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Watch, Watching, Watch -- Keep the change you filthy animal!


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On 1/10/2022 at 5:50 AM, briantw said:
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Also, why the fuck would you tease a Dexter/Batista reunion and then not follow through?  

Yeah, that was kinda daft.

Spoiler

I also didn't love the reasoning it was Harrison who needed to end Dexter. How is it suppose to influence him? If he kills the father he just learnt to love and care for? Unless they hope to continue the story, which is definitely not a great idea.

I would much preferred if it was Batista, or even Angela.

 

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Matrix Resurrections: Brilliant first half that largely falls apart in the second. Too convoluted; too many reveals; too much CBM fan service and not enough "Matrix". Some interesting meta commentary. Some interesting concepts. also a human city that oddly had no humans in it. 

The Lobster: Brilliantly weird. Beautifully made. Love it. There's a lot going on there and I certainly haven't unpacked all of it but definitely worth a watch. 

Power of the Dog: Well directed. Some great performances . Great cinematography, score, production design, etc. And lord know I love seeing Cumberbatch being cruel to animals. It reminded me a lot of There Will be Blood, almost to the point of being derivative. 

But franky, I don't understand the praise this movie is getting. It's definitely worthy of awards recognition but GG for best picture? The second half of the film was a bit messy.  I couldn't really get engaged at times and some of the reveals either weren't that revealing or didn't really have a payoff.

The only film I've seen out of the other nominees is Dune and I liked that more. 

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Looking for a different show to begin, I went in blind to Manifest. Figured a fun show with lots of Weird Stuff Happening would be a good binge. I am about halfway through the first season and will probably push to the season finale. I have been having a bit of fun with the mystery aspect, but the show is far more of a sentimental soap opera than I expected. I want to connect with nuanced characters as much as the next viewer, but I find all these tearjerker scenes ringing hollow. 

I did have one delightful moment, though. Early in the fifth episode, a main character is having a conversation on a plane. Every time the camera cuts back to her from the second passenger, her hair is down at a different length. One line it's fully let down, the next a full eight inches or so higher up her neckline. Almost every cut back to her line from the other camera angle shows it a bit different. It was hilariously visible and I am surprised the scene made it through editing. This stuff happens often but I'm pretty sure it's the first time I ever noticed on my own. 

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Conspiracy experts: what do we make of Cumberbatch having a starring role in a film with cat co-stars and a film with something to do with a dog, nearly back-to-back, on two of the major streaming platforms, hmmmmmmmmmmm?

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Watched King Richard on HBO Max. It was a nice, sturdy feel-good movie, very much in Will Smith's wheelhouse these days. The awards buzz for it speaks to the poverty of the cinematic season, though.

Also watched the premiere on the new season of Euphoria. The show goes almost into parody with how utterly messed up its characters are, especially manic pixie drug addict Rue (Zendaya), but the opening of the episode was pretty memorable as it provides background to the mumbling, soulful Fezco (Angus Cloud) and how his grandmother led him into the world of dealing drugs... and picked up his adopted brother along the way. Too little of Jules this episode, though. Reminds me I never watched the Christmas special they did.

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Watched The Empty Man based purely on the buzz Chris Stuckman was giving it on his channel. 
 

I guess it was pretty good. At one point I did groan as an initially interesting opening 20 minutes looked like it was just going to lead into a tired Candyman kinda movie. It does tend to switch into something else, I won’t give spoilers. All I’ll say is that it just felt a bit like a mish mash of a number of horror tropes combined. I’m not sure I really felt too enamoured but the way it played out in the end either. But I get why you’d want to praise a movie like this which is at least trying.

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11 hours ago, 3CityApache said:

Yeah, that was kinda daft.

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I also didn't love the reasoning it was Harrison who needed to end Dexter. How is it suppose to influence him? If he kills the father he just learnt to love and care for? Unless they hope to continue the story, which is definitely not a great idea.

I would much preferred if it was Batista, or even Angela.

 

Spoiler

Yeah I wasn't a big fan of Harrison doing it, especially initially.  It's certainly insanely selfish on Dexter's part.  But, well, that makes sense.  As does the fact Harrison is the only one Dexter would allow to do it.  Especially with Deb gone - who he kinda made the offer to at the end of Season 7.

 

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Finally relented and watched Don't Look Up.  Was reticent because I've found McKay's venture into political satire almost entirely trite and lacking the subtlety of a 2X4 to the face, and boy did this one not disappoint.  It added longwinded and unfocused to the list.  I did enjoy DiCaprio and especially Lawrence's performances, that's what kept me watching.  I really wish McKay would just go back to making regular comedies.  The only time I laughed in this one was when Meryl Streep forgets Jonah Hill.

