. If you've seen every other Venture Bros episode until now, go watch it, otherwise, go watch every other Venture Bros episode in chronilogical order. The first season or two has a bit janky animation, but it picks up really fast.

 

The Venture Bros: For people who love sci-fi, saturday morning cartoons and failure.

 

Oh wasn't that episode so much fun? Now we just have to wait another ~10 months before the series starts up again. 

I can't be mad though. I must have watched that Halloween episode 6 times while waiting for season five. Come to think of it that show's about due for a rewatch.

[Henroid]

Venture Bros. is pretty amazing with how much the creators build up dramatic moments, be it in a single episode or over the course of a season, and then they just drop the audience throw a trapdoor of bullshit. Those guys are so good at what they do, I adore them.

 

It's too bad Colbert got too busy to continue doing Professor Impossible's voice beyond season 2.

[Bjorn]

I was about to link and make a snarky comment about the Poltergeist reboot, until I actually read the article and thought about it for a second.  It is still likely to be terrible, but this is one horror movie where revisiting the menace of the television could be interesting given the number of screens in the average American house now.