Discuss and Rate the Last Thing You Watched (non-movies)

gorfias

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Have you seen any of Flanagan’s prior shows? In some ways I think the intended impact of Usher hits best, but overall I’d probably put it somewhere between A Haunting of Hill House being a high point in terms of consistency and Midnight Mass which, had its issues but also built a sense of dread that culminated in a suitable finale.
Yes, I've seen them. This guy is very prolific! He's involved with a ton of great horror/suspense. But for the last episode of Usher, I'd put it at the top. But the occult is spookiest when it is murky and unknown and the last episode did two things: 1) Rather than murky it had a 1000 watt bulb and microscope on it. 2) Rather than amusing Easter eggs of Poe's works, it got pretty literal. But what a ride! Haunting of Hill House
kinda like Star Wars and Force Ghosts. Death, where is thy sting? You can just hang around forever. It just didn't seem to abide by its own rules. But may still have the top spot. Mass's the scene where the guy is on a boat to far from shore to get back before daylight? That show had some great beats!
 
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BrawlMan

Lover of beat'em ups.
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I remember watching Trinity Blood back in the day, and how boring and really shitty the ending is. Then it's turn out the original author of the light novel series died before the anime was even made, and the non-ending that goes nowhere. I have not seen it since it aired on adult swim back in 2007.

 

Old_Hunter_77

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Dark Winds season 1, AMC

Based on a series of novels about Navajo police officers investigating and getting caught up in various crimes and whatnot on the Navajo reservation, it's a thriller/mystery series. Continuing AMC's thing with brooding stories in desert spaces. We checked it out because I am interested in stories about indigenous people, it has two actors from the excellent Reservation Dogs, and it's only 6 episodes a season.
It's... ok. The cast is solid, the directing is great if you like long loving mood-setting vistas, and the mystery at the core of the crime interested me which is the most important thing for this type of show. What really surprised me is that there are elements of "magic" and that characters take it seriously so it's just really unique to see that but in a relatively modern setting (takes place in 1971 so there is also retro/nostalgia in here).

It's a pretty solid genre show with a native-American twist and I just love that we are seeing more of these cultures represented but as people. Ultimately the plot and story resolve very ok- there's some of that "now that you know the secrets lemme just tell you stuff" at the end and I do wish it was handled a bit more elegantly but a show like this will always be better in the beginning and middle as the mystery and suspense rule the screen.
 

gorfias

Unrealistic but happy
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Reacher S2: E1-3, new episodes on Fridays

Alan Ritchson (Aquaman from Smallville) returns as Jack Reacher. Former military doing the "Kung Fu" traveling the nation and having adventures sorta thing. Tom Cruise played him kind unconvincingly in 2 movies. The character is based on a book series in which Reacher is a very large mammal. It is Ritchson that fits this bill. When he one hand hurls a guy, you can believe it.

You do have to suspend disbelief a lot. In S1 he had a cop with him in a podunk town and you could believe the cop would put up with him. In the big city? Not so much. And he seems, early on, ready to dish out a lot more violence and even death than in S1.

But so far, a lot of fun. B+


 

Piscian

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Yes, I've seen them. This guy is very prolific! He's involved with a ton of great horror/suspense. But for the last episode of Usher, I'd put it at the top. But the occult is spookiest when it is murky and unknown and the last episode did two things: 1) Rather than murky it had a 1000 watt bulb and microscope on it. 2) Rather than amusing Easter eggs of Poe's works, it got pretty literal. But what a ride! Haunting of Hill House
kinda like Star Wars and Force Ghosts. Death, where is thy sting? You can just hang around forever. It just didn't seem to abide by its own rules. But may still have the top spot. Mass's the scene where the guy is on a boat to far from shore to get back before daylight? That show had some great beats!
I'll never shut up about how Absentia is one of my favorite horror films. Its on freevee if you wanna give it a shot.

 
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Gordon_4

The Big Engine
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Reacher S2: E1-3, new episodes on Fridays

Alan Ritchson (Aquaman from Smallville) returns as Jack Reacher. Former military doing the "Kung Fu" traveling the nation and having adventures sorta thing. Tom Cruise played him kind unconvincingly in 2 movies. The character is based on a book series in which Reacher is a very large mammal. It is Ritchson that fits this bill. When he one hand hurls a guy, you can believe it.

You do have to suspend disbelief a lot. In S1 he had a cop with him in a podunk town and you could believe the cop would put up with him. In the big city? Not so much. And he seems, early on, ready to dish out a lot more violence and even death than in S1.

But so far, a lot of fun. B+


You should try the books. From memory Reacher here has thrown hands with evil conspiracies, cults, foreign spies, traitors (in and out of the army), organised crime and just plain old crooks. Shit gets wild usually by the halfway mark and lots of people end up dead and reacher gets his end away at minimum of one time.
 
