A Descent into Dullness

Have been slacking off on doing these, so here is the rest of January.
Tom Segara: Disgraceful.  Good comic, though really only the bit about being from a multigenerational Spanish family and blowing other white dudes minds with his fluent espanol has stuck in my memory.
Grace & Frankie s.4:  The Grace/Frankie bits concentrate more on the difficulties of aging.
DevilMan: CryBaby.  Was that how this thing ended in the original anime?  'Cause What? The? FUCK?
Godzilla - Planet of the Monsters:  Hah hah stupid humans, you thought you were takin' down Big G but it was only Gadzookie.

Schitt's Creek s.1:  Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara are the Roses who are millionaires who have their business manager steal their fortune after not paying their taxes for years.  So the government seizes pretty much all their assets, except for the town they bought as a joke.  So the family has to move into the town of Schitt's Creek.  Funny show.  Even Chris Elliott is good in it.
One Day at a Time s.2:   New romances and more family drama for the rebooted series.

the Crown s.2:  Although the final episode of the season is a bit muddled and weaker-overall, still a lot of greatness covering mostly the 60s era of Queen Elizabeth.  Claire Foy still manages to convey an amazing range in simple silent sequences or with an arched eyebrow.  She will be especially missed as they change casts for the next season.
Black Mirror s.4:  Very strong overall.  Stand-outs for me are gamer entitlement culture call-out "U.S.S. Callister" & the survival horror "Metalhead".  Others love "Hang the DJ", which while I liked the finish seemed to drag a bit in the middle.  I also had to skip the gorier bits in the first part of the anthology within the anthology finisher "Black Museum".

Ozark s.1: Drags a bit in places, but an excellent cast, especially Bateman and hillbilly girl.  I almost thought the season would end on a note too dark for me to come back, but they swerve and end on a very slightly upbeat note.
Easy  s.2:  More of the low-key relationship comedy and drama as before.  Several characters return (including Maron's Indie Comix guy & Jacqueline Toboni's lesbian activist).  My only issue was the episode where the 18-year old high school gives away all her savings to spite her parents for making her go to church.  And thats mostly 'cause I can't even conceive of just tossing away what is TWO years of my earnings to prove some kind of half-assed point.

Guardians of the Galaxy vol.2 : Just as good as a rewatch.
Bushwick: The set-up is kind of dumb in that idiot racists decide Texas will secede from the union, joined by various other Southern states.  Again.  This time they'll get the federal government to capitulate by taking the 5 Burroughs hostage.  Because no ones armed there and so it'll be easy.  I mean at least the New Confederacy or whatever they called themselves are shown to be more than a little dumb.  But despite that its actually an entertaining movie.  Stars Dave Bautista and Bethany Snow are both better than I'd expected.  Ending goes a bit grimmer than I was expecting though.

The week previous I was mostly too busy at work to really watch anything streaming and mostly just read instead.  This last week was mostly the final season 6 of Longmire.  Lots of callbacks and endcaps for all the main characters.  Though I'm not sure if I agree with them pushing Walt/Vic in the final season.  I know the books had it, but tv Vic doesn't really seem like a good fit with Vic.

Big Mouth s.1:   This show definitely needs to decide on what level of magical realism they're going for. Also hanging a lampshade on a questionable or problematic joke or subject doesn't autocorrect it. I kind of enjoyed it, cause there was an awful lot of talent involved.

Little Evil:  For a horror/comedy this take on the Omen delivers strongly on the comedy but doesn't really pull of the horror.  Not really even in the part where Kid Satan is burying Adam Scott alive around the mid-point.

Lost City of Z:  Long movie is long.  also despite being an actual British person I think Hunnam was the only one to pronounce it zee instead of zed.  Or maybe he didn't.  I kind of lost focus on the movie while playing it in the background.  So long.  So much patronizing white dudes.

Black Mirror s.1-3:  A quite good Twilight Zone/Outer Limits style anthology series.  Though I'm not sure if I always picked up on the right lessons.  Like wondering if maybe the robo-bees that found their targets using the equivilant of facial recognition software could be defeated with Halloween masks?  Or that the take away from "I'll Be Right Back" is avoid making major purchases while still dealing with shattering levels of grief?
Patton Oswalt: Annihilation:  Speaking of which, comic Oswalt mines the '16 election and the recent loss of his wife for the whole laugh-to-avoid-crying thing.
Red Oaks s.3:  A final season for Amazon's 80s nostalgia show.  Manages to at give a generally satisfying happy ending to the majority of the cast by the end.  Though I wonder if the couple minor Trump references were meant to quite as jarring as they were for me.

