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Netflix series: Stranger Things and Dark

 
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smenko



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PostPosted: 12/10/17 1:17 am    ::: Netflix series: Stranger Things and Dark Reply Reply with quote

Anyone else watched, watching or intrigued by any of these series? So much stuff that is keeping me captured by what new clue or event will occur and keep me guessing what the main characters will do next. Sort of like reading a really good book that keeps you flipping through pages..


sambista



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PostPosted: 12/10/17 7:18 am    ::: Reply Reply with quote

i started watching "dark," but i’m not sure i’m ready for the full mixed ride of mystery and sci-fi. you’re right: there’s a whole, wonderful world of entertainment out there (especially if you download!), with really good stuff out of the uk. i don’t remember where i got these shows, whether they were on u.s. network tv, on netflix or from somewhere else, but some other goodies i’ve enjoyed by binge and commend to you:

alias grace (more margaret atwood)
berlin station (season 2 continues; straight-up cloak n dagger)
feud (bette davis vs. joan crawford)
genius (einstein’s story; brilliant)
liar (no, not about trump)
master of none (hilarious, and nothing else like it)
the sinner (this was on usa network)
top of the lake (australia/new zealand - not of this planet?)

oh, and if you're still going through "GoT" or "Downton Abbey" withdrawal, you'll rediscover some of your favorite actors.



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sambista



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PostPosted: 12/10/17 7:27 am    ::: Reply Reply with quote

off topic but related, i'm compelled to urge everyone to see "get out." it should win the oscar for best picture.

it is the most brilliant, most original, most ingenious (i know, i already said that), most clever (yeah, i know i already said that), most surprising film in many years. it cannot be described, and many reviews don't even try, not only because saying anything would give it away but because it defies description.

you could watch it several times and not glean all the brilliance within. there are web pages devoted to things you may have missed. but don't seek out those web pages till after you've seen it.

just brilliant.



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smenko



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PostPosted: 12/10/17 8:40 am    ::: Reply Reply with quote

I'll have to check those suggestions thanks! I would like to add "Glitch" to the listings. It is out of Australia trying to unravel why and how people rose out of their graves from hailing from various time periods and they were not zombies. Sort of on the idea of "The Returned." But, different.


sambista



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PostPosted: 12/21/17 3:24 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

ok, so i'm still obsessing about "get out," still dissecting all of its goodies and apparently still hijacking this thread!

but this . . . this is yet another article, about a filmmaker and his movie, about which everyone with a keyboard has written. this particular article, though, is a delicious piece of writing. nothing else i've read on the subject comes close.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/20/magazine/jordan-peeles-x-ray-vision.html

wesley morris wrote:
It has been 10 months, and we’re still talking about this movie and its alarming presentation of white racism. “Get Out” opened at the top of the box office at the end of February and has grossed many, many times the $4.5 million it cost to make. Racism is old, but Peele found a poetic new way of talking about it. He gave us language we didn’t know we lacked.



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jammerbirdi



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PostPosted: 12/22/17 4:28 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

WHAT? No mention of Godless the brilliant (violent) female character-centric mini-series western?



Y'all. Come on. Rolling Eyes

Also, since 'Bista brings up other shows. Joan and Bette, another like 7 episode mini-series, was also absolutely brilliant. These shows are starting to become of a mind-blowing quality completely unimaginable on TV screens 30 years ago.

Loved the second season of Billions.

Going to dig into the second season of The Crown over the holiday.


sambista



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PostPosted: 12/22/17 5:44 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

"godless" is on my list. and yes, about quality. now we just gotta get to a place of free content without borders. until then, i'm downloading like crazy.



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GlennMacGrady



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PostPosted: 12/22/17 5:51 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

I haven't watched the two shows that started the thread, but I've been binge watching lots of older shows for the past year, many on Netflix. I basically didn't watch any TV series from about 1985 to 2015.

