Netflix Watch Instantly Recommendation Thread

OK, more on "Shtisel." We just started season 3, and I've got to admit, the season premiere is one of the few episodes of TV I've ever seen that left me completely shocked and near speechless.

Fuck, I forgot to go back to Shtisel after season 1. Must watch it again.

alright Josh, you sold me - i petered out partway through season 2 but i'll get back on the horse to get to season 3 with a lede like that

New season of Call My Agent being filmed atm!

?? what!

they totally wrapped it up though?

Oui! C’est vrai! Plus a film!
https://www.nouveautes-tele.com/147577-dix-pour-cent-saison-5-france2.html

I'm just watching season 2 now. I didn't think I'd like it but I'm pretty well sucked in at this point.

They killed Jean Gabin for nothing, the monsters.

He was my favourite.

related:
https://www.movieofthenight.com/
https://www.vulture.com/article/netflix-play-something-decision-fatigue.html

"play something" user testing lab footage:

https://i.imgur.com/IlMrO7W.jpg

I've had this for months so I guess I was a test user although I've never used it.

Call My Agent is great - just finished season 1. Thanks for hiding the spoilers.

I truly have no idea how it got on my radar, but we watched the first episode of "Crash Landing into You," the Korean comedy-drama, and ... I guess it's completely odd and charming in all the right melodramatic ways? At least we'll keep watching a bit, to see where it goes.

We tried to watch the first episode of Shadow and Bone last night, but our broadband signal is obviously not good enough to handle it, because it kept pixelating and fuzzing over. We even swapped to other programmes, which all seemed fine (Superstore, Below Decks, that kind of thing). I've never had that experience before.

Just finished Shadow & Bone and it's actually pretty decent. Not read the books so it took a couple of episodes to get up to speed with the world mythology but the whole thing is fairly short and packs a lot of story into that small number of episodes.

Hope it gets a second season as I think it has the potential to be very good.

Saw Stowaway tonight and it was a misfire in every way and the very good cast didn't actually have much to do and it was obviously low budget (a practical space travel movie with next to no weightlessness) and the highest stakes imaginable that still felt very low stakes and, yet, I liked it regardless of all that.

Well, until the last 90 or so seconds.

The scenes outside in space were pretty terrifying.

I was really expecting it to be something else, so when it became clear it wasn't, it was a bit dull and depressing. Could barely watch the space high-stakes stuff.

I agree that it was depressing. I also agree that it was good anyway. I couldn't watch the exterior scenes at all. Even listening to the audio made my palms sweat.

5/7/2021, the day I cancelled my Netflix dvd plan

Shadow & Bone seems pretty good so far, certainly helped by how damn pretty the entire cast is.

xpost - Is there still a netflix posting out DVDs service or were you in a contract that you never got out of?

They still have vastly more films available by mail than on streaming.

Shadow & Bone seems pretty good so far, certainly helped by how damn pretty the entire cast is.

Oh yeah, you can still get dvd/blu-ray, although supposedly the selection is dwindling. Mostly it finally hit a point where there wasn't really anything decent on the queue, new movies are mostly bad now, we sprung for HBO, so it just didn't make sense anymore. RIP.

That struck me at first too but all in all I'd rather have British accents as the default fantasy advent than the actors putting on fake Russian accents.

we watched "The Mitchells vs. the Machines" yesterday--a good kids movies with a bunch of hipster comedy voice actors (Danny McBride, Abbi Jacobson, Eric Andre.) My 6 yo laughed a lot. Bonus points for making it explicit that the main character is gay at the end.

I thought it could have used another round or two at the writers table, but still pretty enjoyable, other than one or two many heartwarming speeches.

we watched "The Mitchells vs. the Machines" yesterday--a good kids movies with a bunch of hipster comedy voice actors (Danny McBride, Abbi Jacobson, Eric Andre.) My 6 yo laughed a lot. Bonus points for making it explicit that the main character is gay at the end.

This was surprisingly good, although maybe I shouldn't have been when I saw that some of the folks from Into the Spider-Verse were involved. Totally agreed on your bonus points as well, that was sweet and well integrated into the story. One of my favorite non-Pixar kids flicks in a bit now. I liked how the animation almost looked Claymation-ish at times and the way they played with the formats for the memes and other references.

The trailer for this makes it look terrible but i'm glad we tried it. It's great - even if I can now, 18 hours later, barely remember a thing that happened in it. At first my kids were like 'U???' (the all-ages rating in the UK) and then, at several times during the movie scoffing - 'There's no way this is a U!'

I do remember thinking 'great, the movie's almost over - we can get the kids in bed!' and then looking and realising we were only at the halfway point. Pretty action-packed Act II.

also enjoyed mitchells, the mall scene was an incredible and hilarious set piece

every single person I know who's into animation has been raving about this

yeah its great!

