Sharpe
2770
Honestly, none of the “core Clancy” novels would really benefit from such an updating. The ones that are good, or at least flawed-but-good, are good precisely b/c of the Cold War elements and more importantly, the “Cold War Vibe” they have. A huge part of Hunt for Red October is not just the submarine action but the context of the massive fleets and Cold War tension.
Some things just don’t update well.
On the other hand, a well written new story can really work. Have any of you folks watched Vigil? Apparently it’s now on Peacock. I watched it a few months back via one of the Amazon pay channels, don’t recall which one. It’s a pretty solid thriller/procedural involving a nuclear submarine and tension with Russia. Quite good IMO.
Scuzz
2771
We have recently watched the full seasons of Dragons Dogma and Dragon Age on Netflix. They were 7 and 6 shows respectively. The Dragon Age one was good, even my wife who knew nothing about the game enjoyed it. There were several call backs to the games in the show. The Dragons Dogma one wasn’t as good. It wasn’t terrible but as someone who has played the game they took some liberties with it, and since it is open world they changed some stuff.
That definitely captured the book, and I think The Clear and Present Danger film with Harrison Ford and Willem Dafoe also was pretty on target.
Not a series, but this gem just appeared on Netflix:
Jude Law and Rooney Mara in a thriller directed by Soderbergh? Pump that shit right into my veins. Not sure how I missed this back when it was released.
The only hit I got at Qt3 in the movie subforum is triggercut mentioning the movie is about to come out in the Soderbergh thread, and then @anonymgeist mentioning it was his fifth favorite movie of 2013 without any further comments.
I went into Side Effects knowing literally nothing about it other than the title, and it was one of my absolute favorite moviegoing experiences. Ever since, if I have an inkling that I’ll enjoy a movie, I try to go into it totally blind.
Nice. Added to the “list”.
That was really great as I recall.
Re: Jack Ryan, I watched the entire first season and really enjoyed it, but only watched two or three episodes of the second season, set in some fictional Latin American country, and for some reason it didn’t grab me as much and I fell off it. Gonna see if the third season is any good. That’s on Prime, though, right?
Bringing it back to Netflix, The excellent Cuphead Show has a third season.
The Cuphead show is excellent? Woah. Mind blown. I guess I’ll check it out.
Hope I didn’t oversell it, that wasn’t my inent. The Recruit doesn’t aspire to be anything like the stories/shows/movies it’s similar to and is kind of doing its own, less ambitious but slightly quirky thing, but it does it pretty well I think. The focus is much more on character relationships, and on the protagonist’s drive to overcome his own inexperience and limitations.
dgallina
2780
We just got around to watching it based on a family member’s recommendation. I’d say it is pointless & wildly inconsistent steaming hot garbage. I don’t think I’ve seen a show so bad in years and want those seconds of my life back.
Papageno
2781
Well, I’m enjoying it. It’s a great homage to 1930s animation. Voice acting is top-notch, too.
Paul_cze
2782
Venezuela is fictional now? :D
Although it is true they misrepresented it and its problems to incredible degree.
It is … if you want animated shorts done in a faithful 1930s/1940s style (humor is Warner Brothers, animation is Disney - a whole lotta multiplane! - character design is Fleischer), with no modern meta humor or snark.
Sorry, it’s been a long time since I watched. I figured they would do the standard thing that they do in videogames, like for example Just Cause 4 where the country is called Solís, or in Far Cry 6 where NotCuba is called Yara.
Crusis
2785
The Recruit on Netflix is good fun. It feels more like a Jack Ryan adventure than the show Jack Ryan, but with a little more humor. Jack was never a gun toting super hero in the books.
Very strong recommendation for French entry Les Papillons Noirs (Black Butterflies). It’s a six-episode series about a ghost writer who gets hired by an old man to write a novel based on his life. We see the story Albert tells to Adrien on the screen — a love story that becomes a tale of sexual violence and murder — and we see how Albert’s revelations compel Adrien to investigate his own dark past. The storytelling here is IMO superb, the plot keeps you guessing and the conclusion is satisfying.
Content warning: There is a ton of violence, though the vignettes from the past are shot in a kind of 70’s / 80’s style that isn’t particularly realistic. There is blood and plenty of nudity — it is a sort of unconvincing 70’s schlock film blood and nudity, but it is nonetheless there. There are multiple scenes of attempted rape. So, not at all for the kids.
jsnell
2787
I binged a bunch of Netflix series with different subsets of people while visiting family over the holidays. Didn’t have very good luck.
First, Treason is an abysmal spy thriller. There’s no verisimilitude, it’s basically just people doing things they know they shouldn’t with no motivation except that it’s what the plot requires. (As a simple example from the first episode, the wife of the new boss of MI6 feels that something is off about her husband’s behavior on the day of taking the job, tells about this to a CIA officer, and then agrees to spy on her husband for the CIA based on a 60 second conversation.)
The we tried The Recruit that people have been pretty positive on in this thread. It started really strong with the emphasis on office politics and bureaucracy. I would have liked to watch 8 episodes of that show, but it quickly became a poor man’s action show (shot at expensive locations!) with increasingly absurd scenarios and the original premise only being used for quick gags or as a deus ex machina any time they needed the characters to be stupid for plot purposes. And whoever wrote the ending can just piss off.
Finally, Inside Man where it’s hard to disagree with what was written earlier in the thread:
It’s still the best of this lot. The performances are strong (except for Tucci, who can just piss off, as can whoever wrote that role), and I’m a lot more forgiving about absurd coincidences and badly motivated actions in a black comedy than in a drama.
Yeah, that show was spectacularly silly, one that makes you actually shout out loud at the apparent stupidity of the characters.
it’s so dumb. I was doing play by play complaints to my sister as I watched it. The British accent tricked me into thinking it was going to be good. This professional spy starts lying to his wife and acting shifty when all he had to do was say the call was for work and excuse himself.
