Just watched the second half of the Storyville documentary ‘Lance’.

The parallels with the great orange one are striking, and it surprised me that I hadn’t noticed this before (On my mother’s life I WhatsApped my brother with a similar thought prior to the references about ‘Drain The Swamp’ or ‘Make It Great’ !)

I’m a big cycling fan, got into it just before the Lance era (just prior to the Festina affair if that means anything to anyone) and knew the story well, but never drew lines between Lance/Trump until tonight

Similar to the 30 for 30 series, I would highly recommend the documentary regardless of whether you like cycling or even know much about it

This seems to be an experience unique to you

Flipping through Netflix and found an Indian movie called "Sir". Great movie, well worth watching if you are interested in learning about other cultures and class differences . Essentially the relationship between a live-in, domestic helper and her single boss.

Not sure how I would classify this. Somewhat of a "love" story but not a typical love story. Check it out.

Sir Movie Review: A soul-stirring tale of emotional intimacy, dreams and belonging

If you enjoy movies about cultural issues in India, you should watch Monsoon Wedding (not sure where it is streaming).

It got released in the United States soon after My Big Fat Greek Wedding, so it got treated here as "another foreign wedding movie." But it is a much deeper movie than My Big Fat Greek Wedding. It goes into class/race differences in India. And it is still a fun wedding drama/comedy. Highly recommended.

This is my favorite bot so far. Can we keep him?

With the series slated for 6 seasons and each season covering @10 years, that's a pretty optimistic take on Elizabeth's lifespan.

Seconded.

Watched Murder On Middle Beach on HBO Max. It was of special interest to me because it occurred in Madison, CT, the next town over from where I live. Lots of shots of places I've been to, including the courthouse across the street from where I work.

It's a 4-part documentary spanning 8 years or so which chronicles a son's efforts to find out who murdered his mother on March 3, 2010. Over the course of 5 hours or so, he interviews and goes through a number of suspects, including close family members. His family is filled with alcoholics and drug abusers, and there is a lot of shady stuff that goes on in his town. The police botched the case, and now seem more interested in keeping their secrets rather than bringing the killer to justice. By the end, you have a pretty good idea who the killer was, but to date, no charges have been made against anyone.

This isn't on a streaming service but tonight is a documentary/retrospective on Patrice O'Neal on Comedy Channel at 10pm ET. I had never heard of the guy until the Charlie Sheen roast, and then he died shortly after. Since then, I've heard a ton of his stand-up and he was amazingly funny.

I absolutely hate most sitcoms, and Wandavision does such a great job parodying them that I actually have a really hard time getting through an episode of it.

Watched I Care A Lot last night on netflix.

It was a good movie. It made me feel very uncomfortable watching it and I hated the protagonist. I kept waiting for her to die.

But it is a really well done movie and is a great story.

Not a specific viewing recommendation, but a recommendation for the JustWatch app.

You can configure all the services you have and maintain a watchlist. You can then filter your own stuff by genre, quality (HD, 4K etc), or service platform, etc.

If you got to a single title it will list every service its currently on. This has helped me ID a lot of stuff where i wouldn't have had the patience to navigate through like 6+ services to see if its available.

I've found it very useful for maintaining a list of things i want to watch even if they're not currently available to me at that moment. It helps keep it on my radar and then i can sort of easily notice later when it pops onto a service I have.

I've been using it for about 3 months and have found it extremely useful. I rarely feel the need to evangelize on behalf of a service or product, but i think a lot of people would find it useful.

Thanks for the recommendation! I’ll take a look.

Agree, it was disturbing and outside of what Bob mentioned in the spoiler, something one can totally see happening. The ending, though somewhat predictable to me, was very rewarding.

Not streaming service related but is there a less believable person to play renegade cop like badass than Queen Latifah?

Richard Simmons?

Peter Dinklage (Fresh on my mind after playing the Russian crime mob boss) :D

I really liked Nomadland. It's part documentary and part narrative film and it's slowly paced, but Francis McDormand is so damned good.

Dear Ted Lasso, I'm sorry I didn't discover you sooner.

So good

My daughter is sleeping over a friends so wife and I decided tonight we are gonna send our son to his room to play video games and watch a grown up movie. Any suggestions?

What's your general genre preference?

