Really enjoying Exploding Kittens.
The card game, or the summer activity of shitty New Jerseyans?
Cannot remember the 3rd Beverley Hills Cop but Axel F had all of the ingredients of the first but none of the charm. Everything was very forced, the story was paper thin, the writing equally thin although the set pieces were fine. Prime Netflix!
I made it half way and stopped. Agree. This was just a retread of the same movie trying to survive off of nostalgia. Same music, same people, same lines.
TERMINATOR ZERO | Official Teaser Trailer | Netflix
We watched Ghostbusters Frozen Empire last night. We enjoyed it for what it was, a fun movie with Paul Rudd, some talented kids, and the OG actors.
I enjoyed Pluto.
Terminator Zero
Timothy Olyphant is voicing the terminator. I was in before I knew that but now I'm really, really in.
Netflix needs to stop putting out new stuff I want to watch.
I can't afford it right now!
These Rebel Moon Directors cuts really are indulgent, aren't they?
These Rebel Moon Directors cuts really are indulgent, aren't they?
They popped up in my Netflix feed, and I was momentarily confused by this fact. Then I compared the two Part Ones and discovered that the new edit added 50 minutes to the run-time. That guaranteed a hard "Nope!!" from me.
The Guardian says that the additional footage is substantial in terms of quantity, earns the new versions an 'R' rating, but adds very little narratively speaking.
The Guardian says[/url] that the additional footage is substantial, earns the new versions an 'R' rating, and add very little narratively speaking.
As if these movies needed more slow motion grain harvesting.
These Rebel Moon Directors cuts really are indulgent, aren't they?
First time watching a Zack Snyder directors cut?
SallyNasty wrote:These Rebel Moon Directors cuts really are indulgent, aren't they?
They popped up in my Netflix feed, and I was momentarily confused by this fact. Then I compared the two Part Ones and discovered that the new edit added 50 minutes to the run-time. That guaranteed a hard "Nope!!" from me.
The Guardian says that the additional footage is substantial in terms of quantity, earns the new versions an 'R' rating, but adds very little narratively speaking.
"Very little" narrative probably doubles the existing content.
Based on what I've read, it sounds like the new material is more world building and characterization than it is plot-changing. Maybe I'll have time to check it out now that my daughter has started preschool.
I enjoyed Umbrella Academy’s final season, though a lot of the heavy lifting is done by Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally playing cozy midwestern apocalyptic cult leaders.
I enjoyed Umbrella Academy’s final season, though a lot of the heavy lifting is done by Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally playing cozy midwestern apocalyptic cult leaders.
Welp, just when I think I'm out, they pull me back in.
That's on my list for this weekend. I realized I never finished season 3 so gotta do that first. 2 down, season finale to go.
I enjoyed the final season of The Umbrella Academy. I really didn't expect the ending we got...
I kept waiting for the Deus Ex Machina or Mcguffin to save the day. I never expected them to sacrifice themselves for the good of all.
Great show.
I wasted more than 6 hours watching Rebel Moon. Unless you're into masochism, I recommend giving this a wide berth.
I don't think I'll ever watch any new Zack Snyder movies. The guy just doesn't learn.
We watched Bodies Bodies Bodies which was a lot of fun somewhere between a murder mystery a slasher and a comedy. It feels like a new generation is making its mark on cinema which is great.
The reviews have been saying that the 4th season of Umbrella Academy is a disappointment, but to me it might have been my favorite season.
I've read some of those as well, and while I can sort of see where they're coming from with some of the complaints, I also disagree with them that the season was bad.
Apparently a big criticism is that it makes all the previous stuff they've done and struggles they've had meaningless since them being wiped from existence means none of it happened, but I feel like they had to have done all that stuff for them to get to the place mentally where they were even willing to make that ultimate sacrifice. I do wish the final season was longer, but that was Netflix's decision, not the showrunners.
Finished up the latest season of the dragon prince. Excellent as always.
I’m watching To Leslie the film that had an unexpected and much discussed Best Actress Oscar nomination for Andrea Riseborough last year. I can report that she more than deserved it. It’s a painfully real performance.
Edit: It’s a superb movie. I’m surprised it didn’t get more buzz. Allison Janney and Marc Maron were also standouts. Hard to witness someone struggling that much but very powerful.
Finished Terminator:Zero
A lot of the morality questions it poses are almost insultingly superficial and feels like it was written by someone who spent too much time lost in "I'm 14 and this deep" territory, but it mostly redeems itself with a refreshingly sane take on how the franchise uses time travel. I *really* disliked how it makes 1997 Japan have consumer-level robots running all over the place (it made it feel very much like this was just some random semi-futuristic anime universe and not the Terminator universe pre-Judgement Day), but they at least give a passable explanation for it by the end. It still felt very un-Terminator-like though. A lot of that stems from the Terminator itself. He had a high body count, but he just did not feel appropriately dangerous. Anime facial expressions also did not do him any favors. Rather than looking impassive and unfeeling as it slaughtered people it looked like it was always super-intense.
Another big part of why the Terminator didn't feel dangerous enough was that it wasn't on a mission to actually terminate anyone. It may have been after the kids, but it was explicitly not trying to kill them, so it never felt like they were in real mortal danger.
Despite this mostly negative sounding review, I did like how it wrapped up enough to recommend it, it's just that getting to that point is kinda painful due to the aforementioned writing problems.
