What Have You Watched Recently?

[mattingly]

It Rings a bell.

[Bazza]

One ringworld to rule them all, one ringworld to find them, One ringworld to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them.

[Starlord]

Been watching.  Unfortunately, by far the best episode so far was the one without Boba Fett in it.

[zslane]

Boba Fett was more interesting to me the less I knew about him. He was infinitely cooler when he was an enigmatic badass played by Jeremy Bulloch and voiced by Jason Wingreen. The more they demystified him and explored his past, the duller his iconic sheen became. Creating an entirely new Mandalorian anti-hero to focus on and explore in depth was the right way to go, while a series like The Book of Boba Fett is, IMO, merely a continuation of the ruination of the character that began in Return of the Jedi.

[slikmar]

A friend who is a big star wars and specifically Mandalorians says the thing he likes the best about this and the other series is the expansion of the races (Jawas and Tuskan Raiders, for instance). He also says they seem to be, bit by bit, retconning the last 3 movies out of existence.

[Joe Walsh]

I agree, filling in the details of life on Tatooine is the most interesting thing about The Book of Boba Fett. The central story is a snooze so far.

 

[zslane]

I agree, for the most part. However, I'm tired of Tatooine. We've spent way too much time on that one planet over the course of the movies and, now, streaming shows for my tastes. And if filling in the details of life on Tatooine includes establishing the notion that Jawas and humans can and do date each other, then I'd rather we spent our time elsewhere.

[death tribble]

Freedom to Die

A man escapes prison to get his hands on the loot from a robbery that he committed. The police are after him as the car that was used in the escape ran down a young girl. His contact is in a boxing ring and said contact's daughter knows nothing of her father's involvement in crime. The prison escapee in the end manages to get everyone against him as his colleagues are offered money to kill him and he assaults the contact's daughter. He is caught and imprisoned but killed after leaving prison. This is a 1950s film.

 

The Hideout

An insurance investigator is beaten up by thugs after accidentally picking up the wrong piece of luggage before going to New York. It turns out to have payment for an illegal batch of furs. And the payment will help a prison escapee leave the country so they want the money. But the investigator sent the money back to the hotel he got it from. As an added complication the furs are found to have anthrax on them so the whole load must be found and destroyed. Character actor Sam Kydd has a larger than usual part in this film which is a nice change.

 

Murder on the Campus (Out of the Shadow)

A journalist goes to Cambridge after the death of his kid brother who is supposed to have committed suicide. The police do not want him meddling in their business and people who caused the death want loot hidden away years before. This is from 1961.

 

Offbeat

A spy is used by the police to infiltrate a new breed of criminal gang in order to break it up. Interesting idea as it tries to show the crooks as ordinary people.

 

The Man Who Cheated Himself

A police detective tries to cover up the death of his lover's husband but his kid brother who has just become a detective is assigned the case. Lee J Cobb is the former detective. Jane Wyatt is the lover. The plan begins to unravel almost from the atsrt but it has a slight twist at the end.

 

Jailbait

Think Plan 9 from Outer Space was bad ? Well this is another Ed Wood film. The dialogue is ripe The story is a tad predictable as is the twist but it is not that bad. But if you go in knowing it ain't high art then you will not be disappointed. 

[death tribble]

Shadows of Fear. Come into my Parlour 

In this black and white episode (due to a strike) a woman selling cosmetics runs up against a man once jailed for ticket evasion on London Transport. He manages to get her to kill him by working on her already fragile mental state. This was not bad.

 

Woman Times Seven

Shirley MacLaine plays seven different women in sketches in a disappointing film by Vittorio De Sica. The fault is the script as none of the women really stand out. And there are well known guest stars in each of the seven parts (well except part 4 which for some reason is omitted in the film's credits) with Peter Sellers in part 1, Lex Barker and Robert Morley in part 4, Alan Arkin in part 6 and Michael Caine and Phillipe Noiret  in part 7, I can understand why I have never seen this film before. It just does not work.

 

Hell and High Water

This is one of the films that I associate Richard Widmark with. A crew on a salvaged WW2 Japanese sub goes looking for am island where atomic tests may be being carried out. It turns out that the Chinese are planning on dropping an atomic bomb on the Russians from a B29. This is a film I have seen several times but I can watch again readily.

 

Shatter

Hitman Stuart Whitman goes to Hong Kong to collect his payment for killing an African military dictator only for his paymasters to double cross him. This is a Hammer film but not a horror although it does have Peter Cushing. It is a martial arts film and pretty good just not what you expect from Hammer.

