- Crimes of the Future (2022): I've watched this twice and I can't decide whether it's brilliant, or just a pastiche of Cronenberg's earlier work. But I can't stop thinking about it. It's part Videodrome, part Crash, part Naked Lunch and a little Scanner Darkly. It's dense with ideas and leaves some important things that happen completely unexplained.
- Ms. Marvel (2022): This is pretty cute. It's definitely a kids show. The first episode leaned heavily into Scott Pilgrim, with the narration taking place through imagined animated graffiti and so on, but sadly, they stopped that almost immediately. It drags a bit in the middle, and does that typical Marvel thing of "the villain is just an evil version of the hero!!" And the visual presentation of her powers sucks. She makes badly animated crystals instead of stretching and deforming. Terrible choice. And there's a jarring amount of copaganda. Still, it was fun, and it's great that something like this got made at all, for all the obvious reasons.
- Mad God (2021): A stop-motion dialog-free movie about a faceless soldier descending through the layers of some kind of steampunk Giger hell. It's part Švankmajer's Alice and part Eraserhead and all nightmare fuel. I wasn't able to actually finish it, but it is.... a hell of a thing. I don't know if that's a recommendation or not.
- Slash Back (2022): Small town Alaskan teen girls repel alien invasion. It's fun.
- Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes (2020): Two minute time machine! It's shot to appear as a one single shot that loops back on itself, and it's an absolute masterpiece of choreography, shot for approximately zero dollars. I can't even imagine what the storyboards looked like. The only thing that strained my suspension of disbelief was the unfathomably long extension cords.
- Press Play (2022): It's a cute time travel romance. But how did they not call this Mix Tape Time Machine?
- The Princess (2022): A Disney princess is locked in a tower, about to be married off. Oh, but she knows kung fu. It's almost one long Wickian fight scene!
- The Sea Beast (2022): This was adorable. It starts off with some amazing tall-ship action, and then rolls into a somewhat predictable, "the real monsters were the friend we made along the way" thing, but the animation and characterization were just great.
- Outer Range (2022): It's a show about these mysterious creatures from American mythology, the "independent cattle farmer", where four people run a whole ranch and they're all white. Suspend your disbelief on that, though, because they also have a Stargate out in the field, so when they find it they do what everyone would do: first you drop a rock in, then you do a little light murder and toss the body in too. Surely that problem is gone forever, right? Then they fuck around for episodes 2 through 6, episode 7 is the flashback, and episode 8 sets up more cliffhangers. Gaaaahhhhhhhhh.
- Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022): This was garbage. Infuriatingly so. Let's just watch the Pitch Meeting instead.
- 30 Days of Night (2007): I remembered this being not very good, and it's not, but it's ok. There's a good movie in here struggling to get out but it doesn't.
- 30 Days of Night 2: Dark Days (2010): This is utterly forgettable. It might as well be Blade 3, it's that forgettable. I can hear the pitch meeting: "Ok but hear me out, what if instead it was set in LA?" Yes, they never actually make it to any area where the days are dark.
- The Crow 2: City of Angels (1996): I remembered this being bad, but wow, it is so much worse than I even remembered. Not even the Graeme Revell score can save it. I didn't make it past the 30 minute mark. And again: I can hear the pitch meeting: "Ok but hear me out, what if instead it was set in LA?"
I'm basically out of stuff to watch, as you can tell from the barrel-scraping near the end there, so I'm taking suggestions. You know what I like.
I loved Mad God. It's definitely not for everyone and not for the faint of heart at points. But the animation and art direction, IMHO, sets itself a bit a part.
Same here, but I didn't feel like I understood any of it until I slept on it.
I couldn't stand Crimes of the Future, it felt like a Cronenberg parody, in dialog, effects, and especially the premises.
Jamie, have you ever watched any of Westworld? The new season got off to a rough start but has since recovered.
Also you might like Birdgirl and Solar Opposites, but you might hate them too.
Westworld is some of the worst bullshit I've ever seen on TV. I absolutely despised season 1, but for some reason I suffered through season 2, which was somehow even worse, before I noped out forever.
Given how much time you must spend running DNA Lounge, I am always amazed with each update at how you find the time to watch all this stuff!
how hard could it be to run a bar and nightclub?
Lemme guess: you're one of those guys who also thinks anyone working retail or food service is lazy and has an easy job. And you've never owned a small business. You've never had to sign paychecks for people who depend on you.
Just fuck off.
