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What Have You Watched Recently?


Susano

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Reboot (Hulu): Basically this is a broadcast network style workplace sitcom, but it's pretty well done. Not too many "pause for laff" points that fall flat.

 

Warewolf by Night (Disney+): Total aces. Fantastic one-shot. No notes.

 

Andor (Disney+): We're only 7 episodes into this one, but so far it's been the best live action Star Wars series.

 

Upload (Amazon Prime): Wow, Amazon actually made a good series! So funny, but such a disturbing future. Sci-fi doing what it does best.

 

Undone (Amazon Prime): Holy smokes, Amazon has two original series not associated with Jeremy Clarkson that are actually worth watching? This one is fun with time travel and metaphysics, and it's rotoscoped...but it's great!

 

 

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We stopped watching The Patient (Hulu) and The Rings of Power (Amazon Prime) half way through each series. They just weren't holding our interest, and we weren't looking forward to the next episode of either. For us, they were more like the stuff we used to watch back in the bad old days before we had so many great choices. No reason to keep watching something that's not keeping our interest, these days.

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Reflection of Fear

Robert Shaw is a man coming to see his child for the first time in years. Sondra Locke plays the child who is educated privately and kept on her own by her mother and grandmother. Shaw is looking for a divorce while Locke wants her father back in her life. The mother will give Shaw a divorce if he signs an agreement never to see Locke again. But Locke is talking to someone who is like an evil spirit who then turns nasty. This is an interesting idea and Locke is really strong in it.

 

It's a Lovely Day Tomorrow: The Story of the 1943 Bethnal Green Tube Disaster

During the blitz in 1940 a family lose their home and move in with one of the grandmothers before taking up residence in the uncompleted Bethnal Green tube station. They live in a town like structure underground. This leads up to the disaster. One night a panic develops during an air raid as people try to enter the shelter. A woman with a baby trips on the stairs and this leads to a mass pile up. 173 people die in the crush. Details were not released until after the war. It is a little known event and is sensitively handled.

 

976-Evil

Two cousins call a horoscope line only to find out it connects them directly to the Devil who wants them to do things for their benefit at the cost of their souls. While one cousin resists the other becomes deeply involved leading to a climatic fight between the two.

 

The Disappearance

Donald Sutherland plays an assassin whose wife disappears. He wants to find her while his superiors want him to take on a new assignment. There are flashbacks to the life together and how they met. Also his superiors change and may be involved in his wife's disappearance. It is a slow burn and also has Christopher Plummer, David Warner and John Hurt in the cast.

 

Resistance

The story of the wartime work of Marcel Marceau who would become famous after the war as a mime. Marceau joined the French Resistance and served by helping Jewish children escape from France to Switzerland for example away from Klaus Barbie. Jesse Eisenberg is surprisingly not annoying as Marcel. This is a 2020 film that does not have a lot of action. It is still gripping as a group of children are being smuggled into the mountains with the Gestapo in hot pursuit.

 

Charade

A man is thrown from a train. When his widow returns from a winter break she finds all the belongings in the flat gone, her husband had sold them all. She is then menaced by three men who want money that he had but there is no trace of it. The men are thieves once employed by the OSS who stole the money from Germany at the end of WW2. The American Embassy tell her this while a man the widow met while on holiday tries to help her. Or does he ? Cary Grant, Audrey Hepburn, Walter Matthau, James Coburn and George Kennedy star. Well worth repeated viewings.

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Dead Men Walk

George Zucco plays twin brothers, one good and one bad. The bad has already died when he comes back from the dead as a vampire. It's a simple enough tale.

 

Phantom Ship aka The Mystery of the Marie Celeste

Basically what caused everyone on the ship to disappear. Bela Lugosi stars.

 

Appointment in London

The tale of a Wing Commander of a Lancaster bomber group. He is coming close to the end of a third tour but his superiors do not want him to fly anymore. They try to ground him but circumstances lead him to his last mission. Dirk Bogarde is the Wing Commander. This is a rarity as most films do not look at the day to day bomber operations on the British side or look at the special operations such as the dam busting raid.

