The Netflix original documentary Icarus starts off as a pretty interesting experiment and turns into so much more.

i cruised through "Godless" pretty fast..... thumbs up from me....

Set in Colorado, in the late 1800's. Good story..... 7 episodes

Really good documentary, One of Us is another good one.

New amazing documentary called Jim & Andy about Jim Carrey's channeling of Andy Kaufman during the making of the movie Man on the Moon

Watched Big Mouth and Jim and Andy and enjoyed both of them.

Also watched a doc called Hired Guns. It's about musicians who get hired mostly to just play tours and do studio sessions for 'solo' artists and when bands need a quick replacement. Thumbs up as well.

For those who missed it (didn't see it mentioned recently in the thread), American Vandal is a true-crime mockumentary about a kid who is accused of vandalizing the cars of his teachers at a high school with the 'documentary' makers (also students at the school) investigating whether he actually did it or not. It's fucking great and hilarious.

Edit: Also, Black Mirror season 4 goes up on December 29th. I know what I'll be binge watching on New Year's Eve!

First 4 episodes of Punisher are awesome. I kinda wish they stripped the whole thing out of the Marvel universe ala the Marvel Max comics, and just made the whole thing a more grounded "PTSD" story, but understand why they haven't.

I didn't enjoy Punisher all that much at all. It moved REALLY slowly, and the reward was some brutal torture porn...which is about what anybody should expect from a Punisher show, and the lead actor (who I'm too lazy to look up) is a great match for the character, yet in the end I wished I hadn't watched it at all.

I did not expect to enjoy the lewd, infantile humor of BIG MOUTH to get me laughing and enjoying it so much. It was a nice surprise!

I enjoyed it quite a bit.
Jon Bernthal is his name and he played the role well. He is in Shot Caller, which is on Amazon and did a good job in that movie also.

Bernthal was in every movie this year

Every season of Halt and Catch Fire is up on Netflix now. It's really a great show. First season has some issues but 2-4 are terrific television.

Also since a lot of you were around when the PC boom happened and the internet was in it's infancy you'll have some nice nostalgia over the show. It's a bit like Mad Men but 80's-90's computer/internet.


Yeah it wasn't great. Still burned through it and would continue watching future seasons but it felt about 3 episodes too long. The Punisher in DD S2 was much more fun.

Big Mouth is one of my favorite animated shows now. Binged it all in one night with the lady because once we started we couldn't stop laughing.

Godless - 10/10. The whole cast is amazing, but Jeff Daniels just destroys it.

This. The fact that I don't see more people talking about this show is kind of sad. It's literally 10's across the board. Story, acting, direction, cinematography, all top notch.

Didn't see that myself - I thought the story was potentially fantastic, much of the acting was great ... but ..

As resident nit-picker: I thought Godless was pretty good, but fell apart in the final act. After deliberate pacing in the beginning, in the finale it seemed like there were whole character arcs that came out of nowhere, and then others that just fizzled out into nothing.



That said, I still enjoyed it over all, and appreciate any kind of quality western, but I'd probably rate it closer to a 7/10.

Heh, I see we had similar issues.

From SI:

BEST SPORTS DOCUMENTARY

THE PICK: Icarus (Netflix)

SI’s Dan Greene offered up in detail why Bryan Fogel’s doc on the vast Russian doping conspiracy deserved all the plaudits it has received. Amazing work.

It's helpful to put spoiler brackets around text when you quote it when it was initially spoilered to begin with so to not have people start randomly reading spoilers and not even realize they are doing so.

:thumbsup:

Regarding Godless

Spoiler

Ya'll are spot on. I had finished episode 5 when I wrote my praises. The final episode felt almost like someone else had written it in order to jazz things up. Whiteys death was almost comical, which I don't think was the intent. And the gunfight was just silly. The women should have obliterated Griffins posse in about a minute given the high ground and amount of people they had. The horses running through the hotel was, again, comical, when I don't think was the intent. The whole Blacktown thing was ridiculous given the build up. In fact, given the buildup, pretty much everything in the final episode was silly. I still think the series is worth watching, but the final episode really betrayed the first six.

I just finished Episode 5 of Godless, so I'm interesting in seeing if I like or dislike the final act based on the discussion here. On a side note, I'm watching on my new LG OLED and watching it in Dolby Vision is absolutely breathtaking.

Not 100% sure if the first is really showing on Netflix in the US (it is here ...)

Manhunt:Unabomber

Developed by Discovery Channel (no, really) and the title kinda gives away what it is about ;) Much less sensationalistic than the title makes it sound and often will remind you of recent series Mindhunter (if you haven't watched that, you should). Pacing is very deliberate, aided by the decision to condense the show to a couple of snapshots rather than give an exhaustive overview of the whole case.

Don't want to give away too much in case you are blissfully unaware of the case or at least the details ...

In any case the series is doing a pretty good job of establishing the ambiguity of both lead characters, the acting from both (Sam Worthington and Paul Bettany) is really good. At times the show, as many others telling a "true story" falls into the trap of overexplaining stuff or creating friction and suspense instead of trusting themselves to simply tell the story and thrust the viewer into it. But most of the time it really sticks to fleshing it out and using visuals and metaphors to great effect.