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Just finished Squid Game.  I was really enjoying it, but the last episode ruined the experience for me.  So few people to root for to win.  Thought it was interesting that the only characters that I liked were the two immigrants in the story. 

Currently, I’m 3 episodes into 4400.  I enjoyed the original from the mid-2000s.  After the opening plot points, there’s not a lot of similarities here.  This new series has a lot of socio-political messaging in it; the original was a fairly straightforward action/drama/mystery.  IIRC, in the original, the powers displayed by the returnees seemed to have a connection to their personalities.
 

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Crave, a Canadian streaming service, opened up all it's extra pay stuff like HBO shows. I recently watched all of Search Party with Alia Shawkat. What a weird and twisty show. It was fantastic. Did not see the series ending the way it did in such a wtaf way :lol: . It's one of those shows where you hate/love the characters. Elliot just killed me every time he was in a scene. He was such an admittedly horrible person, but I just loved him. 

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I watched an interesting documentary about 2022 yesterday. Not sure whether anyone else heard about it, but it is called Soylent Green. It's got some really insightful things to say about the climate crisis, inequality, assisted dying and the patriarchy. Definitely would recommend it, but you will definitely be shocked when you discover where the story is headed:

Spoiler

Soylent Green is people!!! Wake up you sheeple of the world :laugh:

Joking aside, for a film out of 1973 it is creepily prescient in my opinion. Their society might be in far greater shambles than ours, but at the moment you could be forgiven in thinking that Soylent Green was correct about the future, but only got the timeframe wrong.

Aside from that seeming predictive power, it is also a damn good film. A bit stilted in the way older pictures usually are, but still damn exciting. I think the fact they played this one straight (They have a pretty good chase scene that is wholly without dialogue. Kind of strange not to have someone quip their way to a gun fight) and were pretty grey with their characters has probably created a picture that was able to stand the test of time far better than more optimistic fare. 

It's also just great to see Charlton Heston in this. It just cracks me up that someone so right-wing they could be elected president of the NRA five times has played in some of the most popular "protest" films of all time (I'm using protest in the broadest sense of the word here).

Just think about it, he has Planet of the Apes (against Nuclear Warfare), Soylent Green (against equality and the climate crisis) and arguably Ben Hur (where, in one of the great jokes of cinema, his character was heavily implied to have been in a homosexual relationship with his antagonist prior to the events depicted in the film. Chuck wasn't told about this and played it straight, while the actor who played his opponent was instructed to channel the jilted lover in his performance :lol:).

 

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On 1/11/2022 at 9:56 PM, Ran said:

Watched King Richard on HBO Max. It was a nice, sturdy feel-good movie, very much in Will Smith's wheelhouse these days. The awards buzz for it speaks to the poverty of the cinematic season, though.

Also watched the premiere on the new season of Euphoria. The show goes almost into parody with how utterly messed up its characters are, especially manic pixie drug addict Rue (Zendaya), but the opening of the episode was pretty memorable as it provides background to the mumbling, soulful Fezco (Angus Cloud) and how his grandmother led him into the world of dealing drugs... and picked up his adopted brother along the way. Too little of Jules this episode, though. Reminds me I never watched the Christmas special they did.

"Manic pixie drug addict"?? What does that even mean?

I watched the season 1 marathon on HBO (which I have unlocked for a while as a part of a specisl free holiday package from my cable provider) a few days ago and then the Rue special and the season 2 premiere. Weirdly, they did not show the Jules part of the special, so I'll have to find that and watch it another way. The Rue special was great. And very different than a usual Euphoria episode, as it's just two characters (Rue and her sponsor, aka Zendaya and Colman Domingo) sitting and talking for an hour, but it was really compelling.

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1 hour ago, Annara Snow said:

"Manic pixie drug addict"?? What does that even mean?

Her manic frivolous babbling in the back of the car while high, to the point that even the normally extremely chill Fez gets angry at her = manic pixie drug addict. 

Obviously, she's extremely bipolar and self-medicates, but as I noted for last season it would be a very tough slog with her character if she's just swinging wildly from mania to self-medicated stupor over and over again. The most compelling material for her last season was her relationship to Fezco and her relationship with Jules, and that needs her to be somewhat nearer an even keel -- while threatening to tip one way or the other as a constant danger -- for there to be fulfilling dramatic weight to those relationships, personally.

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Peacemaker dropped the first 3 episodes on HBO Max and I watched the first one. It's entertaining but stupid but funny but what the fuck are they doing?

John Cena can be really hilarious, the new character of Leota seems to be the most interesting and may end up being the best character. It has the silliest title sequence I've seen a while. I had to wonder if they didn't have the money for a proper title sequence but I like the song.

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