What Have You Watched Recently?

[Spence]

On 4/19/2022 at 4:15 AM, mattingly said:

 

 

The Middleman.

I really don't understand why this was canceled.  Especially when some of the "stuff" on TV just will not die. 

[Joe Walsh]

We watched the first two episodes of a couple of new-to-us series on HBOMax:

 

Minx: This half-hour comedy set in the early 70s is about a young woman who realizes her dream of publishing a feminist magazine...thanks to a porn magazine publisher and his crew. So far, it's been really funny and all the characters are nuanced and not simple caricatures.

 

Our Flag Means Death: This half-hour comedy set aboard a would-be pirate ship isn't as funny as Minx, but it's been good enough so far. The 2nd episode was better than the first. It gets its comedy from the ship captain and owner being a fop, while the crew of bloodthirsty pirates are, at best, third-rate mates. Heavy use of all the usual pirate tropes, with a bit of subversion here and there.

 

We start on season 2 of The Flight Attendant tonight, and then it won't be but a week until season 2 of Made for Love. HBOMax is inundating me with new seasons of old favorites this month!

[Ternaugh]

Red Notice: Forgettable heist movie with Ryan Reynolds, Dwayne Johnson, and Gal Godot. (Netflix)

 

Who Framed Roger Rabbit?: 4K release of this classic comedy. Picture and sound are awesome! (4K UHD)

[Joe Walsh]

Marlon Wayans Presents The Headliners (HBOMax): This one-hour comedy show presents five standup comedians and gives each the time for a short set. The laffs vary, of course, but four of the five had me wanting more. Worth a watch.

 

[csyphrett]

Watched two more Columbos with Janet Leigh as a woman who killed her husband and forgot she did it, and Hector Elonziado (spelling?) as a diplomat trying to frame student protesters for the crime he committed. 

CES 

[mattingly]

I've always loved Hector Elizondo. He also played a great bad guy on Kojak.

[death tribble]

Cry of the Banshee

This is another Vincent Price film but he does not do a lot in it as his family are cursed by a witch and the family takes the brunt of it. There are several recognisable faces (to a British audience) in it and Patrick Mower plays the Banshee. You do not work this out until late on. Worth it for Price alone.

 

Twice Told Tales

An anthology with Vincent Price in three sperate tales by Nathanial Hawthorne. The first tale has two old friends discovering the secret of restoring their youth and then maybe the life of a girlfriend of one of them and its tragic consequences; the second tale is of a woman whose touch is death and how her father tries to get a mate for her; and lastly the search for a hidden treasure in a house whose family live under a curse. Not as good as Poe but it has Vincent Price so eminently watchable.

 

Empire of the Ants

Joan Collins in a sub-Them! film. I had seen partway through but not the entire thing. You are not missing much. A scam by Collins to con investors out of money for a resort scheme is wrecked by giant ants who have been grown to giant size due to nuclear waste. The ants attack the investors who are picked off as they try to find a way to escape .They eventually getv to a town with a sugar refinery and the ants are already there. The survivors cause a fire to kill the majority of the ants and escape. Unless you want to watch a bug movie or are a Joan Ciollins fan, avoid.

 

Killing Eve (season 4)

Eve is working for a private security firm while Villanelle is turning to religion. Eve wounds Konstantin while looking for info on the 12 who are Villanelle's employers. ,Villanelle eventually turns violent again and contacts Helene who is trying to find out who is in charge of the 12 and is killing people associated with the group. Carolyn Marttens defects to Russia in order to track the 12 as she wants to finds out who ordered her son's death. It ends with Villanelle confronting and killing the 12 and then being killed herself by British intelligence. The series is not as good as the previous three but has been a good outlet for Sandra Oh, Jodie Comer, Fiona Shaw and Kim Bodnia.

 

Frankenstein Created Woman

Peter Cushing as the Baron is working on experiments on whether the soul is immediately released on the death of the body. His assistant is accused of murder and has his head cut off. The assistant's girlfriend commits suicide and Frankenstein traps the soul of the assistant in the girl's body. But the boy wants revenge and uses the girl's body to find and kill the men responsible for his death.

 

Spiderman Into the Spiderverse.

There is a nice running gag about the origin of Spiderman. This animated feature has different incarnations of Spiderman team up to take down the Kingpin's scheme. not bad at sll.

 

 

[mattingly]

13 hours ago, death tribble said:

Spiderman Into the Spiderverse.

There is a nice running gag about the origin of Spiderman. This animated feature has different incarnations of Spiderman team up to take down the Kingpin's scheme. not bad at all.

 

So much fun. I still crack up every time Noir speaks.

 

 

[L. Marcus]

The Green Knight -- very trippy, very fantasy, very coming-of-age.

