Octopus Overlords

I'm an odd duck who never watched Suicide Squad, but I am loving Peacemaker. I like how he doesn't actually have any super powers. And Robert Patrick is priceless.

Suicide Squad is also by James Gunn and equally as hilarious at times as Peacemaker. If you like the latter, you’ll like the former.

Pig is the odd film that's genuinely moving while being utterly absurd. It's very much not a joke, yet doesn't exist in a world that's quite real. Nicolas Cage is restrained, understated, and completely engrossing. The trailer isn't bad, but still kind of plays it up to be a ludicrous John Wick takeoff, while it's more of an indie flick about loss and memory. There are a lot of unlikely scenes that are allowed to just be rather than being intruded upon by mundane, ultra-realistic scenarios.

I think Pig is on Hulu. I’ve been meaning to watch it for a while. Thanks for reminding me. Cage is going through a little renaissance right now. I’m actually glad to see that. Bruce Willis has stepped into Cage’s former role as “actor who will be in any movie for $12.99 or more.”.

I see the final season of Ozark dropped so we jumped right into that. Thankfully they have a "previously on..." because I needed that.

Mrs. Nym just finished up a re-watch of House M.D., probably for the 6th or 7th time. She introduced it to me when we dated online... I remember watching the third season together with her remotely as it aired, when online watch parties were barely a thing.

This series has always frustrated the hell out of me. The premise is fantastic, and Hugh Laurie is so good. But it constantly refused to break free from its procedural shackles. It feels so 2000s. Sending House to a mental hospital and later prison for a few episodes was the best thing that ever happened to the series. But even there, there had to be a medical case each episode. For the first 2-3 seasons, this was fine. Seasons 1 and 2 are fantastic television, if a bit weighed down by network bloat. But despite some interesting gimmicks and likable new characters, the last several seasons dragged. As most network series that run this many seasons (eight) do, I suppose. Real character development took ages (though it definitely happened for most of the secondary characters).

I often imagine how good this series could have been as a prestige show that ran 6-10 episodes for 3-5 seasons. More of a Cracker or True Detective. But it was a little early.

We're nearing the end of S3 of Buffy. When S4 starts we'll start alternating with Angel, since that's how it unfolded back in the day. Overlooking the blurry standard definition video, Buffy is still Joss Whedon at his best.

Those were the last series Mrs. Nym watched. I'm not really a fan, but I get to watch what she's watching as living room background noise. She actually usually tolerates me when I get engrossed in the odd episode and then ask questions about the plot.

"How come their faces change?" "Why is Angel bad again?" "Isn't there a power imbalance in this relationship considering his literal age, though I realize at some point there's diminishing returns on the upper range?"

My wife has started re-watching The Mentalist on HBOMax. I'm usually doing something else while she watches, but I'll catch bits and pieces here and there. We watched the show during its initial run, and it still has its charms even if it's a bit formulaic.

Finished up "Made for Love" on HBO Max this weekend.

I suggest you not bother.

Watched The Last Duel on HBO Max with Matt Damon and Adam Driver, directed by Ridley Scott. I can see why it was not a success, since you have to sit through the same story three times and it wears a bit thin. The conclusion was somewhat satisfying but wasn't worth waiting for.

The whole point of The Last Duel is the three versions. It's very much a Rashômon style examination of gender in the middle ages. Each version layers in another aspect not found in the others, or outright contradicts the other version(s).

I liked it, myself. I expected to hate it, but it has some strong performances and a pretty intersting story to tell. When we get to the final version of events, we realize just how strong the lead actress' character really is.

Based on some conversations here I tracked down Once Upon a Time in the West on HULU. Classic western. Nice to see Henry Fonda as a bad guy who doesn't devolve into a mustache twirling caricature. The pace is glacial and the facial closeups excessive, but that is the way of Leone. And I forgot what a badass Jack Elam was. Too bad he was under utilized.

After all the talk about convoys, I decided to watch Convoy since it was free with ads (that I never saw) on Youtube. Not a bad film.

I heard it has a mighty convoy. And that they were trucking through the night.

Fuck dude they sure did

hepcat wrote: ↑Wed Mar 02, 2022 10:02 pm I heard it has a mighty convoy. And that they were trucking through the night.

Narrated by CJ McCall?

Just finished watching 1883. Man, gut wrencher. Acting is great, and does a good job showing how brutal life was.

So I got a year of AMC+ over the holidays during a sale. While perusing the available shows, I came across a western called That Dirty Black Bag. I love a good western and this is supposed to be a modern take on Italian spaghetti westerns from the 60s/70s. So I started watching it.

