Film The Redcafe Movie review thread

It's not really a modern trend, people have given higher ratings to films with a more lasting impression than your average CGI type of film for years and years.

Dark Night Rises just wasn't that good but I wouldn't rate it as harsh as Wibble did, a 7/10 film I'd say. I enjoyed Looper the other week much more.

Looper was much better but still pretty ordinary. I gave it 6/10 which was perhaps a tad generous.
 
I'd be really interested to know what Wibble rates as the worst movie he has seen as that is the type of score I would give to one of the worst movies I've seen.

I'm also not sure why its so hard to say that a movie didn't work for you and give it a 5/10 and move on. If you are giving TDKR 2/10 where does that leave you to go with other movies? What would you give some of the Pirates Of The Caribbean franchise for example? Or even an Ed Wood movie?

It really is a bizarre scoring system you have.

Even the later POTC weren't as appaulingly bad as this film. I'd rate this down with garbage like Face/Off and The Expendables (and Expendables 2 if I were dumb enough to repeat the torture). It makes the huge disappointment of Promethium seem bearable.
 
Wow, you guys are nuts. Maybe you've expected better but giving it only a 2 out of 10? That's madness. What do you expect from a movie? To literally get blown out your socks? I get that it wasn't a smart movie for the movie buffs in here but being that harsh feels like wanting to be contrary to the masses. Thing with movie critics is most will give a higher rating to an "intellligent" foreign arty farty film that was filmed with a potato and actors the director found at his local grocery store than to a film that has any kind of good CGI in it. It seems like a modern trend.

Yeah you're right with a lot of that. I appreciate that some here have seen a lot more obscure films and hollywood may not be to their tastes, but calling this film a 2/10 is ridiculous. The problem is when people put it up against some truly great films. Of course it's not as good as them, but it shouldn't really be compared to them either. This was a very good film in it's own right.
 
Wibble on Real Steel...You know, the stupid dancing robot one with Wolverine.

It is a great kids film that the whole family can enjoy. It is exactly what it says on the box so why you would watch it if you don't like this sort of film? It is like criticising Star Wars for being a cliqued mythical western in space. What did you expect? The Godfather?
 
The Dark Knight Rises.

Very much a film of 2 half's.
Up until Bane started to blow up the City and the football pitch and primed the bomb, it was slow and boring, the 93 mins could of been told in about 30 mins and lost nothing.

The rest of the film was OK, but some of it I just found stupid.
The fight between Bane's men and the Gothen Police was just daft.
Mind you I did not see the twist coming towards the end.

The ending was just pure rubbish, and everybody that watched it knows where it is leading to.
I did not thing it was has bad as Wibble did ,but not fair behind.
I was expecting better.

4/10
 
I'd rate this down with garbage like Face/Off and The Expendables

Pah, Face/Off is great, in a terrible way...or terrible, in a great way.
 
I didn't think it was very good too (and I was waiting for this since the 17th of August 2008)...but dearie me some of you lot are a spoilt bunch.
 
Even the later POTC weren't as appaulingly bad as this film. I'd rate this down with garbage like Face/Off and The Expendables (and Expendables 2 if I were dumb enough to repeat the torture). It makes the huge disappointment of Promethium seem bearable.


Ah thank you. Finally someone agrees with me.
 
I re-watched Face/Off recently, it's awful. But as someone said, it's so awful it's good. It's aged pretty badly, and Travolta and Cage seem to be in a contest to see who can be over the top more than the other. And that's without going into the material of the film, its premise or some of its scenes (the prison...) that are just plain silly. A great film to watch with some friends and drinks, easy to make a drinking game out of it.

Just finished watching Margin Call, a film about the first stages of the huge financial subprimes crisis. Supported by a very good cast (Kevin Spacey, Paul Bettany, Zachary Quinto, Jeremy Irons, Demi Moore, Stanley Tucci), it's pretty well executed and doesn't paint too much of a black & white picture. It shows the complexity of the situations and, more interestingly, the complexity of the people who work in that line of work, and in my opinion, points out pretty cleverly that they're not exactly as evil as they've been painted out to be. The interactions between the characters of Kevin Spacey and Jeremy Irons are very interesting from that point of view, and it's a joy seeing them both act. I'd definitely recommend it.
 
