Netflix Watch Instantly Recommendation Thread

Teenage Bounty Hunters was good I thought - a bit all over the place plot- and tone-wise but pretty enjoyable and the actresses who play the lead twins are both excellent. A solid B+ kinda teen show.

My bar for entertainment sunk pretty low, I watched "Sleepover" (kind of) and enjoyed it (what I saw of it through my stoned haze).

To correct this I watched some documentaries which are great:

"John was trying to contact aliens" this is a 16 minute documentary that is utterly fascinating, but the 'reveal' halfway through, though touching, wasn't the most interesting thing to me. I'd have liked a full hour so we could learn more about the weird shit John built, how it worked, and of course, I'd have been into more of his DJ sets for aliens which centered around 70's space rock.

"Without Gorky" - shamefully we knew nothing about Arshile Gorky other than that he was Armenian (My wife is half). This is a pretty intense doc focused on his widow and their two daughters who revisit the area where he hung himself. It's really, really good.

"Kingdom of Us" - I liked this less than Without Gorky, it ostensibly is the same type of doc: how does this family process and relate to the suicide of their father? There are so many kids I had a hard time keeping a few of them straight (it's also filmed over a period of three years and is loose with chronology so that didn't help). But it's worth watching.

"The Society & I Am Not Okay With This cancelled due to Covid-19 production issues"

ugh this fucking blows! I thought a second season of stupid Society was in the can already! I am not okay with this decision!

Netflix decisions are pretty inscrutable. So, these get cancelled due to covid, allegedly, but a David Lynch Wild at Heart show gets a green light? And I'm pretty sure, say, Stranger Things won't be cancelled due to covid. Netflix seems to cancel all sorts of shit for unknown reasons.

Must be some hiccups in the global money laundering machine

the wild at heart thing is not real xp

Thank goodness.

I was going to ask, hadn't heard anything about that

teenage bounty hunters is tremendous -- the all-over-the-place leaps sideways are part of the point i think (anyway they're a good part why i enjoyed it so if they're not #whocare)

#Alive - another good addition to the Korean zombie genre as well as a pretty effective quarantine thriller

Yeah, liked that quite a lot.

idk what this says about me but I am keen to watch the new Ryan Murphy series “Ratched” this Friday

I might give it a whirl. Sharon Stone being in it was the deciding factor.

Cobra Kai is, against all odds, actually, kinda good?
What can I say, it's got heart.

it’s the fkn best - pure joy imo

Zabka can act, who knew

Larusso daughter gives me strong Disney Channel vibes

Zabka kills it; he gets some great lines

Yeah I 'm enjoying that; great one to squeeze in just before bed.

My Octopus Teacher is a must watch

Oh man, i did NOT like that.

OH WTF NETFLIX: https://io9.gizmodo.com/dark-crystal-age-of-resistance-has-been-canceled-by-ne-1845132612

Boooooo

BOOOOOOO

WHAT THE FK

THEY JUST WON A GODDAMN EMMY YOU JERKS

The Devil All the Time has all the depth of the "Crazy Christians" sketch from Studio 60. Tom Holland acts circles around Pattinson, embarrassingly.

yeah this movie was so dull. the only thing I enjoyed about it was Pattinson's terrible accent - I was cracking up every time he was onscreen

Admittedly I’m not an MCU fan, so I’m missing a key chunk of his filmography, but I have yet to figure out why I’m supposed to care about Tom Holland.

I haven’t been on Netflix in months and am annoyed to discover instantwatcher is no longer able to provide a list of recently-added

That is Netflix's fault, from what I understand.

i love octopuses and octopeople but i did not understand the octopus movie. it was pretty, and passably interesting as a pbs special. but i thought the narration was dreadful. it felt very first-semester of film school.

started Ratched last night, one episode in and it's good though extremely AHS in tone and I'm expecting it to turn into some other show after four episodes and loose interest entirely like everything else Ryan Murphy does these days.

Cobra Kai on Netflix now...what happened to YouTube's streaming channel, whatever the fuck it was called?

http://www.youtube.com/premium

iirc they gave up on scripted content entirely; combined it with their Google's streaming music service

Glow and Teenage Bounty Hunters both cancelled this week. Absurd. I realize Covid is impacting filming for things (though Law and Order: SVU appears to be shooting it's new season? how?) but you'd think they could hold out a bit before making these calls (if covid is actually the reason behind it)

I never got into GLOW but I'd have to assume that after three seasons it's mostly run its course both narratively and culturally. Tell me I'm wrong!

