Hidden Gems of Amazon Prime instant videos

Bosch Season 5! We loved it. It's one of my personal favourite shows.

Rat Boy wrote:

Carnival Row:

Two episodes in and it to me feels like taking elements from Shadowrun and Final Fantasy and mixing it all up with bits of Dickens, Doyle, and Downton Abbey.

Yesssssss. Sounds great!

Three episodes in and I'm wondering if there's an RPG similar to this that I can play.

Rat Boy wrote:

Three episodes in and I'm wondering if there's an RPG similar to this that I can play.

Arcanum

The Boys is good.

Justified is GOOOOOOD.

Mid90's was a fantastic film, and totally out of left field given the writer/director's film history.

And my 3-year-old daughter will tell you that Tumbleleaf is AMAZING. I think it's a pretty good little kid's show with high-quality stop-motion animation.

Rewatching and re-loving Patriot. Its like if James Bond were a depressed mortal human who sings folk songs about the awful things he has to do, to cope.

Found and watched Mission Impossible: Fallout on Prime last night and at this rate I figure that for the next Top Gun movie Tom Cruise does in fact fly his own F/A-18.

I watched Fallout last weekend as well and enjoyed it. Glad they went a different way with the "Ethan must be a traitor" bit finally, at least on the IMF side. CIA still a bit dumb.

Cross posting from the Post a Dungeons & Dragons Picture thread:

Mr Eko wrote:

The documentary about D&D art and artists, Eye of the Beholder, is available to stream on Amazon Prime Video now.

Watched it tonight thanks to your recommendation and I now consider it essential viewing for anyone who's merely dabbled in D&D. Every piece of art they showed either told a story or invited the viewer to tell a story about what they were seeing on their own.

Rat Boy wrote:

Cross posting from the Post a Dungeons & Dragons Picture thread:

Mr Eko wrote:

The documentary about D&D art and artists, Eye of the Beholder, is available to stream on Amazon Prime Video now.

Watched it tonight thanks to your recommendation and I now consider it essential viewing for anyone who's merely dabbled in D&D. Every piece of art they showed either told a story or invited the viewer to tell a story about what they were seeing on their own.

Watched this last night. Definitely interesting, and the stories from the artists were great.

But I really wished for a bit less enthusiastic fans raving about how great D&D art is, and a bit more historical and critical context.

In particular, when they addressed the "big boobs and skimpy outfits" side of the genre simply having a few people say "Well I liked it" and nothing else was a pretty bad take. And that one artist who was particularly into making those illustrations... not a good look.

Because I watched Eye of the Beholder Amazon recommended to me World of Darkness, which by the title obviously is a documentary about the Vampire RPG. It covers the history of White Wolf up to the purchase by Paradox, but it obviously came out long before the announcement of Bloodlines 2. It spends a lot of time covering the LARPing community that appeared due to The Masquerade and touches on how movies like Blade and TV shows like True Blood borrowed heavily from the RPG. Now I'm wondering what other RPGs warrant a documentary.

I enjoyed that World of Darkness one too.

As to what else might make a good documentary... well, I'd love to see an overview of Greg Stafford's Glorantha and all the different games that used that world (so many editions of RuneQuest, Heroquest, the various board games). It might be a bit depressing now that he's passed away, though.

Not RPGs, but similar game documentaries; have you already watched King of Kong, and the other one about making indie games with Super Meatboy and Fez and others?

Undone was good except for the very end for me. The mix of cartoon filter with cartoons was interesting.

I was over at my sister's last night and her husband had me watch an episode of something called "Travels by Narrowboat" in which a guy on a Narrowboat travels English canals. There's shots of the English countryside, shots of the boat moving slowly in one direction, shots of people walking on the path next to the canal and keeping pace with the slow moving boat. Occasionally he reaches a lock that he needs to operate to get through. And every so often there's footage of Google Earth showing where he is, and where he's headed.

And there's 5 seasons of this excitement available on Amazon Prime.

I have been reading The Boys and I am not sure I am terribly interested in the comics. They are super over the top full of homophobic slurs and general homophobia. The show is way better.

