Narcos: Mexico is not bad. I wasn’t spoiled by history because I didn’t know the history. I knew more about the Colombian stuff in the original Narcos.
You know how they bleeped out those politician names? You know how those netflix scouts got killed for this series? Makes you wonder.
I read and enjoyed The Umbrella Academy long enough ago that I can’t really remember much of the plot. I hope this is good, but I don’t really have any expectations. Obviouslly @tomchick will not enjoy it, their masks have Deadpool Eyes.
I don’t mind superheroes with zombie eyes so much as I’m just confused by them! Why do some superheroes have zombie eyes? It makes no sense!
-Tom
Because they are zombies?
Started off good, was not enjoying it in the middle, but then redeemed itself toward the end.
My problem was that Diego Luna’s character seems to have changed from the beginning of the season to the end and while you do want to see growth or change in a character, they kind of dropped the ball by not really showing much of that transition on screen.
I give this season a solid 7.5. Maybe 8. But the last season was a 10 for me.
Maybe I don’t like Diego Luna. He is a good actor but just lacks the presence and intensity you enjoy seeing in a gang leader role. He was the dullest character in Rogue One as well.
So my wife and I started watching “Bad Blood”, a Canadian series picked up by Netflix earlier in December. It’s based on the story of the Rizzuto family, mobsters who unified and controlled the Montreal drug trade, corrupt construction and shipping business, and city hall, in the 90’s and 00’s.
It stars Anthony LaPaglia as the head of the crime family, and the always entertaining Kim Coates as his right-hand man. So far it’s no Godfather, but it’s not terrible either, and it provides an entertaining mix of interesting historical facts about the Montreal underworld combined with Coates having license to play the kind of character he plays best. I’m enjoying it.
It looks like the first season is only 6 episodes, and was meant to be a sort of self-contained mini-series. But then the production company decided to expand the story, and it got an 8-episode second season late last year that takes the timeline further along.
Bandersnatch is pretty good; I recommend checking it out.
I watched it as well, since I’m a sucker for anything mob-related (or, as my wife calls it, Italians yelling at each other).
I thought it was OK, nothing special, although not being familiar with the story a couple of the plot twists took me by surprise.
And you forgot to mention gratuitous Paul Sorvino sighting.
Forgot about Paul Sorvino! He is good in this as usual. We finished it and felt the same, it was OK, and the last couple of episodes were definitely the payoff for investing your time in the first four. I like how it ended, kind of a circle-of-life thing with a mob twist. I think I’d have been happy to let it go there, but there is apparently an entire 8 episode second season where Coates is the only main character who returns. It’s not on Netflix yet, so not sure if we will return to watch it when it does drop.
Watching Bodyguard now and it’s almost the exact same deal in terms of pacing. First four episodes were kind of interesting but slowish, with the final couple of episodes really paying off as the plot turns suddenly and things open WAY up. We’ve enjoyed it.
Um, yes please.
Welcome to Marwen has bombed so he’s back on TV. Not all that surprising.
I haven’t read any reviews. Was it that bad?
Are you ignoring all of the other films he’s done?
Not really, but I don’t know that I’d classify him as a leading man capable of carrying a big film. Comic actors have a relatively short shelf life in the movies. There are exceptions but a lot of them move from comic roles to drama, but not all of them make that transition.
Anyway, doing stuff for Netflix isn’t really like being back on TV so that was an unfair comparison. It’s somewhere above a regular TV series and below big budget movies.
I haven’t seen it but it’s 31% on Rotten Tomatoes. I saw the trailer 3-4 times at the theater for various movies, and it just came across as gimmicky and bad.
They chose to make the character’s fantasy come to life with animated action figures. That’s Hollywood stepping in with special effects money. It turned me off of the movie. I’d rather see them tell the story without that stuff.
Well, I rather liked A Friend for the End of the World, myself.
The full trailer for Umbrella Academy
Anyone looking for a new series to dig into could do a lot worse than The Ministry of Time (El Ministerio del Tiempo). It’s a Spanish time travel series that was ripped off by NBC for their pretty unimpressive and now-cancelled show Timeless.
It’s an action-adventure show revolving around a team of 3 people from various periods of Spanish history, employed by the titular Ministerio to patrol the time-stream keeping bad guys from changing history to suit their own ends. It doesn’t make much sense if you spend any time thinking about it, but it’s a testament to the writing and production and acting that it works so well regardless. It’s heavy on Spanish history, so if, like me, you know little about the subject, you’ll be spending a lot of time on Wikipedia looking up references, which is it’s own brand of an enjoyable pastime.
This isn’t high art, but it is a lot of fun. I’m just about finished with Season 1, and I have a feeling I’ll be starting Season 2 tonight.
Watching the final run of Kimmy Schmidt. So weird to hear Kimmy swear.
Also, I guess Netflix isn’t planning to make any movies with Scientologists.