[Spence]

Finally watched Spiderman NWH.  It was a good movie.  I thought the cast was great, all of it.  And I really liked the reunion of the Spideys. 

 

But the plot was just meh.  With all of the fantastic characters they had to work with, couldn't they have hired a professional screen writer with at least one ounce of creativity.  I have read 7th grade fanfic that was better.

 

In this case the cast definitely propped the movie up. 

 

a 1 star movie gets boosted to 4.5 stars by the pure will of the actors....

[Lord Liaden]

Respectfully disagree re the plot.

[L. Marcus]

Dune was seen. Dennis Villeneuve is an artiste of the highest order.

[Spence]

On 4/30/2022 at 10:16 AM, Lord Liaden said:

Respectfully disagree re the plot.

 

I didn't doubt that my assessment would not be universal

 

I probably have a little "blockbuster fatigue" but to me it was like the Star Wars prequels.  Massive and impressive line up of actors and characters.  Very adequate budget. 

Basically all the tools and resources a movie maker could possibly want.  

And yet the story is a pedestrian slog with a few contrived super-battles. 

If I was to write a review I would say the plot could be defined as "Ooopsie! ..... and then stuff kinda happens." 

 

I don't want to spoil it for people that haven't seen it yet, but with that big of a line up (both villains and heroes of the spidey universe) and this is what they came up with????

 

[DShomshak]

Legend of Vox Machina. Okay, so the drama is not on the order of, say, Ibsen or Chekhov, and it's possible that Aaron Sorkin writes better dialogue. But it tires to be fun, not to be Great Art. This 12-episode animated series, adapted from the "Critical Roll" D&D online game, is amusing and captures the feel of a well-run game. (Including the moments, aggravating at the tine but funny in hindsight, when the dice screw you over and a task that should be simple becomes impossible.) The charaters are pretty standard Fantasy types, but introduced clearly and promptly. It is generally clear what everyone is doing. I have seen worse storytelling on TV.

 

I will note it is quite a free adaptation. For instance, the spellcasting characters don't run out of spell slots: They exhaust their magic because they get tired. They also push their magical powers, suffering additional fatigue as a result, and "stunt" their magic to do things that do not fit within the narrowly defined affects of D&D spells. The result is that the whole series feels a lot more... Hero System.

 

Dean Shomshak

[Scott Ruggels]

Watched the second season of Ultraman on Netflix.  it's Mocapped 3D, and Cel shaded, so the dialogue scenes are a bit stiff, and robotic, but, it's Ultraman, so the acrobatics and the martial arts are stellar. IT has a much more epic feel than the first season. 

[Spence]

1 hour ago, DShomshak said:

Legend of Vox Machina. Okay, so the drama is not on the order of, say, Ibsen or Chekhov, and it's possible that Aaron Sorkin writes better dialogue. But it tires to be fun, not to be Great Art. This 12-episode animated series, adapted from the "Critical Roll" D&D online game, is amusing and captures the feel of a well-run game. (Including the moments, aggravating at the tine but funny in hindsight, when the dice screw you over and a task that should be simple becomes impossible.) The charaters are pretty standard Fantasy types, but introduced clearly and promptly. It is generally clear what everyone is doing. I have seen worse storytelling on TV.

 

I will note it is quite a free adaptation. For instance, the spellcasting characters don't run out of spell slots: They exhaust their magic because they get tired. They also push their magical powers, suffering additional fatigue as a result, and "stunt" their magic to do things that do not fit within the narrowly defined affects of D&D spells. The result is that the whole series feels a lot more... Hero System.

 

Dean Shomshak

I went back and re-tried the Legend of Vox Machina.

I made it all the way through and will agree with you overall.  Combat was decidedly not D&D as well.  The combat actually had action and people being knocked around.  Basically Hero style cinematic battles including Knockback.  Leaving out the unnecessary crude softporn halfling garbage it was a decent series.  Very anime’like in the good way.

[Ninja-Bear]

1 hour ago, Scott Ruggels said:

Watched the second season of Ultraman on Netflix.  it's Mocapped 3D, and Cel shaded, so the dialogue scenes are a bit stiff, and robotic, but, it's Ultraman, so the acrobatics and the martial arts are stellar. IT has a much more epic feel than the first season. 

They finally came out with a second season? I’ll have to remember to watch it.

[Bazza]

Moon Knight, 2.5 episodes in. Hahahaha. This show is funny. It’s unexpected commentary on “meta psychology” & “meta history” is fascinating. 