 

The Abominable Dr Phibes

If you want to see a film in which a number of people are killed in ingenious ways then this is one of the films to see. Vincent Price is the deranged Doctor avenging himself on the surgical team who failed to save his wife on the operating table. His form of revenge is to enact the 10 plagues on them that Moses visited upon the Egyptians. Jospeh Cotton is the chief surgeon saved to last and Terry Thomas is one of the other victims. Although this is campy, Price is masterful as he can only speak with a recording device that he must plug in and as this is set in the 1920s, he cannot do this all that often. Caroline Munro plays the wife in a non-speaking or credited role.

 

Gemini Man

Will Smith is an assassin for the DIA whose last target was not what he was told and when he retires he is almost killed and various of the people in his life are targeted and killed as no-one must know what happened and why. Smith finds himself up against a younger assassin who happens to be his clone. It is alright. 

[csyphrett]

Lex Barker used to be one of the movie Tarzans I think.

 

Tarzan had a long string of movies based in the jungles and sometimes traveling the world from the 30's to the 60's with a television show starring Ron Ely. Every modern take is a rehash of his origin story and a visit to Victorian England. It's like people forgot that Tarzan was more like Indiana Jones than not.

CES 

[Spence]

57 minutes ago, csyphrett said:

It's like people forgot that Tarzan was more like Indiana Jones than not.

They didn't forget. 

It is just that Follywood can't actually read.  They mostly sit in a circle berating everything (except Hollywood of course) as being evil and allow their echo chamber to inform them what the original author was thinking.  Then they take the concept and "fix" it.  Later sitting in their circle they wonder why it failed. 

Rinse repeat.

 

 

[Ternaugh]

Godzilla VS. Kong: Go into it expecting an experience like the old Toho films, and you won't be disappointed. (HBO max)

 

THE Suicide Squad: Second movie from DC with the same title, this one got it mostly right by giving control over to James Gunn, and allowing him to make the R-rated film that Disney wouldn't. I went in with extremely low expectations, but it was actually an enjoyable experience. (HBO max)

[Starlord]

 

[Spence]

2 minutes ago, Starlord said:

 

I never really played the game past that one time many many years ago.  I have watched the various animated shows available.  With that in mind it does look decent.  I'd give it a try if it wasn't behind a paywall. 

 

At the rate all the multiple streamers are hemorrhaging money, maybe they will go back to using a smaller number of platforms for all the shows. 

[Joe Walsh]

Somebody Somewhere (HBOMax): We've watched S1 E1 and S1 E2, and so far it has its moments. It's a dramedy about a woman whose sister recently died and who doesn't seem to fit into her rural hometown.

 

Nine Perfect Strangers (Hulu): We finally decided to give this once-buzzy miniseries a try. Two episides in and it's juuuuuust interesting enough to keep going. There are some funny moments, but mostly it a kinda bland mystery.

 

Dopesick (Hulu): A few episodes in, this is a pretty compelling watch. It's about how the Sackler family and Purdue Pharmaceutical drove the opioid epidemic for amazing profits at the cost of millions of lives. Good stuff from Danny Strong.

 

 

[Old Man]

Finally got around to watching The Eternals (Marvel).  After having my expectations set abysmally low by months of whinging and handwringing by people desperately wanting Marvel to fail, I was pleasantly surprised.  It's far from perfect, but it eventually got the main thing right, which was to focus on the relationships between the Eternals themselves.  Are there plot holes?  Yes.  Does it fit cleanly into the rest of the MCU? Lol no.  Is it still a good film?  Certainly.

[Scott Ruggels]

I gave Vox Machina on Amazon a try. The first three episodes. Generally, I cannot watch critical roll, because like sports, I would rather play than watch, and the sessions just go too long. This was a show that had the interactions edited to digestible chunks and then animated. As an animated representation of fifth edition D&D, it worked quite well, however, the tone was all over the place, and I wasn’t much a fan of the characters. The constant bickering, and incompetence wasn’t very entertaining for me. I just sat back and watched the villains, and the quality of the animation. Definitely not for kids. It’s lewd and crude, with a lot of F bombs. I will continue watching it out of morbid curiosity, but I don’t know if I can recommend it.

[Spence]

11 hours ago, Old Man said:

Finally got around to watching The Eternals (Marvel).  After having my expectations set abysmally low by months of whinging and handwringing by people desperately wanting Marvel to fail, I was pleasantly surprised.  It's far from perfect, but it eventually got the main thing right, which was to focus on the relationships between the Eternals themselves.  Are there plot holes?  Yes.  Does it fit cleanly into the rest of the MCU? Lol no.  Is it still a good film?  Certainly.

 

Hmmm....I started it last week sometime.  Still haven't gotten back to it.  Not anything I can point to as being "bad" I guess beyond it being less interesting than pretty much anything else.

