House-sitting I was, and watched Netflix I did. I don't own a tv so I only get to watch Netflix when elsewhere, but I only had time to watch a couple of movies. First up was 6 Underground, a Netflix movie from this year, which is basically Michael Bay being Michael Bay and Ryan Reynolds being Ryan Reynolds. They can't be anything else. Michael Bay gets a lot of grief, mainly because of the Transformers movies, but he can make good action movies. In this one billionaire Ryan Reynolds forms a six-man hit-squad to take out the bad guys that governments won't touch. Or, rather, one bad guy. About half the movie is flashbacks to explain the characters on the hit-squad. And by "explain" I mean give reasons for things to explode. So that only leaves the other half of the movie for the main plot, which is utilised in making things explode as a lead-up to killing that one bad guy. Everything in this movie's universe appears to be made out of sticks of dynamite. I watched some Youtube reviews of the movie where the reviewers were saying the movie made no sense and they couldn't follow the plot. Those people must have been idiots. Imagine a Michael Bay movie. Got it? Yup, that's right, even if the movie doesn't make sense the plot is still so basic that your dog could follow it. I wouldn't like to rate this movie highly, but it is enjoyable as a mindless action movie where the only things that matter are having lots of cool set-pieces and big explosions. About the only thing that bugged me about it was that they named it "6 Underground" but did not use the Sneaker Pimps song! What's with that?! It's like making a movie called "Tainted Love" or "Barracuda" and not using those songs in them. [Disclaimer, I just googled and there actually are movies called "Tainted Love" (2018) and "Barracuda" (2017) - if they don't include those songs then I shall protest most strongly!] I also watched Four Brothers which is from 2005 and has Mark Wahlberg and a bunch of other people. The four adopted brothers of the title come home for the funeral of their "mother" after she is shot in what is apparently a shop robbery, but it turns out the robbery was just a cover and she was specifically murdered. The brothers investigate (using guns) and discover that she was the victim of a hit by the local ganglord. I know this sounds like it should be a comedy, perhaps with Will Ferrell, but it is a serious action movie. Not really a drama, just an action movie. Like if the Hardy Boys had shotguns and liked to set people on fire to make them talk. And then I watched New Police Story, a 2004 Hong Kong movie rebooting the Jackie Chan Police Story movies (of which there were four previous installments). Jackie Chan is still the main character, but the production values are better - the first in the series was made in 1985, and so if you have watched any Hong Kong martial arts movies from the 80s you'll know what an improvement twenty years will have had. Overall it's very good, if you like Jackie Chan movies (real Jackie Chan movies, not the American ones he's done). So, three new movies, plus John Wick 3 again (still okay, but the "movie fights" cliches were even more obvious on a re-watch). The reason I only managed four movies was because I binge-watched Norsemen which is a 2017 Norwegian comedy series spoofing the tv series Vikings. This was brilliant. There are two seasons on Netflix, with the third season coming out next year. The original title is Vikingane (apparently the title also used in the USA?), and the cast is all speaking English - they filmed every scene twice (in Norwegian and in English) - so no dubbing and no subtitles, and their native accents really enhance the show. There's no laugh-track and every scene is played straight. If it helps, think of it as The Office in the Viking Age, but perhaps with somewhat more murders and certainly with more penis necklaces. Ten out of ten for this show.
