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Watch, Watched, Watching: Hindsight in 2020


Ramsay B.

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1 hour ago, Cas Stark said:

I never seem to find anything on either Amazon or Apple TV compared to Netflix.  Don't have Hulu. 

95% of amazon prime stuff is absolute trash. They spend more energy pushing you onto their other channels to make money.

But there are a handful of great shows on there. The Boys, Mr Robot, The Expanse, Black Sails and Preacher , which means i keep going back

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I saw Jumanji the next level today. The first one was refreshingly silly and I unexpectedly ended up liking it. This new one is certainly not bad, but it is not as refreshing as the first one (I know, should have seen that one coming). I therefore enjoyed it a bit less, but as far as sequels go, this one was better than most. Also nice to see Rory McCann get some more work.

On 2/14/2020 at 6:05 PM, polishgenius said:

 

This is the only real area where Gladiator is superior, I feel. Well, and the quality of the battles, but that's not an area they're directly comparable.

I almost think the opposite on the supporting cast- Gladiator's had more depth, of course, but I was way more invested in Creasy's relationship with the kid than with anything in Gladiator. Dakota Fanning fucking killed that role.

Really? I didn't give a toss about her or the relationship with Denzel. Come to think of it, I'm blanking on all the names of the characters, which is usually a bad sign. With Gladiator I have the opposite. I think I can name every single one of them. From the great Proximo (Oliver Reed's last great role. Imagine what feats he could have accomplished if he wasn't a sad drunkard), to Richard Harris' Marcus Aurelius (who is still like the archetypical wise king whenever I think of that archetype), the beautiful Lucilla as played Connie Nielsen. Heck, even Lucius was good as the adorable kid. All those characters seem to have such a rich inner life and the film brilliantly establishes their (past) relationships with one another without falling back on flashbacks or voice-over.

Gladiator is definitely the finest film ever made by a Scott. After Top Gun of course, some films are just hors de categorie ;)

On 2/14/2020 at 6:05 PM, polishgenius said:

Has it? Apart from having Kevin Spacey in it I haven't seen it much criticised?

In any case Parasite is probably a better film anyway.

Oh definitely. You have to google American Beauty. In my own experience, it is one of the most ridiculed films to have ever won best picture. Jokes about the plastic bag abound to this day. It certainly doesn't help that Kevin Spacey played the role he played in it. That brought a fresh load of scrutiny on it, but you can go as far back as Scary Movie 3 (or 4, don't remember exacly) to see it parodied. 

22 hours ago, Zorral said:

It could well be on the order of how things Bond changed* with the 2002 Pierce Bosnan Bond, who is no longer the super 007, but subject to dirty hair, unshaven cheeks -- and torture.  When he walked over that bridge from North Korea to South Korea, through the obscuring fog, Bond walked into a world that had changed forever from the post WWII 007 world he'd always known.

Scott may well have made different decisions for Gladiator if he was having a 2002 release, you see what I mean, maybe?

Bond is an obvious example. However, I don't think Gladiator needed to be changed that much. It was already a film about a warlike and overstretched empire fighting foreigners and generally being out of touch with the values that made it great in the first place. Quite prescient come to think of it.

22 hours ago, Zorral said:

* As much as they tried to bring back the old Bond in Spectre, complete with magic car, magic watch, the ladies who fall for him in o about 5 seconds and have sex, and even a villain from the Connery days -- they couldn't quite get there, and Spectre was the better for that. 

The spectre of universal, global surveillance of every single person on the planet can't be put back in the bottle.

 

 

The words 'better' and 'Spectre' are not commonly used together. Only in such phrases as 'I guess seeing Spectre is better than getting cancer' or 'I guess we better forget Spectre ever happened'

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1 hour ago, Veltigar said:

 

The words 'better' and 'Spectre' are not commonly used together. Only in such phrases as 'I guess seeing Spectre is better than getting cancer' or 'I guess we better forget Spectre ever happened'

I can see how one might think that.  I cannot possibly comment.  ;):P:D:cheers:

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I watched The General, a film I don't remember hearing about before (it's from 1998) but stumbled across on Amazon Prime. The film is a biopic of Irish gangster Martin Cahill who is playing a cat-and-mouse game with the Irish police after a series of audacious heists, but gets into trouble after unwisely trying to deal with both the Provisional IRA and the Ulster Volunteer Force. I think the highlight is Brendan Gleeson's charismatic performance in the lead role, with Maria Doyle Kennedy and Jon Voigt offering good support. At times it is almost comedic as Gleeson and his gang repeatedly trick the Gardai, but it does have its darker moments as well.

Afterwards I read an amusing bit of trivia that a scene where Cahill steals a gold disc from a house was based on a real incident where Cahill burgled the home of John Boorman, the film's director.

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2 hours ago, Veltigar said:

In my own experience, it is one of the most ridiculed films to have ever won best picture. Jokes about the plastic bag abound to this day. 

 

Oh, the plastic bags, sure, and to some extent the roses (though that was meant to be ridiculous), but mocking some moments of pretention isn't the same as the whole story and message of the film falling apart which I don't think it has. The black family drama scenes still hold up.

 

2 hours ago, Veltigar said:

Really? I didn't give a toss about her or the relationship with Denzel.

I guess that's where a lot of our difference lies, if you're not invested in that the film will mean nothing. It would be too far to describe it as a two-hander obviously but there are times it's not far off. 

