Hidden Gems of Amazon Prime instant videos

Garth wrote:
Fedaykin98 wrote:
Garth wrote:
fangblackbone wrote:

Jesse Eisenberg may be a jerk, but his movie "Vivarium" is pretty solid :)

Is he a jerk? I always figured he was because he plays lots of jerky characters, but didn't know if he actually was one.

He does? I thought he played a bunch of pathetic losers.

There is a Venn diagram of those two groups of people.

Mark Zuckerberg.

Fedaykin98 wrote:

Of course, that's true, I just don't think I've seen a movie where he plays a jerk rather than a pathetic loser. I've seen him in three movies that I can think of. Man, I went to the movies a lot before we had kids. :lol:

He's a colossal douche in The Social Network.

I watched Aeon Flux last night. I completely missed it when it came out. It was pretty good for what it was: a reasonable sci-fi movie with a lot of 'check out how hot Charlize Theron is'

mudbunny wrote:

If you can get past the love affair of the New Zealand team and a bunch of American teams, and the cheezy Bear Grylls voice-overs, the latest Eco-Challenge Fiji is really, really good.

Seconded. It's produced by Mark Burnett and scratches a bit of that SurvivorAmazing Race itch. Just wish it had Probst intead of Bear Grylls - but he's really not that bad.

Quintin_Stone wrote:
Fedaykin98 wrote:

Of course, that's true, I just don't think I've seen a movie where he plays a jerk rather than a pathetic loser. I've seen him in three movies that I can think of. Man, I went to the movies a lot before we had kids. :lol:

He's a colossal douche in The Social Network.

To be fair, it's feeling like it's becoming pretty common that the actors who only play nice guys are actually awful human beings and the ones who only play jerks are genuinely sweet and caring people.

PaladinTom wrote:
mudbunny wrote:

If you can get past the love affair of the New Zealand team and a bunch of American teams, and the cheezy Bear Grylls voice-overs, the latest Eco-Challenge Fiji is really, really good.

Seconded. It's produced by Mark Burnett and scratches a bit of that SurvivorAmazing Race itch. Just wish it had Probst intead of Bear Grylls - but he's really not that bad.

My wife and I used to watch the Eco-Challenge races years ago, so it was fantastic to realize about halfway through Episode 1 that this was its return. Really enjoying it so far, except for the part where I feel guilty lounging on a couch. I feel like I should be watching this on a stationary bike or something.

We watched the first episode of The Goes Wrong Show.
I laughed a lot
Slapstick with tv episodes going wrong. First is a Christmas special.
We saw the play, The play That Goes Wrong, and I enjoyed it.

MathGoddess wrote:

We watched the first episode of The Goes Wrong Show.
I laughed a lot
Slapstick with tv episodes going wrong. First is a Christmas special.
We saw the play, The play That Goes Wrong, and I enjoyed it.

Those were great fun.

Maybe this is cheating because it’s on the Shudder channel on Amazon rather than Amazon Prime itself, but I watched The Beach House last night and loved it- it perfectly nails the creeping existential dread of life on the coast.
Or maybe that’s just me.
Anyway, if you’re a fan of slow-paced atmospheric horror that obviously cribs from Annihilation I highly recommend it.

Watched the first two of the three available episodes of The Boys season 2. It’s still good but a lot slower paced than the start of the first season. The new character is great and I can’t wait for the heel turn.

Whoever made the call to release this season weekly rather than all at once needs to be punched in the junk.

ruhk wrote:

Whoever made the call to release this season weekly rather than all at once needs to be punched in the junk.

Agreed. I am quite annoyed and will end up waiting to watch until more episodes are out.

Thanks for letting us know. I hate delayed releases like that and will just wait until Oct to start then.

Yeah. I'll be skipping out on The Boys and at least two other shows that are all doing week to week until they've finished their seasons.

I think I get why they're doing it, especially right now, but it's just not how I want to watch basically anything anymore.

I'm in the opposite corner. I have enjoyed having something to look forward to each week with some of the recent streaming shows that have returned to historical form and have been releasing new episodes on a one-week cycle.

Yeah I too like the weekly format, gives me something to look forward each week while having time to catch up on all the OTHER content I'm trying to injest.

vypre wrote:

I'm in the opposite corner. I have enjoyed having something to look forward to each week with some of the recent streaming shows that have returned to historical form and have been releasing new episodes on a one-week cycle.

Veloxi wrote:

Yeah I too like the weekly format, gives me something to look forward each week while having time to catch up on all the OTHER content I'm trying to injest.

This is me also. It gives me time to process what I've watched and think about it. Often when I've binged shows, thinking back on the experience, everything is a blur. One of my best tv experiences was watching Breaking Bad weekly. I know tons of people binged it, but it was such a different, more fraught experience watching it week-to-week.

Nothing stopping you guys from hitting the button on your remote to prevent the show from playing the next episode.

Personally I hate having to artificially wait to watch shows. I want to decide for myself when I want watch something, not have some company decide for me in an effort to eek out a fraction or a percent more renewals for next month.

For me the point of streaming is to watch on my schedule not the companies. If I wanted that I would watch cable.