What's funny is that probably my favorite recent movie is Spider Man: Into the Spiderverse, which would be a waste of adult movie night.

We are pretty good with whatever except for sci fi or stuff that us really out there.

I'm also not a fan of superhero movies.

A couple of films I liked of recent vintage from very different ends of the spectrum:

Portrait of a Lady On Fire: The last movie I saw in the theater. Sexy French romance (lesbian). Very well acted. Very well paced. If you want to explore human relationships outside of the typical Rom-Com view, this is a really good film.

Uncut Gems: I really liked this. Fair warning--I had a couple of friends who hated it. Adam Sandler plays a gambling addict with a lot of issues that stem from his addiction. If you like the angry/serious Sandler, this one is for you. Lots of high energy. Fun Kevin Garnett cameo (playing himself).

I heard Uncut Gems is great, but as a sports bettor I heard there is so many unrealistic things that happen it is hard to enjoy.

I don't think that will get in your way. It's only his final vet that's illegal, the rest of the movie is the consequences of gambling, not exactly specific bets. It's great.

Man, was episode 8 of WandaVision a fantastic 45 minutes of television.

I'm hardly his biggest fan, but Sandler deserved a Best Actor nomination for Uncut Gems.

Watched Minari on Prime because daughter came back and wanted to check it out. Steven "Glenn Rhee" Yeun stars in it.

Kinda like Nomadland, more of a biopic without a traditional ending. Not sure I'd watch it again but glad I watched it.

Ended up watching The Little Things. ehh.

We just finished binging "Better Things" on Hulu. Enjoyed it immensely. I will warn you it is very woman-centric. It is about a woman approaching 50 with three daughters whose husband completely left the picture. If you have an over-sized male ego, it will get bruised.

Leto was great. Felt like the protagonists were ok, weren't great characters. I thought they had some good work with Denzell's character, but it wasn't delivered as well as I would have liked. I did appreciate that all characters are fallible, and as soon as that was over I said, 'people won't like the way this ends', and they generally don't, but I can appreciate that style in a movie. I think it can be very effective. I'd watch it again, just for Leto's work.

I agree Leto was great, TBH I didn't even understand what the hell happened in the end. Was very confusing.

For real, no shit spoiler in here.

Good Lord Bird was fantastic.

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I have to watch I Care A Lot now...

incidently I regret turning on the golden globes.

So cringey....

Only funny thing was Ben Stiller

Minari just won Best Foreign Film at the Golden Globes. Shows you how much I know.

NY Times likes JustWatch too. May have to check it out myself.

I pay $20/year for the pro version of Letterbox - one of the features of that is that Justwatch is integrated into your watchlist - you can filter your watchlisted films by which ones are available on Hulu, Amazon Prime, Netflix, etc. You can also customize a filter to include all of the services you have, so you can see in one click from your list what you have access to right now.

Yes, I love this feature. I have 1,299 films in my Watchlist and regularly check it against the streaming options to see what's available at any given moment.

Do you ever find yourself watching one movie instead of another just to manipulate your stats - like bumping up an actor you really like in your top-20 star rankings, or watching a movie from a certain year that looks sadly under-represented in your movie timeline graph?

I might do that sometimes.

The other feature I love with Letterboxd pro is the stats. Among other things, it tallies your most watched actors and directors. My top 10...

Actors

1. Samuel L. Jackson (40)
2. Matt Damon (34)
3. Tom Hanks (32)
4. Tom Cruise (30)
5. Morgan Freeman (28)
t6. Phillip Seymour Hoffman (27)
t6. Bruce Willis (27)
t8. Michael J. Fox (26)
t8. Paul Rudd (26)
t10. Bill Murray (25)
t10. Robert Downey Jr. (25)
t10. John C. Reilly (25)
t10. Woody Harrelson (25)

Directors

1. Steven Spielberg (26)
2. Martin Scorsese (16)
t3. Woody Allen (14)
t3. Billy Wilder (14)
t3. Steven Soderberg (14)
t3. Alfred Hitchcock (14)
t7. Tim Burton (12)
t7. Robert Zemeckis (12)
t7. Peter Jackson (12)
t10. Clint Eastwood (11)
t10. Josef von Sternberg (11)
t10. Ron Howard (11)
t10. Joel Coen (11)

I haven't actually done that yet, although now I'd like to bump Woody Allen out of my top 10. That'll be a lot of movie watching, though.

