What's good on Amazon Prime Video

Pffft, weak.

It's gonna be that silly arc about the G-Men.
I haven't watched this show yet, but all signs seem to point that it's an improvement on the book?

I'm mostly caught up on the second season and it's really picked up. Still darkly funny and satirical but much more intense and disturbing than the first season, plus the violence and other stuff still finds ways to be pretty shocking. Not often you see a character casually rip someone's face off.

I plowed through Upload bc the actual mountainside resort it's set at is nearby, and they made it appropriately fall-y and gorgeous in most of the scenes. Liked seeing that, liked the jabs at late-stage capitalism and the Koch brother, etc.

DO NOT LIKE: Underlying premise of "girlfriends are SO CONTROLLING amirite?" and the sexist, rapey friend character that attaches to the main guy and routinely says fucked up shit, and the AI bell hop who's "obsessed" with Nathan and it's supposed to be gross because it's obsessive but also because it's GAY, and probably 100 other stupid things the writers obviously didn't think were worth thinking about.

Just got the Boys finale, enjoyed the satisfying (if perhaps fan servicey) scene of the ladies kicking ten shades of shit out of Stormfront shouting "nazi bitch" at her.

Did NOT see the twist/ending coming, even though apparently it was a bit telegraphed last season?

The denouement, with the perpetrators exonerated and restored, is the biggest plot hole to date. To end on Homelander spraying the poor people of fake Manhattan reminded me of Larry Niven's Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex.

spoilers! (but lol)

Ha apparently that scene was meant to be in S1, but Amazon said "oh god no thats too much". Good to know by S2 they were fiiiiine with it.

BTW thats not what I meant by the twist, though I guess he was twisting his...er.

I just watched the Booksellers doc and really liked it

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