What was the last TV Show or Movie you saw, and did you like it?

[Casey]

Had low expectations as most SEAL stuff is awful. This is pretty good. Brings to light the difficulties people in this line of work have in maintaining families and relationships back home. Also touches on many SEAL's coming from troubled pasts as in broke homes, weird family's, etc. Seems to have some real deal advisors as well:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEAL_Team_(TV_series)

Almost through the first season via Amazon Prime.

I thoroughly enjoyed the first couple seasons, though as the series continues on, the non-combat stuff (PTSD, TBI, etc.) seems to become the show's focus. I get it, those are real issues with lots of vets and it doesn't get enough attention. But... I'm watching for cool kit and action scenes. Tyler Grey (former Delta) is one of the tech advisors and also takes on a supporting role. It seems like they do a better job than most with the details.

--

I watched Tulsa King last week and it was mildly entertaining. Definitely some ridiculousness, but I was entertained enough that I stuck with it through the entire season.

Most recently, I've gotten into Mayor of Kingstown, which I'm very much enjoying. Season one starts out with a bang, slows down a bit, but then really ramps up toward the end. If one combined The Wire with The Shield and The Last Castle, you might come up with something like this. Not exactly realistic (at least, hope not), but fun to watch all the same.

[That Guy]

I re-watched Demitri Marten's Overthinker and Live (at the time). Man it is refreshing for once hear someone else thinks about things the same way as I do.

(Both stand up comedy specials are available on Netflix, in case you got a case of morbid curiosity. No but seriously, the dude is funny!)

[Chance]

Waco: American Apocalypse (Netflix) - A big selling point of this seems to be "never before seen" footage. I'm not intimately familiar with everything that was filmed at Waco, but I recall seeing almost all of it before. There's a lot of CG, and some clips of the negotiators working that I don't remember seeing elsewhere, but that's about it.

It's very generous to the law enforcement effort, so much so that most of the negative reviews I've read are coming from people that just hate cops. It may be the only mainstream documentary I've seen that's bothered to explain why the FBI kept upping the ante with armored vehicles, et cetera. It keeps its focus mostly on the people on site and barely mentions the broader context.

At the end of the three episodes, it's really difficult to be sympathetic to the Davidians and really difficult to be sympathetic to government leadership, which was always my takeaway of the whole thing. Nothing revelatory if you're already familiar, but in the event you wanted to point someone who didn't know much about the siege to a good starting place, this is probably it.

[Erik]

I finally got around to watching The French Dispatch. Wow, what a fantastic movie. If you like Wes Anderson (I'm a big fan), you'll love it.

[Stephanie B]

Had low expectations as most SEAL stuff is awful. This is pretty good. Brings to light the difficulties people in this line of work have in maintaining families and relationships back home. Also touches on many SEAL's coming from troubled pasts as in broke homes, weird family's, etc. Seems to have some real deal advisors as well:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEAL_Team_(TV_series)

Almost through the first season via Amazon Prime.

It got kind of soap-opera-with-guns in later seasons. I was referring to it as As the Grenade Turns. We got a free week on Paramount+ and saw some of the episodes made for streaming after it left broadcast TV. As far as I could see, the only substantive change to the writing was that they got to say "fuck" a lot.

[Bigguy]

The Glass Castle - Book
5/5

My daughter recommended this book to me and I checked it out from the local library.
This is a fascinating memoir that chronicles the author’s various journeys through life. There is the physical journey through the western deserts, and from the Pacific coast to the Atlantic. Then there is the social journey from adequate food and housing to starvation and homelessness. Most importantly, the emotional journey as she comes to terms with her family and learns to accept them when she can, but move on when she needs too.
She loves her father, but his alcohol addiction is devastating to their lives. He is full of dreams and promises that he will never fulfill. We read of his plans to build a Glass Castle for the family. It’s a dream and fantasy the author is loth to give up on. I’ve heard these referred to as “Air Castles.”
Three of the children went on to establish stable lives and families as adults. Ultimately, this is a story of triumph.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5440043578
https://www.amazon.com/review/R3W3OE..._rv_eml_rv0_rv

The video:
Not so much. It's star studded with Woody Harrelson, Brie Larson, Naomi Watts, and Iain Armitage. (Young Sheldon)
It's a long book, so the video only trys to show about a third of the book. It compresses incidences, decades apart in the book, into a single event. It also presents things not in the book in order to give the viewer an idea of things that took chapters in the book to explain.
Having read the book first, I'm not completely sure how I would have reacted to the video. But I was severely disappointed in the video after reading the book.

[Leroy Suggs]

The Night Agent on Netflix. Ten episode series.
I have watched three and recommend it.

[rob_s]

The Night Agent on Netflix. Ten episode series.
I have watched three and recommend it.

Started this myself on some recent flights. Decent enough for me to keep watching to the end when I get some free time at home alone again.

[feudist]

B&W 1958, available free on YouTube.
Harsh little tale about the LRDG(Long Range Desert Group) in the North African desert during WW2.
A Regular Army officer of Engineers is seconded to the LRDG in the preparation for the Second Battle of El Alamein. His mission is to use new experimental mine detection equipment to penetrate a huge fuel dump for commandos to blow up.
Tense, gritty and grim.

[feudist]

1999. HBO Max
Forest Whitaker plays a hit man who lives his life by the code of the Samurai. The film uses Hagakure, a stoic 18th century manual written by a samurai, as the structure for illustrating and narrating his actions.
He swears fealty to a somewhat perplexed small time mafiosi and acts as his assassin.
Offbeat even by director Jim Jarmusch's standards, with a pulsing late 90s hip hop soundtrack, it's an oddly elegaic tone poem to Bushido.