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