I do go year by year to find the biggest movie(s) that aren't greyed out. That's largely how my Watchlist got so big.

Maybe that would help with the situation I frequently run into where I want to see something at the movie theater, but end up not seeing it, and then later forget what it was when my wife and I are looking for a halfway decent movie to stream.

Recently upgraded to the letterboxd pro. I didn't even know about the "stats" sections. So far it's just my journey dynasty + 1. No real surprise, the 1920s is beating out the 1930s so far in highest ratings by decade. Best year, 1924 with an average of 3.5 with 8 movies seen. It's helped by half of them being Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd movies.

Top 5 Actors (Most Seen)

1. Buster Keaton (11)
2. Adolphe Menjou (8)
t3. Harold Lloyd (7)
t3. Sakamoto Takeshi (7)
t3. Aoki Tomio (7)


Top 5 Actor (Highest Rating)

1. Charlie Chaplin (4.0)
2. Jobyna Ralston (3.8) <- Harold Lloyd's co-star is 4 films
3. Harold Lloyd (3.5)
t4. Aoki Tomio (3.4)
t4. Iida Chouko (3.4)
t4. Buster Keaton (3.4)

Top 5 Directors (Most Seen)

1. Buster Keaton (10)
2. Edwin S. Porter (9)
3. D.W. Griffith (8)
t4. Ozu Yasujirou (7)
t4. Sam Taylor (7)

Top 5 Directors (Highest Rated)
1. William A. Wellman (4.0) <- Wings (1927) and The Public Enemy (1931)
2. Charlie Chaplin (3.9)
t3. Fred C. Newmeyer (3.8) -< Harold Lloyd's director
t3. Sergei Eisenstein (3.8)
t3. Mervyn LeRoy (3.8) <- I Am A Fugitive From a Chain Gang and Gold Diggers of 1933

One of these weekends I'll need to do what larry did and just go through year by year and enter in every movie I've seen (that I remember seeing, anyway).

I have a spreadsheet for this (sadly, no lie)

SI

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Age of Samurai

This is a fantastic historical look at the history of Japan

I've watched a couple episodes. Yes, pretty interesting.

Saw Coming to America 2. Good to see Eddie and Arsenio again. The costumes are fantastic.

Finishing up Working Moms (at least the 4 seasons on Netflix now). Crazy funny. The creator and star of the show is the daughter of comedy director Ivan Rietman who directed Ghostbuster, Stripes, Meatballs, Twins, and Kindergarden Cop to name a few. She definitely has her father's sense of humor.

Anybody else watch Tribes of Europa?

Finished it last night. Kind of wish it was more than six episodes.

Amazing show. So good.

Honestly that sort of statement is the equivalent of being like "the car the main character drove wasn't actually released until a year after where the film takes place - its do distracting i can't enjoy the movie."

I think it would have almost zero impact on your experience, and if anything i think a familiarity with sports betting probably adds a fair amount to some scenes.

Holy Shit! Did I miss CT coming back into our lives?

Welcome back, dude!

I've heard a lot of people claim otherwise. Model of a car is a minor detail. When the premise of the movie is sports betting and the actual betting someone is doing couldn't happen it seems like more than a minor detail.

The Sinner has some genuinely shocking moments, especially in season 1.

We watched "Comming To America" 1&2 last night. It was fun. The second movie was very much a more family friendly version. I forgot how much they got away with in the first movie and kept a pg-13 rating.

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We did the same thing. Shipped the kids to my parents for the night, ordered thai food and did a double feature.

I agree we were surprised by the first one. I have seen it several times, but usually on TBS or somewhere. The second one wasn't very good, but it was nice to have a night without the kids around.

I wanna tear you apart...and your friend too...

He clay...he clay he clay...

mmmmm thai....

Green curry and phud thai are my goto yo

Netflix now airing a documentary called "The Last Blockbuster".

Must be one satisfying victory lap.

Paid $5 to watch "The Swordsman", a Korean movie based on the period when China was exerting rule over Joseon/Korea.

Actually better than I expected. Watch it for the action. The storyline is as expected for the genre. The non-action acting wasn't that great.