I enjoyed Undone, but I am really not a fan of

Spoiler:

the "what if mental illness is actually superpowers?" premise. It's pretty overused, and while it has been used well in some cases it always leaves me feeling a little uncomfortable. It feels sort of like its fetishizing a real issue that affects a lot of people, and that seems gross to me.

Also, as someone who's a big fan of magical realism I really prefer it when the more fantastic elements are played straight and used as a vehicle to explore more serious issues, rather than having those elements constantly called into question: "What if none of this is real? What if she's just crazy?" I hate that.

BoJack Horseman, also created by Raphael Bob-Waksberg, is great because it uses a completely ridiculous world and cast of characters to explore complex topics. Can you imagine if the show kept interrupting all that to say "hey maybe BoJack isn't an actual talking horse, maybe he's just mentally ill! Maybe all these wacky talking animals are just hallucinations?" Nobody would want to watch that.

Most of the time, Undone is a great show about a woman who becomes unstuck in time and is forced to confront and deal with various unresolved issues between her and her family and friends. But then sometimes, the show interrupts all that to tell me that maybe this is actually a show about an unmedicated schizophrenic whose life is spiralling out of control. I don't want to watch that second show.

And honestly? The show would work just as well without the schizophrenia subplot. You still have Alma unstuck in time dealing with all her sh*t, you still have the backstory of her dad's weird shaman experiments, you still have her friends and family confused by her weird behaviour, it all still works. There's still plenty of drama in that show.

Hell I'm even fine with the uncertain ending, that's a common enough trope in magical realism. I just wish they'd omitted the "schizophrenia or superpowers" part, I think it makes the show worse and it does a disservice to people who actually struggle with mental illness.

SallyNasty wrote:

I have been reading The Boys and I am not sure I am terribly interested in the comics. They are super over the top full of homophobic slurs and general homophobia. The show is way better.

I tried it because I desperately wanted more after that finale but quickly came to the same conclusion.

SallyNasty wrote:

I have been reading The Boys and I am not sure I am terribly interested in the comics. They are super over the top full of homophobic slurs and general homophobia. The show is way better.

The comic is 10 years old and shows its age (or so I hear, haven't read a single page). The general opinion is that the show is better than the source material because the show took what works from the comics and left behind what is no longer "acceptable". I quote acceptable to generalize it, not critique how some topics have evolved.

Hobbes2099 wrote:
SallyNasty wrote:

I have been reading The Boys and I am not sure I am terribly interested in the comics. They are super over the top full of homophobic slurs and general homophobia. The show is way better.

The comic is 10 years old and shows its age (or so I hear, haven't read a single page). The general opinion is that the show is better than the source material because the show took what works from the comics and left behind what is no longer "acceptable". I quote acceptable to generalize it, not critique how some topics have evolved.

It was pretty uneven 10 years ago, and time hasn't been very kind to it. That said, I think Ennis was working out a lot of his feelings about the state of comics and having to constantly write superheroes, and how ugly he thought the industry was. The whole book was supposed to be kind of gross.

Tscott wrote:

I was over at my sister's last night and her husband had me watch an episode of something called "Travels by Narrowboat" in which a guy on a Narrowboat travels English canals. There's shots of the English countryside, shots of the boat moving slowly in one direction, shots of people walking on the path next to the canal and keeping pace with the slow moving boat. Occasionally he reaches a lock that he needs to operate to get through. And every so often there's footage of Google Earth showing where he is, and where he's headed.

And there's 5 seasons of this excitement available on Amazon Prime.

I checked out a couple episodes last night and it's weirdly compelling (and weirdly frustrating).

On the compelling side are the environment and visuals and the fact he's capturing a slice of life that I never knew existed.

On the frustrating side is the guy himself. I watched three or four episodes and despite playing up the ordeal of actually buying the boat and having the boat be the center of his whole adventure he's yet to actually show viewers the inside of it. And I've definitely seen better cinematography and editing on YouTube.

muttonchop wrote:

I enjoyed Undone, but I am really not a fan of

Spoiler:

the "what if mental illness is actually superpowers?" premise. It's pretty overused, and while it has been used well in some cases it always leaves me feeling a little uncomfortable. It feels sort of like its fetishizing a real issue that affects a lot of people, and that seems gross to me.

