Netflix Watch Instantly Recommendation Thread

'Feel Good' is good

Yes! Been meaning to post about that. One of the better sitcoms written by & starring a comedian.

whoa didn’t realise there was a second season!

i seem to remember things being fucked beyond repair

I find watching it a very stressful experience. I'm not even sure I'd call it a comedy. It's more like a half-hour psychodrama with jokes in it. That's not to say that it's not good, but watching it does not bring me relief from the real world, and I'm increasingly thinking that's what I want in a comedy.

True, but the jokes are really good, and they do a good job of not drawing out some sort of tedious will they/won't they scenario, or having plots solely based on miscommunication (compared to say HBO's Starstruck, just bc we started watching it at the same time). But yeah I could see how it could be triggering for some people.

Beyond Evil is one of the best shows I've watched lately. Korean cop/serial killer drama with strong plot parallels to Twin Peaks. It's tense af, with a crazy twist every 5 minutes, and completely top notch acting.

^^oh yeah, that one is great. meanders a bit in the middle but loved all the plot twists and strong character work by everyone involved.

Gunpowder Milkshake is a dud
it is a great cast but it suuuuuuucks

When I worked in DVD distribution we’d sell movies like this every month: named cast, shit script, flashy poster, flash-bang trailer… everyone would rent it, hate it, and in a year there’d be 75 used copies in every redbox across the country

they are the movie equivalent of packing peanuts

i can tell within 5 minutes that i’ll hate it
the 17 production logos in the opening credits is usually the first giveaway

end rant

thanks for confirming - was kind of interested because of the cast but yeah, the trailer looked pretty bad already

a few episodes into Never Have I Ever s2... it's kinda boring now that they keep rehashing the Paxton-Devi-Ben drama and all the other characters don't seem to be given much else to do. hope it improves soon.

Gunpowder Milkshake is a dud
it is a great cast but it suuuuuuucks

OTM, I really regret spending 2 hrs on that.

the 17 production logos in the opening credits is usually the first giveaway

Yep.

a few episodes into Never Have I Ever s2... it's kinda boring now that they keep rehashing the Paxton-Devi-Ben drama and all the other characters don't seem to be given much else to do. hope it improves soon.

I really did like S1, but when I saw it was coming and watched the teaser all my interest in watching another full season of it dissipated.

Another agree for Gunpowder Milkshake being blah.

Binged Move to Heaven this weekend. Highly recommend. Korean 10 ep drama about Aspergers 20 y.o. working family trauma cleaning business, uncovering the deceased's core (loves, hopes, concerns) as they clean scenes. If you don't mind weeping. Some of the eps are incredibly affecting.

yeah 'move to heaven' was good. the first episode with the deaf parents set the tone, loved the girl next door.

Gunpowder Milkshake? More like Dumbpowder Milkshit

There were some impressively gruesome kills in it, though.

Also watched the first three eps of "Salt Fat Acid Heat". Appreciated her country choices for demonstrating the various items - Fat (Italy), Salt (Japan), Acid (Mexico) - and liked seeing the local ingredients highlighted. Will be using miso more, and want bottles of barrel-aged soy sauce and Ligurian olive oil. Will keep an eye out for sour oranges, too.

When I watched that a couple years ago, it actually made me (and avowed hater of preparing and cooking food) want to cook. I really appreciated that.

Of course, I never followed through, but that's not her fault.

Speaking of gruesome kills we watched those RL Stine movies "Fear Street".

The 1994 one was TERRIBLE, they seemed to thnk the only way to telegraph "hey this is 1994" was to play 10 second snippets of 90s college goth-rock one after the other for the first hour, completely inconrous to the actual happenings on screen, and the fashions were so off they had to not have consulted anyone over the age of 30.

But ugh yeah... major gore. Was not expecting it.

I haven't and won't watch them because I can't do gore, but my impression from people who have is that 1994 sucked and the other ones were good. True?

I've watched them all over the last three nights. First was bad but had some genuine scares/hand in front of face moments but yeah, second two much better if still flawed and wearing their influences on their sleeves. Music use to pinpoint year stays pretty heavy handed throughout but quite enjoyed the tonal shifts and the Stranger Things/Home Alone final 30 minutes or so

Feature length episode of Kingdom now out

The Korean series?

Yep

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTqz2QYsSeY

was wondering the same, there's like at least 3 different TV shows called Kingdom in the past decade

I still have a soft spot for the dopey MMA one (also on Netflix, last I checked) w/ Frank Grillo, Jonathan Tucker, Matt Lauria and uhh Nick Jonas

oh and Paul Walter Hauser's in there too

was curious about that one but it left US Netflix earlier this year i think

Thought maybe it could even be Lars von Trier’s Riget.

Decided to check out Nayattu, a Indian political thriller that I found out about from the Letterboxd top25 of the year so far list. Thought it was really great and tense, police corruption and brutality taken as givens. Checked out some reviews afterwards tho and apparently it's full of caste prejudice that totally went over my head? The perils of engaging w/ culture you don't know shit about, I guess.

