Great minds…
Yep, watched the first two episodes last night. That is the Reacher we all deserve. Nothing against Cruise’s tiny Reacher, or maybe I should say nothing against his action career in general, which we all know he works very hard at, does his own stunts, etc.
But one of the defining characteristics of Reacher is that he’s a big, imposing guy. A cop compares him to Frankenstein’s monster at one point, which is an apt comparison, because nobody would make a movie with a tiny Frankenstein monster.
As you said @mordecaiB, it’s very watchable; well paced, with little bits of humor between the action. Very bingeable. Each of the two eps I saw end in a mini-cliffhanger designed to draw you into the next ep. I had to stop myself from binging a third one because it was getting late.
It ain’t Shakespeare, but it’s good at what it is.
I’m waiting for the series to end Feb 18th before I start watching the Korean series Girls’ High School Mystery Class 2. I’m waiting for it to end so I can binge watch the entire season.
Girls’ High School Mystery Class is a mix of improv (on the part of the celebrities) and staged scenes where five female celebrities, all well past high school age “attend” a high school and have to solve multiple puzzles to unveil the mysterious happenings at the school.
Besides the high school setting, this setup sounds a lot like the description of the above mentioned ‘Murderville’ (or the original British “Murder in Successvile” on which it’s based).
Fantastic! Thanks for the news! Looks like it will be February 18th. I’m so looking forward to it.
Read the description, sounds interesting. If I start up Netflix again I’ll give it a try.
I just finished bingeing Sex Lives of College Girls on HBO (created by Mindy Kaling), and it was… OK. It was perfectly competent and entertaining enough, but for the first 80% of the season it wasn’t the slightest bit surprising or challenging in any way. All the story beats played out exactly as you would expect, all the people you thought would end up being bad or good did so, yada yada yada. I mean, it still had jokes and stuff, and the leads are all very appealing, so it was perfectly watchable, but forgettable. It then improved markedly in the last few episodes, when things started actually paying off. I’m now definitely looking forward to season 2 if there is one.
How are people finding The Book of Boba Fett? We watched episode 1 and it didn’t grab us at all, but there seems to be a fair bit of buzz about it since.
And which HBO show should I watch first: Station Eleven or Raised by Wolves?
I see the new seasons of Disenchantment and Space Force are due to drop soon on Netflix. Disenchantment has been an odd one - too serious to be funny, too funny to be taken seriously - but it’s certainly different. And the first season of Space Force was quite promising.
I can’t speak to ‘Station Eleven’, not having HBO Max anymore, but we watched the first season of ‘Raised by Wolves’ when we did have it for a few months, and I can give it a thumbs-up. It’s a very weird, quirky, but watchable sci-fi show. Was never quite sure in s1 where the story was going, but despite that (or maybe because of it) we kept watching.
I didn’t realise this was by the same team behind Mike Tyson Mysteries and Nobodies (an underrated comedy I enjoyed). Maybe I’ll give it a try.
I started watching Murderville but I couldn’t even get past the first episode. I found Will Arnett to be painfully unfunny.
TWITHATSFTGITW is not terrible, I’d say it’s more a disappointing execution of a promising concept. And like I mentioned, 8 eps at less than 1/2 hour each isn’t too much of a time sink.
I liked it a little better than you, but again, a disappointing execution of a promising (or at least interesting) concept. My wife strangely liked it more than I did, and she can be a tough crowd when it comes to comedies.
We started watching this while going through withdrawal from Only Murders In The Building (which is SO fun… I can’t say enough about it).
Anyhow, The After Party is different, but satisfies some of the same need for a mystery, over-the-top characters…and has a Roshomon deal, where each episode is a re-telling of the evening of the murder from a different character’s perspective.
I’d hang in there with Boba Fett, especially if you liked the Mandalorian.
… and Grogu !
The last couple of episodes are worth it. Especially when I decided that the series is just a part of The Mando & Grogu saga.
Not only is each episode from the perspective of a different character but each is also done in a different style; one is a romcom, another is an action movie, etc.
And when it’s Ben Schwartz’s turn, he goes for it being a musical… the latest episode is mostly-animated, in a “cool” style.
.
Oh, I COULD mention my latest guilty pleasure: Dollface.
It’s Kat Demming (proving she’s so much better than the horrid writing on Broke Girls)…
… who got broken up with, and realizes she’d ignored her friends for the years she’d been focused on that guy. She tries to reconnect. And eventually succeeds.
Cool music, snarky critique of LA and California Girls In Their Thirties “culture”…and you get a sweet Matthew Gray Gubler, and a cat lady.
On Hulu.
I really enjoyed the one with Conan & with Marshawn who was probably the best. Sharon Stone wasn’t bad either in a campy kind of way but we laughed the most on the first two episodes.
I watched The Cuphead Show on Netflix which is a series of 1930s-style cartoon shorts based on the video game Cuphead. I haven’t played the video game (it looks way too frustrating for my tastes) but I’ve watched a play-through on Youtube so I was familiar with the subject matter: two brothers who have cups for heads tangle with a bunch of bad guys including The Devil.
It had a lot of the goofy charm of the video game (e.g the humour and the “rubber hose” animation style) and the episodes were only 10 minutes long so it was an agreeable time-waster.
Yeah, I watched a few of those too. I wasn’t sure what to think. It’s very well done in terms of copying that particular quirky 30s animation style. But I have a thing about what you might call ‘intentional kitsch’, entertainments that try too hard to imitate something that originally came about organically.
The animation in the video game is even better (IMO), not to mention the music! E.g.:
Wow. A 2D shooter with a soundtrack and style reminiscent of a Cab Calloway fever dream. Maybe I’ll give the game a try if it’s available for PC.
I’m catching up on older series, having just finished Bones and Scrubs. Am considering starting Cougar Town but the first episode didn’t immediately click with me.
Started on Firefly Lane, mainly for its two leads: it seems to be a low stakes cozy watch, which suits my current mood.