Hidden Gems of Netflix's Watch Instantly

Just finished the first episode of The Cabin with Bert Kreischer and I'm really enjoying it. It's got that "friends hanging out and shooting the sh*t" vibe that I miss in my real life.

Nevin73 wrote:

Just finished the first episode of The Cabin with Bert Kreischer and I'm really enjoying it. It's got that "friends hanging out and shooting the sh*t" vibe that I miss in my real life.

It's been on my list for a bit. Glad to hear it's good.

mrlogical wrote:

On Friday, my 8 year old had the day off from school. She loves mysteries and has been reading Sherlock Holmes mysteries and wants to dress up as Sherlock for Halloween. I'd told her about Enola Holmes and she loved the idea, even asking to change her costume plans to Enola Holmes (her mom has already started on the costume so I think we're just going to say Enola dresses like Sherlock). So she and I made a plan to watch together on her day off, and she was very excited and I was cautiously optimistic, but I knew it could easily not work out: my daughter is incredibly easily scared of depictions of conflict or even just kids being sneaky. I did my best to prepare her, talking about how there would be some fights and some tension but that we know of course Enola is the hero and will win the day in the end. From the start of the movie, it seemed cute and charming and my daughter was very engaged with it...but we only lasted about 25 minutes. Enola sneaking around her own house at night led to major distress, and when that was soon followed by Enola on a train car trying to sneak away from some person who might do her harm, my daughter was officially out. Argh! So frustrating. We had a similar experience a few months ago when she and I started Avatar the Last Airbender together. I was super impressed that she actually made it through more than a dozen episodes despite occasionally being scared, but after an episode where the three kids snuck into a town in disguise, it just tripped some anxiety switch in her head and she decided the show suddenly too scary and she could not watch it anymore. These are things I think she would really love if she could just accept that sometimes stories have conflict, but I know I'm not going to get her there by forcing it. Oh well.

Thank goodness you didn’t get to the scene where bowler hat almost murders her.

I'm not liking The Haunting of Bly Manor nearly as much as I liked the first eight episodes of Hill House. I'm six episodes in so hopefully it ends stronger than Hill House. So far, the story has been way too predictable and a lot of the characters are just annoying. The dad being Garth Marenghi kind of weirds me out.

I'm 6 episode in on Bly Manor and find it interesting but not very good. They have multiple things going on that feel random and unconnected. Even if the last few episode turn out to be great the overall show will still be a failure especially compared to Hill House which every episode was great and built on the previous episodes.

So here is the problem, I think, with Bly Manor. Mike Flanagan did not write and direct all the episodes as he did with Hill House. He was the show runner, I think, he did editing, and he has exec producer credit on all the episodes. But except for the first episode, the screenplays and direction were done by a group of second stringers, and it shows. Bly Manor does not have the feel or the character of a Flanagan production.

It’s unfortunate. After learning this, I might be more likely not to bother finishing it. It really hasn’t grabbed me yet, and my watchlist is humongous.

Well, I for one am enjoying Bly Manor quite a bit. Each and every episode so far (the first five) has grabbed me at the beginning and not let me go until the end.

Yeah I am really enjoying Bly Manor also. The accents don't bother me like others and even if it might not be as good as Hill House, I still find it a really enjoyable. I've got 2 episodes left so we'll see if they are able to finish it strong.

BadKen wrote:

So here is the problem, I think, with Bly Manor. Mike Flanagan did not write and direct all the episodes as he did with Hill House. He was the show runner, I think, he did editing, and he has exec producer credit on all the episodes. But except for the first episode, the screenplays and direction were done by a group of second stringers, and it shows. Bly Manor does not have the feel or the character of a Flanagan production.

It’s unfortunate. After learning this, I might be more likely not to bother finishing it. It really hasn’t grabbed me yet, and my watchlist is humongous.

It did feel a bit loose in places.

I share the sentiment of others. I enjoyed it, but not as much as Hill House. Still, keep 'em comin'.

