Hidden Gems of Hulu and Hulu+

Baron Of Hell wrote:

Just started Little Fires Everywhere. I'm three episodes in and really digging it. From the trailer I thought it was going to be something different.

I didn’t watch all of it, but what I caught while others in my house watched it was impressive to amazing.

Watched The United States vs Billie Holiday and liked it. It did take me a hour to get into the movie though. Looked up some stuff to see if what the movie had really happen. I do have some of her music but didn't know anything about her life. Oddly enough my favorite part was something that didn't happen and most people probably wont like it. Or maybe they will I don't know.

Baron Of Hell wrote:

Watched The United States vs Billie Holiday and liked it. It did take me a hour to get into the movie though. Looked up some stuff to see if what the movie had really happen. I do have some of her music but didn't know anything about her life. Oddly enough my favorite part was something that didn't happen and most people probably wont like it. Or maybe they will I don't know.

Oh there was one thing I didn't like. One person was kind of cartoonish. He didn't seem to fit with the tone of the movie.

This looks interesting.

DEVS. Watch it.

Like most of Alex Garland’s works, DEVS is an exploration of a fundamental aspect of humanity. In this case, the subject is free will. Also like most of Garland’s work, it is touching, intellectually stimulating, suspenseful, and gorgeous to look at. The focus is on the characters, for the most part, but a few side characters do get short shrift. There’s only so much you can do in eight hours with a plot as tight as this one. Something I love about Garland’s writing is that he does not hold the viewer’s hand. Things move at a good clip, and he expects you to keep up. This also tends to reward multiple viewings, because he always has things happening on multiple levels.

Eight episodes, no fat. Highly recommended.

I really liked Devs.

Yeah, I'm really hoping F/X isn't messed with now that Disney owns it as I think they take some of the biggest creative chances on TV out of anyone right now.

As far as I've read, Disney wants to keep both FX and Hulu around for more adult-oriented shows and Disney+ will remain family-friendly only.

Interestingly, they also recently launched Star inside the Disney+ app for international markets. Hopefully if they do ever decide to shut down Hulu, they'll roll all of the content into the D+ app for the US market as well.

https://www.macrumors.com/2021/02/23...

PaladinTom wrote:

Interestingly, they also recently launched Star inside the Disney+ app for international markets. Hopefully if they do ever decide to shut down Hulu, they'll roll all of the content into the D+ app for the US market as well.

Yes, as a Canadian, I've been loving the Star addition as Disney+ seems to be the most open about 4K versions and also I kind of forgot how much stuff Fox had (for instance, almost every Wes Anderson film and all the Planet of the Apes material).

It does make it a funny match, however, having it all pasted onto a channel that is staying family friendly in other markets. You can start a random movie in the generic listings and it might be a super tame movie that still has the one swear word dubbed out, or it might have someone being horrifically murdered after a sex scene. I mean, I get it and I understand why, and I'm totally happy (especially because a lot of this stuff was previously only available for streaming on Starz where you get the awful cropped for 16:9 version with bad audio) but still kind of funny to have that split personality in a streaming service.

But then again, Disney+ already has a split personality in other ways. (We are keeping in this joke in the cartoon that all Asian people are the same and only care about Chinese food because we believe we should keep things as they are even if they are deemed insensitive now. Also, we made great pains to remove a nipple using CGI.)

Devs was amazing. I am hoping against hope that we get a 4K disc release at some point. It is a gorgeously shot show and the sound was just too cool. I know I am setting myself up to be disappointed. But still.

Don't know how long its been available but Hulu just recommended Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and I am doing a little happy dance.

Agent 86 wrote:

Don't know how long its been available but Hulu just recommended Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and I am doing a little happy dance.

Under appreciated show.

This recommendation may be the result of a long week at work, but I needed something entertaining, not too serious, and fun.

Boss Level hit that spot. YMMV.

Nimcosi wrote:

This recommendation may be the result of a long week at work, but I needed something entertaining, not too serious, and fun.

Boss Level hit that spot. YMMV.

Basically, 80s action flick meets Groundhog Day. Absolutely loved it.

