Movies/TV worth watching (or at least discussing)

[OldPhiKap]

Mrs.PK and I just watched the Bee Gee documentary. Pretty good. Thanks to those who recommended.

[JasonEvans]

Possibly the best film of the year... Promising Young Woman. Wow... just wow. A true must see. Here is my 100-word-review: https://flixchat.blogspot.com/2020/1...son-evans.html

Simultaneously relevant and a rollicking good time, this comedic thriller does a wonderful job of subverting expectations. Every time I thought I knew how it would go, it changed course in a believable and honest way, which is not easy to pull off.

[Skydog]

Possibly the best film of the year... Promising Young Woman. Wow... just wow. A true must see. Here is my 100-word-review: https://flixchat.blogspot.com/2020/1...son-evans.html

So for those of us who aren’t risking going to a theatre and don’t get a review copy - do you have any idea when and how we might see this?

[JasonEvans]

So for those of us who aren’t risking going to a theatre and don’t get a review copy - do you have any idea when and how we might see this?

My bet is that it will be available some time in mid-late January. It opens in theaters this week and there is a required 17 day window until it can stream. I'm pretty confident the folks behind this film will get it to streaming before awards season really heats up in February (Golden Globes are Feb 28, Oscars are April 25).

I am not sure if they have them in your area, but you could look for a drive-in theater. Those are supposedly quite safe.

[Dr. Rosenrosen]

MrsPK and I devoured The Queen’s Gambit this weekend. Glad we watched it, really well-done I thought. And the fact that it is a single-season story was great.

Absolutely loved it. Had to pace myself to make it last a full week.

[duke74]

And Gal Gadot ... I mean Wonder Woman ... in about 10 hours.

[Skydog]

My bet is that it will be available some time in mid-late January. It opens in theaters this week and there is a required 17 day window until it can stream. I'm pretty confident the folks behind this film will get it to streaming before awards season really heats up in February (Golden Globes are Feb 28, Oscars are April 25).

I am not sure if they have them in your area, but you could look for a drive-in theater. Those are supposedly quite safe.

Thanks for info. I live in Durham. I don’t think we have any drive-ins but may be wrong and someone will set me straight. I think it was the Starlight drive-in I used to go to here- approx a century ago.

[Skydog]

So, someone PM'd me asking about Pick of the Litter and I figured I would educate all of you who have not seen this amazing film. Pick of the litter follows 5 puppies on the journey to try to be a guide dog for the blind. It is not easy as even dogs who are bred specifically for this purpose have only a small chance of learning the habits and exhibiting the traits that it takes to become the eyes for a blind human being. The film not only gives us a peek at this training, but also takes us inside the world of the people who volunteer to train these animals. We also meet some blind folks who are hoping to get a guide dog and talk about how it would change their life.

The film is heartwarming, sad, enlightening, and emotional. It is 81 minutes long and will be among the best 81 minutes to you spend this week. It is currently 97% on Rotten Tomatoes and I am actively looking for the 3% who did not like it so I can hunt them down and take away their film critic card.

Here is a trailer... prepare to tear up a little bit.


Pick of the Litter is currently streaming on Netflix... do yourself a favor and watch it.

Without the rec I would have never watched this - I don’t naturally pick out such wholesome looking fare. But I did indeed enjoy those 80 minutes - so thanks for pointing it out.

[CrazyNotCrazie]

Not a big TV/Movie person (other than sports) so I am rarely on this thread, but the entire family watched Soul today on Disney+. We all enjoyed it - definitely worth checking out. I have not seen any of the other comparable movies but CNC Jr-1 (age 10) said he liked it better than Inside Out.

[bundabergdevil]

We watched that new Clooney movie, Midnight Sky, on Christmas Eve. It’s sort of an intergalactic The Road. Really didn’t do much to let us get invested in the characters and some of the effects felt dated. So, meh.

Watched Rose Island last night. It’s an Italian film about an engineer that constructs an island in international waters and attempts to get it nation state status. It’s based on a true story and we really enjoyed it despite the dubbing. Won’t spoil the unbelievable and true ending but the island turned into a thorn in Italy’s side for reasons that still evade me.

[Mtn.Devil.91.92.01.10.15]

Anyone here watch Letterkenny?

I hesitate to recommend it to anyone who doesn't have a relatively twisted sense of humor...

[brevity]

Not a big TV/Movie person (other than sports) so I am rarely on this thread, but the entire family watched Soul today on Disney+. We all enjoyed it - definitely worth checking out. I have not seen any of the other comparable movies but CNC Jr-1 (age 10) said he liked it better than Inside Out.

I saw Soul on Disney+ yesterday and Wonder Woman 1984 on HBO Max today. Both were fine, but felt like lesser efforts that may not have been worth a big screen viewing in the first place.

Pixar, by now, has illustrated themselves into a corner with their formula of creating kids' films with the primary purpose of making adults cry. After a while you just get jaded. For a film that was about the importance of human emotion, I didn't really feel much of anything with Soul. I thought Inside Out and Coco covered this ground better. The music -- by Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross, and Jon Batiste -- was exceptional in places but didn't amount to a full score.