On a personal note I haaaaaate this illustration style and consider it a little young for somebody going off to college:

https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/3rEAAOSwss5f~EeR/s-l400.jpg

I enjoyed seeing the Sony/Spiderverse style in another context, which fit well with the general internet/tech themes, and there were definitely good parts, but by the end I think I hated this movie? The LGBT representation angle was like one semi-step forward (does she ever directly interact with another person not in her family?) and nine steps back: par for the course for virtually all mainstream animated movies I know I know, but christ the pro-family hetero-normative propaganda was relentless and felt more pointed in light of the main character's pretty much irrelevant sexuality. Plus Maya Rudolph was not sufficient distraction from how sexistly thin the mom character was.

That said, I might actually have embraced it if the contractually obligatory in media res opening had been cut, and they'd had the confidence to let you enjoy the surprisingly subtle switch from family drama to global apocalypse. I was really hoping Thor Ragnarok making fun of "bet you're wondering how I got here *record scratch*" would kill this off

lol that was a bit more denunciating that I intended, but tbf I wouldn't have written all that about something completely mediocre

No I think that's really fair. And the dad is super front and center but what's he about again? He likes THE WOODS and wants to LIVE OFF THE LAND except he sorta sucks at it because LOL DADS AM I RIGHT. I mean it was fun and way better than I thought it would be but I'm pretty tired of the climax of like every animated movie being 'Family is the most important thing everrrrrr'

I'd argue that the treatment of the parents was somewhat intentional - the parents are sort of on the periphery of someone preparing to go to college and absolutely absorbed in a creative pursuit that the parents aren't really engaging with. To Katie, her parents are frustratingly one-dimensional!

I think that was part of what she learns, there is more to her dad than she realized or paid attention to! I do definitely agree that the mom character doesn't even get that kind of revelation though, which does suck.

I was really hoping Thor Ragnarok making fun of "bet you're wondering how I got here *record scratch*" would kill this off

I also hate this, and it's so pervasive. So many book club "literary" novels do it too. Just start the story at the start!

Someone suggested that so many of these films centre on the dad/child relationship because dads are the ones who bring the kids to the cinema. I'm not sure that's true, but I think it is true that mothers will sit through any shite about ponies or whatever and just tune out, whereas dads will only go if there's something in it for them. (Sweeping generalization, I know.)

I really enjoyed the film while I was watching it, but agree with all these criticisms.

xp
Yeah the father-daughter conflict didn't really make sense to me. He's worried about her choosing an artistic life (at the very start of college? ok) because he failed as an artist--his chosen medium being a single log cabin? Which they moved out of when they had kids? I guess? Also he doesn't like technology, so he's literally never watched a single one of her movies? Quite possible I missed something there.

I kind of pity animated screenwriters. You're writing for a medium that means you can literally depict anything imaginable—and this movie does have some awesome stuff in it, no doubt--and what we get is movie after movie telling you to believe in yourself and love your family.

Wrote that before jon's posts. That's an interesting point about it being from the daughter's less than generous POV, thanks (though yeah I think that makes the mom's non-arc even worse).

trishyb: I can't remember where it was now, but I read an article the other day about this phenomenon. The most depressing part was an anonymous quote from a screenwriter that studio execs now demand the nonlinear beginning trope and ask for rewrites to make it happen. Sad to hear about it spreading to books as I can see the economic logic for streaming entertainment (get them hooked), but books have a different level of investment to them.

In media res dates back to ancient epics, e.g. Iliad and the Odyssey.

Also gotta imagine that the whole in media res things helps with streaming services' need to grab eyeballs immediately.

right, that's the economic logic I meant

Not sure how seriously to take Leee's point, but I'm not saying it's brand new or cannot be done well. Just that it's becoming ubiquitous and hacky/cliched, and in this particular case it totally undercut one of the things the script did well, which was letting a robot apocalypse unfold in the background of a more conventional family drama before erupting into the foreground. Also the actual substance of the prologue was bad: my family is so weird: I make movies on my phone, and my little brother likes dinosaurs, an incredibly unique interest for a child

Also gotta imagine that the whole in media res things helps with streaming services' need to grab eyeballs immediately.

This is exactly where it comes from in books, too. I've been on a fair few writing courses, and they'll all tell you that only established writers can get away with a slow buildup. If you're new, you need to record-scratch that first paragraph in order to grab an agent, then a publisher, then someone who looks at the sample on Kindles.

We watched ET the other day, and that film starts so slowly. And so creepily, too. Imagine if it had started with them all on their flying bikes, then cutting to Elliott going "And I thought letting the frogs go was bad!"

lmao

If your movie opens with any more buildup than The Naked Kiss, I'm already bored.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AU3QDnpFm8

lol