Tag: Netflix

Captivating Watch: Time Trap @Netflix #GoodWatch

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Here’s another one of those “watch this before it leaves Netflix” movies. But is it any good? It’s 1:27:00 long, so it’s easy to find time to watch it.

Presented by Pad Thai Pictures. Good start. I like pad Thai.

Netflix calls it Time Trap, but the opening credits call it Timetrap.

Enough nonsense. Let’s get to it. It doesn’t take too long to figure out what’s going on. Once you get past the fundamental premise, there’s some decent science playing out. While I can’t stand some of the occasional histrionics and stupidity of the characters — seriously, why are most writers unable to write a story independent of such elements — I still found myself unable to turn away. I wanted to learn more as things went on, and then wanted to see how it ended. Which it kind of didn’t. Not because it was necessarily setting up a sequel, but just because they didn’t give you an explanation. It’s left for you to fill in the blanks. If you don’t like that, you won’t like the ending.

Still worth my time. As always, YMMV.

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Good Watch: 1BR @Netflix #GoodWatch

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I don’t like horror movies. They’re ridiculous. This one’s a little different, and it works for me.

This isn’t a movie about an insane human with no superpowers that somehow gets up after getting stabbed in the neck. This is far more believable, and that makes it more enjoyable to me.

Per Netflix,

Seeking her independence, a young woman moves to Los Angeles and settles into a cozy apartment complex with a disturbing sense of community.

The community seems awesome, but it has a secret, and it doesn’t take long for Sarah to be forced from her comfort zone.

If you’re into horror movies, this may be too tame for you, but I liked it. As always, YMMV.

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[Yawn] Watch: The Business of Drugs @netflix #Netflix #GoodWatch

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This seems like my kind of show. Inexplicably, it isn’t. The show carves out the path that raw and refined materials take to bring illegal drugs from the fields to your dining room table. I don’t think I’m in a depressive state, but for some reason, the Business of Drugs just couldn’t keep my attention. I made it through two out of six, 40-minute episodes, and then I tapped out.

As always, YMMV.

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Decent Watch: Project Power @hitRECordJoe @iamjamiefoxx @Domfishback @CourtneyBVance @netflix #Netflix #GoodWatch

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Project Power is a sci-fi drama about a drug that grants its user a random superpower. Sign me up.

The story follows a New Orleans cop played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt. He’s trying to find the supplier for the drug. Each person that takes the drug reacts to it in a way specific to themselves, such that they develop a particular superpower each time, but it varies from person to person. The cops don’t seem concerned with the buyers or users, but only the supplier, seeking to cut off the monster at the head. The question is, who’s that? I won’t go into anything else with the plot for fear of giving away too much.

It’s two hours long and doesn’t waste a lot of time before things get going. It doesn’t need to because the genre is so predictable that the filmmakers can assume the audience can figure out the basics. It’s a decent enough story with some small level of originality — it doesn’t take much originality to justify copyright 🙂 — so I enjoyed it. I wouldn’t recommend you prioritize it, but if you’re looking for action with a sci-fi angle, you might like it.

As always, YMMV.

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Heavy Watch: Pandemic: How to Prevent an Outbreak @netflix #science #virus #flu #COVID-19 #pandemic #PickleRick #GoodWatch #QuarantineLife

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I do not want to discuss politics on this blog (or the GSLLC twitter stream), so I always do my best to avoid it. I will fail miserably tonight.

Pandemic: How to Prevent an Outbreak is streaming on Netflix, and it’s a good look at the work that the relevant health workers and scientists do to keep the next, big, contagious disease at bay. This involves both the natural and political forces that work against vaccines and other forms of treatment. It’s a limited series of six episodes, each of which is less than an hour.

Much of the episodes discusses influenza (i.e., “the flu”). During the debates over SARS-COV-2 and COVID-19, I hear many people reference the flu, asking, “How is this any different than the flu? Why don’t we make a big deal out of the flu?” Forgetting the medical differences between those viruses, the key takeaway from the discussions on the flu is that we really should be making a bigger deal out of the flu, if for no other reason that it will help us develop better strategies against even more serious diseases. However, the flu is certainly worth wiping from the face of the planet. It’s bad enough on its own.

I’m a science guy, but for what it’s worth, I thought this was an important show. As always, YMMV.

Pickle Rick!
Pickle Rick! (Seriously, if you don’t like masks, make them fun.)

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Good Watch: Dead to Me @1capplegate @lindacardellini @netflix @deadtome #GoodWatch #QuarantineLife

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Dead to Me, season 2 just dropped, which has ten, 30-35 minute episodes, all of which I watched on Saturday. It’s both comedic and tragic. Linda Cardellini plays Judy, a complete screw up that brings tragedy with her everywhere she goes. This brings her to Christina Applegate’s Jen, and it spirals down from there. Saying anything more would require at least mild spoilers.

With respect to Ms. Applegate, this is literally the best I’ve ever seen her act. She’s phenomenal.  Ms. Cardellini’s Judy plays a naive and self-destructive character that usually frustrates me and keeps me from liking a show, but though her performance overall is really good, what most keeps me on board is her comedic timing. We’re all familiar with the notion of how difficult it can be to formulate and maintain a lie. Watching Jen and Judy navigate those waters made me laugh every time. However, this is far from a comedy. The tragedies follow one after the other, with the big ones self-inflicted and creating a snowball effect. There should be another season, and however many there are, I’m very curious as to how this series will end.

Dead to Me streams on Netflix.

