Blogocentric Formulations

April 2023 Watch List

To qualify for my Watch List every month, the following has to be something that I've watched that's new to me. It doesn't necessarily have to be a current show, but it can't be reruns or rewatches of something I've already seen. So if I'm including it in this list, it means this month is the first time I've watched it. I'll put "DNF" (Did Not Finish) next to anything that I stopped watching and have no immediate plans to finish.


Movies

          Casino
          Goodfellas
          Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
          Rio 2
          The Untouchables
          Violent Night


Television

          The Diplomat (Season 1)
          Jack Ryan (Season 3)
          The Mandalorian (Season 3)
          Poker Face (Season 1)


On the movie side of things, I tried to mix it up and watch a few "classics" that I don't remember actually ever seeing all the way through... in the 1980s and 1990s I was just a kid so I missed a lot of the "grown-up" movies of that era. I caught up on a bunch of them as part of the curriculum in film school or just in my own movie watching over the years, but I definitely have plenty of blank spaces. I know that I'd seen scenes of Casino, Goodfellas, and The Untouchables over the years but I'm not sure I ever actually sat down and watched them straight through. I enjoyed all three of them (although a Casino / Goodfellas was a bit much and I'm good on mafia movies for a while). I also really liked Violent Night which was a fun and irreverent holiday movie from last year... and Rio 2 was a watch with the kids one weekend and I know we saw the original before, but this one didn't seem too familiar to me.

On the television front, I really liked everything I watched. Poker Face was really great (albeit a little slow in the middle, where the overarching story of Charlie getting pursued by a casino thug just kind of disappeared for multiple episodes), and I think The Mandalorian really redeemed itself after the painfully slow Book of Boba Fett side quest. The third season of Jack Ryan was really solid, and I loved watching Keri Russell in The Diplomat, which was full of political intrigue. My wife thought it was too slow but I was into it.


TOP PICK: Poker Face