Season 3 of Star Trek Discovery is up on Netflix in the UK, it picks up immediately after the end of season 2 - Michael Burnham travels 900 years into the future and, well, lets just say the Federation is a somewhat different prospect nowadays.

I really enjoyed it to be honest - for sure the plot occasionally warped forward a little, and there are a few throwaway lines that cover a lot of ground, but over all it was quite a lot of fun - it felt like they were giving the "lesser" Star Trek races a chance to shine a little too - no Klingons, Romulans, Vulcans or anyone else on display, just some rather cranky Andorians, Orions and whatever Morn's species is. And someone who is clearly going to be "the love interest" in this far future, even though that's doing his rather Han Solo style swashbuckling character a bit of a disservice. It is by some distance the best of the current times Treks, mostly by not being Trek except when it really matters.

Looking forward to the next episodes. I thought the whole point of Netflix was binging on box sets, I'm having to remind myself how to get by on one episode a week again.

I'm looking forward to it, but planning to bank up a few episodes before diving in. I don't have the attention span for weekly shows any more!

Currently watching Hannibal as my Halloween viewing. It's a bit cliched but entertaining enough, and about as horrific as I can tolerate.

"Away" is still great. Much more intense than I was expecting but still great. I'm on episode 5.

ComfortZone wrote:

Currently watching Hannibal as my Halloween viewing. It's a bit cliched but entertaining enough, and about as horrific as I can tolerate.

Seem to remember this got good reviews when first aired. Just watched s1 and quite disappointed overall especially with the main few characters. Mind you, I rewatched the Lecter movies recently so had a direct comparison.

My wife is a huge fan of Schitt's Creek and have watched it multiple times. She asked me to watch it with her, so I sat down and expected to last just a couple of episodes as I thought it was cringe humor. It's not. After a week of binging we are on the final season now and I love it.

Wow, Hill House opens strong. That was a densely-packed first episode.

I binged the back half of The Haunting of Bly Manor last night, mostly just to get through it. It does improve after the first couple of episodes, but maybe I just wasn't in the mood for a gothic romance. I did really enjoy the whole story in episode 8 though!

The love story is a great one, and both actors are fantastic at playing that clumsy falling-in-love process. That was fun to watch.

Bless Carla Gugino and Henry Thomas, both fine actors, but their accents were godawful throughout. Should have cast some UK actors. By contrast, Oliver Jackson-Cohen is an English actor, and he did a pretty good job with the Scots accent to my ears, but some twitter wags are dinging him for it.

I read one comment about the narrator accent*, something to the effect that it was a really bold choice to have the narrator use a different regional accent for each word in the script! That elicited an audible HAH from me. The funny thing is that in interviews, her counterpart (an English actor) said that she worked with Gugino on the script, sending her recordings and stuff, but, well... I'm kicking a dead horse.

I give it a moderate recommendation if you're up for a solid gothic romance with some well crafted characters and a bit of spoopy weirdness stuffed in the cracks. The first few episodes didn't hook me as much as others, but it definitely improves as it reaches the halfway point, and accelerates towards a satisfyingly romantic conclusion.

* found it:

IMAGE(https://i.ibb.co/fGrWcfD/bly-narrator.png)

merphle wrote:

Wow, Hill House opens strong. That was a densely-packed first episode.

Yeah, it doesn't let up, either. Each of the early episodes is centered on a character, and it's fun to watch the way their stories weave in and out of each other.

BadKen wrote:
merphle wrote:

Wow, Hill House opens strong. That was a densely-packed first episode.

Yeah, it doesn't let up, either. Each of the early episodes is centered on a character, and it's fun to watch the way their stories weave in and out of each other.

Bly Manor is definitely more my preferred level of "horror" / creepiness factor than Hill House. I'm hopeful that I can make it through the season without chickening out, because the story does seem intriguing.

Finally finished The Good Place, and I cried almost as much as the end of The Magicians. Also watched the first episode of The Unicorn which was adorable and delightful. Walton Goggins is a GD national treasure.

