ysbreker

Movie/TV recommendations

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I watched The Signal but didn't like it that much. Some good ideas but boring implementation. Still, that trailer looks interesting. Maybe trying to be Blade Runner will do them good, but I have reservations for now.

 

I'll admit I liked it far more for its premise and effects (and a little bit for its performances, <3 me some evil brooding Fishburne) than its actual story and execution. Same deal for District 9, actually, even though that manages to be a bit more inventive. I just like that small scope, scrappy sci-fi that doesn't try to be too big for its britches.

 

Just watched all 3 Rush Hour films again with the girlfriend. Good lord Carter is a horrible chauvinist douchebag but they're so goddamn entertaining.

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I'll admit I liked it far more for its premise and effects (and a little bit for its performances, <3 me some evil brooding Fishburne) than its actual story and execution. Same deal for District 9, actually, even though that manages to be a bit more inventive. I just like that small scope, scrappy sci-fi that doesn't try to be too big for its britches.

 

Just watched all 3 Rush Hour films again with the girlfriend. Good lord Carter is a horrible chauvinist douchebag but they're so goddamn entertaining.

 

Rush Hour 2 is one of my favorite movies for some reason. I think the series is always trying to balance the partnership between Lee and Carter by giving both their moments and foibles, but the best thing that works about them is that they're both basically huge idiot assholes.

 

End of the Tour was great, Jason Segel made me forget he was Jason Segel, and Jesse Eisenberg is so good at being terrible. The audience I watched it with was super receptive to the humor. 

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Have watched the first 3 episodes of 'Between' on Netflix. To avoid some inevitable spoilers I would recommend not reading the show blurb and just diving straight in. The premise has been used plenty of times (mysterious outbreak in small town) but it has been effective. Also, this show is fairly brutal with its deaths so far.

 

The acting is so-so but above the usual par of the genre and it does improve as the series progresses.

 

Anyway it is a definite thumbs up to the show and I was surprised by how much I have been enjoying it. I also like that the standard pacing of a TV show isn't required (each episode doesn't have to end on a cliff hanger and there doesn't have to be a 'beat' every 10 minutes) because of the Netflix funding.

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The Equalizer is a well-made and watchable but utterly rote film with no character arcs, peril or even much story to speak of. It does have one of the most elaborately shot "walks away from explosion" sequences I've seen.

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Saw A Most Violent Year with the parents last night and man... It knocked me out.

Everything in that movie is underplayed and under the skin. It's an incredibly tense film and there's an air of violence that could erupt out of nowhere; and when violence does erupt, its dirty, nasty and mercenary. 

 

Another thing I liked about the film is it's alive. Everything that was happening that year--even the name implies--is shown through dialogue from the characters or the radio or through songs.

 

J. C. Chandler has become one of my favorite current US directors. 

 

EDIT: Actually, thinking about it and somewhat reading the New Yorker review of the film, it is a violent film; although, not the physical violence, we know; it's more about the violence that takes place between the words, deals, glances and risk taking between entrepreneurs and trying to gain and make more money and ground; it's a more muted violence.

 

Hmm, muted isn't the word, is most the explosive violence comes not from the blows from hands, but the blows of words towards other people and how devastating it can be for a person or people.

 

I'm fascinated by The Most Violent Year treated violence, but then again, I have a huge fascination with violence.

Later this weekend I plan on watching this:

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Just watched A Girl Who Walks Home Alone At Night again, on Blu-Ray

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I started buying Blu-Rays recently and this is my favourite so far. It includes well-done interviews and making-of, about 50 minutes I think, and some awesome deleted scenes, which I can understand why they were deleted, but they are good and almost combine into another short film. One small gripe I have is that the menu interactivity is bonkers, using the same color for both inactive and active menu items in a few cases (but it only really matters for stereo/5.1 selection screen). Inside the Blu-Ray case is a comic with 2 stories related to the main character, which is a nice touch. I liked the movie itself even more the second time, the only thing I didn't like that much being some music choices.

 

After Mad Max Fury Road, I think this might actually be my favourite movie from the last two or three years.

 

 

I love it so much.

 

The disco ball bedroom heartbeat scene is my favorite movie scene in recent memory. It's just so beautifully restrained and atmospheric, I don't know.