Thought maybe it could even be Lars von Trier’s _Riget_.

Right, thought I heard something about that

Feature length episode of Kingdom now out

― groovypanda, Friday, 23 July 2021 10:42 (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

This was v bleak, from the plot to the selection of hats. Rural Korea in the 16th century wasn't much fun to live/die in I guess.

What's the Neko Case song that's featured in the Country episode of This Is Pop?

Ah, "Furnace Room Lullaby"!

I binged the first season of Never Have I Ever in maaaaayyybe two days? It maxes out on "avert your eyes from this terrible life choice" tension that I can only tolerate by spacing out and mainlining it without thinking about it too much. But one thing I am LOVING is how non-white it is!! Just out here being about Black, brown, Afrolatina, Asian, etc, people and giving zero fucks. It's delightful.

yeah i loved s1

s2 took me to the max of “ok she’s kind a nut & a terrible person? & i dont enjoy watching this?” so i stoped

I finished season 2 eventually - spacing out the episodes helped in reducing the urge to yell at Devi through the TV. I didn’t really like the show rationalising her behaviour as a response to her father’s death, some of the things she got up to were pretty terrible.

I quite liked the complicated friendship she had with Aneesa though and glad they fleshed Paxton out a bit more too.

i really really REALLY love John McEnroe as the narrator. genius move.

Shadow and Bone is quite good! Had very low hopes for a NF fantasy series, but it comes together well. A lot of world building details are packed in or not fully explained so it's easy to get lost, but the story is still compelling. Hope we get additional seasons

Brand New Cherry Flavor, anyone? A few episodes in and it’s pretty good - excellent, fucked up body horror and 90s fashion that actually looks like 90s fashion. Rosa Salazar is fantastic even if she does look like she could be Aubrey Plaza’s twin.

there were a couple posts on the not-Netflix thread...maybe a sign to have one rolling tv thread as that keeps happening and we don't all live in the same country

Ah ok, I’ll look over there. a rolling TV thread sounds like a good idea but makes it very hard to avoid spoilers if you don’t have access to certain services (e.g. Hulu isn’t available where I am)

Is anyone else as curious about writers as I am? Every time I watch an episode of a show I like and the writing seems above or below usual standard I turn to the Wikipedia episode guide and see if it's a writer who's new or whatever.

Like yesterday I watched Dead to Me s2e3, a show I've felt has been consistently good so far, and it right from the off it just seemed bad, characters acting out of character, weak dialogue, weird plot holes. I look it up and it's the first one from that particular writer. And I make a mean mental note against that name.

I'm sure I sometimes conflate it with directing or acting choices, but anyway.

Honestly, I have no idea how credits work. Meaning, there's often a writer's room, but only one or two writers gets the credit on a show. Does that mean those one or two writers wrote everything themselves, or just the bulk/concept? I have no idea. I haven't been watching White Lotus or even know what it is, but I know Mike White not only created it but wrote every episode himself, by himself. That seems sort of unusual. A lot of the top tier TV seems to be a product of a team, even if only one person gets the actual "written by" credit. And yeah, the director makes a big difference, too, maybe even bigger, because there's only one of them, even if I assume the showrunner can influence things.

I haven't been watching White Lotus or even know what it is,

okay

but I know Mike White not only created it but wrote every episode himself, by himself. That seems sort of unusual.

except

A lot of the top tier TV seems to be a product of a team, even if only one person gets the actual "written by" credit.

so... not that unusual? at least, not as unusual as not ever having seen a show or even knowing 'what it is' but knowing who has writing credit on each episode. imo!

there's often a writer's room, but only one or two writers gets the credit on a show. Does that mean those one or two writers wrote everything themselves, or just the bulk/concept? I have no idea..

you possibly could have just left it there ^

Honestly, I have no idea how credits work.

or even there!

Alba I have the same thoughts but I never actually bother to look any of it up. For instance, Stranger Things S3, Hopper was just doing all this dumb stuff that Hopper would never do. 11 too. The acting was fine, the direction was fine. They were just being made to say and do things that rang untrue to their characters. Of course this can be an interesting choice - deliberately show a beloved character who's out of sorts, or going through a transformation, but that's not really what it was.

I remember reading something about 30 Rock where they explained that they would sit around in a writer's room and come up with the general episode idea & outline, then assign it to one writer to actually come up with a script (whose name would be on the episode as 'written by'). But then of course the script would be reviewed by everyone, punched up, jokes added, etc.

But Mike White said in an interview that he didn't have a writer's room, he really did write it all by himself, which does seem unusual.

Yeah. In the UK that's how most dramas are written, actually. Sometimes big comedies will have a writer's room but in general it doesn't happen because writer's room are extremely expensive. This is the main reason there's never been a UK version of the Daily Show, for instance. You need a big team of writers.