Yeah, i’m glad they went there with it, exploring what that shield really means to those who are non-white. And you don’t get Carl Lumbly on the cast if you’re not gonna give him some meaty scenes to play with.
Good review over on Tor as well - it’s the episode of montages!
Shitts Creek, the Office, etc.
As am I.
"They'll never let a Black man be Captain America."
That was powerful as fuck, putting that kind of raw truth up front and center; especially in the age of bigoted fanboys and toxic gatekeeping bs.
Relatedly…
We watched Dirty Rotten Scoundrels last night, and I found myself trying to explain to my partner that Michael Caine did this show back in the day, with a premise kinda like the A-Team, except it was just him and he didn’t build or detonate things, but was even more of a badass. I’m not sure I really sold the premise.
I think you will find that the 80s Equalizer starred Edward Woodward and not my cocaine.
Well shit fire and save matches, thou art correct. I was so certain of the memory that I didn’t even bother to verify it before posting that. That’s what I get for not making coffee until mid-morning.
The Equalizer was the first “adult” show I was allowed to watch so it holds a special place for me and times spent with my dad.
I will definitely get this on DVD whenever it’s out…
I love Barry Jenkins so much… I think him and Ben Wheatley might be my favorite directors working today.
I remember there was at least one episode of the old show where the crisis was resolved by throwing a ticking bomb out of a window (or something) and the practical effects were gloriously unconvincing
Wish i’d seen this on a massive screen, there were some thrilling scenes (particularly the moon landing) and i appreciated them including the small things that usually get overlooked (cooling pumps whirring, metal expanding/contracting etc) I’ve warmed to Gosling over time, i never found him a particularly engaging screen presence but he really excels in roles like this where he has to portray Armstrong’s stoicism. Does it force a narrative that probably didn’t exist? Probably! But that’s films for ya. Also a superb score and i feel like it’d make a very nice double bill with the magnificent For All Mankind.
I enjoyed this a lot, i guess it’s not entirely original but it was still charming and gave me fond memories of films like Tremors. You can’t go wrong with a bit of Michael Rooker either, i’d watch an entire film of Clyde and Minnow surviving in the monsterpocalypse.
Just watched Promising Young Woman the other day. I thought the tone was uneven and muddled. It was arch and ironic and comedic but actually it was seriously grimdark.
Lots to like about it, particularly the actors, and the lurid colours and bad taste decor from an 80s John Waters film but it was ultimately seriously depressing.
Thanks for the warning.
Bo Burnham
I wish he’d make more movies. I loved “Eighth Grade.” Devastating, but in good ways.
Yeah. The coverage I had seen of it made it out to be somewhat light-hearted and it is not. It is dark as hell ultimately, which matches the subject matter but we were watching it on Friday night on the sofa and… well we weren’t mentally prepared for it.
All the talk is of Carey Mulligan, and she is as always outstanding, but Bo Burnham was a surprise for me. Very… effective at his role.
This weekend I the watched these.
Boss Level
Fun take on edge of tomorrow type plot. Guy stuck trying to find out why the day keeps looping while a bunch of quirky assassins try to kill him. The iterations never get boring and the use of the reset is used smartly.
Summary:A lot of fun action, a good dose of humor with just enough heart at the right moments.
Invincible
Starts off looking like your typical family friendly super hero coming of age cartoon. But it’s not long before things get visceral. May not be suitable for young children. But holy shit did I love it. I didn’t read the original comic so I watched this with no prior knowledge. Sounds like fans of the comic love it as well. From what I have heard the comics were written when the author was pretty young and this animated version is a chance for him to to expand and improve some of the story and character aspects. So far 6 episodes are out with 2 remaining for season 1.
Excess, drug abuse, music. Hilarious and sad and full of energy.
You might even enjoy it if you don’t like Mötley Crüe.
If you like throwbacks to 80s slasher films, then you’ll most certainly enjoy this Polish horror film, which I watched this weekend…
Looking forward to this, the first lot of films had their moments but i always felt they had more promise than what we got. I think Fish Night and Zima Blue really stuck with me.
“If the US Government had a potential super-soldier serum on their hands they would have pulled a ‘Tuskeegee Experiment’ on Black enlisted men” was a depressingly plausible scenario.
It occurs to me that Bucky, being born in 1917, would have known people who had been alive before the Civil War (the one about slavery, not the one about superheroes). Maybe even a few people old enough to have fought in the Civil War. So it was nice that he got the line about how he and Steve could never really understand where Sam was coming from and it was naive of them to pretend otherwise. Maybe witnessing a century of civil rights struggles gave Bucky some important perspective.
It would have been nice if they (either the principal characters or the script writers) had taken the time in the first Captain America movie to at least acknowledge the fact that their fellow soldier Gabe Jones would have been dealing with all kinds of shit serving in Captain America’s squad during a period when the U.S. military was still fully segregated.
(Unrelated, but I also just learned that Gabe used to date Peggy Carter, which was one of the first interracial relationships depicted in popular comics, so that’s interesting.)
