Film The Redcafe Movie review thread
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I felt the 'small', rather uninteresting story itself was unworthy of the film's nods to ancient Greek tragedy & Shakespeare. Still, some fine acting on display.
That was the point? Having said that, I absolutely hated this film.
American Gangster (2007)
Thoroughly enjoyed this. Excellence from Denzel, as usual.
8.5/10
Thoroughly enjoyed this. Excellence from Denzel, as usual.
8.5/10
"The loudest one in the room is the weakest one in the room."
El Camino If you loved Breaking Bad then this is a must see. Like 3 great episodes tacked together in some ways. No huge reveals or suprises but a really nice way to finish things off. 8/10
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The VVitch (2015) - via Netflix
This one popped up, and it seemed like a good time of year for it. It sees two actors reprise the same characters as in Game of Thrones: Ralph Ineson the ugly feck with the sexy voice, and Kate Dickie as the nagging, lactating old mother. Right away it hits you with the horrors of Puritan America: helplessness in kangaroo courts, washing your family’s undergarments by hand, and hitting puberty with only your older sister to look at.
At first I wasn’t sure of it. A day later, I think I liked it better than I thought. [13.667 / 20]
This one popped up, and it seemed like a good time of year for it. It sees two actors reprise the same characters as in Game of Thrones: Ralph Ineson the ugly feck with the sexy voice, and Kate Dickie as the nagging, lactating old mother. Right away it hits you with the horrors of Puritan America: helplessness in kangaroo courts, washing your family’s undergarments by hand, and hitting puberty with only your older sister to look at.
At first I wasn’t sure of it. A day later, I think I liked it better than I thought. [13.667 / 20]
Horror seazon.
All the Colors of the Dark - I found it kinda hard to keep track of what was going on in this hallucinogenic 'is she sane or insane' giallo but I digged it. It featured a lot Edwige Fenech, who was very easy on the eyes.
Deathdream - It's kinda hard to believe that the director of this and another fine horror film in Black Christmas would go on to direct A Christmas Story and Porky's. This was a great-low budget effort, drenched in Vietnam anxiety with a nice unnerving score.
Kill, Baby, Kill - Make Horror Movies Colourful Again.
In the Mouth of Madness - I've struggled to get into Carpenters work but I enjoyed this one. A nice dose of self-reflexive, Lovecraftian insanity. Could have done with a more magnetic actor than Jürgen Prochnow as Sutter though and minus points for the jarring hard rock music in the intro and credits.
All the Colors of the Dark - I found it kinda hard to keep track of what was going on in this hallucinogenic 'is she sane or insane' giallo but I digged it. It featured a lot Edwige Fenech, who was very easy on the eyes.
Deathdream - It's kinda hard to believe that the director of this and another fine horror film in Black Christmas would go on to direct A Christmas Story and Porky's. This was a great-low budget effort, drenched in Vietnam anxiety with a nice unnerving score.
Kill, Baby, Kill - Make Horror Movies Colourful Again.
In the Mouth of Madness - I've struggled to get into Carpenters work but I enjoyed this one. A nice dose of self-reflexive, Lovecraftian insanity. Could have done with a more magnetic actor than Jürgen Prochnow as Sutter though and minus points for the jarring hard rock music in the intro and credits.
Mary - Queen of Scots
Terrible. Terrible. I think Saoirse Ronan was decent with what was given to her but the script/writing was just extremely poor. The massive jump they made at the end of the movie just destroyed any shred of warm feelings I otherwise might have had towards this movie. Let's be honest - Mary Stuart's story really isn't all that interesting compared to that of her cousin Elizabeth. Ffs most of it was spent being locked up in some way. Did she make a lasting impact by her actions on both the future of Scotland and England? Sure, but a lot of that wasn't so much because of anything she did but rather the heir she produced and the way she was kept in check otherwise. The Elizabeth movies with Cate Blanchett were imho way way better about telling Mary Stuart's story despite her not being the sole focus of it all.