Edit to go over the time travel stuff:
I liked that it was explicitly rejecting the single timeline theory that every movie past the first one messed up. There is no changing the past, you're basically just going to an alternate timeline that diverged from your past the moment you got to it. Everything that was in your present continues on without you.
The specific timelines don't really gel until the last episode, but they are:
- Malcolm's original "future" timeline. It's not a "future" that we've already seen in any of the movies, as they mention when talking about how Skynet misunderstands time travel that every time it kills a "savior" a new one pops up to defeat it. They're still fighting Skynet in 2045, so it's not likely a John Connor timeline, or even a Dani Ramos from Dark Fate timeline. Eiko gives birth to Malcolm and he later creates Misaki as an experiment to create a machine intelligence that does not immediately deem humanity an existential threat to its own survival.
- Malcolm and Misaki create a new timeline when they go to 1983, (a year before the first movie is set, bypassing Sarah and John Connor's story entirely), and create Kokoro to try to stop Judgment Day. In this timeline they are uninterrupted by any time travelers, but they still aren't able to stop Skynet, and somehow, Kokoro's existence makes this timeline's future even worse. Malcolm's son Kenta grows up to broker a deal for coexistence between Skynet and humans, but it sounds like a bad one, given that there's still a resistance fighting them. Kokoro still opposed Skynet in this timeline (if she hadn't, then there'd have been no need for the Terminator to go back to try to force Malcolm to reprogram her) and still took over Japan with an army of 1NN0 robots. It sounds like after her initial opposition to Skynet, Kokoro ultimately decided humanity wasn't worth saving and abandoned them to their fate at the hands of Skynet, as there were Terminators running rampant in this timeline's future Japan but none of Kokoro's 1NN0 forces left. Still, Skynet determines that Malcolm poses an existential threat to its own survival, and has adult Kenta send a Terminator to 1997 to either get Malcolm to reprogram Kokoro to join with Skynet, or somehow destroy Kokoro so she at least won't oppose Skynet. Eiko follows him to 1997, both to stop him and to try to prevent Kokoro from being brought online (though that goal doesn't seem well thought out because without her Japan gets nuked during Judgement Day, so its a choice between the whole country getting nuked or having her save the country but violently take control of it). Because it's years before Eiko would have gotten pregnant with Malcolm, he is effectively never born in this timeline. Her resistance cell is wiped out just as she travels back to 1997. No word on who the old lady leader is who knows that it "has" to be Eiko who goes back in time, and also knows that time traveling to "fix your past" is bullshit.
- The Terminator and Eiko coming to 1997 create a new timeline, the "present" as seen in the show. Malcolm and Mitsuki still traveled from their 2045 to 1983 to create Kokoro to stop Judgement Day, and still fail to stop it. Kokoro still stops Japan from being nuked and still violently takes control with her 1NN0 robots. The difference in this timeline is that Eiko's and the Terminator's presence cause Malcolm to sacrifice his life to save Eiko, which convinces Kokoro that humans are actually worth saving. Presumably, her change of heart means she will not be as violent in her control over the surviving humans as she was in the future Eiko is from, or abandon them to take on Skynet themselves, but that's just implied at this point.
The showrunner said he has a potential 6-season story in his head that follows the children through several decades, but only if he was given free reign to make it. I think it's satisfying enough as a single season show. I fear that if they do greenlight a second season it would end up in a situation where they would *need* all the extra seasons he has planned to finish telling that story, and Netflix would be unlikely to give them that many, leaving his planned story either only partially told or rushed to fit the remaining five seasons worth of ideas into however many season they do get and thus feel unsatisfying.
We are rather enjoying Kaos, a well made comedy drama set in a modern age but based around the Greek pantheon. The major selling point is Jeff Goldblum as Zeus which was a part his louche confidence was born to play but I think Janet Mcteer steals is thunder ( apologies couldn’t resist) as Hera. Mrs BBK is a big fan of the recent rash of Greek myth retelling in print and it’s going down well with her.
LOVED KAOS episode 1. Super fun.
It's such a well done series from all the details from the myths to the star power, and the soundtrack. I couldn't stop watching it!
Kaos was reviewed very favourably by The Guardian, so I've started watching it. I'm two episodes in and I agree entirely about the performances of Jeff Goldblum and Janet Mcteer. They're both very good. And the show itself is well-written, witty and erudite. It also looks sumptuous.
But it's also very 'Netflix-slow'. I hope the amount of detail and exposition being poured into early episodes is paid off with more sprightly pacing in the later ones. (This always irritates me about Neflix shows, but it's at the front of my mind because I've just finished Season 1 of Gyeongseong Creature, which moved at a glacial pace over the course of 10 episodes; each more than one hour in length.)
I'm also finding the amount of exposition slightly disappointing. And I think its not always done very elegantly or subtly. There's an awful lot of 'telling', rather than 'showing' going on. Some of it is absolutely necessary: we need Prometheus to give us background about the character, temperament and foibles of the Gods. But I wish they'd credit the audience with more intelligence or willingness to do a little work themselves.
I think back to the original Clash of the Titans (1981) which pretty much left the audience to work a lot out for themselves.
Nonetheless, I'm enjoying it enough to be excited about working my through to the end.
Interview with the Vampire the tv series was added. My favorite vampire series.
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