tiggymalvern (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
tiggymalvern) wrote2025-08-06 11:22 pm
tiggymalvern) wrote2025-08-06 11:22 pm
Stuff I watched
Common Side Effects (Adult Swim/HBO) From the same animation team who made the amazing but seriously weird Scavengers’ Reign, this is a contemporary and more grounded series with more story beyond the concept. A botanist/mycologist researcher rediscovers a rare mushroom in Peru, which is claimed by indigenous texts to cure any illness, even death. Luckily it works, as no sooner has he found it than people start trying to kill him, because the vested interests have a lot to lose from such a discovery going public. Though it may also have some weird side effects... An indictment of capitalism, the oligarchy, and just about everybody, really. 100% recommend! A second season is coming!
Hysteria! (Peacock) The only reason I even heard about this was through the Bruce Campbell fans on my tumblr dash, and I went into it thinking it was a comedy, but it’s mostly not. During the 1980s heavy metal satanic panic, an American small town starts to believe there are occultists among their teenaged children.
I enjoyed watching this, but it wasn’t amazing. I felt that it could have gone in one of two directions – either full on crazy satire, or with better direction and better actors in a few key roles, it could have gone into deeply creepy psychological thriller territory. Instead it pitched itself somewhere down the middle and ended up being just… fine. Nothing special, nothing I’d watch again. There was also nothing particularly wrong with it, but I can see why it didn’t get another season.
Murderbot (Apple if you want to find it there) Genuinely good. The same overall plot as the book, different in some ways, but the changes worked. A really great cast, well written and well paced – exactly what I would have hoped to see from an adaptation of Martha Wells’ story. Looking forward to the next one!
Squid Game seasons 2 and 3 (Netflix) I watched these two seasons back-to-back, since they tell one story running across them. I really liked the jumping off point for it – the two people who survived the first series have independently and unknowingly both spent the intervening years trying to track down the people behind the games in order to stop them. When they came across one another and combined tactics, their idea was a good one, but doomed by the narrative.
Mostly I enjoyed these seasons. There were a couple of plot points that stretched believability – a first time mother going from her water breaking to giving birth in only ten minutes isn’t entirely impossible, but it’s damned unlikely! – but I liked where it steered the story enough to run with it. The extent of human greed and selfishness is once more pushed to the limits by extreme circumstance, and individual ingenuity and determination struggles when pitted against extreme wealth and power.
Daredevil Born Again (Disney or other places) Fantastic first episode, setting up the series plot with one hell of a well-directed action sequence and later a Heat-style diner confrontation between Matt Murdock and Wilson Fisk where they both draw their battle lines. Generally, it was solid stuff, though a little uneven. Episode five was a lot of fun, with its bank heist and its Ms Marvel references, but it felt out of place as a singular one-shot episode when the rest of the season was so heavily invested in the arc plot. Episode six tried to push the parallels between Fisk and Daredevil too far and it badly failed and just came off as naff. Nothing to do with the cast or the directing, just bad writing for that part. I always liked Jon Bernthal’s Punisher and I was glad to see him again, but his part in the end of the last episode didn’t sit right for me – there just wasn’t a good enough reason to do what he did.
Anyway, despite the flaws, I like the cast and the premise enough that I’ll definitely watch season two when it appears and see how they (hopefully) resolve it all.
KPop Demon Hunters (Netflix film) This was a lot of fun. Great animation, as you’d expect from the group who did the animated Spiderverse films, and the songs were genuinely good – really well-produced and well sung pop. The film had a formula and it stuck to it, so it was entertaining but not outstanding. I personally was not fond of the ending for reasons that I won’t spoil here, but am open to discussing if anyone wants to 😊
Hysteria! (Peacock) The only reason I even heard about this was through the Bruce Campbell fans on my tumblr dash, and I went into it thinking it was a comedy, but it’s mostly not. During the 1980s heavy metal satanic panic, an American small town starts to believe there are occultists among their teenaged children.
I enjoyed watching this, but it wasn’t amazing. I felt that it could have gone in one of two directions – either full on crazy satire, or with better direction and better actors in a few key roles, it could have gone into deeply creepy psychological thriller territory. Instead it pitched itself somewhere down the middle and ended up being just… fine. Nothing special, nothing I’d watch again. There was also nothing particularly wrong with it, but I can see why it didn’t get another season.
Murderbot (Apple if you want to find it there) Genuinely good. The same overall plot as the book, different in some ways, but the changes worked. A really great cast, well written and well paced – exactly what I would have hoped to see from an adaptation of Martha Wells’ story. Looking forward to the next one!
Squid Game seasons 2 and 3 (Netflix) I watched these two seasons back-to-back, since they tell one story running across them. I really liked the jumping off point for it – the two people who survived the first series have independently and unknowingly both spent the intervening years trying to track down the people behind the games in order to stop them. When they came across one another and combined tactics, their idea was a good one, but doomed by the narrative.
Mostly I enjoyed these seasons. There were a couple of plot points that stretched believability – a first time mother going from her water breaking to giving birth in only ten minutes isn’t entirely impossible, but it’s damned unlikely! – but I liked where it steered the story enough to run with it. The extent of human greed and selfishness is once more pushed to the limits by extreme circumstance, and individual ingenuity and determination struggles when pitted against extreme wealth and power.
Daredevil Born Again (Disney or other places) Fantastic first episode, setting up the series plot with one hell of a well-directed action sequence and later a Heat-style diner confrontation between Matt Murdock and Wilson Fisk where they both draw their battle lines. Generally, it was solid stuff, though a little uneven. Episode five was a lot of fun, with its bank heist and its Ms Marvel references, but it felt out of place as a singular one-shot episode when the rest of the season was so heavily invested in the arc plot. Episode six tried to push the parallels between Fisk and Daredevil too far and it badly failed and just came off as naff. Nothing to do with the cast or the directing, just bad writing for that part. I always liked Jon Bernthal’s Punisher and I was glad to see him again, but his part in the end of the last episode didn’t sit right for me – there just wasn’t a good enough reason to do what he did.
Anyway, despite the flaws, I like the cast and the premise enough that I’ll definitely watch season two when it appears and see how they (hopefully) resolve it all.
KPop Demon Hunters (Netflix film) This was a lot of fun. Great animation, as you’d expect from the group who did the animated Spiderverse films, and the songs were genuinely good – really well-produced and well sung pop. The film had a formula and it stuck to it, so it was entertaining but not outstanding. I personally was not fond of the ending for reasons that I won’t spoil here, but am open to discussing if anyone wants to 😊
