Netflix Watch Instantly Recommendation Thread

upgrade is a blumhouse joint and you're describing their look/casting pretty well

I would say Blumhouse has a more digital "inky" house style with slashes of neon; think The Purge series or the recent Fantasy Island.

Karate Kid

Out of the bloke who did Upgrade's previous films, six had grossed over $100 million on $1-10 million budgets - he won't be resorting to Netflix unless cinemas go away altogether. (Upgrade "only" made about six times its $3MM budget; his Invisible Man this year pulled in $130 million on a $7MM budget in two weeks, before the pandemic shut down movie theaters - it reopened in his home country last month).

My son and I just getting to the end of the first season of Trollhunters.

What's the correct viewing order - do we jump into season two next or should we start on 3 Below?

you're supposed to watch them backward. and not only in backward order, but each episode backward as well. only then will the truth about Trollhunters be revealed.

Finally watching Narcos: Mexico. It’s a wee bit corny but v watchable & who doesnt love Michael Peña right

(ttrue story of Kiki Camerena 4-part docuseries “The Last Narc” is on Amazon Prime, highly recommended companion viewing if you want to chainsmoke & never sleep again).

thinking of watching this bob lazar ufo thing, is this a bad idea? n.b. i want to believe.

love on the spectrum is (maybe surprisingly?) great

Found it too painful to get through even one episode.

Admittedly my bar was set very low, so this may not be saying much, but Upgrade was better than I expected.

there was various chat scattered around ILX when Upgrade came out, here's some:

upgrade is really good (i liked it so much i started a thread about it) but i would not call it a horror movie (though it has some horror elements for sure)

― na (NA), Wednesday, June 13, 2018 2:52 AM (two years ago)

Upgrade was quite entertaining. Reviewers that seemed to focus on movie being “dumb” giving most of its influences much more credit for intelligence than I would. Definitely kind of movie I could stand more of being made.

― One bad call from barely losing to (Alex in SF), Wednesday, September 12, 2018 11:02 PM (two years ago)

I agree. I didn't love it, not normally my kind of thing but it was a pretty solid b-movie with quite tight storytelling. Well constructed.

― Robert Adam Gilmour, Saturday, September 15, 2018 7:27 AM (one year ago)

I was expecting Upgrade to be a half-decent SF spin on Death Wish; it turned out to be a smart and beautifully shot thriller with an SF angle. Highly recommended.

― grawlix (unperson), Sunday, September 23, 2018 9:41 AM (one year ago)

Considerably less smart on second viewing, but yes, this movie is a gem.

― oder doch?, Monday, September 24, 2018 9:32 PM (one year ago)

I just saw Upgrade. It was pretty good! Clever b-movie premise, great execution for what must have been a low budget. Reminded me a bit of the original Terminator, or maybe Robocop, if it was directed by David Cronenberg.

― Josh in Chicago, Monday, November 19, 2018 4:45 PM (one year ago)

and a small, withered thread: "upgrade" (2018)

probably succumbed to the quotation mark-search bork-curse. just say 'no', folks.

The chat about it in this thread earlier in the week was all I'd seen. Not sure it warrants a standalone thread, I'd say it was ok, if you like that kind of film, but nothing special.

I Am Mother is a decent little SF as well.

lol I am just watching Upgrade now and rn Stem is to this guy what my 5yo is to me
"One second has passed"

So weird thing- the Tom Hardy lookalike lead in Upgrade is my college roommate’s ex-husband.

Tom Softy

That IS weird!
When he's doing all the 'stop hitting yourself' stuff I also get a Chris Pratt vibe.

There's a whole wormhole about Logan Marshall-Green and Tom Hardy being mistaken for one another.

tbf, ENBB's post might add to it!

(It doesn't really, I'm, just drunk.)

Watched recently:

The Babysitters Club

The Babysitters Club, along with Sweet Valley High, was much of my childhood reading material (before I got into my teens and graduated to more age-appropriate fare like Vampire Chronicles fic and Stephen King books).

This show was actually recommended to me by a fellow ilxor and it’s incredible. I’ve watched it twice over now. The updated material makes sense, the kids are very true to their book characters without coming across as cloying or irritating, and ofc my fave Claudia Kishi is INCREDIBLE.

Seriously, I’m not sure it’s possible to watch Claudia and Mean Janine without tearing up at least a little.

Strongly recommend, for a wholesome watch that’s not saccharine and does the things the books did well.

Selling Sunset

Currently watching this and it’s great. You could say trash - the clothes, the heels, the copious amount of plastic surgery - but if you don’t like looking at enormous tasteless houses and cringing at how awful the rich are, who even are you?

Obviously selling high priced property, all the women are tough, and watching how they work together and bump off each other is the best part of the show. (It’s not the damn owners, who never add anything to a single scene). I love Christine, even though (or because?) she’s awful, and Mary (even though she’s fooling herself). A good easy watch.

I need to get around to checking out BSC - I loved those books too and haven't heard a single bad thing about the series. And yessss Claudia Kishi, style queen and rare Asian character in 90s kid lit, was my hero growing up. <3

However good you think Claudia will be, she’s better. Also, her and Mimi? The cutest.

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

https://deadline.com/2020/08/the-society-i-am-not-okay-with-this-canceled-netflix-covid-related-no-season-2-1203020036/

Dang, I liked I Am Not Okay With This a lot.

Is The Society s1 worth watching?

hope Netflix's no-residuals policy worked out for Chuck Forsman here

baby sitters club is indeed INCREDIBLE

We watched the first part of Babysitters Club - it was a bit slow at the start. So we flipped over to Teenage Bounty Hunters. That was quite the shift in tone & content.

if I never read Babysitters Club would I still enjoy it?

(I was more of a Sweet Valley High gal, lol)

Yes. First and last episodes aren’t as good as the test, but they’re still good.

Shame about I Am Not Okay With This, which I liked a lot. Was putting these shows on hiatus not an option?

Never read BsC or SVH, but those who did might wanna check this out: https://www.amazon.ca/Paperback-Crush-Totally-Radical-History/dp/1683690788

if I never read Babysitters Club would I still enjoy it?

(I was more of a Sweet Valley High gal, lol)

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