 

Johnny Nobody

An American writer dares God to strike him down in an Irish village when a stranger appears and shoots him dead. The stranger is an amnesiac who says he heard a voice telling him to kill the writer. At the trial the question is did God send him or not ? The local priest investigates and gets more than he bargains for.

 

Cry of the Werewolf

The daughter of a woman reputed to be a werewolf is hiding with gypsies. She returns to her mother's home to stop people finding her mother's tomb. An odd little film but worth a look.

 

Night of the Demon

A scientist visits an occultist in order to get him to remove a curse placed on him. He is killed by a demon although falling electric wires are the official reason. Another scientist arrives in the country to attend seminars debunking the supernatural and exposing the occultist as a fraud. The first scientist's daughter teams up with him as the occultist states that in three days the scientist will die. Creepy. Dana Andrews is the hero. Worth a look.

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X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes, on Svengoolie. A bit slow in parts, but behind the conventional horror movie tropes of scientific hubris and obsession there's quite a good treatment of Lovecraftian themes without making a single Lovecraftian reference. The scientist wants to expand the range of vision. It works. He sees more... and more... and more...

 

Dean Shomshak

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Babylon 5: Season 1 (Signs and Portents): I'm rewatching the entire series. I own the DVDs, but this time around, I'm watching the HD version on HBOmax. First, these are not letterboxed, which means that some of the artifacts on the DVD release aren't present. Of course, the real reason to watch is because of the story--it's still one of the best long-form series out there. (HBOmax*)

 

The Santa Clause: Tim Allen movie where Santa falls off of the roof, and his character inherits the job. As a holiday movie, it holds up pretty well. (Disney+)

 

Zen-Grogu and Dust Bunnies: This charming short was hand-animated by Studio Ghibli, with music by Ludwig Göransson. (Disney+)

 

 

*The HD version is also available for purchase on Amazon Prime, for those folks not interested in an HBOmax subscription

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Spirited: Musical retelling of A Christmas Carol, with Ryan Reynolds and Will Ferrell. Worth a watch. (Apple TV+)

 

Slumberland: This one is very loosely based on Little Nemo in Slumberland, but it's not quite as fantastic as that century-old comic strip. I enjoyed it, and it's worth a watch to see Jason Momoa chew the Dreamland scenery as the creature, Flip. (Netflix)

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Invincible (Amazon Prime):  This animated supers series was sort of worth watching, and sort of interesting in terms of the various characters and their interplay, but the repeated and extreme violence makes it really not all that interesting to me. I've seen enough violence, and don't need it pushed in my face like that in order to understand the horror of it.

 

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1899 on Netflix.  A woman doctor is a passenger on a German liner bound for New York, when the ship intercepts a message purportedly sent from another liner from the same company that’s been missing for four months.  The passengers are displeased with the detour.   Aboard the floating derelict, they find only one passenger, a 12 year old boy. Or is he the only passenger.   
 

A slow burn creeping dread sort of mystery that really feels like how a Calll of Cthulhu game should feel.  Soft recommendation as it’s creeeeeepy, and a lot folks here seem to be sensitive souls.   

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The Watcher (Netflix): Started out promisingly, but my empathy/sympathy for the protagonist couple dropped sharply after the first few episodes, since by their own actions (and apparent lack of impulse control) they just made things worse for themselves.  Although I read that this was planned as a one-and-done, it seems like a second season has been greenlit, but I'll give that a pass.

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Andor (Season 1): It starts slow, but builds to be one of the best series I've watched in a long time. Looking forward to season 2. (Disney+)

 

The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special: It's mostly just goofy fun, in the spirit of TV Christmas specials of the past (complete with a "Special Presentation" bumper that looks like it came from the 70s). (Disney+)

 

For All Mankind (Seasons 1 and 2): Set in an alternate history where the Soviets were first on the moon, the show details a space race that never ended. I'm enjoying it, and I've recently started into season 3. The show looks beautiful, and the scenes blending historical figures with the activities in the plot are done in a seamless way. (Apple TV+)

 

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