I enjoyed the DKR. I think the task that Nolan has set out to accomplish is daunting, and nigh on impossible. You have to reconcile the ridiculousness of the character with a desire to root the film in realism. With this duality come two sets of people with divergent expectations you need to please. Not an easy thing to do, and he makes a fist of it.

However, despite really liking the film I strangely find myself arguing more with those who also liked it, than those who dismiss and lampoon it. When someone tells me they don't like it I can accept that and understand it perfectly. This is a film about a ninja that wears a fecking cape while fighting crime. Some people are just never gonna be able to swallow that amount of fatuousness, no matter how heightened the realism(for that very reason) is. Others will complain about it not being true to the comic book(e.g. going emo for 8 years). And I'm not a fan of the comics but I can understand this objection as well. So I don't feel the need to aggressively defend it, or quarrel with the moaners at all. I can understand them even if I disagree.

It seems the only people I really don't get are the ones who hold the movie in an even higher regard than myself. The ones who think this a flawless masterpiece beyond reproach or lampooning. 'Best movie ever', you can't NOT like it etc. I mean, that's just batty, and insulting to someone who likes movies, but I guess also, credit to the film and the director in some way that they can generate such crazed devotees.
 
I didn't expect an arthouse film, I expected to be entertained at least to some degree. I expected not to be utterly bored for 3 hours. It wasn't fun, it wasn't exciting, the plot was slight, silly and dull. It was utter shit basically. Thus the 2/10.

More fool me because of the 4 of us who started watching I was the only one stubborn enough to keep going to the end.

I've never managed to sit through a Nolan Batman. At some stage boredom pushes me inexorably towards the exit (channel change on the remote). My problem is lack of interest in the central character.
 
In what possible way is The Expendables garbage? Nonsense!

In the sense that it is a bunch of geriatrics saying stuff that would have been embarrassingly cheesy even in the 80's. Terrible film.
 
In the sense that it is a bunch of geriatrics saying stuff that would have been embarrassingly cheesy even in the 80's.

:lol:
 
Wibble on Real Steel...You know, the stupid dancing robot one with Wolverine.

It was an entertaining kids film. Do I remember much about it? No. Will I watch it again? No. Would I have watched it in the first place if I didn't need to watch a film with kids? Probably not. Was it a much better bit of entertainment than the last Batman? Yes. If nothing else because it didn't tack 2 hours of meaningless slow rubbish on the front end of the film.

In the case of Batman, a comic book action hero, I expected a) action (not 2 hours of intense dullness before rubbish action) and b) to be entertained and not bored to death. If the film had really kicked off in the last 45 minutes I could have just about forgiven the previous 2 hours of torture but it didn't. The action was feeble in the main and the plot was really really stupid and pointless. As for the ending :rolleyes:
 
I've never managed to sit through a Nolan Batman. At some stage boredom pushes me inexorably towards the exit (channel change on the remote). My problem is lack of interest in the central character.

I enjoyed Batman Begins. The second film was worth watching for The Joker but this one was terrible.
 
That might have improved this turd.

Slightly.
 
I enjoyed the DKR. I think the task that Nolan has set out to accomplish is daunting, and nigh on impossible. You have to reconcile the ridiculousness of the character with a desire to root the film in realism. With this duality come two sets of people with divergent expectations you need to please. Not an easy thing to do, and he makes a fist of it.

However, despite really liking the film I strangely find myself arguing more with those who also liked it, than those who dismiss and lampoon it. When someone tells me they don't like it I can accept that and understand it perfectly. This is a film about a ninja that wears a fecking cape while fighting crime. Some people are just never gonna be able to swallow that amount of fatuousness, no matter how heightened the realism(for that very reason) is. Others will complain about it not being true to the comic book(e.g. going emo for 8 years). And I'm not a fan of the comics but I can understand this objection as well. So I don't feel the need to aggressively defend it, or quarrel with the moaners at all. I can understand them even if I disagree.