 

5 hours ago, Scott Ruggels said:

I gave Vox Machina on Amazon a try. The first three episodes. Generally, I cannot watch critical roll, because like sports, I would rather play than watch, and the sessions just go too long. This was a show that had the interactions edited to digestible chunks and then animated. As an animated representation of fifth edition D&D, it worked quite well, however, the tone was all over the place, and I wasn’t much a fan of the characters. The constant bickering, and incompetence wasn’t very entertaining for me. I just sat back and watched the villains, and the quality of the animation. Definitely not for kids. It’s lewd and crude, with a lot of F bombs. I will continue watching it out of morbid curiosity, but I don’t know if I can recommend it.

 

It is based on CR?!

Didn't know that, was completely bored and underwhelmed the time I tried to watch CR way back when.

 

I thought Vox Machina was trying to be a another take on South Park and failing.  I have made it through 2 episodes.

 

Oh well, recent forum threads had me considering try CR again.  But if the a$$hattery that was in VM is an indication of what is considered to be "the ultimate bestest role-playing ever" I think I will pass on CR.  It really explains the cratering quality of players that were showing up at my FLGS just before the coof.  Several of the shop DMs quit because of the murderhobos destroying game sessions. 

 

Suddenly things make sense

[csyphrett]

14 hours ago, Old Man said:

Finally got around to watching The Eternals (Marvel).  After having my expectations set abysmally low by months of whinging and handwringing by people desperately wanting Marvel to fail, I was pleasantly surprised.  It's far from perfect, but it eventually got the main thing right, which was to focus on the relationships between the Eternals themselves.  Are there plot holes?  Yes.  Does it fit cleanly into the rest of the MCU? Lol no.  Is it still a good film?  Certainly.

The director was on record as saying the original ending was the planet blowing up. Marvel/Disney said no to that

CES

[Old Man]

22 minutes ago, csyphrett said:

The director was on record as saying the original ending was the planet blowing up. Marvel/Disney said no to that

CES

 

I feel as though that might have created a number of continuity issues.

[csyphrett]

The other night was Columbo night as our hero deals with Vera Miles clocking Martin Sheen with a microscope, and Donald Pleasance suffocating his brother for wanting to sell the land the family winery was on

CES  

[Scott Ruggels]

8 hours ago, Spence said:

 

It is based on CR?!

Didn't know that, was completely bored and underwhelmed the time I tried to watch CR way back when.

 

I thought Vox Machina was trying to be a another take on South Park and failing.  I have made it through 2 episodes.

 

Oh well, recent forum threads had me considering try CR again.  But if the a$$hattery that was in VM is an indication of what is considered to be "the ultimate bestest role-playing ever" I think I will pass on CR.  It really explains the cratering quality of players that were showing up at my FLGS just before the coof.  Several of the shop DMs quit because of the murderhobos destroying game sessions. 

 

Suddenly things make sense

Yes, based on Critical Roll. Someone went back through the old Twitch Streams and figured this was the first time they killed a Dragon, so when they were around 7th Level. Apparently they get more skilled as they play, as the cast of players are basically Matt Mercers Cartoon Voice over colleagues.  Later seasons they apparently are more competent. But yes, this is where the ridiculously Horny Bard became a trope, that and several others.

 

Critical Roll has be cited by lots of folks as the popularizer of D&D< and it's downfall, by giving regular folks a "template"  for their characters. Your observations at the FLGS, match what other people have had, but while it might be damaging to the hobby, I think Magic: The Gathering, and other CCGs are what sucked the money out of the hobby and nearly put it all to sleep after the mid 90's.

At to the Eternals. It looked awful, so I avoided it. Too much representation and gender4 swapping and not enough Jack Kirby.

[Dr. MID-Nite]

I'm curious as to what you think an "acceptable" level of representation is. Realistically, if we're basing representation on % of population a good chunk of the cast would be of Chinese or Indian descent. This movie had two Asian characters and one Indian character. So....actually...too little representation if we're going by the numbers. They even rolled the black and gay guy into one character for crying out loud. I see more representation after an hour at work so I'm continually befuddled by this complaint.

[zslane]

If the whole point of the Celestials creating such a racially diverse group of Eternals was to assist in their being accepted into the societies they were expected to help, then it is curious that there was no Native American or Inuit Eternal. And since Eternals are androids, what is the purpose behind giving them any sort of human sexuality at all?

 

I think we are meant to disregard these deeper questions about the whole concept and just "go with it".

[Pariah]

Watched the first couple of episodes of Kim Possible on Disney+ with my kids. They were ... nonplussed.