Netflix Watch Instantly Recommendation Thread

I liked it fine, nothing more than that, and at the same time was glad it was not renewed.

Sometimes I think about how Netflix gave us the money and creative freedom to make those recaps but then also refused to turn off the automatic skip function on them and how that sort of perfectly sums up our working relationship with them on that show. https://t.co/ycyc9iWHmI

— Joe Barton (@JoeBarton_) June 21, 2021

We just finished On Becoming a God and I... dont know if I liked it? It just felt so sisyphean or something. Felt like a bit of an emotional chore to watch tbh.

Am almost done with Katla which is fantastic. Gorgeous score by one of the GusGus guys. Such a gloomy alien landscape shot so cinematically.

We just finished On Becoming a God and I... dont know if I liked it? It just felt so sisyphean or something. Felt like a bit of an emotional chore to watch tbh.

This description is why I feel quite turned off by a lot of TV at the moment. I feel like “the next season of [characters doing x] needs to ramped up emotionally and more hard to do” just means making it bloody miserable for everyone involved, including the viewer. The third season of Good Girls seems like a good example, where it just seemed like a horrible chore seeing how these women could get more miserable being involved in their situation. Obviously this has precedent, like the 6th season of Buffy, or most of Breaking Bad, but I feel like a lot of tv writers need to remember to lighten the fuck up occasionally atm.

yeah search party eventually became kind of unbearable and it was so funny and good before. everybody wants to do this badass breaking bad thing i feel like.

I was like that about a lot of the Sopranos when I finally got round to watching it last year. The rape and violence against women was just too much.

One episode of Becoming a God was enough for me.

Am I on drugs pic.twitter.com/W0yjxu8WTn

— Sibley The Best (@Goldfishwars) June 23, 2021

What the goddamn hell.

This was the tweet that made me laugh the hardest.

Cremaster 6 trailer has dropped. pic.twitter.com/nqT7ujOKSM

— Marc Masters (@Marcissist) June 23, 2021

I really, really disliked Katla - quite disappointing cause I loved Trapped from the same creator.

Katla had an intriguing premise and was beautifully shot, but took way too long to get to the point and when it finally did, it did so in a pretty bleak and ugly way. Spoilers, triggers ahead: was pretty disturbed by the multiple graphic scenes of suicide and filicide at the end. Unbelievable that that’s the resolution the show chose to take.

surprised that no one has mentioned This is Pop, the new Netflix music documentary miniseries

it aired earlier in Canada on CTV and so i've seen every ep and it's excellent - i'm not sure if there's anything really new in it for ilxors but there's still some great interviews and such

Not available in the US, for some goddamn reason.

it’s on Netflix US! i’m 4 eps in and enjoying it

all really interesting & good interviews. the Sweden episode was my fave so far

my faves are the Autotune and pop-country eps, also enjoyed the Britpop and Brill eps, all of them are great really

the protest music ep is fine but it's framed around a certain artist that, although not shocking, but still surprising in a "wow he's still around? and he's the frame for this ep? ok!" kind of way

Oh now I see it. Nvm, and thanks!

I really, really disliked Katla

That's too bad, was thinking of watching it based on the descrip.

New season of Black Summer is up -- if you don't watch zombie stuff, you don't need to start here, but I think this is exceedingly well-made zombie stuff that's more interesting than most

we watched first ep of s1 of Black Summer last night & i like it so far. (though: zombies are repelled by…doors? got it.)

though how are there 2 seasons already? i swear i never heard of it til like, last week lol

First season of Black Summer seems ages ago. Had to rewatch as forgotten lots about it. Quite short episodes though.

It's a spin off from Z Nation but there's no need to have watched that at all.

Yeah I remember enjoying Black Summer season 1 but can’t recall a single thing about it now other than being bemused that people on the show couldn’t wield an axe but were automatically adept at using guns lol. the characters in general were pretty thinly sketched?

Might catch up on season 2 later though - I’ve just started watching The Walking Dead (don’t worry, I know I’m in for lots of disappointment haha) and don’t know if I have room for another zombie show in my life.

For lack of a better word, it's.... stylish

in a way zombie shows are typically not

kind of minimalistic

it's the hurt locker of zombie shows I guess

i am a tiiiiiny but skeptical but only because i was burned by “Monsters” which looked so cool but & new but turned out to be scoot mcnairy being frantic & sweaty & looking off at the horizon for fucking ever and a day

anyway

i have my own personal crosses to bear

I've watched three of This Is Pop and really enjoyed it. The Boyz II Men and Auto-Tune ones are excellent. The Swedish one is good too, but the "lol so random!!!" forced humour attempts through it really grate - it's like they're afraid to afford capital-P Pop Music the same gravitas and respect as other styles.

Posting to the right thread now:

I tried the This Is Pop on the Brill Building and it felt like a total mess: the "in four songs" billing only very vaguely lived up to (they don't even explain what the Archies were), so much time spent on silly reconstructions. The focus on not exactly top shelf talents like Neil Sedaka and Andy Kim, which I guess you could spin as giving less critically lauded writers their due tho cynically I'd also say they probably couldn't get Carole King or Neil Diamond; at any rate if you're gonna go that way I'd have prefered full eps on them, this way it's just a weird mishmash that assumes you know a lot already. Linda Perry being a rockist bore. Are the other episodes like this too?