If they release it in chunks for a cool reason like part two is set during Halloween then fine split it into two parts but one episode a week just means I am gonna skip it for a few week so it can build up a few episodes and probably forget it came out.

The nice thing about a weekly release is it gives you a chance to digest and talk about an episode with people. Discuss what might happen next. We've lost that with the binging. Theres been a number of times I've wanted to discuss a show with a friend but they have binged it all in 1 weekend where I couldn't or vice versa.

For a show I'm watching solo, I might enjoy the binge option. For shows I watch with my wife, I enjoy the old "appointment TV" concept.

I'm watching Lovecraft Country by myself right now, and I enjoy the weekly pacing.

We've lost the art of talking about shows because there's a tad bit more than three networks these days (hell, there's more than three major streaming services) and any episode discussion that might happen is predicated on 1) people subscribing to the right streaming service, 2) being interested in that one particular show that's been designed to appeal to specific demo, and 3) watching the new episode of that particular show as soon as it's made available. And in the days of COVID social distancing there's not even 'water cooler chat.'

And even then the extent of those kinds of conversations are "Did you see that episode? It was good. You should watch it." If I want a nerdy, deep-dive dissection of a show I'm turning to an online fan community, not a co-worker or friend who watches it while scrolling through social media.

Releasing shows weekly on an on-demand streaming service is both stupid and 180 degrees opposite of the value proposition every streaming service has promoted since they started: watch what you want, when you want.

I get that Amazon wants to pretend that they're HBO and get some of that sweet, sweet social media buzz. But the reality is that if they make good shows people will recommend them to their friends. Hell, I just finished rewatching The Wire, a show that's nearly 20 years old, with a buddy of mine because he had never seen it.

There's another consideration, too, and that's the production of the series.

If it is known by the producers that a series will be released all at once, they are likely to structure it differently than if they are sure it will be a weekly release. I've seen this in several series, where something marketed as "bingeable" is structured a lot more like a 10-12 hour movie. Conversely, on HBO, for example, series are typically released weekly, so they frequently have cliffhanger episodes to keep people watching, and also standalone episodes of the sort that would be unlikely to appear in a 10-hour-movie styled program.

The release method's influence on production, along with other factors, keeps things more interesting for viewers, as they have more variety in their entertainment. People who like to swish the episodes around in their mouths before spitting them out can do so, and those who want to chug a season all at once also have options.

The only thing I like about week to week shows is they still do a "previously on..." at the beginning.

Sometimes binging gets interrupted by a couple nights of sports or a kid having sleep issues, working late, etc. And it's nice to get a recap of important things a few days later when I return.

I think even the binge shows should have that. It should probably be skippable like credits.

Stele wrote:

The only thing I like about week to week shows is they still do a "previously on..." at the beginning.

Sometimes binging gets interrupted by a couple nights of sports or a kid having sleep issues, working late, etc. And it's nice to get a recap of important things a few days later when I return.

I think even the binge shows should have that. It should probably be skippable like credits.

I agree that's nice, and those "previously..." things often emphasize the important stuff you might not have been paying enough attention to even if you just watched it Phone distractions, etc.

I could swear one of the services at least tried a thing where if you watched back to back you wouldn't get the recap, but if you had time in between viewings, you'd get the options. But I can't remember where I saw it done that way.

Seems like it was a show that had been on TV where that recap was already produced. Not sure it happened on content originally produced for streaming or not.

Just been watching Star Trek Discovery and the s2 finale kind of drove the point home when they did a previously from the Shorts series that I didn't watch and was like WTF.

Hulu does that thing where if there are days between when you watch episodes then it replays the last 3-4 minutes of the previous episode first. I personally found it annoying but I can see it being an easy substitute for the “what happened last time” question.

Liking The Boys season 2 so far. Like someone said before, it does seem slower paced compared to the first season.
The supes seem fairly efficient at their jobs, with some glaring exceptions. I wish the series had more of the supes being horrible at their job (not evil, just being extremely amateurish). Giancarlo at one point even mentions that the supes were great during WW2, which, remembering the comic, it's, uh, let's say, open to discussion.

Half-way through recap of S1 atop the first episode of S2, did I decide that
A. I really liked The Boys, and
B. I didn't remember everything with enough detail.

So I decided to re-binge S1.
Which took all of 2 nights. Man, S1 goes in a blur.

I like what they're doing with S2.
I can't wait to see what they have in store with Stormfront.
I think I'm ready to move on from the Deep. He feels pointless.

Also, I'm getting this TF2's Pyro vibe from Black Noir. I really hope if leads somewhere.

I was listening to a recap podcast and watched a couple videos---boy I don't remember much of it either. Quite a bit in the middle sections I was very hazy on.

Hobbes2099 wrote:

Also, I'm getting this TF2's Pyro vibe from Black Noir. I really hope if leads somewhere.

I watched a Con panel between the seasons (don't know which one) and someone from the crowd mentioned a spoiler about him during the Q&A part. I felt bad for the, I imagine, vast majority of people who haven't read the comic. Now, from what I've seen of him in the show, the showrunners seem to be going somewhere completely different, which actually makes sense since they've been doing that a lot with other characters and plotlines.