Current Watching

[Hot Pepsi]

I’m enjoying Around the World in 80 Days on PBS.

PBS evokes so many warm childhood memories.

[Slightly Brown]

Mass. Parents of a kid killed in a mass shooting meet the parents of the mass shooter. It’s all set in one (carefully set-up) church anti-room. The film swirls with blame and rage and politeness and research and confusion and grief. It’s basically mothers and fathers trying to understand why something appalling happened. The performances are fantastic.

[Cal Alamein]

Just finished The Puppet Master: Hunting the Ultimate Conman.
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-r...ime-tv-netflix

Robert Henry-Freeguard is probably well-known for those in the UK, but he was completely unknown to me. An extremely frustrating, yet engaging series. Won't say anymore as there's a lot going on in this 3-parter.

[Hot Pepsi]

New Ozark episodes. The first 7 of the fourth and last season. It’s compelling.

[WOM]

I'm apparently late to Only Murders In The Building, but man is this a lot of fun. Steve Martin, Martin Short, Selena Gomez and a ton of other great people. Very funny and very well written.

[Hot Pepsi]

It could have been a little shorter, but well done.

[Sits]

Being late also, we just finished Mare of Easttown which is expertly made and acted but extremely sad. See also Olive Kitteridge which we are 3/4 through. And the latest series of After Life. Actually it wasn’t an uplifting evening’s viewing considering we’d started with Spooks where one of the crew got killed.

[gjw100]

We’ve just finished Season 3 of ‘After Life’. It was certainly worth watching and on balance I enjoyed it but, as with the previous two series, it was an occasionally frustrating experience. As you might expect from the subject matter, there were some moments of real eye-dabbing sadness, but when these are interspersed with the sort of obvious, ham-fisted pathos that just makes you roll your eyes instead, it can feel somewhat manipulative. The humour is also very hit and miss – there are plenty of genuinely funny scenes/lines, but all too often (as is his wont), in pursuit of the laugh Gervais descends into tiresomely predictable crudity and bad language. David Earl’s Brian is the chief culprit here and you suspect that the character was created solely to give Gervais a peg to hang much of this stuff on, just as he did in ‘Derek’, where the same actor plays Kev in a performance virtually indistinguishable from the one that he gives here.

[Hot Pepsi]

New season of Billions *****spoiler**** without Axe. Corey Stoll is now the main billionaire. I think he’s a way better character and actor than Damian Lewis.

[WOM]

It'll have to be very, very good to survive more than one season without DL.

[WOM]

Also, my god is Ozark still good.

[Tony C]

We thoroughly enjoyed ‘The Nest’ on Netflix. A film that seems to have almost completely missed the radar in terms of its profile although being a 2020 film there may be obvious reasons for that. It’s set in the 1980’s heart of Reaganomics and ‘greed is good’ philosophy and the central character is a money-obsessed, deal- making, bullshitting trader although - hopefully not a spoiler - don’t expect to hate him as much as you might think.

Great performances from Jude Law and Carrie Coon drive a really thoughtful piece of work. Very good Ebert review below.

https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/t...ie-review-2020

[Hot Pepsi]

It'll have to be very, very good to survive more than one season without DL.

We’ll see. Seems like they should have ended it when he wanted to quit so both main character arcs end together.

But *** spoiler *** he isn’t dead, so maybe he can appear one or two more times to properly wrap it.

[Lang Spoon]

We thoroughly enjoyed ‘The Nest’ on Netflix. A film that seems to have almost completely missed the radar in terms of its profile although being a 2020 film there may be obvious reasons for that. It’s set in the 1980’s heart of Reaganomics and ‘greed is good’ philosophy and the central character is a money-obsessed, deal- making, bullshitting trader although - hopefully not a spoiler - don’t expect to hate him as much as you might think.

