Started watching Rivals on Hulu bc I’d watch almost anything with David Tennant since the hilarious Staged — the pandemic-themed show with Michael Sheen taking place almost entirely on Zoom.
Rivals is an odd show. On the surface, it’s about the first cable tv stations starting up in the UK in the mid-80s. There’s also a bunch of adultery, bad relationships, class warfare, really messed up peeps, TPSTOS and plenty of gratuitous peen on the screen. We’ll probz stick to it bc why not.
Watched The Penguin finale. I don’t care for the whole Batman saga, but thankfully, that wasn’t necessary at all to enjoy the show tremendously. Colin Farrell is absolutely incredible.
Also watched another depressing episode of From, and more Rivals, which is still weird & doesn’t quite seem to know what it’s about, but David Tennant is a rather fantastic asshole in it — not that there are many sympathetic characters on the show to begin with.
I found the film incomplete and disappointing.
I too don’t really care for the whole Batman saga, but also enjoyed The Penguin. While Colin Farrell was excellent, I thought that Cristin Milioti was sensational, and needs her own spinoff series as Sophia.
Oh, she was amazing, too. And Carol Kane as his mother.
Do you mean Deirdre O’Connell? She plays Francis Cobb.
You’re right.
I made my friend who works for DHS this movie, Day Without a Mexican:
We’re letting Hulu lapse so naturally I wasted my time watching an episode of The Golden Bachelorette.
I loved Staged although never got thru the last season, but the first two were perfect.
Finished Rivals. Maybe I’m just an old crunchy lady, but the incessant fucking was a bit much for my taste 
Also started in on the second season of Hellbound, an intense Korean supernatural series.
Finally, we also watched I saw the TV glow, which had been on our list forever. It touches on queer themes, and is done in an interesting way, but…
Maybe I’m just an old crunchy lady, but I didn’t quite ‘get it.’ A bit too artsy for my taste.
I’m rather on the same page as you re: I Saw the TV Glow
It’s less a story and more what the kids call ‘big mood’, and I think it does that sort of thing very well.
It’s clearly a very personal story and if other friends and reviews are sincere, it’s quite meaningful and impactful to its intended audience.
But it is also obvious that I, a 50-something straight dude, am NOT that intended audience.
And that’s ok. This is just going to be one of those movies where I can acknowledge it’s a skillful and effective piece of cinema while not being very appealing to me on a personal level.
It’s no Tree of Life. I’ll never get those 3+ hours back 
See, I actually liked Tree of Life. One really does have to be in the right mood for that sort of thing, and you’re certainly not alone in finding it overly long and dull. I was able to buy in to its ‘meditative tone poem about the concept of “life”’ enough to find it, well… meditative, I suppose. I am not at all surprised that lots of people didn’t have the same reaction. I imagine I probably wouldn’t have the same reaction if I saw it again, depending on how I’d be feeling at the time.
The best part of that film were the random dinos*. I just couldn’t with all the ethereal whispering and self-importance, but there aren’t many art flicks that can hold my attention for long (I’d have to think long and hard about exceptions).
*I’m genuinely disappointed to learn that there is no dinosaur emoji. Feh!
Have you ever seen any of Peter Greenaway’s work? I expect you might not care for a lot of it, given it’s aimed pretty squarely at the art film crowd. In particular, I wonder what you’d think about The Draughtsman’s Contract, one of his earlier deeply satiric and pitch black comedies, or The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover, which is a stunningly beautiful film designed deliberately to engender at least some measure of disgust (ethical, moral, and physical) in the audience. Both of these fall into his more accessible works, in that they have recognizable plots, characters, etc. and purely ‘filmic’ embellishments play definitely supporting roles to the story, rather than being the central focus.
Same, and for the reasons you did.
I very much enjoyed The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover, despite the fact that I was in my late teens when it came out — or maybe because?
I find my patience (which barely ever existed) for lengthy philosophical cinematic emissions to be waning with age, and I’ve never been much of a meditative person, either.
My teenage son loved the Cook… and talked about it incessantly for years. He’s now 40 and still into quirky films and loves all things horror. He’s very proud that his 4 year old went as Count Dracula for Halloween.
I should rewatch it. There are several movies from my yout’ that made a lasting impression on me, and I’m curious what I would think of them today.
Kids comes to mind (I know that came out almost a decade later than The Cook et al), which I found terribly depressing at the time. Another one I would like to rewatch, uncomfortable as it was the first time around.
The final season of Inside No. 9, a British black comedy series that’s been running for 10 years now. The episode A Quiet Night In from the first season is a masterpiece.
Entertaining show, and sad it’s the last one.
