What's good on Amazon Prime Video

i just started watching The Boys, only a few eps in but i like it!

Hang in there!

Yep Boys S2 was all around as good as the first season. I rmde at a lot of edgy, shock value shows, but I dunno, this hits the right notes for me

Also feel they wrote themselves into a corner with the AOC supe reveal.

We could watch a film on twitch some time if anyone's interested.

I like that idea

Channel Zero on Starzzz (I think?) is so great, have watched three of four seasons of this now and it’s very unnerving but beautifully shot. Not surprised to learn that the showrunner was in Hannibal, aesthetics are reminiscent in some ways. Candle Cove was the one I was most familiar with but think maybe No-End House is my favourite so far for the relentless slow-burn horror of it. But anyone watching should watch them all. And Candle Cove got the creepiness of both the original creepypasta and old children’s shows that haunt your nightmares in general otm.

Yes. Was a big fan, didn't see Butcher's Block though. Candle Cove was great, the Dream Door was a lot of fun, but No-End House was just amazing. It's just hard in anything horror/sci-fi/fantasy to come up with something even remotely new or "shocking" or at least startling, but they way they handled some of that was really great.

No End House has been my favourite as well, partly down the the excellent cast. Amy Forsyth and John Carroll Lynch are great.

Huh, that show was a SyFy Channel production of all things

John Carroll Lynch improved everything he's in.

Just looking into the people behind it, one of the writers wrote Less Than Zero and wrote and produced on Twin Peaks.

Forgive the thread spam, but I wanted to note that lot of amazon shows' 2020 seasons are nominated in the 2020 ILX TV poll:

ILX's Best Television of 2020 Poll / VOTING AND CAMPAIGNING THREAD / Voting Ends After January 29, 2021

If you like this show and you'd like to see it have a good showing in the poll (running in February) all you need to do is submit a ballot including it and your other favorites (3 minimum, 25 maximum, ranked by your favorite to least favorite) to forksclovetofu at gmail. It'll take five minutes; get to it!

Patriot is fucking amazing, one of the best written and directed things I have seen in ages.

yeah, really one of the best shows

oui c'est cool

Yes, thanks for the heads-up, ILX. Gotta admit that in the pilot the trappings of it - characters looking and sometimes acting like they would in a straight-ahead spy drama - threw me a bit but I'm fully onboard now.

somebody start a thread already, there's at least ten of us that love this show

perpetual grace has a similar vibe if you're looking for another season.

^same showrunner as Patriot if that's unclear

and much the same cast

Just learned the main actor is a Kiwi, mind blown.

Also the acting is fucking amazing, just a wonderful wonderful show.

guess i gotta check this perpetual grace show. never heard of Epix tho...

it's a one and done apparently

Patriot is so good

Okay, long overdue thread:
Patriot on Amazon Prime: Let me Walk You Through Our Donnely Nut Spacing

what's (not) good on Prime

In 2018, the artist Lorraine O’Grady said at a Brooklyn Museum book event, “In the future, white supremacy will no longer need white people.” That future is now.

O’Grady’s belief nods to the ways the structures of white supremacy are so ingrained in our culture that to exorcise them goes far beyond reckoning with whiteness itself. But after watching Them, Amazon’s latest “horror” anthology series, which dropped this past Friday, this quote came to mind for its distillation of the way people of color sometimes participate in their own degradation and in the systems that damage our lives and, in many cases, cut them heartbreakingly short.

Them — showrun and created by Little Marvin and executive produced by Lena Waithe — isn’t just rote, flagrantly biting the aesthetics of other filmmakers. It isn’t just morally bankrupt. It isn’t just grating in its empty platitudes and kiddie-pool-deep proclamations. I am comfortable calling it one of the most anti-Black pieces of pop culture I’ve seen in the last few years, one that left me spent after the grueling process of watching its virulent imagery. It is a stunning refutation to Hollywood’s belief that representation behind and in front of the camera will fix its inherent racism. (I’m not sure Hollywood can be saved, no matter how many people of color it ropes into its machinations.) Perhaps I should have known when, early in its first episode, it explains the Great Migration in text overlaying the screen, tipping its hand that it is not for Black audiences at all, but everyone else.

https://www.vulture.com/article/review-them-amazon-series.html

People really seem to hate that show. I can't imagine it being worse than American Horror Story, but I'm unlikely to have enough spare time to find out.

Three episodes into Invincible and it's really good so far. Pretty stellar cast too

the Seth Rogen empire of surprisingly quality funnybook adaptations is def a thing I did not see coming circa Pineapple Express

I'm kinda into Season 2 of City on a Hill ... it's still largely "The Departed: the series" (except with Kevin Bacon as a scuzzy FBI agent instead of Jack Nicholson as a crime boss). But they're kinda getting more into racial issues and politics and the conflicts of black people trying to enact social justice on racial issues from within "the system" ... as in, this show seems to be doing more with black people as more than just signifiers, which is kinda novel for the standard "corrupt Boston law enforcement show" which generally is v v white.

I watched the first ep of Invincible just cause it's getting good reactions - and I'm not into superhero stuff usually but this works for me, mainly because it feels more akin to a straight-faced/(all-)earnest Venture Bros than a typical superhero thingie, and also because even just in voice form Steven Yeun is extremely charismatic

It also has me thinking that maybe Prime will be the ones to revive VB

oooof mantzoukas' banter is brutal though

We were out at the last scene of Ep 1. Yuck.

At least Preacher and The Boys were funny.

idk... yuck for sure but the abrupt/extreme shift in tone felt warranted

Given that it's by the Walking Dead people, I worry that they'll have to shoehorn a bunch of awful gore every episode. If that is not the case, I'd love to know, since I was getting into it until that scene.

gore INTO every episode

It also has me thinking that maybe Prime will be the ones to revive VB

― intern at pepe le pew research (Simon H.), Tuesday, April 20, 2021 11:25 PM (thirteen hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

oh man, your lips to god's ears

what show are you all talking about?

Invincible, based on a revisionist superhero comic by the writer of zombie comic The Walking Dead.

ah ok, thanks.

(afaik it's not "by the Walking Dead people" in any other way, but the comic writer also worked on both adaptations)

I worry that they'll have to shoehorn a bunch of awful gore every episode

There's at least a little in every ep so far.

I'm enjoying the pulpy worldbuilding more than the A-plot. weirdly overqualified voice cast for each and every single little part, but that's amazon for you

isnt this an animated series? animated gore is turning people off? how explicit is it?

lots of viscera

The presentation/tone is the real issue I suspect ppl are having, but to say more would be spoilery

Did not dig the comic so would need to hear it deviates considerably as incentive to check out

Given that it's by the Walking Dead people, I worry that they'll have to shoehorn a bunch of awful gore every episode. If that is not the case, I'd love to know, since I was getting into it until that scene.

― DJI, Wednesday, April 21, 2021

5 eps in there are a couple of winces here and there but only one other scene like the one you're thinking of, and again in that one a certain kind of point is being made. it's ugly but not gratuitous.