While I see the influences they mention, what I mostly see is a horrific version of the west. This show is pretty much full on horror. Gore, sinister forces, the whole 9 yards. I haven’t decided if I like it yet, but it has me curious as to where it’s going.

Been watching the New Wonder years, and it's been a pretty decent show. I was a pretty big fan of the original too. Well, the latest episode made a direct callback to the original in a quite satisfying way.

In the pilot to the original show, Winnie Cooper's family is pretty devastated to learn that their son Brian was shot and killed in Vietnam, to the point that it drives them to divorce.

In this new Wonder Years, elder brother Bruce also is serving in Vietnam and comes home injured and wracked with survivor's guilt. We learn that he had to leave his friend and squadmate behind on the battlefield when they were ambushed by gunfire in trying to save others that were down. He'd made a pact to his friend, that should anything happen to either of them, to contact the other's family at let them know.

As the episode comes to a close, we see little brother Dean (this show's Kevin) with his older brother Bruce, finding the strength to write to his friend's family. His friend's name was Brian, and upon looking at the picture of the girl next to her big brother, Dean asks who the pretty girl is.

“Gwendolyn, but he called her Winnie,” Bruce replies. Bombshell

https://tvline.com/2022/04/13/the-wonde ... ie-cooper/

https://www.cinemablend.com/television/ ... connection

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (the Nick Cage plays Nick Cage movie) is on one level an intentionally mediocre action comedy. On another level it's an introspective meta comedy with a redemption arc, and it works most of the time. It's well acted by both Cage and especially Pascal. It's sometimes genuinely funny (I'll always remember Pascal's "fake laugh" scene) but also frequently uninspired, and unfortunately its propensity for self-reference isn't fresh or finely tuned enough to carry the picture. This film had the potential to be completely bizarre and subversive, but instead it generally plays it safe. In some ways that's entirely fitting with the film's structure and theme, but I still view it as a massive waste of potential. Still, its blending of tropes was novel enough to keep me interested and left me feeling positive.

There's some beautiful contemporary camerawork here. I'm a little surprised it's rated so highly on RT (86%). It feels more like a 57 or 63% to me. It's not as quirky or as clever as the trailer suggests, but it's definitely a competent celebration of Cage's media personality and his adored legacy of mainstream schlock. Though I'd much rather see the story cut down to the adult drama about two men (plus the meta stuff) that the film itself alludes to, tongue-in-cheek. A bad movie plus a pretty good movie still only equals an average movie, even if the bad movie was a joke. In the hands of e.g. Spike Jonze or Harmon/Roiland etc. this film could have been something amazing and mind-bending, but it's clear that would have betrayed the vision of actual writer/director Tom Gormican.

Game of Thrones (I'm a dynosaur and I just heard about this series)

Sudy wrote: ↑Wed Jun 29, 2022 2:58 am I'm a little surprised it's rated so highly on RT (86%). It feels more like a 57 or 63% to me.

You thought it was okay, but feel that ~40% of the critics/audience should have disliked it? That seems odd.

You do remember, right, that RT is only a statement of whether something is "good" or "bad"? The percentage is not a reflection of how good/bad it is. 86% is the percentage of critics/audience that didn't think it was "bad". They could have all rated it at 51% "goodness".

Edit: We saw it. It was okay. I probably wouldn't go out of my way to see it again, but I'm also likely to stop and watch if I'm flipping channels in the future.

TheMix wrote: ↑Wed Jun 29, 2022 10:07 am You thought it was okay, but feel that ~40% of the critics/audience should have disliked it? That seems odd.

I understand, but yes. I was surprised 86% of reviewers liked/recommended it. I thought more of them should have thought it was a bad film.

While statistically you may be correct, I doubt there are a lot of 95% films that everyone only tolerated or 5% movies everyone barely disliked. Though I agree the concepts are frequently conflated, even by myself. I don't know what the statistical distribution would be, but I'd be interested to see it. If 95% of people think something is bad, I'm willing to bet a lot of them think it's especially bad. But I'm sure there are exceptions. Many review styles just don't allow for this degree of interpretation (or if they did, it would be the Metacritic score).

But I'm not a statistician and I've been up all night, so if this is fallacious thinking please let me know.

I guess I'm just less surprised that that high a percentage of reviewers thought it was worth watching. Perhaps it falls closer to the some "great" movie determinate/line to make more reviewers think it's worth spending a couple hours with. Not a "great" movie, just "worth a watch".

At the end of the day, that's really all RT is, right? A stamp of "worth watching" vs. "avoid watching"? Apparently the reviewers didn't think it fell into the latter category.

