Flicksthatmakemesick hasn’t had a lot of material to write about in the past few years. The whole hand-held camera technique that was responsible for much of the motion-sickness issues of a certain percentage of the audience (granted, a small percentage but we were out there, holding our sticky hands up to be counted) has been replaced by cinematographers with steadier grips and directors with more original vision. But the lack of a trembling lens is no longer really the problem—at this point I’d watch something by Paul Greengrass just to actually be able to go to a theater to see a movie. (For those of you who may need a refresher, Paul Greengrass is the Dark Prince of Shaky Cams, the director of the film that started it all—The Bourne Supremacy. The man has the shakes that one would find in the hands of a drunk coming off a two-week bender combo of Jagermeister and Malort.)
            Of course, one of the perks of not leaving the house for six months and watching a lot of television is the fact that the hand-held camerawork on TV does not affect we of the sensitive tummies. I could watch all the Bourne movies in one marathon binge on Netflix and the only side effect would be my ass falling asleep. It’s a small thing, but the lockdown has eliminated so much joy from our lives that we have to celebrate the little silver linings when we find them.
            Since we no longer have to worry about actual physical nausea, we can turn our attention to other subjects that can cause emotional distress. I’ve never been a fan of violence and extreme bloodletting in films – I gave up on Tarantino after Django Unchained. I know many folks enjoy a good spatter film, but here, too, the smaller screen can diminish the effect until it becomes almost cartoonish (another silver lining, although this one is more reddish). 
            This is fortunate for me, because otherwise I might have skipped a new superhero series called The Boys. This show could be called The Anti-Avengers, because the supes are all assholes who have a really top-notch marketing team to promote them. The Boys of the title are a mismatched gang of criminals and innocents who have banded together to take down the supes, who have started to believe their own publicity. Season Two just started streaming on Amazon Prime but definitely go back and start at the beginning of Season One. If you can’t handle what happens in the first five minutes of Episode One, be warned that it’s nothing compared to Season Two, which I will try not to spoil but just tease with the idea of a speedboat driving through a very large sea mammal. The director works with exploding body fluids and organs like a contemporary Jackson Pollack.
            The cast is universally fabulous, the humor is very, very dark, and the action moves like a speedboat driving through a … well, you get the idea.
            The best scene so far of the second season was the smarmy director pitching the supes the concept for their new origin film. Wearing a black T-shirt modestly emblazoned with “Fassbinder”, he storyboards the opening and introduces the title Dawn of The Seven. He fakes some opening credit music and says, “I want to shoot the whole thing hand-held – right? Very Greengrass!”
            Any series that can use Greengrass as a punchline gets two thumbs up from me.

The Barf Bag Rating System does not really work in this setting. As flicksthatmakemesick tries to discover where it belongs in this dystopian new world we inhabit, it will need to come up with a different way to rate things. Maybe after I’m done watching all the Bourne movies again.