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I got a chance to see the I Am Chris Farley documentary, which gets broadcast and made available on VOD tonight.

 

I found it disappointingly effusive and guarded, in stark contrast to the excellent and unflinching The Chris Farley Show: A Biography in Three Acts that was published several years back, and which interviews many of the same people.  There's a strong sense that the Farley Estate influenced the heavily sanitized, even sappy, slant of the doc.  

 

The interviews still make it worthwhile, but this is the whitewashed documentary you would expect them to have made in 1998, not nearly twenty years after the fact.

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I saw The Gift last night. Pretty riveting stuff.

I guess it fell into some gross trope-y traps but honestly if you're going to tell a story about a reactive housewife (though she's not exactly a housewife), I feel like this is the way to do it. I think there's no way Gordo actually raped her. It creates symmetry with the high school gossip being lies. I was also pretty stoked that Robyn made the final decision of the film, closing Simon out of the baby room. She's pretty much the only one who had any character development.

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I wanted to like The Gift but despite excellent performances (especially from Bateman) and my general fondness for this sort of intimate thriller, the silliness of the villain collapses the whole thing. 

 

For some reason multiple-paragraph spoiler text isn't working for me, so forgive the pluralized tags...

 

If I'm Robyn I don't think the ambiguity of the rape would exactly comfort me after watching the video.  Gordo drugged Robyn and filmed himself groped her in a monkey mask...she's violated as a means of punishing Simon, which is a gross way of treating her as a character, especially since the movie pretended she was the protagonist for awhile.  Ultimately she's maybe raped as a twisted punchline.

 

I like the concept of Robyn coming to realize her husband's a mendacious dirtbag (kind of a Breaking Bad from the wife's POV), but I think the movie's insistence on being a thriller, complete with the Enigmatic Stalker template and the stock jump scares cheapened what could have been a more grounded and powerful adult drama.

 

Similarly, the concept of Bateman having created a vengeful enemy from a malicious old lie has potential, but it doesn't work because at no point is Gordo convincing as a real human being with his sophisticated psychological warfare, effortless identity fraud and general outlandishness.  He's not so much a vulnerable avenger as he is The Joker.

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Am I a bad person for wanting to see that.

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I caught Hector and the search for happiness last night, and man was it excellent. Simon Pegg has been absolutely fantastic in every movie I've seen of his, and this might just be his best work so far. He manages to do the funny movie with a message thing so well.

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I finally got around to watching A Most Violent Year. It's been a while since I've seen something so titanic and yet so restrained, it's not surprising that it almost has a perfectly flat spread of ratings on Amazon. It's hard for people to get behind, but I certainly could.

 

In other news, there's a podcast of three notable TV critics debating the best TV show of all timeThe Sopranos vs. The Wire vs. Deadwood. I honestly feel like the guy stumping for The Wire does not give nearly enough ground on what the other two shows have over his hobby horse, but otherwise it's a very good discussion about what makes TV dramas great.

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I finally got around to watching A Most Violent Year. It's been a while since I've seen something so titanic and yet so restrained, it's not surprising that it almost has a perfectly flat spread of ratings on Amazon. It's hard for people to get behind, but I certainly could.

 

In other news, there's a podcast of three notable TV critics debating the best TV show of all timeThe Sopranos vs. The Wire vs. Deadwood. I honestly feel like the guy stumping for The Wire does not give nearly enough ground on what the other two shows have over his hobby horse, but otherwise it's a very good discussion about what makes TV dramas great.

 

I also need to finish re-watching Deadwood and get round to re-watching the Sopranos after reading this. One of the guys just posted this article about the humanity of David Simon that is worth reading. HBO just announced they are in talks for a motherfucking cocksucking deadwood movie and I am tore between excitement and despair as I re-read this talk conversation.

 

Also started watching Mr.Robot and the USA network was the last place I would have expected so unlike what else is on tv. In the last two week I was talking to people at 2 different birthday parties and both of them brought up this show as something I should watch and they were right. The way it is shoot in particular is so different and there is something about Rami Malek that has me hoping he wins an Emmy. My only concern is how long this show can keep this up but better a spectacular rise and fall than USA usual blandness. 