C.
lemme guess. you're an idiot with no sense of irony and your first reaction to everything is to interpret it in the most negative light possible. i'm not going to suggest you fuck off because you most certainly have enough other things going wrong for yourself already
You "loved Mad God"? Wow. Don't get me wrong, I spoke for a while with Phil Tippett and Mad God's composer, Dan Wool, back in May. Phil is a charming curmudgeon with decades of genius level insights into a technical aspect of an industry that is happier to shovel popcorn down people's throats and promulgate mercenary industrial complex propaganda, than it is creating real art.
Mad God, I guess, was at least art? I even applied to Tippett Studios offering to work for free, just to sap up some of the knowledge presumably held within the staff there. But love it?
I had difficulty not walking out of the theater, and I am someone who enjoyed Meet the Feebles (which purportedly had the largest walk out of any screening in the history of cinema).
It is a difficult film.
Whether the mutations, the mushroom clouds, the veritable electrocutions and defecations, stop motion can only shine a turd so much.
One of my dear friends, who works as an editor on Hollywood sorts of pictures, and also saw a screening with Tippett and has exposed me to all sorts of harrowing cinema over the decades, didn't even have high praise for it. How did he phrase it? " It apparently feels pretty disjointed due to its 30 year production."
IMHO, the film had two redeeming qualities (sorry, animation is not a redeeming quality intrinsically, there is absolutely incredible animation in abundance, something such as Shingo Tamagawa's PUPARIA for example, is short and sweet):
1. The disintegrating map, was a physical depiction of something akin to PFS (Perfect Forward Secrecy) a characteristic far too misunderstood, even in the realms of cryptography and secure comms.
2. the whirling cosmic swirls as the hellish worlds were obliterated. I think that was deliberate? I'll give it to Tippett: he at least realizes that there needs to be some sort of emotional catharsis after putting an audience through something horrendous. In contrast, Darren Aronofsky has never seemed to demonstrate this level of insight in his directing. Even the grotesque realms depicted in numerous David Cronenberg films are occasionally punctuated by comedic relief.
I guess as a bonus, I saw it theatrically, at the Roxie. When I spoke with Phil and Dan, I was led to believe that Mad God would only be viewable on Shudder, and the last thing I need right now is another subscription to another g.f.d. streaming service.
I don't blame Jamie for not finishing the film. Candidly, I don't think I can even imagine ever wanting to give it a second viewing and I've seen some absolute dog it.sh cinema.
I guess if you like gory Tool music videos, and you wanted a feature length version of such a thing, it's totally your cup of tea?
Mega Time Squad from NZ a few years back
The Bear
Reservation Dogs
Our Flag Means Death
Atlanta
Our Flag Means Death is surprisingly good. The last few episodes are punchingly good.
The pilot is the worst episode in the series, which I suppose is not uncommon. I loved it overall.
I watched Our Flag Means Death and it was ok I guess but I've already forgotten it and don't care. I felt the same way about What We Do In The Shadows, and whatever that ghost-hunter spinoff was. Cringey incompetence-comedy is just not my thing.
Only made it 2 episodes into Reservation Dogs. Didn't care about any of the characters or their problems.
The Resident Evil TV series was way better than I thought it could be. Other than that, I was waiting for your next list because we'd also run out of stuff.
One night during lockdown I abused myself by watching all seven of those movies and I don't think I'll make any Resident Evil-related mistakes like that again. I understand there's also a cartoon. The trailer looks deplorable.
Bad Travelling
Swarm
Seconded. These are episodes in the latest season (3) of Netflix’s Love, Death, and Robots series. Earlier seasons are better, so watch them all if you haven’t. They’re standalone animated shorts, so no continuity to worry about. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love,_Death_%26_Robots
Jamie has seen series One, (it was reviewed at the time) and he liked it, the newer seasons are both more uneven and in some cases boring.
Bad Travelling was good, clearly it's a much better way to spend that time than watching "The Crow 2" (let alone watching it again for some reason, if anybody had the impression that Jamie isn't a masochist) but it's no Aquila Rift or Sonnie's Edge.
Keeping standalones fresh is hard. Black Mirror did a good job (even if you think uploading is the Bad Outcome, San Junipero is still a very different episode than most), but LD&R is following a more typical path where eventually you know what you're getting even though initially the whole point of this structure is you don't know what you're getting. For example another "three robots" episode? It's short, but it's also unnecessary. Humans suck. We knew that.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13841850/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKJ4Thgk1Js
If you enjoy farce, it turns out that Mischief Theatre in the UK has done two seasons of TV now -- called The Goes Wrong Show -- that don't seem to have gotten any PR in America. At least some full episodes are free on YouTube with ads. I'd say start with their strongest episodes, Ninety Degrees or A Trial to Watch.