Best thing here: If you like the first scene, you will like the show. So no excuses to try the first 3 minutes ;) Only 8 episodes, so easy to manage in terms of time commitment (as far as i understand it there will be more seasons concentrating on different crimes/investigations, making this part 1 of an Anthology)



Dark

Has been produced under the umbrella of Netflix in germany with german actors/crew etc, so you can for once just watch the original rather than wait for the botched or "still pretty good, but definitely not as good" american remake of a great european show ;) (like The Returned or the Killing)

Plays wonderfully with "german Angst" with it's setting of a small(ish) rural town surrounded by dark forrests and loomed over by a nuclear power plant. It also has different timelines, fantastic cinematography and brilliantly plays with concepts of crime, personal relationships and mystery (here there be time travel !). Really does a great job of establishing the various timelines, although this in combination with a rather large cast can be a tad confusing. There's a neat table to help navigate it on the wikipedia page : Dark (TV series - Wikipedia)

It is understandable to liken it to Stranger Things, as has been done a lot in reviews and even promotional material, due to the makeup of the Cast (although the kids are quite a bit older) and the general setting/mood. But i think something like Twin Peaks is a better comparison. Moves very slow, which might not be for everyone, and definitely is firmly rooted in suspense rather than action. Works for me, but might put off others.

Really worth your time. First season has 10 episodes of 45-55 Minutes.

I think I'm late to the party here, but I burned through all of Ozark this weekend while in bed sick. Just a fantastic show. I love Jason Bateman, and Laura Linney is excellent as well.

I watched Geralds Game last night and I must be missing something because I managed to be bored to tears and completely flummoxed by all the pot "twists" and turns. But I looked on RT and it's got like a 95% critics score and 75% audience score. What the hell am I missing? The whole deformed giant, daddy diddling story line just had me going wtf, and not in a good way.

I tried to read that book back when I was a teenager and couldn't get past the first few chapters. Terrible.

I don't know what's up with RT but it seems to be inflating scores somehow.

I saw Lady Bird because it's like 100% on RT. Decent movie but a ripoff of Rushmore. I figure it'd fall into like the 80% range but it's for some reason the favorite to win an Oscar. That's insane.

A ripoff of Rushmore? What movie did you watch man? Did you even see any of the family dynamics?

Lady Bird was a terrific movie.

It's a fine movie. It's just been done a bunch of times already with Rushmore, Thumbsucker, and others. I think they even knew they were taking heavily from Rushmore because she has a Rushmore poster in her room.

Heck, the Math Olympiad joke is stolen almost word for word from Rushmore.

I'm not trashing them for it. Most people under 30 have never seen Rushmore and each generation kind of needs that coming of age movie with the angsty selfish teen. But you really think it's one of the best movies of all time as the RT has it ranked?

I mean, Lady Bird and Rushmore are both coming of age films with an indie flair, but they both go about it almost completely differently. Lady Bird is a far more personal and emotional take on the material and is about completely different types of central relationships.

Well, Greta Gerwig is dating Noah Baumbach who has extensive writing history with Wes Anderson. So, I am sure the influence is there. However, Lady Bird stands just fine on it's own two feet as a film.

Just finished "Godless" and I am not sure what y'all are complaining about. It's like you've never seen a Western before. The final episode played out exactly as I expected and while I may have wanted a twist or two perhaps (though one death may have been), it was satisfying.

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I take RT ratings with a grain of salt. A movie can have a ton of "yeah, it's pretty good" ratings to get to 98% or something. I look at metacritic also to get a better sense of how "overwhelming" the praise is.

For Lady Bird, it is listed as one of the best movies of the year. I am with that. It's certainly top 5 for me this year. I liked it better than Dunkirk. But, I actually liked Coco just a little bit more. But with Lady Bird, I have two sons that are late high school and looking at college, so it was definitely more personal for me.

The Sam Waterson ending was brutal.

Planet Earth 2 is out. Using the new technology available really upped its game. Pretty fantastic.

I watched Godless aswell, but all i kept thinking, the whole time, was Deadwood. It's pretty much a poor man's deadwood. From the opening credits, to the death in ep 3. I don't know, it was a fine show, and it had it's moments, but it really looked like it was trying to be a clean version of Deadwood to me, and that's just impossible.

See, I thought it was the original Star Wars trilogy on horseback.

Not only is it out, but it's streaming in 4k, which... wow!

?

Not every Western is Deadwood :). It's more trying to be "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly" to me than Deadwood. I didn't even think it was even trying to be Deadwood - perhaps with the exception that most of the plot took place around LaBelle rather than all over the West (but even then, they get around).

New season of Black Mirror turned up on Netflix on Friday. Half way through, mixed so far (trying to avoid spoilers).

I really liked it. Too bad it was so short. The 1st 2 episodes were great.

I've only watched the first episode of the new Black Mirror. I really liked it.

I'm trying to limit myself to one a day/every other day rather than burning through all 6 a day or two like I did with season 3. Gonna throw on the second episode here in a minute. Avoiding spoilers pretty well so far.

Black Mirror was great as usual, id score all of them 9.0+, except Metalhead. My three standouts were USS Callister, Black Museum and Hang the DJ. Pretty in awe of Charlie Brookers writing ability, cant believe he was a video game reviewer and a fledgling comic just a 4-5 years ago. Props to Jodie Fosters direction on Arkangel and Tim Van Patten with Hang the DJ. I hope this series never ends.

I really liked Arkangel. That was fantastic. Jodie Foster did a great job.

Query. I saw the first season of Black Mirror but nothing since. I don't need to have seen the 2nd or 3rd season to enjoy the 4th right? It's pretty much an Anthology, correct?

They are all independent stories. No need to watch 2 and 3 to watch 4.

Finished season 4 tonight. I'd give them all 7.5-ish out of ten, nothing as good as "San Junipero"/"Shut Up and Dance" from last season, nothing as bad as "Playtest" from last season.

so it's like American HOrror story?

More like a modern twilight zone. Every episode is a stand alone.

Ha. For my money, I found Metalhead the most thrilling.

Just a friendly suggestion....

Don't watch 3 episodes of Black Mirror (S4 3-5) and then go read about the other 2 episodes from the season that you already watched and then go to bed right after.

If your brain works anything like mine...your dreams are fun.