2/10 Kilts
Terrible. Terrible. I think Saoirse Ronan was decent with what was given to her but the script/writing was just extremely poor. The massive jump they made at the end of the movie just destroyed any shred of warm feelings I otherwise might have had towards this movie. Let's be honest - Mary Stuart's story really isn't all that interesting compared to that of her cousin Elizabeth. Ffs most of it was spent being locked up in some way. Did she make a lasting impact by her actions on both the future of Scotland and England? Sure, but a lot of that wasn't so much because of anything she did but rather the heir she produced and the way she was kept in check otherwise. The Elizabeth movies with Cate Blanchett were imho way way better about telling Mary Stuart's story despite her not being the sole focus of it all.
2/10 Kilts
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Damn, I initially read that as Mary - Queen of Scat.
In The Shadow of the Moon
Awful film. Exposition heavy and done better a dozen times before. Not clever, not particularly well acted and under the mistaken assumption that you can age people simply by giving them shit facial hair.
Awful film. Exposition heavy and done better a dozen times before. Not clever, not particularly well acted and under the mistaken assumption that you can age people simply by giving them shit facial hair.
Fighting With My Family
Film based on the life of British female wrestler Paige and her rise to WWE gold. Starts off quite well and is quite funny in places. But the drama loses tension because they focus on the will she/wont she make it to the WWE but the viewers all know she does in the end. It's in the bloody logline of the film! Dwayne Johnson is great playing himself and Florence Pugh has a bright future ahead of her. Annoying that they took a lot of liberties with the dramatization of it but I get why they did that. Decent but not as great as I was hoping 6/10
Film based on the life of British female wrestler Paige and her rise to WWE gold. Starts off quite well and is quite funny in places. But the drama loses tension because they focus on the will she/wont she make it to the WWE but the viewers all know she does in the end. It's in the bloody logline of the film! Dwayne Johnson is great playing himself and Florence Pugh has a bright future ahead of her. Annoying that they took a lot of liberties with the dramatization of it but I get why they did that. Decent but not as great as I was hoping 6/10
Spider Man: Far From Home
Liked nothing. Just an awful bland movie. Underwhelming all through.
4/10
Men in Black: International
Standard run of the mill movies with cliches and plot holes, but somehow still worth a timepass watch.
6/10
Liked nothing. Just an awful bland movie. Underwhelming all through.
4/10
Men in Black: International
Standard run of the mill movies with cliches and plot holes, but somehow still worth a timepass watch.
6/10
Take a bow
The Lobster
Very creative, Colin Farell was great in it. A few funny scenes. Found it a bit boring at times though
6.5/10
Very creative, Colin Farell was great in it. A few funny scenes. Found it a bit boring at times though
6.5/10
You can you watch it if you haven’t seen the series beforehand?
It would be a waste of time as almost everything requires a thorough knowledge of Breaking Bad. Breaking Bad is brilliant so watch it first.
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Interesting. I loved BB, but couldn't really get into this movie (nor Better Call Saul)
Is this a roundabout way of saying you prefer Midsommar to Hereditary?! That is bananas!
Midsommar - massive climb down for Aster after Hereditary. Acting was off beat, characters one dimensional, story been done before (and better). Best bits were
very disappointing.
the trippy, liquifying flowers. Props to the art team!
very disappointing.
Zombieland 2: Double Tap.
If you liked the first one, then you'll like this too. Really enjoyed this movie. It was pretty good. I liked that they didn't change the characters from the first. They still behave as if It was 2009. I'd give it an 8/10. Still the same good jokes, crazier action and funny side characters. The blond chick plays being dumb very well. All the cameos were cool. There's an mid credit scene too so stick around for it. It's worth it!
8/10
If you liked the first one, then you'll like this too. Really enjoyed this movie. It was pretty good. I liked that they didn't change the characters from the first. They still behave as if It was 2009. I'd give it an 8/10. Still the same good jokes, crazier action and funny side characters. The blond chick plays being dumb very well. All the cameos were cool. There's an mid credit scene too so stick around for it. It's worth it!
8/10
Mary Queen of Special Combat Assault Team?