I just finished The Haunting of Bly Manor, and absolutely loved it.

Mixolyde wrote:

Finally finished The Good Place, and I cried almost as much as the end of The Magicians. Also watched the first episode of The Unicorn which was adorable and delightful. Walton Goggins is a GD national treasure.

I was a sobbing mess both times I watched the finale of The Good Place. I just love that show so much.

I finished The Haunting of Hill House today. I stayed up watching it far too late last night, finishing episode 5 just after midnight, and watching the remaining half-season today. I enjoyed surviving it. It was definitely a much, MUCH heavier story than Bly Manor; I think I prefer Bly Manor as a result, but that's more just a factor of my own personal tastes, rather than any indictment on Hill House.

Also, I didn't know, going in, that Hill House is set primarily in Massachusetts... and the house itself is located in western Mass - a location I know quite well, from having lived there for 4 years, and where my oldest daughter is currently living. That really didn't help to calm me down while watching.

So tonight's family film night was A Babysitter's guide to Monster hunting which joins the current pantheon of Netflix's family adventure films rather well.

It's actually good to see Netflix doing something like this to be honest because since Pirates of the Caribbean - Curse of the Black Pearl (what do you mean there have been other pirate films?) it feels like a genre that Hollywood has really started to neglect, especially with the rise of the MCU.

This isn't a perfect film by a long shot, but as a fairly not too frightening kids Halloween movie, it mostly works quite well. The leads are all engaging enough - especially the younger ones and although the story was quite nuts and bolts in a lot of places at the beginning it eventually found it's voice and sense of fun. It lacks the magic of something like ET or even Ghostbusters (despite Ivan Reitman's involvement) but it worked well enough despite some of the animated characters looking like cheap Pixar knock-offs.

It's worth a watch for sure, although it's probably a little too scary in places for the really young (mini-sorb is coming on 9 years old now and they were fine with it) you could do a lot worse for a lockdown Halloween evening. Not a patch on Enola Holmes though.

If you're in the mood for a horror movie and are thinking about watching Eli don't. It's terribad.

I think there's an alternate universe out there where Real Steel spawned a number of improbable sequels with a cult following a la Fast and Furious. It's not really a good movie. The child actor is a standard issue child actor, and Evangeline Lily is not given much to work with. But there's a lot of really fun stuff in there, including a lot of fight choreography that more expensive robot movies could really learn something from. It's both cartoonish and engaging at the same time. For instance, in one fight, the protagonist bot is fighting a two-headed robot, whose heads each swivel 360 degrees independently. It's a complete gimmick, but it somehow works. Halfway through the fight, protago-bot dodges a punch, pirhouetting around to the back side of the robot. One of the heads swivels around to track him, and is immediately punched in the face. We have had like seven Transformers movies that have yet to generate a fraction of the charm of that sequence.

OG_slinger wrote:

If you're in the mood for a horror movie and are thinking about watching Eli don't. It's terribad.

Thanks for the warning. It was on my ‘I’m going to get around to watching that one day’ list and I may have eventually gotten around to watching it.

kazooka wrote:

I think there's an alternate universe out there where Real Steel spawned a number of improbable sequels with a cult following a la Fast and Furious. It's not really a good movie.

I remember watching it, but couldn’t tell you much about it. I do remember enjoying it for what it was.

Agreed Real Steel took so many hack tropes and managed to make something that executed well, in its intended context. There were lots of threads a slightly more by-the-numbers movie would’ve exposed awkwardly, and I’m glad to be left wondering.

But it’s very much in the Down-and-Out Man Learns to Believe and There Are a Kid and a Woman to Help genre, for no reason. There are lots of ways this could’ve been told as-or-more-interestingly.

Looks like Away isn't getting a second season. I haven't even gotten around to trying it out yet.

MannishBoy wrote:

Looks like Away isn't getting a second season. I haven't even gotten around to trying it out yet.

Oh. Good news.

It's worth a try. The first episode is representative of the rest in terms of quality and tone so you'll know by the end of it if it's for you.