 

Also talking about USA I started watching Playing house since it's two leads are the main voices of the WOMP it up podcast and I love nothing better than to hear Jessica St.Clair and Lena Preham banter back and forth.

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Just watched White God as it's now available on torrent (and probably paid digital channels too). Biggest disappointment of late, even as I was expecting to be a bit disappointed. I don't know, these things can be very subjective, but I didn't find the human acting in this movie to be any good, the camerawork was sloppy, as was the plot with characters who seemed totally unmotivated, just robots following their stereotypes. Only near the end did the characters start to become more-dimensional, but it was too late. There were a few nice shots, but sometimes the dog herds seemed like sloppy CGI. Overall I was just bored and I also thought the music didn't always fit the scenes. I really wanted to like it, but it just didn't work for me at all.

 

The canine acting was great, though and I want to see some making-of material.

 

[EDIT]Ok, wow, what do I know -- apparently the film was made without CGI. I was sure they couldn't have actually filmed such a huge herd of dogs, but I guess they did then. I guess I thought it looked fake because I couldn't believe it was real.

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I also need to finish re-watching Deadwood and get round to re-watching the Sopranos after reading this. One of the guys just posted this article about the humanity of David Simon that is worth reading. HBO just announced they are in talks for a motherfucking cocksucking deadwood movie and I am tore between excitement and despair as I re-read this talk conversation.

 

I hate to say it, more than anything because I think Deadwood is far and away the best show ever to appear on television even with its early end, but a Deadwood movie is almost certainly never going to happen. For some reason, from the moment that they declined to renew the actors' contracts and thereby doomed the show to cancellation, HBO has maintained that movie sequels were a standing possibility that held their interest, even if circumstances occasionally forced them to admit that said possibility was extremely low. Meanwhile, the sets have been torn down and a substantial minority of the actors have ongoing commitments, so I'm guessing that the most recent statement is a combination of pie-in-the-sky thinking and prudent PR, owing to Dillahunt discomfiting HBO slightly with his tweets. Even Milch has stopped talking about it since a 2011 deal fell through.

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The latest Rick and Morty is sublimely good.

 

The ending gave me the biggest laugh since they switched realities in season one and it ended on Morty's dumbfounded face. I nearly predicted it at the start but the episode was so full on that I got lost on the ride and forgot. This show is seriously cornering the market on moments of hilarious existential horror.

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The latest Rick and Morty is sublimely good.

 

The ending gave me the biggest laugh since they switched realities in season one and it ended on Morty's dumbfounded face. I nearly predicted it at the start but the episode was so full on that I got lost on the ride and forgot. This show is seriously cornering the market on moments of hilarious existential horror.

 

I loved it as well.

 

It felt almost like a spiritual successor to the fake-clip-show episode of Community way back when. Favorite moment is the bad memory flashback between morty and summer. So good.

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Watched Mad Max Fury Road in black and white (by turning saturation down). I think Miller may be right that this is actually the best way to view it. Although I loved the original comic-book colors, black and white made things seem more realistic by removing the exaggeration. It was harder to keep track of things in some scenes (although I think it could have been the fault of the rip, as it seemed jittery in a few places, especially the undercranked scenes), but on the other hand it brought out new details that were less noticeable the color version.

 

I wonder if it will ever be possible to see a realistically (or traditional-post-apocalyptically) colored version of this film.

 

I've now seen the movie 4 times and I expect by the end of the year this number will be at least double.

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I watched We Need To Talk About Kevin a while back and I kind of can't stop thinking about it. I feel like normally after a movie I have a pretty good grasp of a character, or at least have a basic emotional state of whether I like them or not but I still cant quite figure out Tilda Swinton's character Eva after about two months, but that's kind of amazing and why I love it. Its rare for a film to stick with me like that but I also don't want to go back to it again any time soon because of the subject material. Highly recommended,

 

I also recently watched The Zero Theorem and Only Lovers Left Alive, both good, both with Tilda Swinton (just a small part in the former). I like Tilda Swinton. She is good.

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Also I saw Taika Waititi's "Boy" recently and loved that. I know it's already been recommended here, so I'll just second it. Even liked it more than "What We Do in the Shadows" and it's a real step up from "Eagle vs Shark", which I also liked, though.

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