Yeah, I mean, I agree with them. I'm just surprised they agree with me? I think I usually wouldn't give a pass to a movie like this. But I think there's enough polish and novelty in it to warrant a viewing. And I guess the average review felt the same way, or better. FWIW the Metacritic rating is 68.

Ah. I hadn't looked. So I was trying to figure out if the 86% was the critics or the audience viewers.

I don't think the 86% is surprising if it's the latter. Cage, while often over-the-top, can be fun to watch. And I don't think he's become a pariah with viewers yet. And Pascal is on the up-and-up these days. Plus the pairing seems to work pretty well. I guess I am more surprised that the critics score was as high as it is.

Edit: Never mind. I completely misunderstood. I went and looked it up on RT. 86% critics and 87% audience. I initially read "Metacritic" as just "critic" and thought you were talking about the different scores on RT.

Ah, yes, it's the critics score. I barely ever look at the audience one. I should, but I'm too used to its propensity for being review bombed, or the proles just having shitty opinions (not that critics are exempt from this).

Side note... there is a new Beavis and Butthead movie, apparently. And the critics gave it 95%....

Ah, nice... I didn't know that was out yet. Their cultural stock has increased tremendously in the past couple decades.

TheMix wrote: ↑Wed Jun 29, 2022 10:50 am Side note... there is a new Beavis and Butthead movie, apparently. And the critics gave it 95%....

Never been a fan, although I call my son Beavis on occasion. It seems that is on Paramount+? Amazon says it's free until...tomorrow. Not enough time to even bother with any of the shows there.

I just rewatched Raiders of the Lost Ark, and something occurred to me that they glossed over. Spoiler for a 40 year old movie:

I am starting to catch up - I have three shows finishing this week.

But I'm in the mood for something, and I can't seem to find what show will scratch that itch. I want more 24. Jack Ryan and The Unit would have also scratched the itch. Something one part Bond, one part military, good writing, and not a crime procedural or a political drama. Something that takes place as much 'in the field' as sitting around an office (or worse - a courtroom.) Not mindless action, but not zero-action, either.


Any suggestions?

Reacher?

I've already reached Reacher. And it was awesome - not quite what I was looking for, but a great show (and probably would have scratched the itch in the end anyway.)

Blackhawk wrote: ↑Fri Jul 08, 2022 10:30 am I am starting to catch up - I have three shows finishing this week.

But I'm in the mood for something, and I can't seem to find what show will scratch that itch. I want more 24. Jack Ryan and The Unit would have also scratched the itch. Something one part Bond, one part military, good writing, and not a crime procedural or a political drama. Something that takes place as much 'in the field' as sitting around an office (or worse - a courtroom.) Not mindless action, but not zero-action, either.


Any suggestions?

If you can handle a show with both Arabic and Hebrew dialogue (and English subtitles), Fauda is arguably the best-kept secret on Netflix:

Netflix.com wrote:A top Israeli agent comes out of retirement to hunt for a Palestinian fighter he thought he'd killed, setting a chaotic chain of events into motion.

If you need further convincing that it's worth your while, consider this: The series has become such a phenomenon, it’s beloved by both Israelis and Arabs, which is no mean feat.

I honestly can't. I have never been able to watch more than a few scenes with subtitles before I completely lose track of what's going on (I either watch the show and lose the dialog, or I read the show and lose the visual elements.) It's kept me from more than a few things I'd want to watch.

Blackhawk wrote: ↑Fri Jul 08, 2022 11:00 am I honestly can't. I have never been able to watch more than a few scenes with subtitles before I completely lose track of what's going on (I either watch the show and lose the dialog, or I read the show and lose the visual elements.) It's kept me from more than a few things I'd want to watch.

Yeah, that's a real shame, as some of the finest content available on streaming platforms are the foreign shows.

If you have HBO Max, Person of Interest may scratch you where you itch:

HBOMax.com wrote:A former CIA operative and a tech-savvy billionaire prevent crimes, using unique vigilante justice.

Anonymous Bosch wrote: ↑Fri Jul 08, 2022 11:16 am

Blackhawk wrote: ↑Fri Jul 08, 2022 11:00 am I honestly can't. I have never been able to watch more than a few scenes with subtitles before I completely lose track of what's going on (I either watch the show and lose the dialog, or I read the show and lose the visual elements.) It's kept me from more than a few things I'd want to watch.

Yeah, that's a real shame, as some of the finest content available on streaming platforms are the foreign shows.

If you have HBO Max, Person of Interest may scratch you where you itch:

HBOMax.com wrote:A former CIA operative and a tech-savvy billionaire prevent crimes, using unique vigilante justice.

I love Person of Interest. The first season felt hemmed in, like the network was trying to stuff it into its procedural formula. Then it starts to get really interesting.