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Locke& Key has to be one of the most visually stunning pieces I've ever seen on TV.Not so sure about the story yet, but I'm intrigued. Just starting ep 4.

Avenue 5 has started to get seriously funny after the first 2 eps.Forgive the oxymoron.

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57 minutes ago, redriver said:

Locke& Key has to be one of the most visually stunning pieces I've ever seen on TV.Not so sure about the story yet, but I'm intrigued. Just starting ep 4.

6 episodes in. I've been watching 1 episode per night. I don't think it's quite binge worthy. It does look good, though it's not quite the most impressive yet. The story is ok. I've started watching out of boredom, and the mystery portions + the main characters are interesting. And the story is far darker that one might initially assume. But I find the main villain boring. 

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2 hours ago, redriver said:

Locke& Key has to be one of the most visually stunning pieces I've ever seen on TV.Not so sure about the story yet, but I'm intrigued. Just starting ep 4.

Avenue 5 has started to get seriously funny after the first 2 eps.Forgive the oxymoron.

I really wasn’t impressed by Avenue 5 at all. I barely gave it a chance to be fair but saw most of the first episode and it was super clunky and the humour was very broad and never seemed to hit its target. I was pretty disappointed in it. If it actually improves I might go back to it I guess 

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12 hours ago, redriver said:

Avenue 5 has started to get seriously funny after the first 2 eps.Forgive the oxymoron.

I think I made it to episode 3 before I stalled out on this.  Maybe it was 2...

 

5 hours ago, Nictarion said:

Rewatching Band of Brothers. It really is crazy how many people in this went on to make it big. I completely forgot Simon Pegg and James McAvoy were in it. 

Such a masterpiece. 

I'm due for a rewatch of this too.

 

All the talk of Gladiator has me watching it right now.

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12 hours ago, Heartofice said:

I really wasn’t impressed by Avenue 5 at all. I barely gave it a chance to be fair but saw most of the first episode and it was super clunky and the humour was very broad and never seemed to hit its target. I was pretty disappointed in it. If it actually improves I might go back to it I guess 

Kind of surprised this got renewed for another season. The general consensus seems to be pretty meh. 

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3 minutes ago, Nictarion said:

Kind of surprised this got renewed for another season. The general consensus seems to be pretty meh. 

Its pretty terrible, but in a really strange way, and I'm slightly fascinated by how its getting made and what anyone involved with it is thinking.

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51 minutes ago, Datepalm said:

Its pretty terrible, but in a really strange way, and I'm slightly fascinated by how its getting made and what anyone involved with it is thinking.

So.Strangely,fascinatingly terrible?

Probably what Iannuci was aiming for..

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Caught Little Women yesterday and I adored it. Some scenes/ characters didn't work for me & Gerwig has a tendency not to cast people of colour in movies she has written or directed, but I still really enjoyed Little Women and I'm glad I caught it on the big screen.

I've finally got time off so I'm catching 1917, Parasite & Birds of Prey this week so I'm excited.

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After being perplexed at seeing it mentioned in a couple of 'best of the decade' lists, I decided that I should probably way Jon Favreau's 'Chef' movie. 

Now I've been avoiding it for quite some time as I'd always assumed it was a middle of the road, bland, feel good movie that should be almost entirely forgettable. But it keeps coming up, people keep talking about it as some underrated gem. So I went against my gut and I watched it. 

Verdict: My gut was correct. It's exactly as I expected. I'm a huge fan of Swingers and love Favreau for directing Iron Man, in fact his presence in the movie stops it from being completely irritating because he's just very likable and real. 

The the oddest thing about this movie is that it is barely a movie. It doesn't actually seem to have a plot. There is ZERO drama after the first 20 minutes. Basically something bad happens early on, then the rest of the movie is just a lot of people being very nice, nice stuff happening, things look nice.. it's.. it's NICE! I just found it strange that with only 10 mins of the movie left, there had been zero jeopardy, zero risk and zero drama. It was feel good in the most extreme sense, in that it seemed uninterested in making the viewer feel any emotion other than hunger. 

It does make you feel hungry though.

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I, too, saw Chef for the first time a few months ago. I felt much the same, it's a very laid back, low drama "slice of life" sort of film. The main draw are the cooking scenes, I suppose, which is why I guess foodies love it.

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Also helps if youve lived in the industry at all. It is easily the closest "this is how it is" of any movie involving the restaurant world I can think of. So it's a top 5 ever for me simply because I love to cook, and I have been one of those tequila shot rounds, no sleep, service before self types my entire life (though as front of house myself). 

Last time I watched it, I paused about halfway through and and spent a good hour and a half cooking myself one of the best impromptu meals I have ever come up with.

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4 minutes ago, Argonath Diver said:

Also helps if youve lived in the industry at all. It is easily the closest "this is how it is" of any movie involving the restaurant world I can think of. So it's a top 5 ever for me simply because I love to cook, and I have been one of those tequila shot rounds, no sleep, service before self types my entire life (though as front of house myself). 

Last time I watched it, I paused about halfway through and and spent a good hour and a half cooking myself one of the best impromptu meals I have ever come up with.

yeah I got the sense of that. It just felt more like a documentary than a movie. You can appreciate it if you like good food, but it felt more like an insider movie to me. Like when Hollywood makes movies about Hollywood that are aimed at people who work in Hollywood.

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