[death tribble]

Fools Rush In

This is a short film but it did illustrate why script and actors are important. The film is cut down from a heist on a ship where diamonds were stolen to the gang docking in New York and preparing to fence the gems and flee. A photographer gets a photo of the gang as they land and sets off after them as he becomes suspicious. He is a bit of a coward. His wife gets captured by the gang when he attempts to spy on them and he rescues her and flees with the loot so they come after them but are stopped. It is not that good and with adverts clocks in at 50 mins. With a better script and actors it could have been so much more.

 

The Ox-Bow Incident

This is a Henry Fonda Western where a posse sets out to find the killers of a rancher. There has been a lot of cattle rustling in the area so the mob are trigger happy and rope happy. A group of men are caught and there is a debate about taking them, back to town for trial or hanging them then and there. They have cattle rom the rancher's stock and he is thought not to have wanted to sell any and the men have no bill of sale. One also pretends not to speak English. He is a Mexican and it turns out he has the rancher's gun which he says he found. The posse are led by a deputy and a so called Confederate officer. as the sheriff was elsewhere. Some of the men given the choice do not want to lynch the men then and there but the rest do. After they are on the way back they run into the sheriff and they tell him what they did. He informs them that the rancher is still alive and they have the men who shot him. The sheriff asks who carried out the hanging and one man says that only seven of the group were innocent. Back at the town the officer commits suicide and the others get money together for the widow of one of the men who was killed. he film is a look at the mentality of the mob specifically a lynch mob. Scary.

 

Return of Dracula

This is a 1958 black and white film that has been overshadowed by Hammer's version of Dracula that came out at the same time. Return is a modern day film and having escaped the police in Europe, Dracula comes to America posing as an artist who has family there. But the police are still after him. It is not bad but is completely overshadowed by Christopher Lee as Dracula,

 

The Vampire

A doctor takes the wrong medication and becomes a homicidal maniac. This is directed by the same director as Return of Dracula and greatly benefits from Kenneth Tobey as a police officer in the cast. It is easy to feel sympathy for the doctor evn though you know he is doomed.

 

Topper Returns

This is the third of the Topper films where the eponymous banker has a run in with a ghost of a girl who was murdered for being in the wrong room at the wrong time. She was the friend of the daughter of a mine owner who swapped bedrooms and was consequently killed by a mystery figure. Topper tries to help the ghost while the police and Topper's wife turn up trying to find out what he is upto. There is a bit of mystery and fun in the script and it benefits from George Zucco's presence son that you think he is the bad guy. Joan Blondell and Carole Landis are also in the cast. This one is for repeat watching.

 

Seven Thieves

This is a heist movie from 1960 and I had never heard of it. It has Rod Steiger, Edward G Robinson, Eli Wallach and Joan Collins in the cast. Robinson was a professor who has relocated to Europe after being disgraced. He has come up with a major job and needs old friend Steiger to help him keep the gang in line. Collins has been used to entrap a director of the Monte Carlo casino so that the gang can get in and get the money. The methods are dated but it is a clear and easy watch. Again it bears rewatching.

[csyphrett]

It's Columbo night as Columbo shows Patrick MacGoohan he can deal with secret agent men (as an aside MacGoohan's boss has a card identifying himself as Operator x-9 from the comic strips and it looked like Sam's dad from SG-1 was the coroner), and Ricardo Montalbon that bulls can be handled.

CES 

[mattingly]

12 hours ago, Bazza said:

Moon Knight, 2.5 episodes in. Hahahaha. This show is funny. It’s unexpected commentary on “meta psychology” & “meta history” is fascinating. 

 

I totally love the show. I recommend not watching more than one episode a day/ Give them time to settle.

[Ninja-Bear]

I finished the Sony Chiba series The Street Fighter. The third one he seems less of a bastard than the first two.

[Ninja-Bear]

15 hours ago, Spence said:

I went back and re-tried the Legend of Vox Machina.

 

I made it all the way through and will agree with you overall.  Combat was decidedly not D&D as well.  The combat actually had action and people being knocked around.  Basically Hero style cinematic battles including Knockback.  

 

D&D can do this as well even using the 10 second per round. The key is if you present combat as the rationale that you are only rolling one important roll in those 10 seconds and the rest is the swipes, blocks and evades and such and present that as fun it works.  I did it with my kids and nephew. Man we’re they getting into it even if they whiffed a roll. 

[Scott Ruggels]

17 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

They finally came out with a second season? I’ll have to remember to watch it.

It’s not bad and it moves along.  Good martial arts fights.  

[Joe Walsh]

Wow, having watched 5 of 10 episodes, Minx (HBOMax) is hilarious and awesome!

 

As for our other watched-5-of-10 episodes series, Our Flag Means Death (HBOMax), it's gotten much better since Blackbeard became a main character. Much, much better.