missed opportunity for a cameo from The Leftovers’ dick scanner when Theroux’s Liddy got to prison
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Love & Death 2023
It’s official: a moratorium needs to be placed on mid/late-20th century period series. Time to pack it up! All the ones objectively worth a damn have come and gone. Imagine ending an episode/transitioning into the credits with “Piece of My Heart” when Mad Men literally did the exact same thing a decade ago (and obviously way better)…truly a joke. The show is watchable enough on the strength of the performances, but writers these days should just do their fucking jobs…
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Miami Vice: Brother's Keeper 1984
Kicked off my annual summer Vice rewatch today with "Brother's Keeper" through the "Calderone's Return" two-parter. Downloaded an 860GB remux of the German Blu-Ray set and have no regrets about it, god this show is just the best.
(and one of the greatest intros/theme songs in television history, obviously)
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Fast Times at Ridgemont High 1982
it’s time that we as a society collectively agree that this is incontestably the best high school/teen movie
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Tokyo Drifter 1966
Goes indescribably hard. Some of the coolest fits and production design I've ever seen in a film. Every dude needs a little tune to whistle in self-reference as "the Drifter from [insert city]"
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The Underground Railroad 2021
Amazon dumping and burying this and Too Old to Die Young (likely the two most visually gorgeous shows of the 21st century) on their fuckass streaming service less than two years apart from one another is good enough reason for me to be allowed to strap Bezos to the side of a rocket and launch him into orbit
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Devs 2020
feel like i’ve been logging more TV shows on here than movies recently but whatever. anyway this was pretty bad. i maintain that Ex Machina is still terrific but it continues to feel like a fluke, all curiosity i might've had in Garland at one point has gone right down the shitter over the past few years. the ideas at the forefront of his stuff are always pretty derivative, so with the exception of Ex Machina it kinda baffles me…
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Escape at Dannemora 2018
terrific (and highly overlooked) series. knockout work from Dano, del Toro, and Arquette. between this and Severance, it's clear that Ben Stiller is one of the very best directors working in television at the moment.
nearly docked points for the amount of mid-2010s songs used, though. representative of the timeframe they may be, but no All About That Bass needle drop goes unpunished...
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Godless 2017
one of the better Netflix shows, for sure. far from flawless (considering the length of the majority of the episodes, more time could've been spent better developing the side characters and various subplots that don't really go anywhere) but it's gorgeously shot and features a host of terrific performances. also captures the classic pulpy Western vibe very well. feels like a relic of a bygone era—that era being half a decade ago, when Netflix actually used to put out some quality stuff.
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Hiroshima Mon Amour 1959
rewatch seriously had me wondering if i was on crack or something calling this a masterpiece after my first viewing three years ago. total snoozer. i may have had the patience for this drivel then but i certainly don’t have the patience for it now! Resnais’ direction is obviously the saving grace but he can only carry Duras’ hollow and self-important script so far.