Dave Made a Maze (2017)
This was fantastic, thank you!
I assume you've seen it, but searching this site came up empty: Swiss Army Man (2016) by The Daniels.
The Baby on HBO Max ... cute but evil parasite baby latches on to woman from 'Sarf Larndon' ... she is not her first...
(his first)
Did anyone see the second season of Beforeigners?
I mentioned Minx last time. I started rewatching Rome. Mute on Netflix was okay; low budget vengeance flick. Love, Death, and Robots season 3 is out; I've only just begun. But speaking of short films, I occasionally search youtube and bulk-download short film collections. They're hit and miss, but they're short.
Yup. Dumb. "Our immigration analogy ran out of idea. What if ... Jack the Ripper? Also, what if all of time is small and there are actually only five people that matter and on persons is ACTUALLY the other person's child? Like Star Wars!"
Yeah, that was super disappointing. First season was great, though.
The last couple of episodes go completely batshit, which personally I quite enjoyed.
I think a lot of shows would have coasted along, keeping the time-travel weirdness (and strange drugs, shamans and whatever the fuck Odin is) at a background level, and never really committed to it. So I have to give them props for deciding to go full fantasy.
That Jack the Ripper plot was bullshit though.
A correction on Slash/Back, it takes place in Nunavut, not Alaska. It's literally the opposite side of the continent.
Mad God looks like it has a good share of The Brothers Quay in its DNA. Which is a compliment.
I always appreciate your recommendations, my wife has even started to trust my "internet dude", so thanks for that.
Since you asked, have you checked out season 3 of Love, Death + Robots? It is the best one yet I think. Masons Rats is definitely worth the ten minute investment.
> I'm taking suggestions. You know what I like.
You're way ahead of me in the titles you like which is why I so appreciate your "recently watched" posts. If you're open to other genres then I and probably other readers can recommend some gems that you might enjoy.
Thank you for saving me some time to look into Outer Range, especially so with a review bordering on literature.
Meanwhile, is it just me or are we suddenly seeing way better time travel TV than ever before in history? Does this mean humans are capable of learning from past mistakes after all?
Some movies I saw recently and quite liked, with some elements that could put them in your wheelhouse.
C.
Oh, and the Diaboliks are based on an apparently-famous Italian comic book, which explains the insane, bigger-than-life aspects.
C.
I am a huge fan of the 1968 Danger: Diabolik so the idea of a remake fills me with dread...
Fair enough - 99% of Hollywood remakes of anything, foreign or domestic, are utter garbage. I am hoping for better with this, because it's remade by another Italian studio, and apparently they have great respect for the comic.
But just what I've heard. It could be shit, too.
C.
My view of it may be tainted, but I have trouble thinking of that film as anything other than pastiche trash. But I've only ever seen with with Mike Nelson and some puppets sitting in front of it talking over the dialog.
I'm also generally not a fan of that late 60s spy/thief/assassin/man-of-mystery genre though. Am I robbing myself of fun?
Yes and no. I happen to like that sort of thing, and the second-rate ones that were campy and cheesy made absolutely great fodder for MST3K and/or RiffTrax and/or Cinematic Titanic. Unfortunately most of those were never released on DVD, so you have to really hunt for them.
The ones I liked:
If you don't like the spy/thief/etc types when they're trying to be taken seriously, you might still like them when they're being ripped to shreds and made fun of. If you haven't seen them in MST3K/etc, maybe try a few.
C.
That'll teach me to type and not proofread while sitting through Zoom meetings. I meant to say that I've only seen Danger: Diabolik and many of its ilk by having Mike and the puppets rip them to shreds.
The movies, and the shows, of that era that fall into this category just never do it for me. The only one I've seen that I really developed a taste for is McGoohan's The Prisoner (and yes, it is trash). I suspect THAT fondness is due mostly to having watched it when I was 7 or so.
The 60s spy stuff can have its charm, but sometimes (like Metropolis) it has been referenced and cloned so much that it's difficult to enjoy on its own merits. In particular, if you watch Our Man Flint and In Like Flint, which were themselves comedy parodies, you're realize that Austin Powers was just a parody remake of a parody.
It's like how people are always suggesting to Kingfish that Hubba Hubba Revue do a "Muppet Show" theme, and he's like... "so my 21st Century burlesque and variety show should do a parody of a mid 20th Century show that was itself a parody of early 20th Century burlesque and variety shows?"
