TV/Movies Megathread

[Malthus]

Watching the Netflix series "Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness". Everyone portrayed is impressively crazy. I'm enjoying it.

Watched the first episode last night. Wow, I'm hooked. You think it can't get any crazier then "hold my beer", yes it can.

That country song is real. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzDXo9kUs7g

The impressive part of this show, as a show, is that the insanity keeps ramping up.

You see the first episode and think "this is crazy" ... but the crazy is only just beginning. It's ten times as crazy by the end.

[Legbiter]

Since I've fallen to the depths of watching Homeland,

Yeah, Tiger King is great.

[Legbiter]

Watching the Netflix series "Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness". Everyone portrayed is impressively crazy. I'm enjoying it.

Watched the first episode last night. Wow, I'm hooked. You think it can't get any crazier then "hold my beer", yes it can.

That country song is real. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzDXo9kUs7g

The impressive part of this show, as a show, is that the insanity keeps ramping up.

You see the first episode and think "this is crazy" ... but the crazy is only just beginning. It's ten times as crazy by the end.

Can't wait. 

[Malthus]

Can't wait. 

We binged the hell out of it. It's like a terrible surreal train wreck, you can't look away. 

[Barrister]

Wife and I watched Knives Out last night.  What a just satisfying, well make movie.

Written and directed by Rian Johnson, it's just a modern take on a good old fashioned Agatha Christie-style Whodunnit.  Now the characters are two dimensional at best, stereotypes at worst, but the movie even pokes fun at itself for that point (favourite line was Chris Evans black sheep of the family character calling Daniel Craig's southern private detective hired to help out with the case "CSI KFC").  The movie has no grander message to say, no social criticism.

But what it is is a master craft of plotting. There are numerous twists and swerves, but every single one of them made sense and were earned.  I swear there were a hundred different "Chekhov's guns" lying around in that movie, and I'll be damned if every single one of them didn't go off in the course of the movie.

Fairly mild spoiler to follow: [spoiler]The movie also tries to subvert expectations too.  For being a whodunnit, you're actually told whodunnit in the first 10 minutes.  There are still many, many twists to follow however.[/spoiler]

This was my pick, and I don't think Tracy was quite into it because she spent the first half of the movie looking at her phone.  The phone was put away by the second half however.

[Oexmelin]

The movie has no grander message to say, no social criticism.

There clearly are a bunch of social messages in Knives Out... The whole movie is about self-satisfied "decent" people who all insist they are self-made (despite all being propped up by their father), but drop the mask the moment their position of privilege (and the inheritance they clearly think ought to belong to them) is threatened by an outsider (an immigrant, no less - who they all smugly patronize while being utterly incapable of saying anything really meaningful about her).

[Barrister]

The movie has no grander message to say, no social criticism.

There clearly are a bunch of social messages in Knives Out... The whole movie is about self-satisfied "decent" people who all insist they are self-made (despite all being propped up by their father), but drop the mask the moment their position of privilege (and the inheritance they clearly think ought to belong to them) is threatened by an outsider (an immigrant, no less - who they all smugly patronize while being utterly incapable of saying anything really meaningful about her).

Yes that's certainly there.  For example Don Johnson's clearly Trumpist speech about immigrants, where he tries to call out Marta as doing it the right way, not knowing her own mother is in the country illegally.  But it's still not a "message" kind of movie.

[FunkMonk]

The funniest bit is when each of them describe Marta as coming from a different country from the other.

[Barrister]

The funniest bit is when each of them describe Marta as coming from a different country from the other.

Yes, that was a funny bit.

[FunkMonk]

The son being an alt-right edgelord was a nice touch too 

[Barrister]

The son being an alt-right edgelord was a nice touch too 

Sort of, but they never went anywhere with it.

[Oexmelin]

He's set up as a foil - the only one whose ideas are conveniently labelled as hateful, yet even as the other characters try to distance themselves from him, they continuously reveal themselves to be indeed quite close.

[Duque de Bragança]

Since I've fallen to the depths of watching Homeland, I think I'll give this Tiger King thing a try. 15 days into quarantine and I'm alarmingly running out of shows to watch.

Let me guess, the non-Israeli version?

[celedhring]

Since I've fallen to the depths of watching Homeland, I think I'll give this Tiger King thing a try. 15 days into quarantine and I'm alarmingly running out of shows to watch.

Let me guess, the non-Israeli version?

Yes.

I have watched the Israeli version too.

[Savonarola]

Carlos (2010)

Three part Mini-series that follows Carlos the Jackal's career from 1973 to his capture in 1994.  This is more of a greatest hits compilation than a story; mostly it chronicles Carlos's most notorious crimes (or attempted crimes; as with a few unfortunate exceptions most of his nefarious deeds went hilariously awry.)  In the third part, when Carlos has become "The Godfather of European Terrorism" the cinematography grows extremely dim; just like in "The Godfather."  I thought that was clever.  It's also made explicit that Carlos wanted to go out in a blaze of glory; which, of course, he didn't.  Today he's still in a French prison.