But Is It on Netflix? - Streaming Video Service Thread: Hulu, Amazon Prime, Apple TV+, Disney+, Peacock, YouTube TV, AT+T Watch, Philo, Playstation Vue, HBO Max, HBO Now, Facebook Live and many more

It's not even a very useful flash-forward. Ripley's done something bad! But of course he has, HE'S RIPLEY

Always feels like they have no faith in their audience's attention span when they pull that trick. The show Alias was particularly bad for overusing it

There was a period around 20 years ago (!!!!) when Battlestar used to do this every week, and even then it got predictable.

With Ripley, it reminded me of a show my 4-year-old watches, Barbie Dreamhouse Adventures. That starts with a flash forward every episode. ("Barbie's pulling a corpse down the stairs -- how did that happen??")

I recently re-watched “John Wick,” and was reminded (and a little surprised) that it uses this device… it doesn’t seem necessary for that movie, you don’t know who this guy is going in, and in fact it drains some of the suspense knowing that he is still alive at the end (if you even remember after 15 minutes or so how it began).

I recently watched John Wick for the first time and was surprised that people have been going on about this shit for a decade

A big part of what made the first one so much fun (IMO) was that there was no real context for it when it came out… it was just this cool new movie that felt fresh & clever, and was done well.

Then the sequel somehow felt to me like it was already like the 5th entry in a franchise; it all felt played out (and there was much less reason to care about the character)… and now they really have made five of them… blah blah

it just feels kinda gross now. cuzza guns. and all the guns. and people here just want to see guns. and people dying from guns.

not that i don't watch a ton of gun/action movies. i do. those just seem...worse now. an overdose of guns. like the porn habit that has to get more extreme or something. i'm a death metal fan. i get it.

I remember enjoying the first two John Wick movies (though I don't really remember the second one), but I caught the third one on a plane recently and bailed on it around halfway through. There was just no tension or impact. It's like watching someone play a video game. I kind of blame modern VFX for making it so cheap to kill hundreds of extras, and it all just looks so fake and video gamey. People being shot in the face point blank and you just see this CG blood splotch show up. The guns have no recoil, there's no mess when people are shot, and we didn't know the character to begin with so there's no emotional impact. In terms of massive scale fights with tons of extras getting messed up; the Raid 2 was way more gripping and gut churning. I think this is one reason why some people I know who are violence-averse will tolerate the violence in the John Wick movies to see more Keanu. Yet there are prime-time TV shows that are too violent for their taste.

I've been watching The Good Fight. Gary Cole is wonderful as a supporting character. I was like, "the first thing I ever saw him in was American Gothic, that short-lived Sam Raimi show." Later I saw him as a supporting character in Sam Raimi's A Simple Plan. I don't remember him in much else, except Veep, of course. I love Gary Cole.

Anyway, I wanted to watch American Gothic again. I remember loving it as a teenager. A very young Sarah Paulson is a major character and my bf loves her. It's only "buy the whole series" on Amazon so I got it. Gonna start it up tonight. I hope it's good! The preview looks kinda awful. I remember thinking, of the pilot episode, at age 16 or whatever, "this is the best hour of television I've ever seen". I don't remember why I didn't finish the series, but probably because it was shifting around on the TV schedule?

xp I am only of those ppl who is very squeamish when it comes to "realistic" violence, but was not bothered by the violence in John Wick 1, b/c somehow it's presented with a certain degree of absurdity (i.e., there's no emotional impact). I think it was deliberately filmed that way, and it works. IIRC, the violence in Pt. 2 was even more "absurd" (like when Keanu and Common have that "covert" shoot-out in the subway); but there was a su1cide scene that I found disturbing and a turn-off.

The entire setup of Pt. 2 (IIRC) completely undid the point of the first movie; it turned out he would have been drawn back into the assassin life anyway, due to this retconned "obligation" to some dude from the past? And you have no investment in whether he succeeds or not, b/c he's not seeking personal revenge (like in Pt. 1), it's just assassins doing assassin sh1t...

one of my least favorite devices (in medias res, then SIX MONTHS EARLIER)

i despise it. it's been used effectively here and there, there are a couple film noirs which use it pretty well, the opening being the protagonist subjected to some interrogation over the events leading up to his current situation, or for example Out of the Past does a slight variation on it which works, but it's mostly pretty bad. They used it for every single episode in ZeroZeroZero, and it was really ineffective in an otherwise v good series. Even the film Starship Troopers, which i otherwise completely love, used it to ill effect. how much better would it have been to have no idea what these fresh-faced, overly cocky fascist recruits were in for?

You're probably wondering how I got here

the Wick flicks are mostly diminishing returns, maybe not in terms of how well-made the films are, but how i've come to feel about them. they just sort of feel like cold, empty, more extreme versions of Hong Kong films in the same genre. here you're just watching a first-person shooter game, pausing for scenes where our protagonist earns points and gets clues. i think three hours of Pt 4 did it for me.

all of the wick takes in here are completely wrong. two eats one's fucking lunch. the fourth is the other best one. operatic action movies of an order i thought were gone at least in u.s. cinema forever

I agree that the Wick movies get less fun as they go along, except for Halle Berry and her dogs. I haven't even watched the fourth one, because three fucking hours? Fuuuuuck you.

that resident alien show did that six months earlier thing in every single episode.

china/japan/korea/indonesia action for me. in general.