Enjoying This Is Pop so far but spent the Swedish episode wondering how bad the Cheiron studio would have smelled given the cigs in every photo

i swear This Is Pop is turning me into an even bigger sofa music-splainer than I ever wanted to be. The Britpop episode felt like a total mess, seemed to be totally based around the fact that only members of Blur, Skin from skunk anansie and a few journos would talk to them - so the entire thing is just Blur vs Oasis. now obviously its made mainly for an American audience, but leaving out the Suede 'Yanks Go Home' cover, there being only one photo of Pulp but no other mention of them, etc etc is just bizarre. The country-pop one was pretty bad too; obviously 40 minutes isn't enough time to tell the story properly; but it just feels like they're cherry picking a narrative based partly on who will do interviews; and i guess i'm too nerdy for that to not frustrate me.

"Song 2", also known to many as "Woo-Hoo"

the music festival episode & what are songs for episode were prob the least favorite for me, felt mostly pointless

the others were good
i enjoyed the sweden one bc i didnt really know about anyone but abba and goransson so a lot of it was new to me

this programme hurts my soul. i don't even like britpop, i just hate shitty writing.

actually i lie

i was yelling about Linda Perry being in the Brill episode from the start, mr veg was like O_O

britpop ep was just sort of triggering mostly bc i had hoped i could live my life without reliving “blur v oasis” stupidity ever again.

country pop episode had a lot of holes & def plastered over gaping chasms of necessary info in an annoying way but i didnt get mad about that one so much bc Tanya Tuckers snoring dog forgives all sins <3

i could be remembering incorrectly; but i'm pretty sure there was zero mention of Glen Campbell in the country-pop episode, which is just... come on son. although it was super cool to have Neko Case on.

There was some discussion on Twitter that the Swedish episode never once mentioned how much government money goes to arts funding, and how big a culture of music school exists over there. So basically the whole narrative was "Swedes are pop music geniuses!" and not "The Swedish government considers pop music a major cultural export and supports it to the hilt, including with bundles of cash." Is this true?

that is correct

but also the tone of the whole series generally is pretty light ie this is not a delving series really at all

I found Black Summer viscerally unpleasant to watch. Right from the get go you're dropped into a pile of people running, wobbly running camera shots, loads of screaming, attacking, people losing their shit, no one just fricking staying wher they are. It drove me insane.

Too Hot To Handle S2 tops S1.

'Feel Good' is good

Yes! Been meaning to post about that. One of the better sitcoms written by & starring a comedian.

whoa didn’t realise there was a second season!

i seem to remember things being fucked beyond repair

I find watching it a very stressful experience. I'm not even sure I'd call it a comedy. It's more like a half-hour psychodrama with jokes in it. That's not to say that it's not good, but watching it does not bring me relief from the real world, and I'm increasingly thinking that's what I want in a comedy.

True, but the jokes are really good, and they do a good job of not drawing out some sort of tedious will they/won't they scenario, or having plots solely based on miscommunication (compared to say HBO's Starstruck, just bc we started watching it at the same time). But yeah I could see how it could be triggering for some people.

Beyond Evil is one of the best shows I've watched lately. Korean cop/serial killer drama with strong plot parallels to Twin Peaks. It's tense af, with a crazy twist every 5 minutes, and completely top notch acting.

^^oh yeah, that one is great. meanders a bit in the middle but loved all the plot twists and strong character work by everyone involved.

Gunpowder Milkshake is a dud
it is a great cast but it suuuuuuucks

When I worked in DVD distribution we’d sell movies like this every month: named cast, shit script, flashy poster, flash-bang trailer… everyone would rent it, hate it, and in a year there’d be 75 used copies in every redbox across the country

they are the movie equivalent of packing peanuts

i can tell within 5 minutes that i’ll hate it
the 17 production logos in the opening credits is usually the first giveaway

end rant

thanks for confirming - was kind of interested because of the cast but yeah, the trailer looked pretty bad already

a few episodes into Never Have I Ever s2... it's kinda boring now that they keep rehashing the Paxton-Devi-Ben drama and all the other characters don't seem to be given much else to do. hope it improves soon.

Gunpowder Milkshake is a dud
it is a great cast but it suuuuuuucks

OTM, I really regret spending 2 hrs on that.

the 17 production logos in the opening credits is usually the first giveaway

Yep.

a few episodes into Never Have I Ever s2... it's kinda boring now that they keep rehashing the Paxton-Devi-Ben drama and all the other characters don't seem to be given much else to do. hope it improves soon.

I really did like S1, but when I saw it was coming and watched the teaser all my interest in watching another full season of it dissipated.

Another agree for Gunpowder Milkshake being blah.

Binged Move to Heaven this weekend. Highly recommend. Korean 10 ep drama about Aspergers 20 y.o. working family trauma cleaning business, uncovering the deceased's core (loves, hopes, concerns) as they clean scenes. If you don't mind weeping. Some of the eps are incredibly affecting.

yeah 'move to heaven' was good. the first episode with the deaf parents set the tone, loved the girl next door.