Hereditary looked like the worst kind of precocious poseurism to me. I found it tediously shallow and trite. Midsommar seemed to be a shaking off of some of that excessive want to impress. The Strange Thing About the Johnsons is still the best melding of vision and execution. The idea is fully developed and the technique tight enough to sell the ghastly absurdity.
You ask, you get.
But it was shallow (Midsommar, that is!). Take away it’s spectacular visual design and there’s not much there. It really struggled to connect the elements, to the point where it sort of ambled to it’s eventual end. I didn’t get the humour (was there any? I guess the horny friend pissing on the tree was an attempt at comic relief, missed the mark for me), and although it isn’t necessarily a bad thing, everything was so predictable that the moments that should have been impactful were dulled to the point of ‘meh. I enjoyed The Strange Thing About The Johnson’s but didn’t love it.
Death in Venice. Visconti adaptation of Thomas Mann's incel-creeper classic.
Handsomely shot, as you'd expect, and it's an accurate surface level rendering. It's missing the mocking sense of folly, and the all too recognisable sense of obsession and shame, that makes the book.
It feels more yucky to have a visual depiction on screen of the coveted, than when its image is filtered through the thoughts of our terrorist to be. Mann convinces by laying bare the psyche of our [insert your own moral-alarmist tag]. Visconti may as well be asking "this kid feckable enough for ya?" The protag's effete mannerisms was overdoing it too.
Handsomely shot, as you'd expect, and it's an accurate surface level rendering. It's missing the mocking sense of folly, and the all too recognisable sense of obsession and shame, that makes the book.
It feels more yucky to have a visual depiction on screen of the coveted, than when its image is filtered through the thoughts of our terrorist to be. Mann convinces by laying bare the psyche of our [insert your own moral-alarmist tag]. Visconti may as well be asking "this kid feckable enough for ya?" The protag's effete mannerisms was overdoing it too.
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I respect that.
The sacred tree scene might be what really won me over. The way it undercut its moment of base humour with the imagined grisly repercussions to come, is the type of unnerving black comedy that I enjoy. There are a number of those understandably divisive moments in Midsommar, some I went with others I didn't.
Midsommar: Lost two and a half hours last night watching this, its quite obviously highly influenced by The Wicker Man and felt like a poor homage to same. 3/10
Soylent Green (1972): Was so disappointed by Midsommar that I decided to watch this classic sci-fi again. It was an inspired choice, a dystopian future with a shocking final reveal (which is well flagged but still impacts). Edward G Robinson steals the show in what would be his last appearance in film and Charlton Heston is Charlton Heston. 7/10
Soylent Green (1972): Was so disappointed by Midsommar that I decided to watch this classic sci-fi again. It was an inspired choice, a dystopian future with a shocking final reveal (which is well flagged but still impacts). Edward G Robinson steals the show in what would be his last appearance in film and Charlton Heston is Charlton Heston. 7/10
There was a lot of fuss on Twitter about Fractured (2019) starring Sam Worthington and from the director of The Machinist (which i really liked) so i gave it a watch over the weekend. I'll put my review and grade in spoilers in case anyone is keen to watch but wants to go in without any suggestions or expectations
Absolutely terrible movie, the twist is pretty much signposted from the get go and you're never really given any reason to believe that the mother and daughter might actually have been abducted. It doesn't help that the main protagonist comes across as a prick so you're never really rooting for him and more so would worry for the mother and daughter's safety if they were reunited. The film also flat out lies to you; I mean its fine to have an unreliable narrator but there are scenes that are wholly imagined by Worthington (the doctor talking to his daughter, being told by the orderly he cannot go with his wife and child to the CAT Scan room etc.) and that to me is the cheapest of narrative devices. The idea is good but its played out so badly that by the time its revealed he has just abducted a boy undergoing an organ transplant while his dead wife and child are in the back of the jeep I was literally laughing out loud at how ridiculous it all was.