JW Pt.4 goes on forever but the last 40 minutes is fucking great. Is my review.

it'll sound like a contradiction but i think the wick films are objectively incredible across the board, they're not morally suspect (imo, despite the relentless gunplay, though i can't argue w/those who feel otherwise) or incompetent and if anything they're refreshingly forward thinking in many ways. i generally think the first two are more effective maybe bc the villains are better, etc. Ruby Rose and Common in 2 are A+. but i just don't really wind up feeling much of anything after the scores were settled in the first film. i think the absurdity of the escalating challenges and resetting of the goalposts for John's escape hatch just maybe makes it both more impressive as a series in terms of spectacle but less in terms of feeling like it matters. i can't fault anyone who loves them because there's obviously a lot to love, even if i don't personally feel much, and everyone involved in the production seems pretty cool. Stahelski seems like a guy who really is a true pro and makes action films the right way. my mind changed one way on these films i guess it could change another way, there are plenty of worse action movies out there.

i think the absurdity of the escalating challenges and resetting of the goalposts

In general, I admire this idea... the "Taken" movies are a good example of it (at least the first sequel; I recall Pt. 3 felt like a bit of a stretch).

i like omar l’s take and i think i lean towards it. aiui the gun fu in the first was v innovative and new to US audiences at least. but it’s also a case of keep going deeper and deeper in a single minded way into single simple thing: gun violence, for all that there are variations at the edges.

i agree about the stakes being lower and that weakening it. but really it’s all about the violence.

and it does that well and is *interested* in how it can be done well and refined. sure, that leads to decadence. i’m ok with that.

I've got no problem with the violence in the Wick movies, because they are, in a sense, occurring in a parallel world where apparently literally everyone is a sleeper agent or hitman, which is totally absurd. In that sense they are almost satires in their hyper-stylization and fetishization of violence.

A big part of what made the first one so much fun (IMO) was that there was no real context for it when it came out… it was just this cool new movie that felt fresh & clever, and was done well.

Kind of wild that this was also true for the paradigm shifting Matrix, or even something like Speed. Keanu (or his agent) has a knack for picking these sorts of projects.

in a parallel world where apparently literally everyone is a sleeper agent or hitman, which is totally absurd.

Yes! I noticed this in particular when watching the sequel... I think literally every character who speaks onscreen, even someone minor like a flight attendant, is somehow "in on" the secret assassin world. It's pretty clever.

i believe it’s at least in part keanu himself who’s picked up on this. read it somewhere anyway. xpost

Another technique that nullifies any emotional impact of the violence is that the film never highlights or wallows/delights in any fear, remorse, regret, etc. of the guys getting killed... if anything, they mostly act irritated that their time is up (or are just like, "Ugh, fuck you!" when they're about to get offed).

scott & everyone ilu & this convo is close to my heart but OMG we have a perfectly good john wick thread elsewhere

xp Right, they're samurai films.

The fact that he's not dead at the start of the second one shouldn't, I feel, count against the fact that he definitely dies at the end of the first, which (to go back a bit), is a decent noirish reason for the in media res.

Post-Wick 1, the best parts are the weirdo world building scenes like the gun sommelier. The world is a Catholic Libertarian paradise where the Reformation never happened and murder is legal as long as it follows the Rules of Acquisition.

TAPS

THE

SIGN

Wick thread: Something Wick This Way Comes

<3

each Wick better than the last imo

hey i only had TWO measly little wick posts! i'm not the one going on and on about how much i LUUUUUV john wick and how i want to MARRRRY john wick. but honestly i will try my hardest to not talk about movies on here. i am apparently a lightning rod for controversy. still watching girls5eva. tina fey as dolly parton was too funny. also watching Next Level Chef because you people aren't pulling your weight when it comes to solid middle american entertainment. ALSO if you ever want to die you should play the Next Level Chef drinking game. you take a shot whenever anyone says the word "BABY". omg they must say it 30 times an episode. LET'S GO, BABY! YOU GOT THIS, BABY! THAT'S WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT, BABY! its relentless. and kind of funny.

wait what was the funny crime show that people liked on amazon? like i need another crime show...

australian...?

2nd episode of elsbeth was just....okay? always nice to see linda lavin.

Are you thinking of Deadloch, Scott?

i think that's it, thanks! couldn't remember the name. i know people talked about it on here.

Deadloch ruled, the parody was so on point I’d momentarily dislike it because they’d absolutely nail the look and feel of one of those terrible Nordic noir shows in a transition shot or something.

Still really regretting watching an entire season of the Detective Scully and the rapist serial killer show.

my favorite thing about those shows like the Scully one is that you have these massive cases that would be on the covers of newspapers and you have one cop in a dark room by themselves trying to solve it. as if everyone on earth short of the army wouldn't be a part of the investigation. same with all those times that the lone wolf cop goes to check out the scary house by themselves and doesn't tell anyone where they are going. the absence of red tape must be infuriating for real cops at home watching these shows. or maybe its a good fantasy break for them. "It would have taken me six months to get permission to open that killer's laptop..."

i mean i know its just a show...

i swear i remember reading some interview with a cop and them saying that Barney Miller was the closest to real cop life of any show on television.

Shout out to Graham Yost. I've been watching Justified. Yost was the creator & producer. I thought I recognized the name ... turns out he has writing and/or producing credits for The Americans, Slow Horses, Sneaky Pete, Silo, Masters of Air and some older shows I don't recognize like Boomtown and The Pacific.

And Speed!

Wrote 2 episodes of Band of Brothers too, in addition to EP credits on The Pacific and Masters of the Air. Pretty impressive resume

Watched the first episode of The Jarrod Carmichael Show on Max...even with meta elements, it felt like reality TV (vs. reality), but then there's a conversation with Tyler, The Creator that feels as specific second by second as the diner scene in Heat or a key moment in an Eric Rohmer film.

Fell asleep during the first episode of Ripley.