Watched Destroyer which was great. And holy F I did not know that was Nicole Kidman. They did a good job making her look rough and young.

Watched Good Boys which I thought was going to be about dogs. I don't know which movie I got it mixed up with. This is raunchy low teen or tween as they put it comedy. I think the kids are around 12 and 13. Not a movie for kids. Like there is running gag about sex doll that is mistaken for a CPR dummy. I won't lie I thought it was CPR dummy. Anyway I thought it was pretty funny, Lots of Run the Jewels songs in it.

Watched Sputnik last night, a sci-fi horror movie set in the Soviet Union during the early 80s. I was pleasantly surprised by it especially considering I was expecting a Russian version of Apollo 18.

The plot is pretty straightforward, but I did enjoy the pacing and the cinematography, especially the nearly abandoned research complex the movie takes place at.

Baron Of Hell wrote:

Watched Good Boys which I thought was going to be about dogs. I don't know which movie I got it mixed up with. This is raunchy low teen or tween as they put it comedy. I think the kids are around 12 and 13. Not a movie for kids. Like there is running gag about sex doll that is mistaken for a CPR dummy. I won't lie I thought it was CPR dummy. Anyway I thought it was pretty funny, Lots of Run the Jewels songs in it.

Great movie if you love the awkward loss of innocence type of movie. Definitely not for kids. I laughed way too much at all the dumb gags.

I'm really enjoying Debris. There's about 12 episodes to binge now.

It owes a LOT to Fringe, IMO. The acting overall is a lot better (I loved that show but let's be honest, it was often wooden at best apart from Walter gloriously chewing up the scenery with zaniness) but the tradeoff is that it's also more of a serious show with very little to no campiness.

Parts of an alien spacecraft are falling to Earth, and governments (and a MYSTERIOUS ORGANIZATION) are competing to collect bits of it. The different bits are different sizes and have different effects, from teleportation to more severe effects that alter our bodies. So that part of the episode-of-the-week format feels very Fringe-like where the agents fly in to investigate spooky/weird phenomena.

The story arc of the different characters is intriguing enough so far as well (I'm about 5 episodes in), with one of the main characters being the daughter of a scientist who was one of the world's experts on the debris, struggling to deal with his death and that legacy, and the other who's more the wisecracking, junk food eating, personally and politically conflicted character.

It's a shame it seemed so generic before I started watching it, because everything is pretty well-done so far. Hope they stick the landing for the finale.

I've found Debris to be fairly entertaining, though it leans a bit much into emo melodrama at times. Never saw Fringe so my closest comparison would be a more focused X-Files.

Debris is also on Peacock.

AcidCat wrote:

I've found Debris to be fairly entertaining, though it leans a bit much into emo melodrama at times. Never saw Fringe so my closest comparison would be a more focused X-Files.

The most recent 2 episodes had me groaning but otherwise I thought they balanced it well.

"Good" war criminal backstory was pretty eye rolling and lacking in nuance and just uninteresting compared to the rest of the show.

Fingers crossed the finale doesn't keep leaning into it.

Spoiler:

Also, that is the absolute dumbest jail break sequence I've ever seen. Like it was so dumb it killed my suspension of disbelief in a show where the bulk of weirdness is caused by magic metal pieces of an alien ship. There are drunk tanks with better security, let alone holding one of the show's most dangerous/important/deadly villains. Literally just having him disappear from custody without explanation would have been a more interesting narrative choice.

You might want to give Fringe a chance. The first season is fairly average, but once they knew they weren't in danger of impending cancellation it got much weirder and more interesting. And it's not emo at all that I can recall, and much funnier.

The aspect that makes Debris more like Fringe and not X-Files is there isn't really a "skeptic", there's not really an attempt to achieve this "maybe it's real, maybe it's not!" balance of the weekly mysteries (the weirdness is pretty much accepted as reality from very close to the beginning), and the things they're investigating are almost always related to experiments people are intentionally conducting that mess with reality. Whereas X-Files was much more all over the map on all those qualities.

ccoates wrote:

"Good" war criminal backstory was pretty eye rolling and lacking in nuance and just uninteresting compared to the rest of the show.

