Hidden Gems of Amazon Prime instant videos

Finished Reacher - I liked it! None of the acting was that good, but it was one of those shows that ended up being better than the sum of its parts. The fights were brutal. Can't wait for S2!

ComfortZone wrote:
polq37 wrote:

Finally, is anybody watching this having trouble with way too much bass coming through? It's making the subwoofer rumble like no game or movie I've ever watched. It feels distracting and out of balance. I'm watching using the Prime app on an xbox.

I noticed this too, especially during quiet scenes with some low bass in the background. Made my crappy TV speakers go nuts I'm using a Fire stick so it's not just an Xbox thing.

Maybe it was a weird bug. I was thinking that it was a glitch on my end because shortly after that, my wireless subwoofer completely died. It was only about 18 months old and there don't seem to be any good repair or replacement options.

Yeah, Reacher was good. Closer to the books than the Cruise movies, which I also enjoyed.

polq37 wrote:
ComfortZone wrote:
polq37 wrote:

Finally, is anybody watching this having trouble with way too much bass coming through? It's making the subwoofer rumble like no game or movie I've ever watched. It feels distracting and out of balance. I'm watching using the Prime app on an xbox.

I noticed this too, especially during quiet scenes with some low bass in the background. Made my crappy TV speakers go nuts I'm using a Fire stick so it's not just an Xbox thing.

Maybe it was a weird bug. I was thinking that it was a glitch on my end because shortly after that, my wireless subwoofer completely died. It was only about 18 months old and there don't seem to be any good repair or replacement options.

It has happened occasionally in other shows as well. I think Reacher just had some prolonged scenes with low menacing bass in the background, which made it more noticeable.

I also finished the series, and enjoyed it for pretty much the same reasons I like the books. Dumb fun that is satisfying and more-ish for reasons I don't really want to look to closely into! It's at least good to know there are some other GWJers who are the same way

While filtering out the pile of questionable Valentines day rom coms I stumbled across The Vault last night, which as bank heist movies go was very unflashy, actually seemed to have thought through how some early 20th century unbreakable (but breakable) vault might actually work and how you might go about stealing from it. Actual cracking of safe number dials was at an absolute minimum (as I suspect it might actually be in real life) and to be honest the film was all the better for it. Not a gun is fired in the entire movie.

I thoroughly enjoyed it. Much better than Netflix's Army of Thieves

Not a high bar you're setting there

ComfortZone wrote:

Not a high bar you're setting there :)

Well. This is true yes!

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power – Teaser Trailer | Prime Video

Looks remarkably good.

farley3k wrote:

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power – Teaser Trailer | Prime Video

Looks remarkably good.

But….. but……. That Dwarf Lady. She doesn’t have a beard! And that Elf?!? He’s not whi……… doesn’t have long hair!!!!

I quite enjoyed Get Shorty (the Epix dramedy series, not the movie).

The premise is similar, but different than the movie. In the series a low-level thug (played by Chris O'Dowd) for a Guatemalan drug queen/casino owner in Parump, NV gets sent to LA to collect a marker from what turns out to be an unknown script writer who claims to have written a masterpiece.

Things happen and O'Dowd seizes upon the script as a way that he can launder money for the drug queen, get away from his normal thug duties of disappearing bodies, and starting a new life that will save his rocky marriage.

The core of the series is O'Dowd being a fish out of water who learns that his criminal skills also work with making movies and him having to push through whatever obstacle pops up lest he loses the drug queen's money and gets merced himself.

The cast is great, too. Ray Romano plays a washed up B-movie producer O'Dowd partners with to teach him the ropes, Sean Bridgers is O'Dowd's Mormon with very selective beliefs partner, and Lidia Porto absolutely kills it as Amara, the drug queen.

You had me at Chris O'Dowd

Edit: I watched the first episode. Great find, I had never heard of this and there's 3 seasons to enjoy.

OG_slinger wrote:

I quite enjoyed Get Shorty (the Epix dramedy series, not the movie).

Chris O'Dowd you said? Never heard of this before. Watched trailer. Immediately started watching it.

So apparently this is a thing:

8 episode anthology series out on March 4th. The Huey and Butcher characters in the trailer are the comics versions so this probably isn’t canon to the main series.

Season 3 of the main series is out in June, as well.

We think Maisel season 4 is the best yet. Not sure why it was getting mediocre reviews. It's incredibly funny. The "Let it gooooo" bit in episode 1 is the funniest thing in the whole show.