I've never thought much about this period, I'll have to read up on it.

Watched it last night. It was "ok". Just a lot of people waxing poetic on the store itself - the colors, the smells, etc. Frankly, while we used to go to Blockbuster for rentals a lot when younger, it was never more than that, just a store.

The last statement of the film talked about the ability to physically pick up a movie, take it home, watch it. Because we don't do that anymore, we're somehow losing the essence of who we are. Yes, I'm paraphrasing, but yes, I'm rolling my eyes just the same.

LOL. And Blockbuster was the end of theaters and our parents should have remembered the thrill of going to the movie theater.

Every generation has to wax romantically.

As they should.

We turned off Coming 2 America after about 20 minutes. Terrible.

Actually, the more accurate recounting is we started it, both fell asleep within 15 minutes, and turned it off when we woke up.

Yeah. There are things for which I feel nostalgia. But having to go to a store to pick up and drop off a movie from a limited selection instead of having to push a few buttons to have almost every movie ever made instantly streamed is not one of them.

I could see nostalgia for a local indie video store that had a lot of local flavor. But the Blockbuster experience seems almost antiseptic by design.

That is an interesting way to describe that mysterious room with the curtains that Blockbuster never had.;)

Drive to Survive (Season Three) debuted on the weekend.

Like the first two seasons, it's phenomenal, even if you aren't a fan of F1 racing. Lots of behind the scenes politics and so much drama.

Drive to Survive is straight up amazing with all the access and interviews. If you followed the season it's double that.

Kodachrome - enjoyed it. I thought the ending was fantastic.

Sound of Metal - couldn't get through it. The first part was annoying. I appreciated trying to tell the story of someone adjusting to severe hearing loss but I couldn't feel empathy for someone that put himself in that position.

My wife and I have been binge watching Impractical Jokers, good lord that show is a riot.

I second this opinion. Last season was so full of drama. This series captures that and more. I have been getting into F1 over the last 4-5 years and this series just ups my enthusiasm for the sport. On the surface it seems the domination of Mercedes makes the sport bland but when you start to understand the amount of work and fighting that goes on to move up a spot or two in the mid-field this opens up a whole world of things to follow in the sport.

I liken my journey in learning and following F1 to my journey in learning and follow soccer clubs in Europe. You go in feeling let down by a game that finishes with only a couple of goals between the clubs only to learn to appreciate the battles on the pitch between the goals which leads to a whole new love for the sport. Same thing with being bored with Mercedes dominance only to learn to appreciate all that goes into the lesser teams battling to finish in the points and inch ahead of their rivals for a spot or two in the constructors championship.

Philomena stars "M" Judi Dench as a woman that gave up child for adoption to a US couple, and how she gets help from ex-BBC reporter to find her child.

A nice, sometimes funny, sometimes sad story. Worth watching at least once.

Operation Varsity Blues - 6/10

About the college admissions scandal. It was well done, but it didn't tell me much that I didn't already know, and I barely paid attention to the scandal when it happened.

What interested me about the show was how the guy exploited the side door to get kids n college. Who would have thought coaches would vouch for a kid as an athlete and admissions let them in. Then the kid never shows up to practice. I thought that was an incredibly brilliant idea.

Not sure whether this is streamable (yet) as it just premiered on PBS this weekend but it did appear that was an option when I pulled up the program profile page

Twyla Moves | American Masters | PBS

I'll just repurpose my FB post about it (and let's face it, the odds of me posting about Twyla Tharp would seem pretty damned small)

Watched the first episode of Tales From The Loop on Amazon Prime. It's about a town where everyone works at an underground facility where top-secret experiments are done. My understanding is that each episode has a separate storyline dealing with a different set of people. First episode was quite good. If you were a fan of Black Mirror/Twilight Zone you'd like it.

3 days until Godzilla vs. King Kong comes out.

Been waiting for this one. On HBOMax

The rollout of what seems like dozens of content owner streaming services is beyond annoying. It doesn't matter whether you've cut the cord or are still with cable/satellite, who is piling multiple $5/month charges on top of what you are paying for TV? Are that many people really paying for ESPN/Disney, HBOMax, Peacock, Paramount, Discovery, etc., on top of the basic channels they are paying for?