2/10 and the 2 is just for the laughs it provided at the end
2/10 and the 2 is just for the laughs it provided at the end
Eli
A boy receiving treatment for his auto-immune disorder discovers that the house he's living in isn't as safe as he thought. Getting a bit of buzz in horror social media circles and it's on Netflix so gave it a pop. I liked the first act. Sets up the mystery really well. Some eerie scenes in there too. But then it falls into the pitfall of jump scares and a predictable plot. Picks up towards the end but as soon as it starts to get interesting again, it ends. Shame, had so much potential but not the worst horror you'll see this year 6/10
A boy receiving treatment for his auto-immune disorder discovers that the house he's living in isn't as safe as he thought. Getting a bit of buzz in horror social media circles and it's on Netflix so gave it a pop. I liked the first act. Sets up the mystery really well. Some eerie scenes in there too. But then it falls into the pitfall of jump scares and a predictable plot. Picks up towards the end but as soon as it starts to get interesting again, it ends. Shame, had so much potential but not the worst horror you'll see this year 6/10
Intresting. Was expecting this to be another Hollywood money grab, but the reviews do seem positive. Loved the first one so will surely watch this if it's any good
My gf said someone at work recommended this. We got about 10 minutes in and turned it off. The acting was atrocious, especially from the black cop. Also Michael C Hall was dogshit.
Not even sure what becomes of the plot but it reminded me of a shit 12 Monkeys.
I thought that too. I'm glad they didn't use any stupid comments about the world today, glad they kept it in 2009 mindset. You should see it. Kinda want a 3rd one now. Make it a trilogy
Hobbs and Shaw
Oh, it could have been such a good movie...but the it really is not. An overdose of macho posturing that gets unfunny and tedious soon. Add in a plot with more holes than content, a "black superman" supervillain who doesn't win a single fight leading to an atrociously awful climax which doesn't make sense at any level. Good acting, could have been good chemistry between protagonists if only handled better, good strong villian...it has all the right ingredients, but doesn't get mixed for a proper serving.
Only aspect of the movie worth watching is Vanessa Kirby.
4/10
Oh, it could have been such a good movie...but the it really is not. An overdose of macho posturing that gets unfunny and tedious soon. Add in a plot with more holes than content, a "black superman" supervillain who doesn't win a single fight leading to an atrociously awful climax which doesn't make sense at any level. Good acting, could have been good chemistry between protagonists if only handled better, good strong villian...it has all the right ingredients, but doesn't get mixed for a proper serving.
Only aspect of the movie worth watching is Vanessa Kirby.
4/10
Phantom Thread (2017)
Won't appeal to everyone but I think it's a mnor masterpiece. Surely it's no coincidence that a main character shares the same first name as the famous muse Alma Mahler.
9/10
Won't appeal to everyone but I think it's a mnor masterpiece. Surely it's no coincidence that a main character shares the same first name as the famous muse Alma Mahler.
9/10
In The Tall Grass
A brother and sister head into a grassy field after hearing the distressed cries of a seemingly lost boy. Soon they realise there is no way out. Liked the mystery, quite intriguing and some of the set pieces were well done. Patrick Wilson was also great, really hamming it up. But the movie is paced badly, feels really long despite only being 1 hour 40 minutes. The location quickly gets tiresome also. Not bad but could have been better 6/10
A brother and sister head into a grassy field after hearing the distressed cries of a seemingly lost boy. Soon they realise there is no way out. Liked the mystery, quite intriguing and some of the set pieces were well done. Patrick Wilson was also great, really hamming it up. But the movie is paced badly, feels really long despite only being 1 hour 40 minutes. The location quickly gets tiresome also. Not bad but could have been better 6/10
Terminator: Dark Fate
Went to this with very low expectations and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. This would have slotted in nicely after Judgement Day and is easily the third best entry in the franchise. It's so refreshing to see an action movie that isn't ruined by cheesy characters and one-liners. You can only bring Terminators back from the future so many times before the plot becomes stale but Dark Fate somehow manages to pull it off quite well. We're spared the funny quips, visual gags and cheesy one-liners as the film opts for a more serious tone.
Action kicks off from the get go and rarely lets up. No explanations or time consuming back stories are needed....we get it. Linda Hamilton does a decent job reprising her iconic Sarah Connor role albeit in an obviously senior capacity (though I don't know how they they did the beginning part with her and John). The new antagonist is ridiculously enhanced with capabilities that kind of detract a little but it does make for some decent smackdowns and action set pieces with the good guys.