E.g.:
Have you given A Very Secret Service a spin? Both very much throwing back to the era but with a lot of jabs at colonialism and the nostalgia for same.
And I meant to add -- I have never had any respect for MST3K. I don't need contractors to make my jokes for me. If you can't heckle movies on your own, what are you even doing? Fuck that shit entirely.
Have you seen Horse Girl on Netflix? I think you would like it.
I really enjoyed a certain period of the 'Grimdark British Cop' genre. Even if that's not your sort of thing, I mention them because I felt there was an actual story that was worth the time investment.
For the first one, avoid the US tv remake, it was terrible.
Low Winter Sun
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/low_winter_sun
Hyena
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/hyena_2015
Red Riding Trilogy
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/red_riding_trilogy
I liked the U.S. version of Low Winter Sun; I didn't realize it was a remake! I'll check out the original for sure.
I probably should have been more polite about the US series. Also, spoiler warning, the original does have that "Grant Morrison at DisInfo 2000" vibe with the accents which might be a barrier to entry if you're not from these shores!
Killing Eve if you're feeling some British spy vs spy
I did search first, and cant tell if you reviewed it, but “Person of Interest”? Goes from episodic victim of the week to a show about something much more interesting over the course of 5 seasons.
Yeah, it had some good stuff, but there was a lot of plotblocking crap to wade through to get there... "Next (2020)" was a better take on it that got right to the point in one season.
Neither Google nor your site's search shows any sign that you've mentioned For All Mankind, Umbrella Academy or the latest season of The Boys, but you live on Earth during the final years of human history so you'll already be aware of those. FAM is getting better over time; UA and TB are just basically what they already were, which is good enough to watch. Half my brain wants to read what you'd say about them; the other half expects it will be a more erudite variant of "yeah, whatever".
I love The Boys. I watched like the first 4 or 5 episodes of Umbrella Academy and hated every second of it. It fails my test of "do I give even the slightest shit about whether any of these characters dies?" I saw a trailer for For All Mankind and my only thought was, "why would you bother making a show about this, who cares?"
FAM for me has hovered eternally at my personal threshold between "this is inventive enough to be admirable" and "I don't actively hate it but I'd rather play Minecraft right now". The back half of season two rose into the general realm of "I will stop what I'm doing and watch this now", and the third season has waivered up to that level several times. The premise of, basically, what would it take to encourage the US to keep the space race going after 1969, is worthwhile if you already cared about the question, which coincidentally I did; otherwise, the characters are not quite compelling enough to drag you in all by themselves. It is in this specific way that Your Mileage Varies.
Wait and see if it gets a fourth season. If it does, that will be the final season. You can then binge the thing in the secure knowledge that at least you're being told a whole story.
Meanwhile, if Umbrella Academy didn't do it for you, don't let anyone talk you into watching the British series Misfits. Me, I liked both.
UA and Misfits characters definitely had different levels of likeability. They both had some fun time travel eventually, but UA's characters were entitled assholes and unrepentantly awful to each other. Also "fambily." Misfits characters were fuckups, but eventually apologized / did the right thing.
Misfits had the lovably infuriating Nathan, and Simon (Iwan Rheon) who comes out of his shell. I didn't want either of them to die. Eventually, they both did--sometimes, more than once!
FAM is much better if you only pay attention to the alternate history bits and not the technical aspects of space travel and rocketry. The latter vary between "vaguely plausible" to "that's just not how any of this works".
Why do we need the Umbrella Academy, when we have Doom Patrol?
Wayne on amazon prime is a delight
I dunno, maybe Dicktown? David Rees (Get Your War On) and John Hodgman ("...and I'm a PC") animated shorts. Nominally it's a detective show but that's just a framing device. And if you hate them, they are, uh, short.
https://www.hulu.com/series/dicktown or wherever you find stuff.
Los Angeles Plays Itself is a great documentary on a California city, it's people, and architecture in film. And the directory / narrator has an axe to grind with Hollywood.
director / narrator, damn Safari auto correct.
Solaris(1972). If you were disappointed by the Hollywood remake, give the original Soviet version a chance. It portrays the scientists' conflict between cold objectivity and nostalgic humanity much clearer and deeper. Difficulty: subtitles and low budget, low tech aesthetics.
... also the 2:46 runtime. Russian and Polish scifi from the 60s and 70s tended to be quite cerebral and slow-paced.
C.