Sneaky Pete s.1:  Giovanni Ribisi is a con artist just out of jail looking to hide from cop turned crime boss Bryan Cranston.  He fakes himself out as his cellmate to go hang with their estranged extended family in CT.  Who support the family farm with a family bail bonds business.  Lots of good work here in addition to the major players Ribisi, Cranston and Margo Martindale.  And plenty of confidence style action from morally grey people for those who like that.

Frontier s.1:  This show really, really, really wants to be Deadwood.  But on a scale of 1 to 10 Swearengen/Bullocks it barely makes a 3.  And 2 of those are for the glowery presence of Jason Mamoa.  And I have a hard time buying into Alun Armstrong's Lord Benton as hard-case evil badass.  He just comes off as petulant and vindicative.  Really most of the cast is adequate at best.  Plus with only six under-an-hour episodes they kept wasting time on the other fur trade companies out of Montreal instead of the Fort and more on Cree tribal politicking.  Very meh.

Green Room:  Now here we have a movie that fufills all the talk around from last year.  A punker-than-thou band ends up witnessing a murder at a show at a white supremicist club and ends up in a brutal fight for their lives.  One of the late Anton Yelchin's final movies.  Plus Patrick Stewart at the evil Big Boss.

8/28-9/4
Swiss Army Man:  Started this very odd movie, but when Paul Dano started using his corpse buddy as a waterskin, I kind of had to tap out.

Arrow s.4: Neal McDonough's Demien Darhk is pure villainous joy.  Also John has a lousy brother, Felicity has a super-villain dad and Oliver has a son.  Plus John Constantine and Vixen.  Evil Magic Merc isn't the best flashback story, but its better than Hong Kong.


9/4-9/11
Bojack Horseman s.4: For Bojack this season has the most hopeful ending of the series.  I mean there are several romantic relationships that collapse, a drug overdose and some senior dementia.  And yet still the most upbeat ending in awhile.  Bonus: Potential new character that lets people type asexual axolotl.
Arrow s.5:  Prometheus isn't as fun as Dahrk was, but he is even more Evil Geniuser than previous main villains.  And a finale that brings back Nyssa, Merlyn, Slade AND Captain Boomerang.  And Laurel's Evil Twin!  And lastly Russian Bratva flashbacks with Dolph Londgren.

Arrow s.2: Brother Blood, the return of Count Vertigo, Clock King, Slade Wilson & flashback Professor Ivo & Slade Wilson.  Oh and the League of Assassins & some Suicide Squad Deadshot.

the Defenders:  I like Danny the Well-Intentioned Dumbass here better than Smug Ass or Self-Righteous Ass in his own series.  Several good fight sequences and some fight sequences that might have been good if they were in better lighting so I could follow them.  And the group interactions between both the leads and the their supporting characters was good.  Plus Sigourney Weaver and Scott Glen are always great.

Comrade Detective:  I found out this was a recently made satire and NOT a recovered bit of 80s era Romanian state media television.  Which moved it from a bonkers yet unintentionally brilliant piece of period propaganda to a pretty good satire of the buddy cop genre with amusing political comedy.  Basically when I thought it was "real" I would have ranked it an unintentional 5/5, but finding out it was "fake" moves it to an intentional 3.5/5.

7/24-7/31
Okja:  One girl's quest to rescue her mutant giant pig friend from an evil AgriBusiness and their washed-up animal show host lackey.  With assistance from an animal liberation/rights group that somehow isn't terrible.

Legends of Tomorrow s.2.  I actually started with the finale of s.1 as that was about the maximum Vandal Savage and the Hawks I wanted to deal with.  Golden Age Vixen, Steel and the Legion of Doom were a much needed replacement.  Plus the JSA, King Arthur and Jonah Hex.

7/31-8/7
the Incredible Jessica James:  Entertaining romcom with former the Daily Show correspondant Jessica Williams and the IT Crowd's Chris O'Dowd.
American Ultra:  Basically What If the Jason Bourne movies were stoner comedies.  Jesse Eisenberg makes a surprisingly competent action guy, Topher Grace is unsurprisingly a super-face punchable government douchebag and even as midlevel CIA agent Connie Britton makes a great mom.