So bizarre that they would cancel Glow. Is it just because it would be too complicated/expensive to make a wrestling show during COVID?

xp

I'm assuming most of the problems are in keeping actors attached over longer periods of time + logistics involved in COVID-proofing the sets. Also different actors w/ different demands or having to travel, etc

Of course in some cases it could absolutely be Netflix finding a novel (snicker) way to act on fresh data that indicates the show's not worth shelling out for.

I never got into GLOW but I'd have to assume that after three seasons it's mostly run its course both narratively and culturally. Tell me I'm wrong!

― Fuck the NRA (ulysses), Thursday, October 8, 2020 11:28 AM (twenty-one minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

the ending of the last season was not a satisfying series finale. I was p indifferent to it but if you liked it you're prob v disappointed

at least with Netflix they can always do a wrap-up season/finale waaaaay later if they feel like it

Been watching Teenage Bounty Hunters and thoroughly enjoying it.

Enola Holmes was entirely written by focus group, you could hear the pitch meeting. "What we need is a vehicle for the slightly androgynous one out of Stranger Things. How about she gets to play a spunky quirky young heroine who dresses up as a bit at every opportunity, often for money, and does monologues to camera every chance she gets, like Fleabag, that was popular."

I ended up yelling SPUNKY FLEABAG at the screen every time she did it after a while.

Is it just because it would be too complicated/expensive to make a wrestling show during COVID?

not sure if joke but pretty much every "live," weekly, actual-sweating-and-grappling show has taken afaik not so much as a week off this entire time

They're all filmed in Florida, with a state govt corrupted by the McMahons... so not good.

My daughters loved Enola Holmes, and the idea that it was enraging ageing Holmes-nerds would have pleased them even more.

New York Mag's streaming writer on one of the reasons why GLOW likely got canceled

Netflix probably isn’t totally out of the business of scripted shows that stretch on for five or more seasons. If a series is particularly “efficient” (read: cost effective) or serves a very unique niche, I can see the streamer committing to a longer run. The same goes for shows that are global hits, generating huge viewership around the world, like The Crown or Stranger Things. But Netflix’s tendency these days to walk away from shows after three or four seasons suggests it believes the best way to recruit and retain subscribers is to constantly offer audiences a huge ever-changing assortment of new programming rather than rely on old faves to keep folks in its universe. (That’s what reruns of Seinfeld or Grey’s Anatomy are for.)

This is obviously a radical departure from how network TV has done things for a half-century, but why shouldn’t it be? Netflix doesn’t make money the way broadcasters did. The streamer doesn’t need shows it produces to build up a catalogue of 60, 80, or 100 episodes so that it can make hundreds of millions of dollars in selling syndication rights to other platforms because Netflix shows are designed, by and large, to live their entire lives on Netflix. It doesn’t have to keep moderately successful series around for a decade (or even five years) out of fear that it will be hard to get viewers to sample something new, because the Netflix algorithm and home page mean it can get tens of millions of viewers to at least sample almost anything. (Whether they stick around or like the show is another matter.) And while ending shows prematurely potentially pisses off some producers who would very much love to explore the worlds they’ve created for more than just a couple of seasons, well, that’s the beauty of being a global entertainment super-platform: There will always be other producers willing to play by your rules. NBC needs Dick Wolf and Lorne Michaels to be happy. Netflix needs nobody.

marc maron agrees with your "let's end it with a movie" theory btw
https://www.indiewire.com/2020/10/marc-maron-netflix-glow-ending-movie-finale-1234590944/

I have no issues with them doing that, most shows get stale after 3 seasons anyway, but maybe they could actually plan for and commit to a series length to allow for narratives to resolve and people not to get pissed off?

I never got into GLOW but I'd have to assume that after three seasons it's mostly run its course both narratively and culturally. Tell me I'm wrong!

You're wrong! The fourth season was written as a final, was going to change the setting again in order to advance several leads' since-episode-one character journeys and the programme's overall themes, and they were in production on the second episode when COVID shut it down.

I'm sure that the main reason in cancelling it this week is that it would be expensive to keep re-contracting a large cast over and over until it's safe to film most of them physically rubbing all over their colleagues and sitting on each others' heads.