Recent Films and TV Shows that were good...

Another recent watch I thoroughly enjoyed: BEEF, also on Netflix. Two frustrated drivers honk at each other, raise fingers, keep lying to others and themselves, and start a 10-episode feud that wreaks havoc around them. Steven Yeun and standup artist Ally Wong are exceptional! A second season is in the works, but with other characters (the lead being Moon Knight's Oscar Isaac) and another "beef"...

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bob225 said:
Hey all,

I've just finished Dept Q on Netflix.

Disturbing, brutal, addictive, funny. Watched the last episode on the edge of the seat, shouting at some of the goings on, honestly can't remember the last time i got so drawn in to a show or characters.

Great characters, well filmed and put together.

It's not going to be everyones cup of tea.

But in my opinion, Well worth a watch.
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I once got assigned to an office that was equivalent to the basement Morck & Co. got, though much smaller. Most people didn't know it even existed. Since I'm autistic, I loved it.

The university I was working for was so incompetent that later I was given a closet storing graduation robes and then toilets as teaching spaces. Someone had looked at a list of rooms and had no idea what they were for.

No, really. From my point of view, Dept. Q is quite realistic.
 
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I like slow-burning puzzle box stories. Once, Patrick McGoohan got to complete The Prisoner on his own terms, but now many of the shows that get my attention end up cancelled before they can really delve into their core ideas. 1899, Raised by Wolves, Beforeigners, Copenhagen Cowboy, Counterpart, The OA, all set up plans to cover multiple seasons that were compelling but were axed. They're still worth watching on their own terms - if you like that sort of thing. Imagine Black Mirror episodes made into serials.

The first season of Fortitude is worth the effort and fortunately stands on its own. The two follow-up seasons are unnecessary and can be safely ignored.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBQSqCLYBSg&ab_channel=AlasdairBeckett-King
 
Rhinocrates said:
I like slow-burning puzzle box stories. Once, Patrick McGoohan got to complete The Prisoner on his own terms, but now many of the shows that get my attention end up cancelled before they can really delve into their core ideas.
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That's because it was a British show, and with the BBC being a state-owned TV, they allowed for creators to develop their ideas regardless of audience ratings. However, what you're describing has always existed with American shows, with great series being abruptly cancelled after a small number of episodes if the ratings were low (and sometimes regardless of the fact that the only reason for the low ratings were a one-off big event on another channel).
 
NMaude said:
It would be fun to see a TV-series spinoff of the 1994 film "True Lies" (I'm disappointed that there was never a sequel).

On another note I did not like how "Westward" ended (The fourth and final series was a bit disappointing and went in a direction that I didn't like) as there was a lot of unresolved stuff.
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Perhaps you mean "Westworld"?
 
Murderbot is great. Short enough for my ADHD. The over-the-top dysfunctional humans and a "normal" manic robot. Classic!
I bet 'Robbie the Robot' had very similar thoughts, but it was the 50's, so he had to keep his thoughts to himself. :)
 
TsrJoe said:
erm Prisoner was commercial ATV/ITV not BBC

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prisoner
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You're right, my bad! Still, British TV, even commercial, was always a lot more respectful of authors than its American counterpart.
Nowadays, on-demand TV has made things better, in that at least once a season has had the go-ahead, it doesn't get cancelled halfway, however shitty the ratings.
 
Rhinocrates said:
Another not-so-recent, sorry, but Jeremy Brett is the definitive Sherlock Holmes for me.
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Yes, he was good (I only watched bits and pieces of the show though when it was in production), sadly he died shortly after the series ended production.
 
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I also enjoyed Dept. Q. It’s a challenge to create a compelling story with a coterie of mostly unlikable characters. Great acting and a few intriguing plot twists. As with so many streaming series (Masters of the Air comes to mind), some tighter editing to lose an episode or two would have improved the end product, but it’s still quite good.

F1: The Movie : a fun summer, agenda-free, big-screen romp with a dopey plot, better-than-expected acting, and astounding visuals. Worth seeing on the big screen, IMAX if possible. Reminder: it’s a Hollywood production, not an F1 documentary, so let some of the on-track nonsense go and just enjoy it. At least the infamous 32-speed-transmission sound effects have been avoided in this one.

The Residence: probably somewhat unconventional for much of the SPF audience, but give it a shot: a murder at a White House state dinner sets off a zany and surreal investigation involving a bird-watching detective, a never-seen Hugh Jackman, a frantic Kylie Minogue, with Randall Park as a perennially confused FBI agent, and former senator Al Franken as a (yes) exasperated senator trying to reconstruct the story.
 
I wholeheartedly recommend the great DEPARTMENT Q on Netflix.

Carl Morck, an English DCI (Deputy Chief Inspector) with the Edinburgh police is thoroughly despised by everyone in the brigade; not because he's English (though it probably doesn't help) but because he is a sarcastic, sardonic, bitter a-hole who just can't get along with anyone. The fact that he narrowly escaped an ambush that left his closest colleague half-paralyzed didn't help much, of course. Under pressure from her hierarchy, his chief starts a cold case solving unit in the basement and seizes that opportunity to both obtain a subsequent budget for the brigade and give Morck a bone to chew on. His only ally? A mysterious, mild-mannered Syrian immigrant whose deductive methods and tough handling of crooks betray a darker, tougher past in his native country...