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Obliterated, which Netflix really really wanted me to watch. Fuck awful.
Could only watch about ten minutes before wondering wtf Sony was thinking here. Actually it happened sooner but I stuck around to be sure it was shit. Yup, stinky poo certified.
 
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Baffle

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Fisk on Netflix. I really liked this, just the right level of whimsy and silliness with gentle humour.
 
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Casual Shinji

Should've gone before we left.
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I tried to watch the live-action One-Piece show, but dear God, the streaming show-itis is just fucking all over this thing; flat blurry visuals, a seemingly complete lack of cinematography and compositing, and just no pop or passion to anything that I'm seeing. And I've heard people saying this was actually a good show, and how it succeeded were Cowboy Bebop failed, but this was honestly the most soulless, tepid refuse I've ever seen.
 
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I just read the premise here and in theory it sounds like trashy fun. In theory.
It tries too hard to be zany and wild and was also written by a very horny teenager.
It has a very b movie feel but in a bad way. Like there are good b movies but immediately this felt limited by skill more-so than budget. Basically the only reason to watch is if you’re jonesing for some boobies but even then there are going to be better choices. Piranha 3DD for example.
 
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gorfias

Unrealistic but happy
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You should try the books. From memory Reacher here has thrown hands with evil conspiracies, cults, foreign spies, traitors (in and out of the army), organised crime and just plain old crooks. Shit gets wild usually by the halfway mark and lots of people end up dead and reacher gets his end away at minimum of one time.
Will do! My next read, thanks!

Doh. I put a hold on it from my local library. Hope to read it soon.

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I'll never shut up about how Absentia is one of my favorite horror films. Its on freevee if you wanna give it a shot.

I've added Absentia to my watchlist! Thanks for the referral!
EDIT: Oooh, it is on Prime too, no commercials!
 
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Dwarvenhobble

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May 26, 2020
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The Continental: From the World of John Wick

(Amazon Prime)

Rating: A super weird 6 out of 10 in that I'd recommend it but you milage will vary from a 4 out from 10 hating it to a strong 8 out of 10 depending on which parts if it work for you.



Plot:
So for those who don't know this is basically the backstory of how Winston Scott came to run the New York continental hotel which is one of a chain of underworld hotels used by higher ranked criminal right up to the shadowy global criminal cabal members.

Minor spoiler, the story doesn't fully complete


Thoughts:

This is a 6 out of 10 because style wise, I loved it mostly except some issues with fights that weren't that clear in a couple of shots.
Plot wise, this feels like it would have worked with a few more runs of the script
Pacing wise, this is a mess that feels like it lurches about setting up stuff then paying it off all to fast to make room seemingly for a big end of series gunfight. This feels like it should have been a 6 episode series with each being an hour rather than 3 episodes clocking in at 1 hour 30 each so some plot points got more room to breath and be fleshed out.

I will say I also wanted a bit more of the backstory of Yen who is 50% Trad Wife 50% deadly assassin close to on par with John Wick but with no in-between point because of just how the show set up and showed her meeting Winston's brother Frankie only it never developed that very interesting point any further.

Oh also it's pretty funny to watch because every other actor is seemingly trying to be super series and then you have Mel Gibson who plays his role somewhere between the most insane Willem Dafoe role and the most off the wall Nick Cage performance it's actually almost hilarious and ads a lot more entertainment value.

You milage will kind of vary depending on how much you're into what I'd call John Wick lore babble, I like that stuff but if you don't care about the special coins, the hobo army, the high table and all that kind of stuff as this is a lot of that.

Best Performance I'd probably give to Marina Mazepa who plays Gretel one of a pair of twin assassins who never speak with her having almost moments where her character becomes somewhat playful from humming along to a tune to just subtle hand movements. It's almost entirely a physical action role with no lines to convey emotion and she pulls it off really well and works well as a sort of slight contrast to the brother assassin Hansel.

Time to go spoilers,

So Yen's plotline was she was a Vietcong assassin sent to kill American Soldiers in a bar during the Vietnam war by being a suicide bomber but her device failed to go off and she ended up catching the eye of Frankie, whom by the time of the show they're madly in love so I really would have liked that to be fleshed out to explain what happened with Frankie and him discovering her being a Vietcong assassin.

I also think that while Lou Burton and her brother had some of the most boring plot line I feel they were done dirty a bit as they really didn't give the revelation of her father being a criminal time to breath and time to be addressed it felt like it was unceremoniously dumped out there. I'd even have taken it being addressed in the Burton twins big fight scene vs Hansel with a "We're doing this now? really we're talking about this now" as almost a contrast to how Hansel and Gretel the assassin twins never talk.


