TV/Movies Megathread

[Eddie Teach]

Saw the pilot of Fuller House. Even worse than expected. 

[Valmy]

Saw the pilot of Fuller House. Even worse than expected. 

How is that...possible?

[Eddie Teach]

Probably because expectations were based on individual episodes and not the perfect storm that is a pilot. Every character had to use their catchphrase/s, they had some meta-jokes about the series, they had more cloying sentimentality than just about anything I've seen in 25 years.

[garbon]

It is weird seeing that ratty cop on The Killing (US version) in a very different role on House of Cards.

[celedhring]

X-Files. okay-ish; the comedy episode was great (those were always my favorites, though), and the standalones are decent, although the Mulder-Scully emotional claptrap weighs them down a bit. The conspiracy episodes are terrible though, it's almost unintentional parody.

[CountDeMoney]

It is weird seeing that ratty cop on The Killing (US version) in a very different role on House of Cards.

What's even weirder is watching him talk in his native Ubörki-börki-börki-börki-stan-stan language.

[Razgovory]

X-Files. okay-ish; the comedy episode was great (those were always my favorites, though), and the standalones are decent, although the Mulder-Scully emotional claptrap weighs them down a bit. The conspiracy episodes are terrible though, it's almost unintentional parody.

It's weird how they can make such a self-aware comedy episode, but lack that same self-awareness in making the other episodes.  I thought only the comedy episode was really good.  The conspiracy episodes were lousy, and the stand-alones were flawed.  Really unimpressed with the weird stand-ins.  I thought they were jokes, but they show up in the last episode.

[celedhring]

Just saw that the Were-Monster episode was written by the same dude that wrote "Jose Chung's from Outer Space", which is easily my favorite episode of the original show (also a comedy one).

[Savonarola]

Sicario (2015)

Emily Blunt plays an idealistic FBI agent sent as a liaison on a black ops mission to El Paso and Juarez.  When there she uncovers The Truth^TM and we're left to ponder, "Has the war on drugs turned us into the very monsters that we're trying to stop?"

Blunt's performance as they everywoman is decent, but Benicio del Toro steals the show.  He seems to have stepped straight out of a spaghetti western, complete with a mysterious past and superhuman skill with firearms.

[lustindarkness]

The Revenant, spectacular beautiful scenery and lighting, great acting, loved it.

Even if my brain was screaming at me that it was slow and long enough to self diagnose ADD and go get a prescription filled for it.

[celedhring]

The Revenant, spectacular beautiful scenery and lighting, great acting, loved it.

Even if my brain was screaming at me that it was slow and long enough to self diagnose ADD and go get a prescription filled for it.

Same feeling here. My brain was telling me that it was slow and nothing much was happening. But it is so beautifully made. Loved it.

[lustindarkness]

  From IMDB:

Shot only with natural light but with only one exception, according to cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki: a campfire sequence at night where the wind was causing the fire to pulse in a distracting way. "We had to lay a bunch of light bulbs around the fire to create a cushion of light," Lubezki admits. "That's all the light we used." [16 Dec. 2015, Variety]


Shot chronologically on an 80-day schedule that took place over a total principal photography time period of nine months. This unusually long production time was due to the cold weather conditions, the remoteness of the locations and director Alejandro González Iñárritu's and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki's aesthetic plan to shoot only with natural light for maximum realism. Only a few shooting hours were available every day and had to be carefully planned in advance.

I can't imagine how much it sucked to film this movie.

[11B4V]

Sicario (2015)

Emily Blunt plays an idealistic FBI agent sent as a liaison on a black ops mission to El Paso and Juarez.  When there she uncovers The Truth^TM and we're left to ponder, "Has the war on drugs turned us into the very monsters that we're trying to stop?"

Blunt's performance as they everywoman is decent, but Benicio del Toro steals the show.  He seems to have stepped straight out of a spaghetti western, complete with a mysterious past and superhuman skill with firearms.

Did you see it or just parroting wiki?  Did you like it? Hate it?

[Admiral Yi]

Plowing through the Silicon Valley eps I missed (which is like all of them) and one of the greatest things about this show is the opening credits are 3 seconds long.

[Savonarola]

Sicario (2015)

Emily Blunt plays an idealistic FBI agent sent as a liaison on a black ops mission to El Paso and Juarez.  When there she uncovers The Truth^TM and we're left to ponder, "Has the war on drugs turned us into the very monsters that we're trying to stop?"

Blunt's performance as they everywoman is decent, but Benicio del Toro steals the show.  He seems to have stepped straight out of a spaghetti western, complete with a mysterious past and superhuman skill with firearms.

Did you see it or just parroting wiki?  Did you like it? Hate it?

Saw it, of course, I don't write reviews for movies I haven't seen.  I liked it, I'd recommend it to people interested in "Black ops" movies.  The movies strengths are its actors (especially del Toro) and that it creates a morally complex universe without easy answers.  The latter was something of a surprise; from what I read the movie doesn't present a realistic view of the War on Drugs (or the city of Juarez), which is usually a gigantic red flag that we're going to be subjected to the "Hollywood truth" where complex problems have an obvious scapegoat and an easy solution.  That wasn't the case at all in Sicario.