Whether I stay with DirecTV or tried to cobble together 2-3 streaming services to get the kind of coverage I get through DTV with multiple streaming services, there's no way I would then add another $30-50/month for these other "exclusive" services. I got ESPN+ and that's it, mainly to watch my daughter.

Aare they counting on this growing like cell phone service - no one ever imagined spending $300-400 for phone service, but here we are. I just don't get it.

The only thing it's creating in me is an active hatred for TV brands that appear to be funneling exclusive content away from their bread and butter stations.

For us, I find that it means we subscribe to a service for like a month or two a year, like renting a movie. But damned if I'm staying with one for a long period of time unless it's replacing something else. For instance, we started Disney+ last week, watched Wandavision and Soul, will be watching Mandalorian Season 2, probably Falcon and Winter Soldier, and then we'll drop it again- just like we did last year with Mandalorian Season 1 and a couple of other movies. We did the same with the free previews last year for CBS (Picard) and HBO (Watchmen).

SI

I pay way too much for TV. We still pay for cable. Plus I subscribe to: Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, HBO Max (though I don't have to pay extra because I have cable) and Disney+. I, also, have Apple TV (or whatever it's called), but I currently get that for free. I'll likely cancel before I need to pay for it.

Speaking of, I watched all three available episodes of Invincible on Amazon Prime. I quite like it so far.

Same here. But there's always something that keeps us from cutting the cord. DVR space, certain channels one of us has to have, not to mention general technology learning curve issues that I know my wife would struggle with.

YouTube TV looks like it comes the closest, but they don't have everything we need. There's not one streaming service that can do everything we need that would cut our bill so drastically that I could make the switch without causing problems (or to offset the problems I would be creating by switching).

Outside of DirecTV, I pay for ESPN+ and Netflix. That's it. I don't count Amazon Prime because that's more of a side benefit we barely use for the primary shipping benefit.

For me, the accessibility has made movie watching far less of an "event" and more of a ho-hum, everyday thing. So when I say I'm nostalgic for something like Blockbuster, it's really the idea of a planned group movie night/event that I miss.

Enjoyed the Helen Reddy story on Netflix "I am Woman". She was somewhat before my time but remember some of her hits in the 80's.

Just seen that The Serpent started on Netflix on Friday in the US.

It was a joint Netflix/BBC project, so was on over here last winter - I highly recommend this

An awesome series set in SE Asia in the 1970s. Very stylish, very well acted, and based on a very dark true story

We gut the cord years ago and have an antenna. We get about 45 channels. And there is everything. From movie channels to a home improvement channel to a channel that shows marathons of crime dramas. I do use my brothers Dish account to get fox sports and espn

Anyone want to win a legit $10,000,000 reward?

Then you need to solve the biggest robbery in history. Happened in 1990 in Boston. $500,000,000 worth of paintings. Still unsolved.

This Is a Robbery: The World's Biggest Art Heist | Documentary Trailer | Netflix
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OH18cKTmwZ8

I put that on my "remind me" list.

Invincible on Prime is something I can't recommend enough. If you like comics, give this a try.

Agreed! Really enjoyed the first 4 episodes!

This looks interesting, but as a documentary. I don't need acting.

A reasonable point, but you are missing out on a really good show

The two main protagonists are brilliant, their accomplice is one of the most unsettling characters I’ve seen for a while, and the supporting cast is brilliant (the actor who plays Knippenberg deserves whatever award is given for supporting actor in a TV show). It doesn’t hurt that Jenna Louise Coleman is the co-star.

I’ve been to a lot of the places where the events took place as a solo traveller, so maybe it resonates a little more, but my recommendation stands :)

FWIW, there is a dearth of stuff I want to watch on Netflix, Prime and Hulu.

Sling TV is also sucking.

Yep. And if, like me, you've never read this particular comic, at least make it through the credits of episode 1. Trust me. I was very much "ehh this is OK, kinda of like an updated X-Men animated series I guess?" up until that point.

Re-watched Waterworld on Netflix. Watched it when it first came out in the 90's. It wasn't all that great but still entertaining. Think it got a bad rap back when. I like Kevin Costner.

Agree on Waterworld. It's a decent couch potato flick. It was just over-hyped because of how hot Costner's career was when it came out. I think people were hoping for the aquatic version of Star Wars.