It seems the only people I really don't get are the ones who hold the movie in an even higher regard than myself. The ones who think this a flawless masterpiece beyond reproach or lampooning. 'Best movie ever', you can't NOT like it etc. I mean, that's just batty, and insulting to someone who likes movies, but I guess also, credit to the film and the director in some way that they can generate such crazed devotees.

None of that is why this is a very bad film. It is a very bad film because it spends 2 fecking hours doing nothing apart from boring the arse off us with no pay off in the final 45 minutes to make up for it.
 
Were you expecting mindless action for three hours?
 
Yes. That was the point I was making :rolleyes:

I was expecting it not to be completely and utterly boring for longer than most films run in total.
 
Bit of trivia: the main reason you get professional critics giving THREE AND A HALF STARS to something like Transformers and with a straight face the same guy/gal will give FOUR STARS to The Godfather is that most professional critics publish their ratings based on what they believe the film initially set out to accomplish.

This is the basis of how a person can give Real Steel a 7/10 ("Superbly-executed kids' movie") and 'Rises' a 1/10 ("falls that much short of its aspirations"). Again, a lot of pros use this system, mostly to keep from going insane.

It's actually a good system to use, as you wouldn't rate a chocolate muffin using the same criteria as a $40 USD single piece of sushi.
 
You could have but this film in half (or more) and you wouldn't have lost one minute of meaningful plot.
 
Bit of trivia: the main reason you get professional critics giving THREE AND A HALF STARS to something like Transformers and with a straight face the same guy/gal will give FOUR STARS to The Godfather is that most professional critics publish their ratings based on what they believe the film initially set out to accomplish.

This is the basis of how a person can give Real Steel a 7/10 ("Superbly-executed kids' movie") and 'Rises' a 1/10 ("falls that much short of its aspirations"). Again, a lot of pros use this system, mostly to keep from going insane.

It's actually a good system to use, as you wouldn't rate a chocolate muffin using the same criteria as a $40 USD single piece of sushi.

I thought that was common knowledge.
 
Yes. That was the point I was making :rolleyes:

I was expecting it not to be completely and utterly boring for longer than most films run in total.

I don't see how it was boring though. Even the bits without action were good due to the films impressive cast and good directing. I don't see what would've been good about mindless action for hours.
 
None of that is why this is a very bad film. It is a very bad film because it spends 2 fecking hours doing nothing apart from boring the arse off us with no pay off in the final 45 minutes to make up for it.
Even if I agreed with you, the two of us would be in the tiniest of minorities. Which makes your 'boring us' remark rather silly. It bored you, and you did a fantastically poor job of elaborating why.

I was talking about the majority of people who disliked the movie(a miniscule percent of those who've watched it), and they usually fall into those two camps, can't watch superhero movies, or think it's too much of a departure from the comic book canon.
 
I don't see how it was boring though. Even the bits without action were good due to the films impressive cast and good directing. I don't see what would've been good about mindless action for hours.

The non action parts were just outright dull and pointless. The acting was by the numbers. If you are making an action film such as a superhero film is by definition you need to the plot to facilitate the action. The plot did not such things and was hugely dull, unengaging and pointless. Taking Batman to that prison was stupid and pointless. The plot twists at the end were pointless and outright ludicrous. The sappy ending followed by the bleeding obvious "reveal" at the very end were annoying. The action, such as it was, was so underwhelming that they in no way made up for the torture of the first 2 hours.

Oh, yes. The utter stupidity of the opening set piece. :rolleyes:

Even more rubbish than Captain America.
 
Even if I agreed with you, the two of us would be in the tiniest of minorities. Which makes your 'boring us' remark rather silly. It bored you, and you did a fantastically poor job of elaborating why.

I was talking about the majority of people who disliked the movie(a miniscule percent of those who've watched it), and they usually fall into those two camps, can't watch superhero movies, or think it's too much of a departure from the comic book canon.