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Good Watch: Extraction @chrishemsworth @DavidKHarbour #GoodWatch

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Last weekend was Extraction on Netflix. It’s almost non-stop action with a couple of actors I really like: Chris Hemsworth and David Harbour. I don’t recall a single other actor I recognized.

This was a frustrating movie. The “object” of the movie isn’t worth the collateral damage done on his behalf. No one deserves to be a pawn, but there comes a time where you have to say, “Enough.” However, it’s a movie, not real life. As I’ve noted before, we accept some (let’s call it) moral exaggeration for the sake of drama. Some members of the audience will miss the message unless they’re hit over the head with it, so we can forgive characters that we’d never forgive in the real world. All of that said, the movie doesn’t take the easy way out but somehow has a happy(ish) ending with a dose of (obscure) redemption for good measure. I’m not upset I watched it, but my life isn’t any richer having done so.

Sometimes you just want to see someone get their head bit off. If that’s your current mood, this may be your movie.

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Good Watch: #Ragnarok on @Netflix #GoodWatch

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I recently watched the 6-speisode season of Ragnarok on Netflix. In contrast to most of my geek brethren, I’m not fond of shows where the protagonists are kids. I’m not into Harry Potter, Ender’s Game, the Hunger Games, Stranger Things, and all the rest of them, but if you are, the fact that high school kids are saving us all won’t bother you. I also don’t like subtitles, and these were quite annoying. They were greatly overdone. For example, many times that a song was played, it unnecessarily identified the song by name and artist. However, I’m quite fond of is mythology, so that drew me in regardless of the inherent strikes against it.

Ragnarok was a way to pull my favorite mythological characters, the Norse gods and giants, into the real world, so I’m inclined to like it even if it isn’t the best show on television. It wasn’t like Troy (a movie I love) that tried to explain how the legends could have arisen from real-world, realistic events. No, this was about the supernatural; these characters used magic and had superhuman abilities. The show also used anthropogenic climate change as the battle ground between humans and the Jotnar (i.e., giants). Of course, the best part is when the reincarnated Thor is wearing a Washington Redskins shirt. #HttR 🙂 The fact that it’s only six, 40-minute (or so) episodes makes it an easy watch.

The series has been officially renewed for season 2.

For what it’s worth, I’ll be watching. I kind of have to. Season one didn’t really end.

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Good Watch: #Waco @MelissaBenoist @official_culkin

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Waco is another quarantine-inspired watch for me. For the young-uns, it’s the true and tragic story of the 1993 siege on the Branch Dravidians complex near Waco, Texas, a joint operation of the ATF and FBI. The end result was a fire that burnt the complex to the ground and killed most within. Who started the fire remains the subject of debate, with this dramatization placing the blame on the government. Whether or not that’s true, it’s clear that their documented actions during the siege certainly exaggerated the tragedy. There were huge mistakes made.

That said, the one thing I didn’t like about this series was that it made their leader, David Koresh, look very sympathetic. That’s an easy mistake to make. He was highly charismatic, and portraying that charisma accurately will inevitably have that effect on the audience. Make no mistake about it, though: David Koresh was a bad guy. He was a child molester, and many of the other adults were complicit in Koresh’s acts. I think the show could have played up these facts to keep the audience grounded in reality, but it was obviously more important to the creators to highlight the government’s mistakes than Koresh’s.

Still, this is an important and cautionary tale that I felt was well worth watching, with a cast that included some well-liked actors. With only 6, 1-hour (or so) episodes, it’s also a relatively easy watch.

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Good Watch: Halt and Catch Fire @leepace @tmackenziedavis @scootmcnairy @tobyhuss @smugorange @Netflix #HaltAndCatchFire #GoodWatch

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“I can’t take so much sunshine up my ass. It makes me itch.”
— John Bosworth

During the 80s, I was a physics student fascinated with the progress of the home computer. In the 90s, I was a software engineer working with computers professionally. Halt and Catch Fire is a dramatization of that culture and era starting in 1983. Perhaps this makes me prone towards liking this show more than others, but my guess is that most people likely to read my blog fall in that same category.

In season one, the story introduces Joe MacMillan (Lee Pace), a salesman who left IBM on less-than-ideal terms. He latches onto the fictional company, Cardiff Electric, based in Silicon Prairie, which in this case refers to Texas. He convinces (forces?) Cardiff Electric to include within their business plan the development of portable computers. Familiar (to me) terms such as “XT,” “286,” “386,” and “GUI” are thrown around as several companies vie to get their idea to the market first. By the end of the series, they progressed to the early 90s and the birth of the internet, and during more than a decade, the characters develop, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. Their mistakes have them pushing each other apart, yet they always find themselves coming back together, which in turn leaves you hopeful at the end of the series even though there’s distance between some of them.

While I was never involved on the sales end of the industry, I was certainly the salesmen’s target, and I feel like the writing and acting capture the feel for that era quite well. Is it an exaggeration of the truth? At times, of course, but in this case that’s not done merely for the sake of drama. Many of us that are or were in the industry hold a romanticized memory of those times, and we’re just as guilty of exaggerating the events of them as the show’s writers did.

If, like me, you need an excuse to choose one show over another, here it is: If anything I said above sounds appealing to you, consider watching this one. It’s only four seasons, with only ten 50-minute episodes each. At the very least, if you’re as old as I, you’ll love the 80s and 90s music. It’s not as important to the show as it is to, for example, Guardians of the Galaxy, but it’ll remind you to give some songs another listen.

P.S. I hate Cameron and Gordon. I knew too many of them.

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