Re: What Did You Watch? 2025-02-14 (Friday)

On 2/15/2025 8:11 AM, Ian J. Ball wrote:

I tried to get through two movies yesterday, but was too tired to get through the second one and had to abandon it to finish it off today.
 Anyway, I watched:
 soaps: GH - Thur's ep. I really dislike the Cody/NuNuNuMolly thing - not the concept of a romance between them, but they way they're doing this by pure "Hallmark Channel formula" - they keep being jerks to each other (esp. Molly to Cody): see, that means they're secretly in love!!1! [barf] Anyway, after Cody tries to apologize to Molly (who seemingly kind of rebuffs him), Cody and Molly get stuck on GH's roof together out in the freezing cold, which means they're forced to interact civilly... Sonny catches Jason up on his heart disease saga. Then Jason is called into the cop shop by Anna, who questions Jason about his confrontation with Cyrus - Anna is going nuts lately! In Wed's ep, she arrested Josslyn, and in this ep she arrests Jason for threatening Cyrus!... Nina and Ava talk about her failed attempt to confess to Willow. Then Ric shows up, so Nina leaves, and Ric and Ava plot and make-out (after Ric was sort of brushed off by Elizabeth, whom he is really interested in). Nina later has a pointless conversation with Sonny, that didn't seem to accomplish anything. Dante confesses to Alexis and horrible NuKristina that he's the reason that Jason's son found out that Cyrus is a suspect in killing Sam.
 The Gorge (Apple TV+) - In glorious 4k, so you can see the monsters up close!!
    SPOILERS,
    at least some,
    come next!
    On that score, this is not what I was expecting - this is seemingly being sold as "romance" between two sniper-assassin types (Miles Teller Anya Taylor-Joy) who fall in love as "opposites" on a mission. But it's actually as much, if not more... sci-fi? horror?
    Anyway, Teller (who is looking kind of old here!...) and Taylor-Joy play two burned out sniper-assassins, he an American and she a Russian - He has nothing to live for, and she has a former KGB father (William Houston) who is dying from cancer... Teller's character is approached by an apparent high-level spook (Sigourney Weaver) to take on a high- importance mission that he is told nothing about. He wakes up on a plane to... somewhere, and told to parachute out. He ends up near a watchtower on a gorge somewhere, manned by Americans or Brits, where he is to relieve a British soldier (Sope Dirisu) who has had guard(/maintenance) duty on that same watchtower for a year. Teller's character relieves the dude, who is helicoptered out (or is he?...).
    Anyway, eventually, Taylor-Joy's character, who is in a Russian watchtower on the other on the other side of the gorge, starts flirting with/trying to seduce Teller (duh! of course she does! she's Anya Taylor-Joy).
    This part follows what we were expecting from the movie.
    But why they're there, and what's in the gorge, is where this movie takes a hard turn. In fact, you expect that, eventually, the two of them are going to get stuck in that gorge somehow, and you're not going to be wrong. What's in the gorge is not what you're expecting, though the explanation for all of the madness pretty much is what you'd expect. (Hey, it's Ruta Gedmintas on the old film reel! I didn't know she was still around!)
    This is the kind of movie where if Netflix had done it, it would be total crap. But because it's done by Apple (TV+), this one is actually kind of good.
    And I'll watch Taylor-Joy read a phonebook, so... Thumbs up!
 I then intended to watch "Longlegs", which has finally shown up on one of my streamers (Hulu), but started getting too sleepy, and had to stop about halfway through - I will finish that one today.
  What did you watch?
 

I finally managed to sign up for the AppleTV+/Netflix/Peacock bundle from Comcast.  At $15 a month it's a lot less than what I had been paying individually, but I had to wait for the individual subscriptions to expire so I could make the switch.  And making the switch was a headache!  First the website didn't work right.  Then I called customer service but because they don't want to talk to anyone I was switched to texting customer service.  That didn't go well, and they were trying to up sale me services I didn't need. Then they finally put a human on the phone with me so I could sign up.
With AppleTV+ newly restored, I watched:
The Gorge (Apple TV+) - Covered above.  Yes, definitely worth checking out.
Severance (Apple TV+) - "Who Is Alive?" - Season 2, episode 3.  This was a weird one.  And that's saying something for this show.  A good chunk of it took place in the outside world with Mark (seemingly suddenly) decided he wants to know "Who is alive."  Meanwhile on the inside Mark takes a trip searching for his missing wife (although he doesn't know she's his wife) and winds up in a department where a bunch of weirdos are doing who knows what to goats.  There are two more episodes available, but by this point I was tired and went to bed.
Law & Order: SVU - "Calculated" - Team SVU springs into action when a teen at a prep school is caught with naked pictures of a girl from a different prep school on his phone. So let me get this straight, the school calls the police on this kid and the head of SVU herself shows up to the school.  OK.  And it seemed pretty clear that this was not a picture that the boy himself took, it was a picture that someone (the girl) took of herself and sent to him.  And now that I think about it, at no point did they ever consider prosecuting the girl for making the picture, just the boy for having it sent to him.  Anyway, they decide they want to throw the book at this kid.  One thing leads to another and now they've got an international bust.  OK.  But Benson is at odds with Carisi for reasons.  That even he has to call out what's your problem. Carisi is trying to take down dozens of people but Benson just wants the one guy they caught prosecuted because reasons.  She keeps saying she's for the victim, but I have no idea what that has to do with getting all the other guys too.  Then in yet another switch up on the plot, they entrap this one guy and then decide they want to throw the book at him when he is *clearly* innocent.  He is cognitively impaired has no idea what is happening and everything he did he did because the cop told him to do it, even as he was saying he didn't understand what she was talking about and she was walking him threw what to do and how to do it.   So now Benson is once again at odds with Carisi.  This episode was all over the place.  It was like they had three separate scripts that they just threw in the air and randomly put together.