That’s one of those series I know I’d likely enjoy but never give a chance. I’ll have to watch the first episode over the weekend. See if it takes.

tuffalobuffalo wrote:

We think Maisel season 4 is the best yet. Not sure why it was getting mediocre reviews. It's incredibly funny. The "Let it gooooo" bit in episode 1 is the funniest thing in the whole show.

Kind of disagree. Feels like it is retreading some old material. I haven't read any reviews of the season yet, but may once the season is over.

I am still absolutely in love with Mrs. Maisel. It is constantly funny, and I love being in this world with these characters.

My only nit is that this show has become much more of an ensemble show, so we don’t get to spend a lot of time with all of the characters.

BUT all of the characters are just so good we don’t mind watching one group of characters in favor of others.

Easy fix: longer episodes or more episode per season.

kborom wrote:
Crawley wrote:

Yeah we're enjoying Reacher as well. Alan Ritchson is basically classic Schwarzenegger without all the one liners.

Yeah, enjoying this one. Great to see Guillermo as well!

What is it Guillermo? Did you bring more people to look at my peepee?

Finished season 2 of Upload. It's short, only 7 episodes, but good. Robbie Amell said they went with letting the story dictate the episode count rather than have the episode count dictate the story. It's kind of a mixed blessing though. The tight focus on the main plot also meant that there wasn't as much time spent on the everyday minor invasiveness of the world they live in, just the big glaring examples. It moved the main story along quickly, and definitely left me wanting season 3 immediately, but it dropped a few threads from season 1 and glosses over some of the threads they do keep.

Spoiler:

The cousin who went off the pier while investigating Nathan's "accident" wasn't mentioned at all, and while Nathan's business partner was mentioned, there was no update on how his attempt to launch Beyond was going. The side plot of Nathan helping the 2gigs just kind of ended without any real improvement in their situation. I had expected him to use the tool he had to introduce some bugs into the areas they had access to (like the free bagel bug Luke showed him on his first day). The Ludds were pretty underdeveloped and surprisingly simplistic. It'd be trivially easy for them to be kept under surveillance or even infiltrated. The cyber crimes cop plot went absolutely nowhere, though it's clear he's merely being set up for a future part of the story, I had expected them to do more with him than they did. Also, the guy who was killed in the elevator shouldn't have been able to upload based on their preiously-established rules for uploading, as he was already dead in the elevator and they can't upload a corpse.

I hadnt thought about a lot of those issues (and hardly remembered anything about Season 1) but I did also generally enjoy the season. I also was surprised that they ended at 7 episodes. Felt like they were building towards something interesting but cut it off too soon. I guess they intend to do a lot with that in Season 3, assuming there is one.

polypusher wrote:

I hadnt thought about a lot of those issues (and hardly remembered anything about Season 1) but I did also generally enjoy the season. I also was surprised that they ended at 7 episodes. Felt like they were building towards something interesting but cut it off too soon. I guess they intend to do a lot with that in Season 3, assuming there is one.

Theres been no official renewal from Amazon, but Greg Daniels said about a month ago that he and the rest of the writers were about halfway through writing season 3, so I'm assuming there will be one unless they say differently. It's going to be hard to wait though.

Rewatched Upload season 1, still great. Probably start season 2 today.

It's hardly a hidden gem, but I finally got around to watching Sonic The Hedgehog (2020) last night. Jim Carrey makes an excellent Dr. Robotnik, and totally stole the show.

If you are not watching it already, Outer Range is phenomenal. Very twin peaks.

merphle wrote:

It's hardly a hidden gem, but I finally got around to watching Sonic The Hedgehog (2020) last night. Jim Carrey makes an excellent Dr. Robotnik, and totally stole the show.

That was the last movie he will ever make.

kazar wrote:
merphle wrote:

It's hardly a hidden gem, but I finally got around to watching Sonic The Hedgehog (2020) last night. Jim Carrey makes an excellent Dr. Robotnik, and totally stole the show.

That was the last movie he will ever make.

You know he's in the sequel, right?

That was the one I was referring to, but I didn't realize merphle was talking about the first.

Fredrik_S wrote:

If you are not watching it already, Outer Range is phenomenal. Very twin peaks.

Yeah, I watched a couple episodes last night. Super Twin Peaksey.

tuffalobuffalo wrote:
Fredrik_S wrote:

If you are not watching it already, Outer Range is phenomenal. Very twin peaks.

Yeah, I watched a couple episodes last night. Super Twin Peaksey.

How would you describe it to someone like me, who's never seen Twin Peaks? It keeps bubbling up as a recommendation, and the description and screenshots look somewhat interesting, but I don't care at all for westerns.