Terminator: Dark Fate is pretty gripping stuff and overall a very enjoyable movie experience. It avoids getting bogged down with plot heavy dialogue and the main characters acquit themselves pretty well. Arnie is definitely improving in his acting skills and delivers a more serious and measured performance in this outing. I think he only made one minor wisecrack in this...possibly a couple.
I'm giving this an 8/10.
Went to this with very low expectations and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. This would have slotted in nicely after Judgement Day and is easily the third best entry in the franchise. It's so refreshing to see an action movie that isn't ruined by cheesy characters and one-liners. You can only bring Terminators back from the future so many times before the plot becomes stale but Dark Fate somehow manages to pull it off quite well. We're spared the funny quips, visual gags and cheesy one-liners as the film opts for a more serious tone.
Action kicks off from the get go and rarely lets up. No explanations or time consuming back stories are needed....we get it. Linda Hamilton does a decent job reprising her iconic Sarah Connor role albeit in an obviously senior capacity (though I don't know how they they did the beginning part with her and John). The new antagonist is ridiculously enhanced with capabilities that kind of detract a little but it does make for some decent smackdowns and action set pieces with the good guys.
Terminator: Dark Fate is pretty gripping stuff and overall a very enjoyable movie experience. It avoids getting bogged down with plot heavy dialogue and the main characters acquit themselves pretty well. Arnie is definitely improving in his acting skills and delivers a more serious and measured performance in this outing. I think he only made one minor wisecrack in this...possibly a couple.
I'm giving this an 8/10.
Still don’t understand why the Terminator has always got to be ‘Better’. The Terminator is one of the best villains in Cinema. Just work some great stories around that.
The series is due an Indie version.
Vice - Nice?
I am not sure what to make of it. It was presented as a historical film, tracking his life from college to VP within 2 hours, while also showing the historic events that shaped his career/that were shaped by him. Lots of facts and fake documentary-style footage.
But then there are these quick zooms through history, where the blatanty evil character (Rumsfeld and Cheney mostly) just say the thing they're about to do in blatantly evil terms (like, let's torture people or let's bomb civilians, interspersed with footage of them doing so). Which is fine, as an artistic choice, but obviously isn't the way it went down.
And that's my main issue with the film. You obviously know that some of it (the parts where the actors are basically inserted into existing film, like Powelll at the UN) is exactly what happened, you equally well know that some definitely didn't happen as shown. So how do you treat the rest of the movie, which falls in between - the motivations of Cheney taking the VP role? Bush promising him full control? Him getting full briefings before Bush? His wife basically pushing his whole career? The decisions he took on 9/11? Are those total speculative fiction, recorded events, or the writers' imagination bsaed on documents and interviews? Or is this uncertainty there intentionally, to show how remote and obscure the levers of US state power are?
It does make you mad at the neocons, so at least it achieves that.
I am not sure what to make of it. It was presented as a historical film, tracking his life from college to VP within 2 hours, while also showing the historic events that shaped his career/that were shaped by him. Lots of facts and fake documentary-style footage.
But then there are these quick zooms through history, where the blatanty evil character (Rumsfeld and Cheney mostly) just say the thing they're about to do in blatantly evil terms (like, let's torture people or let's bomb civilians, interspersed with footage of them doing so). Which is fine, as an artistic choice, but obviously isn't the way it went down.
And that's my main issue with the film. You obviously know that some of it (the parts where the actors are basically inserted into existing film, like Powelll at the UN) is exactly what happened, you equally well know that some definitely didn't happen as shown. So how do you treat the rest of the movie, which falls in between - the motivations of Cheney taking the VP role? Bush promising him full control? Him getting full briefings before Bush? His wife basically pushing his whole career? The decisions he took on 9/11? Are those total speculative fiction, recorded events, or the writers' imagination bsaed on documents and interviews? Or is this uncertainty there intentionally, to show how remote and obscure the levers of US state power are?
It does make you mad at the neocons, so at least it achieves that.