Until its third act, Wonder Woman 1984 feels like a sequel with much lower stakes than the original. There is, eventually, a circumstance that forces Diana to defeat a supernatural element that can ruin all of humanity, but even then I wondered why the filmmakers chose this time and this particular story. I regarded Kristen Wiig as equivalent to Jim Carrey in Batman Forever: both have an inferiority complex next to the hero(ine) until they have the means to do something about it. Her movement (and Gal Gadot's) looked lower-budget to me, as if the studio spent all the special effects money on re-creating the historical setting. If no one has referred to Pedro Pascal as the Maxwellordian yet, I would like to claim that.

Final note: There is a mid-credits sequence in WW84 that offers a bit of fan service.

[OldPhiKap]

Mentioned this on its own thread, but SonPK and I binged the 16 episodes of The Mandalorian over the last 2.5 days. Very well-done. Not for little kids.

[JasonEvans]

I saw Soul on Disney+ yesterday and Wonder Woman 1984 on HBO Max today. Both were fine, but felt like lesser efforts that may not have been worth a big screen viewing in the first place.

Pixar, by now, has illustrated themselves into a corner with their formula of creating kids' films with the primary purpose of making adults cry. After a while you just get jaded. For a film that was about the importance of human emotion, I didn't really feel much of anything with Soul. I thought Inside Out and Coco covered this ground better. The music -- by Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross, and Jon Batiste -- was exceptional in places but didn't amount to a full score.

Until its third act, Wonder Woman 1984 feels like a sequel with much lower stakes than the original. There is, eventually, a circumstance that forces Diana to defeat a supernatural element that can ruin all of humanity, but even then I wondered why the filmmakers chose this time and this particular story. I regarded Kristen Wiig as equivalent to Jim Carrey in Batman Forever: both have an inferiority complex next to the hero(ine) until they have the means to do something about it. Her movement (and Gal Gadot's) looked lower-budget to me, as if the studio spent all the special effects money on re-creating the historical setting. If no one has referred to Pedro Pascal as the Maxwellordian yet, I would like to claim that.

Final note: There is a mid-credits sequence in WW84 that offers a bit of fan service.

WW84 is a trainwreck. Lots of talking and not much action plus the action that is there is so unrealistic it is hard to develop any "wow" factor to take my breath away. I know it seems silly to talk about realism being important to a superhero movie, but when there are no physics or laws of the universe observed, then it is hard to feel any stakes or sense of peril.

At one point, for no discernable reason, Wonder Woman starts to fly. At first she is using her lasso (which can stretch anywhere from 4 feet to 400 feet depending on the moment) to lasso... uhhh... clouds and then she is just flying on her own. She also uses the lasso to encircle lightning bolts and carry her along that way.

The finale is strange and makes very little sense. Though the movie makes a big deal about her needing to be at full strength to win, she does not use her powers (whatever they are) at the end to accomplish anything. She just tells the bad guy that what he is doing is wrong and will hurt people and he decides that everything he has been doing for the entire movie is suddenly no longer worth it. Yup, Wonder Woman becomes a super psychologist at the end. Woo hoo!

Pedro Pascal looked better under a helmet than he does with an absurd blonde wig. I have no idea why The Cheetah was even in this film. What a waste.

The movie is 2 1/2 hours long and would have been far better at 90-100 minutes. Get rid of the Cheetah, make the confrontation with Max Lord make sense and you have a decent film.

The crazy thing is, I would probably rank this as the third or fourth best film in the DCEU, which shows you how godawful DC is at making movies. It is clearly inferior to the first WW film and to Man of Steel. It is clearly better than Aquaman, BvS, Suicide Squad, and Justice League. I could go either way on how this compares to Shazam and Birds of Prey. If you want to make a case for better or worse, I'm fine with whatever you want.

Ugh...

[YmoBeThere]

Pedro Pascal looked better under a helmet than he does with an absurd blonde wig. I have no idea why The Cheetah was even in this film. What a waste.

I almost had a Blaster* moment when we first saw him sans helmet in The Mandelorian.

*Showing my age with that mid 80s reference.

[LasVegas]

The crazy thing is, I would probably rank this as the third or fourth best film in the DCEU, which shows you how godawful DC is at making movies. It is clearly inferior to the first WW film and to Man of Steel. It is clearly better than Aquaman, BvS, Suicide Squad, and Justice League. I could go either way on how this compares to Shazam and Birds of Prey. If you want to make a case for better or worse, I'm fine with whatever you want.

Ugh...

Woah! Why the Shazam hate? I thought it was a pretty fun flick and one the DC’s better efforts.

[OldPhiKap]

Long shot maybe, but has anyone watched Ted Lasso on Apple TV? Stumbled across this, a silly premise that actually is very fun and very interesting. really. Enjoying this.

[Mtn.Devil.91.92.01.10.15]

WW84 is real, real bad.

[Mtn.Devil.91.92.01.10.15]

WW84 is real, real bad.

Then, I finished it. Ugh.

[LasVegas]

Long shot maybe, but has anyone watched Ted Lasso on Apple TV? Stumbled across this, a silly premise that actually is very fun and very interesting. really. Enjoying this.

Yeah it’s great. I feel like it has been discussed somewhere on here before but maybe I am getting confused. Either way, such a great feel good story about connecting with people. We loved every episode!