I’m watching The Force Awakens with my 6-year-old son. He’s seen the original trilogy. Haters be damned, this movie gives me goosebumps and reminds me of the joys of Star Wars I had when I was young.
2 Likes
Sure he does! Gives him the opportunity to slack of another decade or two and living the Life of the GoT show royalties…
Netflix is generally not good at their recommendations/categories, but under the title “Hidden Gems” is a movie called Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. Has anyone ever heard of this hidden gem?
Sigh.
9 Likes
Not familiar with it, which makes sense seeing as how it was lost and all.
2 Likes
LOL!
That’s taking the current Netflix approach of obfuscation to a whole new level!
My understanding is that, along with Netflix throwing money at content creation to fill up its library, as it loses content that it used to rent, that Netflix removed the “star” rating system … I believe you can only give a “like” or “dislike” now. And then they removed actual written online reviews from their website. My uninformed impression is that a lot of what they are creating or buying is not worth a person’s time, but that with the removal of actual reviews and ratings Netflix can hide the amount of garbage cluttering up their library and make it hard to find quality items. IMHO.
Hmm, sounds old enough to belong in a museum.
4 Likes
War Machine. A thinly-veiled McChrystal is assigned command of the Afghan War effort, played by Brad Pitt in several permanent pained expressions. The film is some fairly heady satire, making rather too much hay from its central tenet to disguise the fact that it’s not entirely accurate, while at the same time being mostly, painfully accurate. There’s some great actors here (Kingsley, Swinton, Stanfield) but aside from one or two speeches that are too on the nose, everyone is subordinate to the comedy of Pitt’s McChrystal, a caricature of a man who has fed himself head-first into his job, and the sheer lunacy of an unwinnable war as his crowning glory.
Is that the prequel to Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull? If so, I can’t imagine it would be any good.
7 Likes
2 Likes
The Dead Don’t Die. An exercise in mild amusement that none of the actors can save. Bill Murray, Adam Driver, Chloe Sevigny, Steve Buscemi, Danny Glover, all of them banded together can do nothing more than raise some smiles and mild chuckles, with deadpan humour and wit, and little else. Nothing bad, but certainly nothing great, or even particularly remarkable, which is a shame coming from Jarmusch.
El Camino, on Netflix. The “sequel” to the hit TV show, Breaking Bad.
As a fan of Breaking Bad, this was fantastic. Reprised some old characters without it feeling forced and wrapped things up just as well as you’d expect. Highly, highly recommended for fans of the show; others be warned, if you have not watched Breaking Bad in its entirety you won’t understand the great majority of the movie.
2 Likes
Yeah, it really was great. Some nice Better Call Saul throwbacks too, like Man Mountain as the stripper bodyguard.
Never got into BCS past the first season - I’ll have to go back and rewatch it!
1 Like
5 Likes
Parasite. Delightful, a work of sublime dark comedy. A poor family supplants the household help of a rich family. Excellent on every level I can think of. Bong Joon-ho is a master.
Midsommar. Well you know what happens when a group of friends visit a welcoming cult, don’t you. It happens here. Don’t watch it for the plot, watch it for the array of stunning shots, with the director and DP putting together plenty of amazing visuals, and a general sense of unease permeates. The director’s cut is a whopping 170 minutes though.
2 Likes
Just got back from Frozen 2 with the family. It was every bit the lesser of the two Frozen movies but even a so/so Disney movie is a pretty top-tier family movie. The story was a bit nonsense with too much exposition and the songs didn’t seem as good to me. It did introduce some interesting lore to the Frozen world, though. Certainly entertaining and sometimes funny; it will be a hit for kids and adults won’t be “suffering” through it.
3 Likes
My kids refuse to watch anything Frozen after last years frozen “short” before Incredibles 2.
1 Like
The first time, maybe. Fortunately, my kids no longer watch the same movie 10 times in a week. After the first one came out, they were totally in that stage, and the music was already everywhere. I remember thinking it was quite good before it was all drilling into my skull.
2 Likes
Hahaha, good point. My kids are still in the “watch everything 1,000 times” phase. I mean, my daughter has access to over 100 My Little Pony episodes on Netflix but only picks the same two…
4 Likes