Oh yeah, easily the worst episode. The whole thing, this convenient attractive Afghan lady who happens to speak great English and Makes The Jaded Hero Care, it was all so contrived and dumb. Also LOL'd at the super-minimum security of that jail the baddie was in. The show certainly has some silly moments.

AcidCat wrote:
ccoates wrote:

"Good" war criminal backstory was pretty eye rolling and lacking in nuance and just uninteresting compared to the rest of the show.

Oh yeah, easily the worst episode. The whole thing, this convenient attractive Afghan lady who happens to speak great English and Makes The Jaded Hero Care, it was all so contrived and dumb. Also LOL'd at the super-minimum security of that jail the baddie was in. The show certainly has some silly moments.

We're willing to Jack Bauer torture and violate this guy's mind, but what we won't do is assign more than a single guard to his entire cell block. You know, budget cuts and whatnot. Although again, we helicopter everywhere and have an endless fleet of vans, labs, SUVs, and Outbreak suits.

Also... they didn't give him a medical scan to begin with?

To be clear for anyone else following along I still really like the show, lol. The last two episodes have just been pretty silly.

Hulu has Young Frankenstein!

Does anyone else have problems with Hulu constantly either restarting a show, or constantly skipping backwards a few minutes so you're in this endless loop of the same chunk of a show?

This also seems to trigger Hulu thinking the ENTIRE show is an advertisement, so you can't even skip ahead to where you were. I have Hulu+, so I shouldn't even have ads, so being told I can't skip ahead in my show because it's an ad is extra insulting.

Hulu itself doesn't seem to care. It started around last year when they did the "revamp" to make the app look more like the website. The old app was uglier, but it worked a lot better.

I've cleared data, reinstalled, restarted, re-logged in, etc. I saw some suggestions online weak wifi can be a cause, but I'm using an ethernet cable on Gigabit fiber.

It seems to happen regardless of device, Xbox, Shield TV, Roku, etc. But not always at the SAME time. In other words they all sometimes do it, but they won't all exhibit the same behavior at once, so you can swap devices but... that's really stupid, to force customers to do that (assuming they even own multiple devices.)

It also seems to go away by itself in the same way it starts randomly.

It's gotten frustrating enough that I'm genuinely considering cancelling my subscription, which I've otherwise been satisfied with for years.

Anyone else ever gotten a helpful response from Hulu? They always just give me the same idiotic "turn it off and on again" suggestions.

I am really late to this particular party and I have no excuse, especially since I always say this is my favorite show of all time when someone asks me. That said, it was only last week that I found that season 11 of The X-Files was available on Hulu... and I still hadn't seen it despite airing in 2018! And I call myself a fan! Wasting no time (after three years, mind you), my wife and I watched all 10 episodes... and they were glorious! Glorious, I tell you! Then again, I'm biased because it is my favorite show ever and all I need is Mulder and Scully on screen to make me happy, but boy did I have a blast with these ten episodes. I'm sad they are supposed to be the last ones for real this time, but being able to enjoy new adventures of my favorite FBI agents was great.

I just saw that season 2 of "Everything Is Going to Be Okay" is out on Hulu. This is a very dysfunctional, but very charming and very funny show. The season was obviously filmed during the pandemic and episode 2 is very good at incorporating social distancing into the awkwardness of the show. Looking forward to watching the rest of this over the next couple days.

Also, unlike other recent shows and movies depicting a character who is autistic or on the spectrum, this show seems to get a lot of praise for both its handling of the subject and for casting an actress with autism and allowing her to give input to her character and her actions behind the scenes.

I don't know if anyone here watched the first season of Motherland: Fort Salem, but the first episode of season two will be available tomorrow. Joy!

I don't know who figured it out, but if you put Paul McCartney in a room with a bunch of studio equipment and instruments and let him just talk about music and his life you get a pretty fascinating docu-series. McCartney 3,2,1 is mostly just footage of him talking one-on-one with record producer Rick Rubin, and it's amazing. Recommended to anyone who has ever heard of a band called "The Beatles" or who has just enjoyed listening to music at any point of their life.