For the past six months I've been watching lots of British mysteries and police procedurals and a few American ones. I especially liked:

- Prime Suspect (with the already beloved-by-me Helen Mirren)

- The Fall (an icey cold and sensually hot Gillian Anderson)

- Luther (the character Alice Morgan is addicting)

- The Tunnel (another great female lead with a sort of Asperger's syndrome, who turned me on to eating french fries on french bread with Tabasco sauce)

- Line of Duty (just brilliant interview room scenes, sometimes with the bad guys interview trapping the good guys)

These I liked somewhat less but still a lot:

- Broadchurch
- Shetland
- Marcella
- The Killing (the only American show I've listed so far)

I watched Godless just last week but didn't really care for it. The plot was linear and entirely predictable.
justintyme



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PostPosted: 12/22/17 6:01 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

American Vandal was awesome.

I'm also liking The Indian Detective.



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sambista



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PostPosted: 12/23/17 1:25 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

saw this list and had to share. looks like tons of goodies await. i'm pretty sure this is paywall stuff (nyt), so happy holidays.

10 Underseen Indies From the Past Year on Netflix

By Scott Tobias

UPDATED Oct. 24, 2017
Netflix has become a reliable destination for many fine independent films that spent little time in theaters, including a few Netflix productions released directly to the service. Here are ten from 2016 to the present that are worth discovering.

Tallulah
In this Netflix original and debut feature from the writer-director Sian Heder, a drifter (Ellen Page) kidnaps a neglected child and passes it off as her daughter to her absent boyfriend’s mother (Allison Janney). The setup just to get us there is a bit convoluted, and more context doesn’t make the drifter’s decisions much more explicable. But Heder, who wrote and produced for “Orange Is the New Black,” keeps the focus on the terrific odd-couple chemistry between Page and Janney, who squeeze all the laughs and pathos they can out of a sticky situation.

Christine
On July 15, 1974, Christine Chubbuck, a broadcast journalist for Channel 40 in Sarasota, Fla., raised a pistol from underneath her anchor desk and shot herself on live television. Her suicide was preceded by a critique of the station’s “blood and guts” news coverage, but Chubbuck’s true motives were far from clear cut. In this incisive biopic from Antonio Campo, Rebecca Hall plays Chubbuck with an intensity that projects vulnerability and resolve in equal measure, as her acute feelings of alienation at home and in the workplace beckon her toward tragedy. Campos has a particularly good feel for how local news was generated in a casually sexist, male-dominated field.

Green Is Gold
After his father is sent to prison, a 13-year-old boy moves to the hills of Northern California to live with his older brother, who runs a thriving illegal marijuana plot. This may sound like the premise for a scolding moral drama or a high-stakes drug thriller, but “Green Is Gold” dials it back in favor of a low-key, shaggy-dog character study that continually defies expectation. Writer-director Ryon Baxter, who also stars as the older brother, doesn’t underplay the dangers of this black-market operation, but themes of masculinity and personal growth are given as much weight as the drug trade.

Blue Jay
Mark Duplass is expert at creating semi-improvisational delights, but “Blue Jay” stands out as a bittersweet, perfectly proportioned movie about the road not taken. Duplass, who wrote the screenplay, and the reliably excellent Sarah Paulson star as former high-school sweethearts who bump into each other on a coincidental trip back to their hometown. After catching up over a cup of coffee, the two continue to stroll down memory lane, and it isn’t long until old memories and unresolved feelings rise perilously to the surface. Shot mostly in black and white, this 80-minute film thrives on Duplass and Paulson’s lived-in chemistry and the fundamental intimacy of the conceit.

Little Sister
The gifted young director Zach Clark follows up “White Reindeer” with another generous, femme-centered character study, this time about the awkward and painful reunion of a dysfunctional family. Addison Timlin stars as a former goth girl now training in Brooklyn to be a nun, who travels from the convent to her childhood home in North Carolina: Her brother (Keith Poulson), she has learned, has returned from Iraq horribly disfigured and is refusing to leave the guesthouse. Clark is telling two different homecoming stories at once, but he holds the melodrama in check, choosing instead to chip away at longstanding issues within the family and examine how the brother’s injuries and the sister’s piety change the dynamic.

