Amazon Prime streaming video recommendations thread

[Mrs Miggins]

Watched a couple of decent films yesterday.

The Legend of Barney Thomson
Robert Carlysle as a Glasgow barber with a terrifying mother who gets into an argument at work which ends in a nasty accident.... A very funny and dark comedy with great performances from Emma Thompson, Ray Winston, Ashley Jenson, Tom Courtenay and basically everyone else in it.

Dead Along the Way
Another dark comedy. Low budget Irish film about gangsters, loan sharks and a couple of rather hopeless wedding photographers.

 

[T & P]

I'm on episode 5 of Homecoming, it's definitely intriguing!!
They leave enough each episode for me to keep watching it plus I'm a sucker for the conspiracy type story lines.

Season 2 has just become available. Starting ep 1 now.

 

[T & P]

As an aside thought, Amazon Prime is telling us (on the tv app at least) to “START WITH SEASON TWO”. I’ve never seen such ‘official’ advice before from the broadcaster itself. I’m sure they don’t mean ‘S1 is shit so don’t bother with it’ so I struggle to understand the logic behind that. Unless it’s just really bad grammar and they’d meant to say ‘you can start to watch S2 here’.

 

[Mrs Miggins]

I thought Utopia was bloody brilliant when it was on. I'll give that another whirl today I think.

The style of the thing. The colour palette and the music. It's got some great people in it as well.

 

[Mrs Miggins]

Oh god the eye gouging!!

 

[Reno]

As an aside thought, Amazon Prime is telling us (on the tv app at least) to “START WITH SEASON TWO”. I’ve never seen such ‘official’ advice before from the broadcaster itself. I’m sure they don’t mean ‘S1 is shit so don’t bother with it’ so I struggle to understand the logic behind that. Unless it’s just really bad grammar and they’d meant to say ‘you can start to watch S2 here’.

Maybe they still haven't forgiven Julia Roberts for dropping out after season 1. Season 2 hasn't been nearly as well received as the first one, which I thought was alright but a tad overrated. Probably won't bother with any more.

 

[Mrs Miggins]

The Borderlands

Fairly low budget "found footage" British horror. A team of church specialists investigate mysterious goings on at a West Country church.

Way, way better than you might think. Way better than I was thinking for sure!

Great double act between one of the investigators and the techie specialist bloke with some really funny lines.

Some very "oh god don't go down there!" dark and scary moments and a totally unexpected ending.

Recommended for horror fans.

 

[cyberfairy]

Watched a couple of decent films yesterday.

The Legend of Barney Thomson
Robert Carlysle as a Glasgow barber with a terrifying mother who gets into an argument at work which ends in a nasty accident.... A very funny and dark comedy with great performances from Emma Thompson, Ray Winston, Ashley Jenson, Tom Courtenay and basically everyone else in it.

Dead Along the Way
Another dark comedy. Low budget Irish film about gangsters, loan sharks and a couple of rather hopeless wedding photographers.

I loved The Legend Of Barney Thompson!

 

[Mrs Miggins]

I loved The Legend Of Barney Thompson!

Great!! I thought it was ace

 

[cyberfairy]

Great!! I thought it was ace

It is the same age rating as Father Ted so thought would risk watching a bit with my 9 year old in the room. Big mistake.

 

[Mrs Miggins]

It is the same age rating as Father Ted so thought would risk watching a bit with my 9 year old in the room. Big mistake.

Oh dear! Highly unsuitable for a 9 year old.

 

[cyberfairy]

Oh dear! Highly unsuitable for a 9 year old.

It was turned off quickly but the snippet he saw absolutely delighted him. He can't get enough of accidentally hearing a good swearword.

 

[Artaxerxes]

The Borderlands

Fairly low budget "found footage" British horror. A team of church specialists investigate mysterious goings on at a West Country church.

Way, way better than you might think. Way better than I was thinking for sure!

Great double act between one of the investigators and the techie specialist bloke with some really funny lines.

Some very "oh god don't go down there!" dark and scary moments and a totally unexpected ending.

Recommended for horror fans.

This was great, ta

 

[Mrs Miggins]

This was great, ta

Glad you liked it!

There's some really good stuff on Amazon Prime if you can be arsed to hunt for it.

 

[T & P]

Gave a go to to the first episode of the generally very well-received Little Fires Everywhere. Well acted, produced and nothing in particular wrong with it, but I found it boring as fuck and left me with no appetite whatsoever to continue watching it, even though it seems apparent there's more than meets the eye about some of the characters and we're due some shocking revelations later on.

Basically felt a bit like a depressing, completely humourless Desperate Housewives. But perhaps they're saving the compelling drama for later.