It also sets up a to be continued as Winston executes the high table's Adjudicator , who it's revealed was trying to screw over the high table somehow anyway and set up the whole coin press heist to begin with for some unknown reason. With a hotel full of bodies basically. I'd like to see it carry on and at least carry on the story to explain how Winston is going to carry on considering he's now got a hotel of bodies and no backing from the larger underworld as such.
 
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gorfias

Unrealistic but happy
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I just read the premise here and in theory it sounds like trashy fun. In theory.
I'm on episode 3. Um, I dunno. Like a car wreck. Can't take my eyes off it.

I will write so far it is like a horny teenager wrote the script while hoping to smash some action figures into each other at a play ground.

I tried to watch the live-action One-Piece show, but dear God, the streaming show-itis is just fucking all over this thing; flat blurry visuals, a seemingly complete lack of cinematography and compositing, and just no pop or passion to anything that I'm seeing. And I've heard people saying this was actually a good show, and how it succeeded were Cowboy Bebop failed, but this was honestly the most soulless, tepid refuse I've ever seen.
Sorry, had a blast watching this. The main character's enthusiasm is infectious. Having a blast with it so far.

My favorite scene


The OG:
 
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Old_Hunter_77

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Lawmen: Bass Reeves

The latest incarnation of the Taylor Sheridan Western-verse, the series of western TV shows that started with Yellowstone and spun off all sorts of prequels.
This one is not a spin-off as Baa Reeves was an actual person, the first black federal marshal in the American territories.

The title before the colon suggests this an attempt to make a potential series of historical fiction seasons (I guess similar to the Genius series on National Geographic that had seasons about Albert Einstein, Pablo Picasso, and Aretha Franklin).

Bass Reeves is played by David Oyelowo, which continues a personally annoying trend of Brits playing American icons (having come to prominence portraying Martin Luther King, Jr. in Selma). He does this speaking thing that has become now common in modern westerns- that grumbling thing that Jeff Bridges started doing when I got old and did more westerns, where it looks like they're chewing their own cheeks.

But once you get past all that the show benefits from being freed from all the Yellowstone baggage and provides comfort food for western-heads like me. I mean if you wanna see tough guys make morally grey decisions while holding onto their [metaphorical] manhood against a backdrop of beautiful desolate scenery.

This show is... competent. If you see a screenshot or a trailer and you dig this sort of boomer-flavored nonsense like I do, you will be satisfied, and if you don't, you won't.

Oh, also Dennis Quaid, Shea Whighum, and Donald Sutherland show up here and there to do their own fair share of cheek-chewing grumbling.
 

Phoenixmgs

The Muse of Fate
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The Curse - 1st 6 episodes - 10/10

I'm absolutely loving this show. The show is awkward and cringe to the nth degree. It's about a couple that is doing a reality show (the show isn't a reality show btw) about flipping houses and making them passive energy houses (that barely require any energy to cool/heat/etc). An example of how cringe basically every scene is, the husband of the couple bought a house at an auction and he goes over to the house to check it out and all, that seems perfectly normal and all that. However, we see from inside the house that 2 kids are living in the house and he knocks and they don't answer obviously, so then the husband starts drilling off deadbolt lock to get in as you see the kids panicking. The husband gets in eventually obviously and then starts trying to explain to the kids, the kids start running (makes sense for them), and he starts chasing them to tell them it's OK and all that. The kids run to a neighbor and the neighbor holds the husband there to wait for the cops because the husband comes off as super sketching. That's like every single scene in the show and I love it.
 

Old_Hunter_77

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The Curse - 1st 6 episodes - 10/10

I'm absolutely loving this show. The show is awkward and cringe to the nth degree. It's about a couple that is doing a reality show (the show isn't a reality show btw) about flipping houses and making them passive energy houses (that barely require any energy to cool/heat/etc). An example of how cringe basically every scene is, the husband of the couple bought a house at an auction and he goes over to the house to check it out and all, that seems perfectly normal and all that. However, we see from inside the house that 2 kids are living in the house and he knocks and they don't answer obviously, so then the husband starts drilling off deadbolt lock to get in as you see the kids panicking. The husband gets in eventually obviously and then starts trying to explain to the kids, the kids start running (makes sense for them), and he starts chasing them to tell them it's OK and all that. The kids run to a neighbor and the neighbor holds the husband there to wait for the cops because the husband comes off as super sketching. That's like every single scene in the show and I love it.
Hell yeah.

I really like what they've been doing with the producer character (who IRL co-write/create the actual show) these last couple episodes as well.

Were you already a fan of Nathan Fielder's previous stuff- Nathan For You and The Rehearsal? If not and you like this kind of "I wanna die but lol" humor and drama check it out.
 
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