Brilliantly played and filmed. Breathtakingly good!

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https://www.space.com/entertainment...hing-we-ever-wanted-from-an-alien-show-review
'Prequelisms' are also kept to a minimum beyond the obligatory elements needed to sell the 2120 setting (only two years before the original Alien movie). Weyland-Yutani plays a big role in the story, synthetics are common, and 'cassette futurism' permeates the advanced technology on display.

Earth, which seemingly hasn't been ravaged by climate change in this universe, is governed by five different corporations: Prodigy, Weyland-Yutani, Lynch, Dynamic, and Threshold. Even with familiar chunks of production design and the Xenomorph at the center of the show, Hawley instantly broadens the universe's horizons with two new additions to the lore: Cyborgs (augmented humans) and hybrids (synthetic bodies infused with human consciousness).

This approach also applies to the structure and tone. Whereas the first two episodes play out like a 'first movie' of sorts, Alien: Earth's first season doesn't fall into the common trap of splitting a movie into an eight-episode behemoth, which always leads to dreadful pacing issues. Yes, this is one long story that aims to run for a handful of seasons (if we had to guess), but its cuts to credits (and the sick needle drops that accompany them) seldom feel random. This project has been in the oven for several years, and the final result feels anything but rushed or weightless because Hawley and his collaborators had a grip on the TV format and the story they wanted to tell.
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Now the genre is obviously horror but harm to animals may be a trigger to some people. In that case skip 25:00 to 29:00 of episode 2.

!st impressions. Effective horror, certainly. Some absurdities - a big spaceship doesn't break up in an uncontrolled re-entry and even largely survives a crash.

There are 'idiot plot' issues, but actually I find idiot plots realistic. Virtually all of history is an idiot plot, after all.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiot_plot
Themes such as the 'conquest' of death, children suddenly thrust into adult situations and forced to mature suddenly, etc look like being the main themes as the series continues. While the style rigorously sticks to the first film, I have a suspicion that the various synthetic and 'hybrid' characters are going to prefigure Winona Ryder's character in Alien Resurrection...
 
I thought the first two episodes were pretty decent though I thought the first episode was the stronger of the two.

It felt like they were more interested in other topics than the aliens.

I’m guess Weyland are going to send people in whatever. Probably more synthetics or cyborgs. That captain must have been designed with Xenomorph capture in mind being as his skin seemed to proof against their blood. Plus the capture weapons he was using.
 
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is governed by five different corporations: Prodigy, Weyland-Yutani, Lynch, Dynamic, and Threshold
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Where's Walmart in this? In Alien: Resurrection it was mentioned that Walmart had taken over WY.
 
Flyaway said:
It felt like they were more interested in other topics than the aliens.
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Yes, immortality and conflict with synthetic/artificial/hybrid intelligence look like the thread that will be running through the series. The opening text is all about three strategies to achieve immortality with no mention of the various monsters (albeit they're in the title).

Immortality was Weyland's obsession in Prometheus and I expect his successor, Yutani, to have something to say about that mission.

Timothy Olyphant's speech about how hybrids are not food and not animals strongly suggests that he thinks the hybrids are superior and likely successors to baseline humans. Expect more speeches like this and stories centred on succession. His Roy Batty hairstyle isn't too subtle either.
 
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Watched the first episode of Alien Earth last night. As a gigantic fan of the Alien universe, it's timing annoys me (2120 setting, at the end of a ~60 year mission) - there isn't anything major going on that wouldn't fit, say, after Aliens, so I'm not quite sure what the point of 2120 was. Beyond that it looked well done visually, seems to be very well cast. Looking forward to watching the second one tonight.

In other news, if you like mobsters, you need to watch Boardwalk Empire. I'd never seen it and started it after seeing a random clip somewhere. This might be the most impressive period piece I've ever seen.
 
Alien Earth was a disappointment for me. I feel like they couldn‘t decide whether they want to appeal to teeagers or millennials. On one hand you have teenage characters acting horribly and on the other hand, you have music/TV shows from early 2000s to appeal to nostalgia. In the end of the day, I guess this trope of overpowered alien just doesn‘t work. This trope is not realistic at all. I would humans be afraid of animals, however powerful they may be, when we have nuclear wespons. It‘s the same problem that I had with Expanse.
 
UFO was by far the superior of the two and was ahead of its time (Basically a 90s SF show right at the end of the 60s/beginning of the 70s), a factor that may've led to its shortsighted cancellation was that it was dark with episodes often having unhappy endings. I have the UFO DVD boxset by the way.
 
NMaude said:
If properly redone with a good budget who else would like to see a 21st reboot of UFO?
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One part of me says “yes” and the other “no.” When I hear a producer declare he was a big fan of the show and can make it better, or it will be made for a modern audience, that’s a red flag it’s going to suck.
 
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The K2 said:
When I hear a producer declare he was a big fan of the show and can make it better, or it will be made for a modern audience, that’s a red flag it’s going to suck.
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Not make it better or for modern audiences (UFO IMO was way ahead of its time) but with a proper budget AND modern FX (Both CGI and practical effects).
 
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