These are my notes to remember what I watched and kinda what I thought about it. I’ve recently transferred my reviews to IMDb and made the list of almost 1200 ratings publicly available. I’ve included the individual ratings with my notes for each movie. These ratings are not absolutely comparable to each other—I rate the film on how well it suited me for the genre and my mood. YMMV. Also, I make no attempt to avoid spoilers.
This is the better of the two new specials on Netflix. Chappelle is effortless and very, very good in this one. I don’t remember a lot of specific jokes, but it was all-new material in his standard topics. The nearly 70 minutes were built on the scaffolding of the 4 times Chappelle met OJ Simpson. He didn’t address politics directly at all, other than most of his material stems from being black in America, which is at heart a very political thing, no?
Highly recommended.
This was also very good, but I liked The Age of Spin better. This one featured a little too much easy material, with a little too much masturbation humor. It’s like when Louis C.K.
won’t stop talking about shit: you can try to fool yourself into thinking that he’s a genius and you just aren’t seeing all the levels of his humor, but objectively you can’t see the difference between when Dave Chappelle makes an easy masturbation joke and when a lesser comedian does it. Still, it’s Dave Chappelle: he’s pretty damned funny.
I didn’t like this movie as much as I’d hoped I would. I’ve really liked other Hitchcock movies like Vertigo and Psycho but this one was disjointed and odd. The plot made little sense,
there was no effort made to explain certain points. People didn’t act very predictably and no reason was given for why they were so odd. And the birds—they weren’t explained either, not even a little bit. They were just an unpredictable force of nature that were filmed at exhausting length. The best scene was in the diner about 2/3 of the way through the movie. Not recommended.
I’d heard that this Marvel-comics–based series on Netflix was a far cry from the three others preceded it—Jessica Jones, Daredevil and Luke Cage. I’ve watched them all and was pleased to see how they intertwined and built on each other. It’s not always fantastic television but, all in all, it’s pretty good. Iron Fist builds on this, with some pretty good characters—although I’ll admit that the main character Danny Rand as Iron Fist is the weakest of them. For a guy who spent 15 years training night and day with monks in a remote part of Tibet to achieve their highest honor,
he sure doesn’t have a good grip on his emotions. On the other hand, he’s away from the only thing he can call home, back in his childhood home of New York City, so its not surprising that he regresses. It’s a bit embarrassing when he does—everyone else seems to keep it together better and it makes him a bit more easily manipulated.
Madame Gau features strongly, as does Claire the nurse. Carrie-Ann Moss as Hogarth is also a breath of fresh air. Danny’s friend Davos says to Claire “That’s how we’re trained. We don’t let emotions cloud our actions. […] A weapon doesn’t know feelings.” That’s nice and all, but we’d just spent 10 shows watching Danny do the exact opposite of that. He’s very simplistically portrayed—especially in the final few shows.
The supporting cast is entertaining, though. The Meachums are pretty good, as is Colleen Wing. I really like Ward. Madame Gau is really good, but Bakudo is a smug Deus ex Machina. The choreography is not nearly as good as in Crouching Tiger. Some of it’s good, but most of the rest is highly telegraphic and clumsy. Finn Jones as Iron Fist is pretty stiff, even though he’s supposed to be the best evar.
In the end, it’s a battle between two cults for the hearts and minds of a couple of good people.
This show is every bit as brilliant as people say it is. There’s a good overall story arc, but the shows are very much character-driven. The writing and dialogue is really great. We’re near the end of season three and the quality is still very high. Looking forward to the next three seasons.
“Carmella: You got a driver’s license, not a license to go carousing around on a school night.”
Tony: A.J. says he’s got no purpose.
Melfi: What did you say?
Tony: I told him it’s cost me about $150,000 to raise him so far and if he’s got no purpose, I want a refund.
“Melfi: You’re both very angry.
Tony: Oh, you must have been at the top of your fuckin’ class.”
“Sil: You could have as many kids as the Kennedys, you’re married to a twat, what does it matter?”
“Melfi: What do you think she sees in you?
Tony: I dunno. Maybe with all of the faggots and crybabies runnin’ around. Whatever I am, at least it’s not that.”
This is the latest installment in the Alien series of films, with Ridley Scott once again at the helm. His vision is interesting and his direction is, as always, lovely, but the plot was just odd.
There were so many incongruities and deus ex machinas that involved everyone being spectacularly careless and stupid to drive the plot forward (just like the previous installment, Prometheus).
That said, I really liked Michael Fassbender as David and Walter, two androids. The scenes with just the two of them were the best (Fassbender playing against himself).
The story was reaching for something interesting but couldn’t decide what to do—and ended up muddling in the standard horror/alien-creature direction that was decidedly less interesting than the more portentous possibilities hinted at in some of the stilted dialogue.
Perhaps another viewing would improve things, but it might also just highlight the more glaring plot holes and technological anachronisms.
Season two is even better than season one. A good mix of very funny jokes, running themes, period references, a bit of pathos and excellent characters. There is a lot of polish in the scripts, with dialogue pared down to essentials. The amount of work that went into this show is obvious. Highly recommended. Very funny.
“Dragon on your chest. Dragon on your chest. Dragon on your chest. Breathing fire!”
I avoided this show for a while because I thought it was just hype: but it’s the real deal. Grandpa Rick Sanchez is a fantastic character, well-written and relentless. He’s a genius. He never backs off and he never loses. There is no comeuppance for him. Morty is also a great character, growing with each episode into a more and more interesting and well-developed guy. The rest of the family is also good, but you really watch for Rick. Some choice quotes from Rick below.
“It’s like the N-word and the C-word had a baby and it was raised by all of the bad words for Jew.”
“There is no god, Summer; gotta rip that band-aid off now you’ll thank me later.”
“I’ll tell you how I feel about school, Jerry: it’s a waste of time. Bunch of people runnin’ around bumpin’ into each other, got a guy up front says, ‘2 + 2,’ and the people in the back say, ‘4.’ Then the bell rings and they give you a carton of milk and a piece of paper that says you can go take a dump or somethin’. I mean, it’s not a place for smart people, Jerry. I know that’s not a popular opinion, but that’s my two cents on the issue.”
“Like nothing shady ever happened in a fully furnished office? You ever hear about Wall Street Morty? You know what those guys do in their fancy board rooms? They take their balls and dip ‘em in cocaine and wipe ‘em all over each other. You know Grandpa goes around and he does his business in public because grandpa isn’t shady.”
“Listen, Morty, I hate to break it to you, but what people call “love” is just a chemical reaction that compels animals to breed. It hits hard, Morty, then it slowly fades, leaving you stranded in a failing marriage. I did it. Your parents are gonna do it. Break the cycle, Morty. Rise above. Focus on science.”
“Now listen, I’m not the nicest guy in the universe. Because I’m the smartest. And being nice is something stupid people do to hedge their bets.”