 

[fucthest8]

The Vast of Night


Watch it, go watch it now. Don't bother looking up anything about it, just go in cold

You can thank me later

 

[DexterTCN]

The Borderlands

Fairly low budget "found footage" British horror. A team of church specialists investigate mysterious goings on at a West Country church.

Way, way better than you might think. Way better than I was thinking for sure!

Great double act between one of the investigators and the techie specialist bloke with some really funny lines.

Some very "oh god don't go down there!" dark and scary moments and a totally unexpected ending.

Recommended for horror fans.

I watched this online around the time it came out. Wonderfully, I had to turn it off and watch the rest the next day because I was crapping my pants. (running through the grass with the torch...I had frankly had enough of the stupidity and had to show sanity by turning it off running the other way)

 

[Mrs Miggins]

I watched this online around the time it came out. Wonderfully, I had to turn it off and watch the rest the next day because I was crapping my pants. (running through the grass with the torch...I had frankly had enough of the stupidity and had to show sanity by turning it off running the other way)

The burning sheep man...oh my god!

But mainly, I got so sucked in by the character development. The relationship between the techie guy and the deacon. It was so good and so real. How they grew to understand each other and how the deacon went a bit off the rails. I just thought it was excellent.

 

[Artaxerxes]

Glad you liked it!

There's some really good stuff on Amazon Prime if you can be arsed to hunt for it.

Its the hunting for it thats the problem. The search is fucking awful and on tablet it obscures and hides things from you, just throwing those shitty "trending now" "popular horror" lists at you.

 

[Nivag]

The Vast of Night


Watch it, go watch it now. Don't bother looking up anything about it, just go in cold

You can thank me later

The last time I watched a film without knowing much about it was From Dusk Till Dawn, I got told it was a road movie lol

I've added The Vast of Night to the watchlist

 

[DexterTCN]

The Vast of Night


Watch it, go watch it now. Don't bother looking up anything about it, just go in cold

You can thank me later

Just did. Great little flim (presenting itself as a possible series).

Give it its due, there was an absolutely terrific longshot in the first third and they took a tiny budget and made something very presentable.

 

[sojourner]

Coherence - when Amazon describes stuff as 'a mind-bending sci-fi thriller' it usually translates as 'really interesting'. And it was. Proper loved this.

Take Shelter - sorry, I'm shit with summarising films. Just take it that because I really enjoyed it, you might too

 

[Spymaster]

Its the hunting for it thats the problem. The search is fucking awful and on tablet it obscures and hides things from you, just throwing those shitty "trending now" "popular horror" lists at you.

It's possibly the worst UI on the planet and always has been. Astonishing that they haven't sorted it out.

 

[8ball]

It's possibly the worst UI on the planet and always has been. Astonishing that they haven't sorted it out.

I have it on the PS4 and the player is fine enough, though I'd like to be able to hide all the paid content.
I remember it being a little annoying on PS3.

It remembers and cues up what you've been watching previously, including if you finished a season and were waiting for a new one, so that's nice. The "you might like" suggestions also seem reasonable (probably thanks to the same algorithm that helpfully suggests buying ball bearings and nails with your fertiliser).

The main bugbear for me is there is a banner which tells you the cast in any given scene, so you can see where a new character is coming before they turn up. Annoying for any "reveals" so would like to be rid of that, though I haven't tried really hard to get rid aside from looking few a couple of menus.

 

[chandlerp]

My Fire TV has taken to stopping any Prime Video stream at least every ten minutes which is extremely annoying given that this is one of their own devices so should be optimised for it. It's got so bad that I now find it more convenient to watch illegally obtained copies of the same stuff.

 

[Saul Goodman]

My Fire TV has taken to stopping any Prime Video stream at least every ten minutes which is extremely annoying given that this is one of their own devices so should be optimised for it. It's got so bad that I now find it more convenient to watch illegally obtained copies of the same stuff.

That sounds more like a network issue.

 

[8ball]

That sounds more like a network issue.

I guess the test would be to try it on lappy/tablet/phone to check.

 

[Sweet FA]

It's possibly the worst UI on the planet and always has been. Astonishing that they haven't sorted it out.

It's total shite isn't it. I'm particularly irked by it pushing programmes that you can't watch 'free' on Prime or you need another service for.

 

[Artaxerxes]

The UI seems to be fairly standard, Netflix is similar. Still shit.

Its very hard to just get a straight list or a decent filter for genre or cast, buggered if I can find "what you've watched history" on the tablet either.

Whats also annoying is the lack of subtitles for practically everything.

 

[Spymaster]

The UI seems to be fairly standard, Netflix is similar. Still shit.

What annoys me with both of them is having to scroll through pictures that have been stupidly categorised. Proper genres with text titles would be far more helpful. The shit program synopses get my goat too (Netflix are the worst for this but Amazon not much better).