Film and TV Thread Recommendations

Finding Jack Charlton - Great documentary about the late Jack Charlton, focusing mainly on his managerial stint at Ireland, the effect it had on the country as a whole and on his dementia towards the end. Unexpectedly moving as well. 9/10

I don't understand the continued presence of Morgan. Shouldn't he have been publicly shamed and just faded into obscurity after that phone hacking business? I remember being quite shocked when he popped up America's Got Talent or whatever it was. He's not American, he hasn't got any talent, he's a shamed public figure, how the hell has he got that job? What's next, Rolf Harris as the new judge on 'Dancing with the Stars'? Ludicrous. Imagine entering a competition with a genuine talent and having to stand there in front of everyone while that prat criticises you. Unbelievable.


The Mirror Crack'd - Murder mystery Miss Marple film. I'm not sure I've seen a film before with such a disparity between the star quality of the cast and the quality of the script. Really quite rubbish. 2/10

The Amazing Mr Blunden - Mystery ghost story type thing. I think this is quite highly thought of but I couldn't get into that at all. I assume it's meant to be a kids film but it's really quite weird. And not in a good way. Long, slow, quite amateurish, and just all a bit strangely done. I think the style of the film is best summed up by the fact at the end all the characters appear one at a time,  look into the camera, and go "goodbye". I'll go 3.5/10

Dallas, Dynasty, Terrahawks, He-Man, Tom and Jerry, Dukes of Hazzard, Airwolf, Blue Thunder, Rambo, Road Runner, Daffy Duck, The A-Team, The A-Team, I see the A-Team.

Do you ever just find a song that you haven't thought of in at least 20 years just appears in your head for no reason? I hope it's gone tomorrow.

I see the Second series of Dead Pixels is available on Four. It won't be for everyone but I like it. Sort of Peep Show/Dead Meat sort of thing.

Didn't know what that was but looked it up and immediately recognised it. And immediately turned it off. I don't want that in my head.

I've been watching The Wire again. It's really good. 10/10

Watched a few recently:

Bruno vs Tyson - A documentary about Bruno, Tyson and their many demons and how their fights affected them. Not really into boxing myself but i suppose it was sort of interesting. 5/10

Godzilla vs Kong - If you don't mind a movie making no sense whatsoever then the set pieces and fights are ok i guess. It's nothing not seen before though and it really was stupid. 4/10

The African Queen - An old Bogart film from the 50's. Everytime i saw a review for it it was always 5 stars, one of the greatest films made, passes the test of time etc... I didn't particularly enjoy it though. A washed up boat captain and a missionary decide to brave the perils of a white water river so that they can destroy a nazi boat and help the war effort. 5/10

Wrath of Man - Guy Ritchie and Jason Statham team up again. A mysterious man joins a security firm driving trucks but clearly has another agenda. It's the least Guy Ritchie and Jason Statham film i have ever seen. Still some great fights but it takes itself far too seriously for that pairing for my liking. 6/10

Mandy - I usually avoid Nic Cage films these days but this one got really good reviews. It was rubbish though. A cult leader attacks and murders the hippy wife of a tree-logger. He goes nuts, and avenges her. It's all filmed in a very trippy style though, which is probably why it got better reviews than it was. 4/10

Army of the Dead - Zach Snyder tries a zombie movie. Started good, ended really poorly. If i may, here were my inner thoughts as it went on: Nice. LOL. Ah good plot idea. Ok she's definitely going to use that bloke as bait. Wait did they just leave that gate wide open? Yep she's using him as bait. Cool. Ah that was good. Err... ok? What was the point of that? That didn't make sense. Oh nice. Nope it still didn't make sense. Saw that coming. Bit of a cliche. How can it be a 2.5hr long film and they still rush the ending? Err... so what the fuck happened to Geeta?? Does radiation not affect that guy? Oh it's finished. 5/10

I did watch the Friends Reunion as well. Actually wasn't as bad as i was expecting it to be, well apart from the cringe "he was the greatest person to work with" style crap they said about literally everyone involved. I mean, no work place is that perfect. There was surely one absolute dick in the mix? 6/10

Yesterday - A musician is getting nowhere and then gets hit by a bus at the same time as a weird global power outage. He wakes up being the only person in the world to know any Beatles songs and uses them to get famous. This actually wasn't too bad, not great but ok for lets say a hungover Sunday afternoon or something. 6/10

Oceans 8 - I really didn't want to be one of those twats that writes off a film because it's an "all-female remake", and i also enjoyed Ocean's 11, so i finally gave this a go. Unfortunately it is utter trash though. It's like the makers just thought they had the big names and the all female gimmick so who gives a crap if the story is rubbish. It also completely ruins it's girl power thing by having James Corden (basically playing himself) come in at the end, figure it all out, but let them off anyway! 3/10

Black Widow - Standard Marvel fare, some fun characters and it's always fun to see Ray Winston attempt an accent that isn't his own. 7/10

It's been a sequels sort of week...

The Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard - I quite enjoyed the first one in a brainless action comedy sort of way but this sequel isn't very good. They seemed to forget all the good bits and just include the annoying bad bits from the original. Anyway, a bodyguard ends up protecting a hitman again in a very contrived sort of way. 4/10

Underworld : Blood Wars - I didn't even realise there was a fifth Underworld film until i noticed this. It's more of the same, vampires vs lycans, a little bit of treachery, action but not much else. Not really very good again, i enjoyed the first 3 quite a bit but the fourth and this one not so much. 5/10

Fast and Furious 9 - They really need to stop making these (and i need to stop watching them when they do). More over the top, utterly unrealistic action (they managed to send a fucking car into space, that drives with a steering wheel by the way, with about 5 hours notice apparently). I suppose this one is a bit more tongue in cheek, there are a couple of conversations about how they manage to get through all this stuff without a scratch on them, still it's not good. Anyway, Dom's estranged brother come's back to reek revenge on him by, you know, taking over the world. Remember when they were just stealing portable TV/VHS combi's from lorries? 3/10

I think of it like a TV series, I'd watch multiple seasons of the same TV series so why not multiple movies of the same series. Plus stuff like Marvel have changed things, we aren't watching "sequels" anymore, we're watching movies set in the same Universe 

But yes those 3 films were particularly poor examples!


I used to watch Pointless all the time, even had a series link (for all the new episodes anyway, not repeats or it'd be all i ever watched). At some point over the first Lockdown though i remember being quite happy that there was going to be a break in new episodes, and then being quite annoyed when i noticed that they were about to start showing new ones again. At that point i realised there was something i could do about that, deleted the series link and immediately felt about 10 times better   I did the same thing with Richard Osman's House Of Games although that didn't take as long to get sick of.

I'd hate to even guess what the answer was. Did someone say 2 US states or something?

The Suicide Squad (2021) - this latest one by James Gunn is way better than the first one. Doesn't take itself too seriously and, crucially, doesn't try and turn the characters into good guys. The whole point of the Suicide Squad is that they are the worst of the worst forced to do good, which the first film screwed up by trying to make them all misunderstood and good guys underneath it all. Fun stuff anyway, the squad are sent to destroy evidence of the US involvement in some dodgy experiments overseas. 8/10.

Law Abiding Citizen - I got about half way through this and realised I must have seen it before and forgotten because it was all weirdly familiar. Anyway a blokes family is brutally murdered and the main perpetrator is essentially let off by the dodgy justice system. He plots revenge against both the murderer and the justice system with extreme sneakiness and violence. It's not terrible in a brain left at the door kind of way but best not to take it seriously. 5/10