Great performances from Jude Law and Carrie Coon drive a really thoughtful piece of work. Very good Ebert review below.

https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/t...ie-review-2020

Yeah, really enjoyed that. Between this and the Third Day, Law is having a surprisingly decent mid period.

[Ginger Yellow]

We thoroughly enjoyed ‘The Nest’ on Netflix. A film that seems to have almost completely missed the radar in terms of its profile although being a 2020 film there may be obvious reasons for that. It’s set in the 1980’s heart of Reaganomics and ‘greed is good’ philosophy and the central character is a money-obsessed, deal- making, bullshitting trader although - hopefully not a spoiler - don’t expect to hate him as much as you might think.

I dunno, I hated him quite a bit despite the humanising touches. He was pretty much a borderline sociopath.

[Sits]

Like jwdd we just finished After Life and I loved the last episode. I’m getting increasingly sentimental.

[Femme Folle]

I finally started watching Lost (after all these years). I have spent a few entire weekends watching it and I'm still not on the final season. So many episodes and so many annoying characters. I will finish it, but I can already tell that the ending won't be satisfying.

[Hot Pepsi]

I started trying Yellowjackets. I don’t think I have the stomach for it.

[WOM]

We, just tonight, started After Life. It's lovely.

[Amor de Cosmos]

I started trying Yellowjackets. I don’t think I have the stomach for it.

It's a bit trying, but kinda compulsive. I've a hunch season two will be a step down, based on the teaser at the conclusion of the last episode.

[Levin]

I really want to watch some world TV in the Walter Presents strand but everything seems to involve murder, rape, police and/or 80s nostalgia. Is that the only stuff Channel 4 buys?

I ended up watching an episode of Amsterdam Vice which it turns out is the origin story of a long running 90s Dutch cop show. I might go back to Paris Police 1900, the political situation is interesting there at least.

[Tony C]

I dunno, I hated him quite a bit despite the humanising touches. He was pretty much a borderline sociopath.

Well, I get that angle too. However I think the conversation with his mother was short but telling and particularly the unsaid stuff about his father. That he himself had then tried to be as good a father as possible gives him some credit. He was misguided, of course, and his obsession with money and materialism was obviously unhealthy but I personally couldn’t see real evil in him. The fact that he wasn’t drawn as a coke-sniffing, womanising, prole-taunting, amoral stereotype of a 1980’s trader made him more interesting and less definable.

[Ginger Yellow]

That he himself had then tried to be as good a father as possible gives him some credit.

Except as the taxi driver said, his idea of a good father was the bare minimum. And he even failed at that.

I certainly think it was a more interesting character and portrayal than it might have been if it was entirely villainous. But that doesn't stop me hating him as a person. In some ways the movies is a British Uncut Gems - a sense of mounting unease, a protagonist, or at least main character sabotaged by his own bullshit and impulse to gamble. And similarly, I hate Adam Sandler's character in that movie. I love the movie as a study of the character, but the person is intolerable.

[Tony C]

Except as the taxi driver said, his idea of a good father was the bare minimum. And he even failed at that.

I certainly think it was a more interesting character and portrayal than it might have been if it was entirely villainous. But that doesn't stop me hating him as a person. In some ways the movies is a British Uncut Gems - a sense of mounting unease, a protagonist, or at least main character sabotaged by his own bullshit and impulse to gamble. And similarly, I hate Adam Sandler's character in that movie. I love the movie as a study of the character, but the person is intolerable.

It’s curious that despite the strong performances of the leads, it’s the conversations involving the very minor characters of the mother and the taxi driver which in many ways define the whole film.

We have a difference of opinion about the main character but probably agree that the film is well worth watching.

[RobW]

Paid £10 to watch Boiling Point via Prime (sorry to local independent cinemas, but I couldn't be arsed leaving the house again). Stephen Graham is typically excellent but it was Vinette Robinson that really stood out as the sous-chef. Didn't really notice that it was a one-shot film. It reminded me a lot of Locke