Little Men
Few films last year understood the practical realities of family life like this beautiful drama from Ira Sachs about the gentrification of a Brooklyn building and the devastating impact it has on two young boys caught in the middle. Greg Kinnear plays a family man who inherits a building from his father but cannot afford to keep the rent low for the modest dress shop downstairs. His son and the shop proprietor’s son become instant friends, but they’re vulnerable to the unavoidable conflict between landlord and tenant. Sachs doesn’t make villains out of anyone, much less proselytize about gentrification. This is just a tough situation, perfectly wrought.

The Eyes of My Mother
If this rural nightmare from Nicolas Pesce weren’t photographed in luscious black and white, it would probably be too gruesome to bear. As it stands, “The Eyes of My Mother” is still not for the faint of heart, opening with a scene in which a little girl witnesses her mother’s murder by a serial killer. It hardly gets less disturbing from there. The killer is captured and chained in the family’s barn, and the girl grows into young adulthood torturing him as a captive plaything, putting her mother’s surgical know-how to good use on him — and eventually others. Imagine a “Psycho” prequel with a much younger Norman Bates as the main character, and that perhaps begins to explain this film’s unsettling appeal.

The Stanford Prison Experiment
In 1971, the Stanford professor Philip Zimbardo recruited 15 male students to take part in a 14-day study on prison abuse, dividing the participants into “guards” and “inmates” and seeing how they responded to their assigned roles. The study lasted six harrowing days before Zimbardo was forced to end it. The results (and ethical shortcomings) of Zimbardo’s work earned a permanent spot in psychology textbooks, and “The Stanford Prison Experiment” dramatizes it with a straightforward, no-frills effectiveness. Michael Angarano does particularly vivid work as a baby-faced “guard” whose John Wayne swagger curdles into sadism as he settles into his authoritarian role.

I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore
After winning the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 2017, this appealingly ramshackle crime drama from Macon Blair arrived on Netflix a month later, skipping a theatrical run. Blair starred as a bumbling amateur seeking revenge in “Blue Ruin,” and his directorial debut is cut from the same cloth, eking tension and black comedy out of an ordinary person’s operating on the wrong side of the law. In this case, that person is played by a terrific Melanie Lynskey, starring as a nursing assistant who recruits a neighbor (Elijah Wood) to help her track down the lowlifes who burgled her home. Their DIY policing leads to an increasingly cataclysmic series of events that challenges the righteousness of their cause.

Tramps
Adam Leon’s debut feature, “Gimme the Loot,” about two graffiti artists on a mission to tag the Mets Home Run Apple, has many virtues, chief among them how vividly it invokes the particular vibe of a Bronx neighborhood. Leon’s second feature, “Tramps,” wanders off into the suburbs; as in its predecessor, the location plays an integral role in the relationship between two attractive young strangers. Callum Turner and Grace Van Patten star as small-timers who fail to exchange a briefcase cleanly, but that’s mere setup for the rom-com charms of their efforts to get it back.



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jammerbirdi



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PostPosted: 12/23/17 3:32 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

I'll try to get over his first thought.

Netflix has become a reliable destination...


sambista



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PostPosted: 12/23/17 5:38 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

jammerbirdi wrote:
I'll try to get over his first thought.

Netflix has become a reliable destination...


what . . . except "godless"?



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jammerbirdi



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PostPosted: 12/24/17 4:07 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

sambista wrote:
jammerbirdi wrote:
I'll try to get over his first thought.

Netflix has become a reliable destination...


what . . . except "godless"?


Reliable is not a word I would associate with the content on Netflix or Amazon or anything else I can see.