Solaris by Tarkovksy was terrible. That guy gets more time driving around Tokyo talking on his car phone (with the kid crawling around the backseat) than the whole flight to the planet. Yeah spaceflight can be boring, but so is that drive. I never watched the remake.
Tarkovksy's Stalker I found much more enjoyable. I don't think it is JWZ material, but the wasteland they slowly traverse is full of beautiful decay.
I didn't find any mention of it on a search of your blog so apologies if I'm treading old ground, but I have to call out The American Astronaut as something you should check out if you've never seen it. Low-budget, black-and-white surrealist space-western-musical from 2001. As the linked AV Club review says, it tries a bit too hard to position itself as a cult film from the get-go, but the musical element really elevates it.
That movie was ok, but The Billy Nayer Show were always amazing live!
With the proviso that both of the titles are rather tricky to search for on your blog, I recently rewatched Cypher (2002) and House (1977) and it looks like you may not have talked about either. And maybe you hated them and never want to speak of them again ... But if not, both worth a look.
I am in the process of watching (and enjoying) Wonderfalls.
It's written by Bryan Fuller who also did Dead Like Me and Pushing Daisies which I also enjoyed.
As far as I know it's not streaming anywhere so you'd need to torrent it.
Yeah, I enjoyed that the first time around. It was definitely a dry run for those two later shows.
You want to go see Peele's latest: Nope. On a big screen.
At this point I'm not sure I'll ever set foot in a movie theatre again.
For years, I was already at the point that Alamo was the only place I'd ever see a movie - I enjoyed the drinking, and the shushing. But watching movies on my couch is also pretty ok, so when will I feel that the theatre experience is worth risking infection? 2027? 2032?
Theaters are just inferior experiences all around except for the huge screen, even aside from the plague. I can pause a movie at home. I can also adjust the volume to suit my hearing. My living room is not full of strangers with dubious ideas about appropriate behavour. Movies at home are vastly more affordable. And so on.
Movie theater popcorn still beats anything I can make at home.
The only things I saw in a movie theater in the past 3 years have been... an opera, and a play. (Met Live and National Theatre Live are reliably attended only by very very old people who, around here anyway, wear their fucking masks and are boosted within an inch of their literal lives.)
The main thing about the theatre that I like is that it’s a nice way to force myself not to be distracted (assuming that it’s a well-run theatre full of not-arseholes).
I continue to be appalled by how bad the sound in most cinemas is. Cranked at the Dolby reference where “normal” levels during the movie are supposed to be 85 dB, and usually not properly calibrated (hence the complaints people have about not being able to hear the speaking in a number of films).
Not a movie recommendation, but relevant to your interests: https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/hwx5iy/milla_jovovich_and_her_daughter_ever/
Not so much a recommendation for something new, but mostly a "yay, this is happening!" You're previously discussed the awesomeness of Primal. Season 2 has just begun and I'm already in love with the show again.
somewhat adjacent to your "night club owner" life (trivia night) and sense of humor (i think)...
i'd suggest not reading about the show or watching the trailer (spoilers) but instead, watching the first 5 mins of ep1 and see if it sticks to your brain
The Rehearsal
This just floated past my eyeballs:
"Machines in Flames (2022, 50min) finds a secret history of self-destruction by following the footsteps of a clandestine group of French computer workers from the 1980s.
The film was first distributed through a network of self-erasing USB data sticks dropped outside corporate campuses. This prompted warning emails from tech firms who feared the release of its secret history of computational self-destruction. They sought to contain its cinematic search for an elusive group - CLODO - that bombed computer companies in 1980s Toulouse, France."
https://machinesinflames.com/
Sisters with Transistors is a good doco on some of the key women working with electronic music from the 30s through to the 80s. Seems relevant to your interests. Watching some of the 40s/50s stuff is especially interesting - things like drawing freehand on film stock, which is then read and synthesised.
Underwater Kristen Stewart plays Ripley, but underwater. Good fun, very predictable.
Dora and the Lost City of Gold No wait, come back, I promise it is better than it has any right to be.
In keeping with the subtitled Eastern Europe theme: Kontroll (2003). A quasi-comedy about quirky subway ticket inspectors set entirely underground. My brother, a big Harmony Korine fan, recommended this though it has sort of a post-apocalyptic SF vibe too.
I liked that one. Great subway setting. Probably more JWZ than Tarkovksy.
White God https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2844798/
God Bless America https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1912398/
The Skin I Live In https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1189073/
My only piece of advice to you is to not watch Thor: Love and Thunder. I love this kind of junk, and even I thought it was abominable.