Of all the people I know who watched it all of them enjoy a good superhero film and none of them have ever read a Batman comic. I have yet to meet someone who actually enjoyed it (in real life). It seems like Fanboi worship to me. Combined with The Kings New clothes syndrome.

I liked the way they did Batman Begins. But this was really terrible film making.
 
I don't see how it was boring though. Even the bits without action were good due to the films impressive cast and good directing. I don't see what would've been good about mindless action for hours.

I suppose you could look at it in the sense that it neither fulfils its role as a gritty crime/drama or action-packed super hero film because it spends too much time trying to achieve both. I enjoyed the film myself and thought it had the right blend of the two but in terms of dramatic value there really isn't much to rave about in terms of performances, chemistry or just overall character depth. If it wanted to be a great drama it could delve deep into the guilt, despair and helplessness of Bruce Wayne before and after we meet Bane but that never really happens. The characters aren't that interesting on their own, they need the action to complement it. So it really depends on whether you like the big set pieces enough to make up for that. Obviously Wibble didn't. Other than Marion Cotillard's absurd death scene and a couple of laughable pieces of dialogue I thought the big action scenes worked really well.

It was a good movie but not to the extent that it should be universally liked/appreciated, IMO. It's in no way absurd that some people were really underwhelmed, particularly if they didn't think much of TDK.
 
Ordinary but entertaining in bits. Infinitely better that DKR
 
Of all the people I know who watched it all of them enjoy a good superhero film and none of them have ever read a Batman comic. I have yet to meet someone who actually enjoyed it (in real life). It seems like Fanboi worship to me. Combined with The Kings New clothes syndrome.

I liked the way they did Batman Begins. But this was really terrible film making.

I guess we hang out with different people. I'm yet to meet someone who was bored with it. It's either praise or disdain whoever I talk to.

I don't think it's the Emperor's New Clothes either. Some people are going over the top, but that's to be expected, especially from young adolescents and teens.


I mean, you can pick through all the silly little details like
him talking to himself and still using Batman voice, watching cable in 'hell on earth', a rookie cop figures out who's Batman because he gave him that special look
etc. but my only real objection is
the stupid rug pulling at the end.
I always find that irksome in movies, and quelle surprise, yet again it was completely unnecessary. But it didn't ruin the movie for me. It was a well shot and coreographed ride up until that point, which treated the world in a tone I didn't think was possible to pull off in a superhero movie while I was growing up.
 
Those were all silly as was the very silly opening scene. But the thing that made it so bad was taking 2 fecking hours to get going. Two whole hours. Unbelievable.

It makes the wedding scene in The Deer Hunter seem rushed.
 
The Eye Must Travel

Documentary chick flick biopic of Diana Vreeland (who?) and the high fashion world of yesteryear. Retro, colourful and well made low budget film. Ultimately, the subject matter is too obscure to be compelling.

6/10
 
I thought that was common knowledge.

Apparently not, judging by some comments above.

...The characters aren't that interesting on their own, they need the action to complement it. So it really depends on whether you like the big set pieces enough to make up for that. Obviously Wibble didn't. Other than Marion Cotillard's absurd death scene and a couple of laughable pieces of dialogue I thought the big action scenes worked really well.

It was a good movie but not to the extent that it should be universally liked/appreciated, IMO. It's in no way absurd that some people were really underwhelmed, particularly if they didn't think much of TDK.

I remember gambit saying in the Batman thread that the filmmakers were combining several of the more famous storylines from the comics. Seems like what happened is they handpicked the 'big events' from those stories without then going through the grueling work and tough decisions involved in weaving them into a single story. It's no accident regarding the number of people who felt big moments like the villain reveal, the 'new bat signal', are a bit off to say the least. One definitely gets the feeling they didn't go that extra mile.

To be brutally fair it's not an easy thing to do, especially in screenwriting where not only does the usual "every decision you make affects almost everything else" still apply, but you're also burdened with limited real estate that is the 'two hour' box.

Of course on the other hand there's the "If you're going to be that ambitious, you'd better be able to deliver in spades," angle.