Here on Sunset Blvd they ran a big billboard that said, only, Netflix is a Joke. Then, after a few weeks and the premier of the Jerry Seinfeld standup special, along with an influx of just tons of standup specials, most ill-advised by some very good comedians who don't combined have a solid hour of material in their entire careers, they put Seinfeld's face on the billboard and thus revealed their clever bit of advertising.

What was the cleverness? It played on the fact that the words, "Netflix is a joke," is such a commonly spoken thought that even Netflix themselves are aware of it.

Come on. Not NEARLY enough of the good movies that have been made in... like... EVER are available on any of the streaming services. But there's no doubt they have all been producing amazing original series. So whatever. But once you've eaten up all the better stuff don't go looking for the great films of the last 30 years or even classics.


sambista



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PostPosted: 12/24/17 6:10 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

jammerbirdi wrote:
sambista wrote:
jammerbirdi wrote:
I'll try to get over his first thought.

Netflix has become a reliable destination...


what . . . except "godless"?


Reliable is not a word I would associate with the content on Netflix or Amazon or anything else I can see.

Here on Sunset Blvd they ran a big billboard that said, only, Netflix is a Joke. Then, after a few weeks and the premier of the Jerry Seinfeld standup special, along with an influx of just tons of standup specials, most ill-advised by some very good comedians who don't combined have a solid hour of material in their entire careers, they put Seinfeld's face on the billboard and thus revealed their clever bit of advertising.

What was the cleverness? It played on the fact that the words, "Netflix is a joke," is such a commonly spoken thought that even Netflix themselves are aware of it.

Come on. Not NEARLY enough of the good movies that have been made in... like... EVER are available on any of the streaming services. But there's no doubt they have all been producing amazing original series. So whatever. But once you've eaten up all the better stuff don't go looking for the great films of the last 30 years or even classics.



oooooookaaaaaaaay. then, um, maybe you should suck it up and read the entire sentence, which qualifies in what way netflix is a reliable source. geez.



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jammerbirdi



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PostPosted: 12/24/17 7:11 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

sambista wrote:
jammerbirdi wrote:
sambista wrote:
jammerbirdi wrote:
I'll try to get over his first thought.

Netflix has become a reliable destination...


what . . . except "godless"?


Reliable is not a word I would associate with the content on Netflix or Amazon or anything else I can see.

Here on Sunset Blvd they ran a big billboard that said, only, Netflix is a Joke. Then, after a few weeks and the premier of the Jerry Seinfeld standup special, along with an influx of just tons of standup specials, most ill-advised by some very good comedians who don't combined have a solid hour of material in their entire careers, they put Seinfeld's face on the billboard and thus revealed their clever bit of advertising.

What was the cleverness? It played on the fact that the words, "Netflix is a joke," is such a commonly spoken thought that even Netflix themselves are aware of it.

Come on. Not NEARLY enough of the good movies that have been made in... like... EVER are available on any of the streaming services. But there's no doubt they have all been producing amazing original series. So whatever. But once you've eaten up all the better stuff don't go looking for the great films of the last 30 years or even classics.



oooooookaaaaaaaay. then, um, maybe you should suck it up and read the entire sentence, which qualifies in what way netflix is a reliable source. geez.



Umm. Why don’t you just take away all of my fun?


sambista



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PostPosted: 12/24/17 8:44 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

just caught a delightful flick that succeeds mostly on its two lead characters. check it out where you can find it: "gifted"



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Hawkeye



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PostPosted: 12/24/17 9:41 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

I'm currently watching Stranger Things---just have a few more episodes of season 2 left. I kinda dig all the '80s stuff, as it's what I grew up on. The show is in 1984 for season 2, so 9-year-old me is grinning a bit.


mercfan3



Joined: 23 Nov 2004
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PostPosted: 01/07/18 11:11 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

Hawkeye wrote:
I'm currently watching Stranger Things---just have a few more episodes of season 2 left. I kinda dig all the '80s stuff, as it's what I grew up on. The show is in 1984 for season 2, so 9-year-old me is grinning a bit.


Love the show.

Incredible group of child actors. Really, all of them are exceptional.



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