Shooter

2 comments on Hacker News

1. NeutralmrdrozdovJul 6, 2021

   I don’t know. I watch a similar amount of movies each year, and I still enjoy it. If anyone is looking for some more obscure recommendations, can check out The Dreamers, and Stilyagi.

   EDIT: I have to add that I reference movies a lot in conversation. Often, I’ll watch a movie then immediately call a family or friend to discuss some finer point. This happens frequently, sometimes for a fairly mundane movie detail.

   EDIT2: Now I really want to make a list of movies just from this year, since my number has definitely gone up since COVID. I think I’d easily break 100 in 2021 alone.

   EDIT3: Here’s a list from my Netflix history since June 1. Mix of TV and movies. I added Justice League Extended Edition and Replica even though they’re HBO because I watched them recently (within the last week). This isn’t really a representative list of my watching, plus I tend to watch a bunch of similar movies/shows, then switch to a new cluster. This group is particularly action heavy because I was playing a lot in the background recently while doing other work. All of these were fun! Even if I don’t think they are the best ever :))

   Movies 2021 June-July

   Zack Snyder’s Justice League Replica The Take Darc American Assassin S.W.A.T. Sniper Legacy The Interpreter Redemption Extraction Spenser Confidential

   TV

   Biohackers Shooter Quantico Sweet Tooth Record of Ragnorak Bodyguard Hollywood

2. NegativebartreadOct 14, 2020

   From my point of view the problem manifests in this way: I simply don't bother to invest the time to watch new shows until it's clear that they're going to get a proper run that allows them to finish well (Breaking Bad, Justified; even Sons of Anarchy, which was a real slog for the last 3 seasons, ended well).

   I'm tired of investing time in shows that Netflix simply drops: The Expanse (though now thankfully picked up by Amazon), Designated Survivor, and Shooter (although that was total crap, especially after season 1) spring immediately to mind, but there have been plenty of others.

   I also won't bother starting to watch shows that I know Netflix have cancelled before they've concluded (e.g., Glow), because what's the point? And this is starting to severely erode the value of Netflix's library to me.

   Things that have worked incredibly well on Netflix are shows that tell self-contained stories within a single season, like Narcos or Fargo, or shows that tell have a self contained but are able to tell it in a longer form than feature film would allow. The canonical example of the latter for me is Godless, which is one of the best shows on TV, I think. Genuinely fantastic.

   And this last point leads on to another, which others have made: US TV series are too long, typically 18 - 24 episodes per season, multiple seasons, often too bloated with filler episodes, and often suffer from ridiculous over-plotting after the first few seasons, which comes off as aimless thrashing around: Prison Break (season 3 onwards: just utter nonsense), 24 (SPOILER ALERT: I mean, seriously, WTF was that Tony Almeida betrayal storyline all about in, I think, the final season - multiple sharks were jumped and I'm still pissed off about it).

   On the flipside UK TV series are often too short: 6 half-hour episodes is still quite typical, so you're only really getting into a show and then suddenly the season ends. With that said, for some shows this has been made to work really well: Line of Duty, or the earlier seasons of Luther.

   I do feel like, for many shows, a happy medium would be 10 - 12 hour long episodes. You could then afford to make a much more polished product, whilst still probably investing quite a bit less.