Also, as someone who's a big fan of magical realism I really prefer it when the more fantastic elements are played straight and used as a vehicle to explore more serious issues, rather than having those elements constantly called into question: "What if none of this is real? What if she's just crazy?" I hate that.

BoJack Horseman, also created by Raphael Bob-Waksberg, is great because it uses a completely ridiculous world and cast of characters to explore complex topics. Can you imagine if the show kept interrupting all that to say "hey maybe BoJack isn't an actual talking horse, maybe he's just mentally ill! Maybe all these wacky talking animals are just hallucinations?" Nobody would want to watch that.

Most of the time, Undone is a great show about a woman who becomes unstuck in time and is forced to confront and deal with various unresolved issues between her and her family and friends. But then sometimes, the show interrupts all that to tell me that maybe this is actually a show about an unmedicated schizophrenic whose life is spiralling out of control. I don't want to watch that second show.

And honestly? The show would work just as well without the schizophrenia subplot. You still have Alma unstuck in time dealing with all her sh*t, you still have the backstory of her dad's weird shaman experiments, you still have her friends and family confused by her weird behaviour, it all still works. There's still plenty of drama in that show.

Hell I'm even fine with the uncertain ending, that's a common enough trope in magical realism. I just wish they'd omitted the "schizophrenia or superpowers" part, I think it makes the show worse and it does a disservice to people who actually struggle with mental illness.

I just finished Undone as well. I enjoyed the process of watching it, was hooked the whole way, but the 'is it real or not' bugged me too. The show has a lot to like about it. The characters are great, the look is good. I watched the whole thing in one sitting, which isn't too hard to do. I think the total is 4 hours.

Spoiler:

It does take you on a frustrating arc. Mid-season, the 'magic' seems undoubtedly real. She connects with that security guard and knows things she can't possibly know. Maybe if you go through that scene frame by frame you can find the guard's sister's name (daughter? I forget) Side note, the back and forth between the guard and Sam is great.

The last 3rd of the season basically forces you to doubt everything you're seeing and doubt the prior 2 3rds of the season and it would have been find if that was the direction they chose to go and end it that way, with Alma taking her pills. To take the last 20 seconds and then just (probably) essentially flip that last third again asks too much of me, I think.

Even then, only Alma sees whatever she's seeing, so it's again doubtable.

I'm loving Undone so far. Love the rotoscoping work, and Salazar is great as usual.

I haven't got to the negative stuff yet though.

BadKen wrote:

I'm loving Undone so far. Love the rotoscoping work, and Salazar is great as usual.

I haven't got to the negative stuff yet though.

I finished it yesterday, and really enjoyed it.

Just finished Carnival Row. I enjoyed it overall. The world building including sets and costuming was great. The actors did a good job. The script was only ok though. The weak point was a very by the numbers plot with all the “twists” pretty easy to see coming. The dialogue was costume drama cliche. Still, I’ll probably watch a second season if there is one.

Anyone talking about fleabag?
Because it is the first show in a long time that makes me guffaw and/or spit-take.
The nose punching episode was effing brilliant!

There was some chatter a couple of months ago. Great and interesting show!

I enjoyed season 2 of Fleabag a lot more than 1, but both were excellent.

I finished Undone and thoroughly enjoyed it. The creators used the medium VERY effectively to enhance the story.

This has set me on a Rosa Salazar binge, and I found on Amazon the 2015 movie Night Owls. It is a wonderful little film, only five actors and two locations. It was shot mostly in a big house they found on airbnb. What really makes it shine is the writing and acting of the two main characters. Critics adored it: 100% on RT.

HIGHLY recommended. Watch Night Owls. I suggest going in blind, as most of the reviews I read after watching laid bare the movie's finer points. Adult themes and language so wait 'til the kids are asleep.