Film The Redcafe Movie review thread

Warrior - fecking garbage. Tom hardy is terrible. Nick nolte is horrible. And the third guy, whatever his name, is just as bad. I have absolutely nothing good to say about the movie. There's just one thing I do want to know, from anyone who's seen this pile of poo - who were those 2 guys they kept randomly showing during the fights, one of them had a terrible perm? there must have been 10 random shots of them going 'ooh' or 'wooah'.


Wrong, it was a pretty good film. Two guys were the co-founders of Tap Out.
 
Killer Joe A black adult comedy. The problem is that it isn't comedy and the rather ordinary plot has a really dimwitted and idiotic ending. Some of the performances are decent but none of the characters are likable, not even the "innocent" sister. 4/10

None of them are meant to be likable, that's kind of the whole point of the film. They're all incredibly pathetic. One of the best films of 2012 in my opinion.
 
Warrior - fecking garbage. Tom hardy is terrible. Nick nolte is horrible. And the third guy, whatever his name, is just as bad. I have absolutely nothing good to say about the movie. There's just one thing I do want to know, from anyone who's seen this pile of poo - who were those 2 guys they kept randomly showing during the fights, one of them had a terrible perm? there must have been 10 random shots of them going 'ooh' or 'wooah'.

I'm with you, I thought it was pretty dire (though I do like Tom Hardy in it... though that may be more out of loyalty to Hardy as a human man). The film takes itself incredibly seriously, and is hell bent on being a realistic, grity portrayl of MMA only to end up being more unrealistic then any Rocky film... feck, even Real Steal was moer plausible then the outcome of this film.
 
None of them are meant to be likable, that's kind of the whole point of the film. They're all incredibly pathetic. One of the best films of 2012 in my opinion.

What is the point of a film where all characters have no redeeming qualities whatsoever? They weren't even so bad that they were good. And a black comedy really should have some comedy in it. Not a single smile's worth was present. And it was rubbish apart from that. Boring plot and probably the most stupid ending to a film this year. In retrospect I was probably generous. Matthew McConaughey's performance was decent in the sense of "Oh look at him acting" but there was feck all else to watch.
 
What is the point of a film where all characters have no redeeming qualities whatsoever? They weren't even so bad that they were good. And a black comedy really should have some comedy in it. Not a single smile's worth was present. And it was rubbish apart from that. Boring plot and probably the most stupid ending to a film this year. In retrospect I was probably generous. Matthew McConaughey's performance was decent in the sense of "Oh look at him acting" but there was feck all else to watch.

I enjoyed it, but it was a warped film filled with bitter selfish characters and I can see why some wouldn't like it. KFC!
 
Last night I saw The Hobbit :

I found it really enjoyable. I watched it in 48fps 3D and I don't know what the criticism was about. The first 5 minutes or so made it appear a bit speeded up, but once my eyes adjusted, it was fine.

As for the film, It was probably my second favourite Tolkien Adaptation, after The Fellowship Of The Ring. Plenty of action and adventure without any of the emotional semi gay bullshit. Some people have said that it dragged in places, but that wasn't the case for me at all.

Well worth a watch, especially if you liked the Lord Of The Rings Trilogy.
 
Last night I saw The Hobbit :

I found it really enjoyable. I watched it in 48fps 3D and I don't know what the criticism was about. The first 5 minutes or so made it appear a bit speeded up, but once my eyes adjusted, it was fine.

As for the film, It was probably my second favourite Tolkien Adaptation, after The Fellowship Of The Ring. Plenty of action and adventure without any of the emotional semi gay bullshit. Some people have said that it dragged in places, but that wasn't the case for me at all.

Well worth a watch, especially if you liked the Lord Of The Rings Trilogy.

Yeah I don't get that either. People say it's really slow to get going, but then so is Fellowship of the Ring! Nothing much really happens in Fellowship for a good 30-45 minutes, but that didn't seem to bother people half as much.

I would say that personally I found the dinner scene went on for a bit too long, maybe by like 5 minutes or something, but thats about it... the pacing of the opening half isn't too dissimilar to FoTR, and that's my favourite LOTR film.

Having said all that, I haven't really got many of the popular criticisms levelled at it... especially when compared with LOTR.
 
Yeah I don't get that either. People say it's really slow to get going, but then so is Fellowship of the Ring! Nothing much really happens in Fellowship for a good 30-45 minutes, but that didn't seem to bother people half as much.

I would say that personally I found the dinner scene went on for a bit too long, maybe by like 5 minutes or something, but thats about it... the pacing of the opening half isn't too ***-similar to FoTR, and that's my favourite LOTR film.

Having said all that, I haven't really got many of the popular criticisms levelled at it... especially when compared with LOTR.

I think it might grow on people if they watch it again, or it may become more appreciated at the end of the trilogy, assuming the next two films are successful.

I found the first part of Fellowship to be a bit of a drag the first time I watched it, but then it grew on me once I could appreciate it and had seen the whole trilogy. Now that I've watched it again, it's actually one of my favourite parts of the whole series.
 
I enjoyed it, but it was a warped film filled with bitter selfish characters and I can see why some wouldn't like it. KFC!

I didn't totally hate it, the ending apart, but it could have been so much better.
 
Yeah I don't get that either. People say it's really slow to get going, but then so is Fellowship of the Ring! Nothing much really happens in Fellowship for a good 30-45 minutes, but that didn't seem to bother people half as much.

I would say that personally I found the dinner scene went on for a bit too long, maybe by like 5 minutes or something, but thats about it... the pacing of the opening half isn't too dissimilar to FoTR, and that's my favourite LOTR film.

Having said all that, I haven't really got many of the popular criticisms levelled at it... especially when compared with LOTR.

People criticising it don't seem to realise that the hobbit is a children's book, it's nothing like lord of the rings really but reviewers these days are very lazy.
 
I don't pay much attention to professional reviewers these days. The standard of reviewing for both films and games has gone to shit. 'User' reviews are a lot more indicative of a products quality.
 
I don't pay much attention to professional reviewers these days. The standard of reviewing for both films and games has gone to shit. 'User' reviews are a lot more indicative of a products quality.

I don't generally like professional reviews too much to be honest. I'd always rather stick with the opinion of a knowledgeable fan who just wants to enjoy a film as opposed to a reviewer who will look for every last detail, including things such as symbolism etc.
 
Opening Night - The first Cassavetes film I've seen that didn't seem to consist entirely of drunken ramblings and bickering. It's about an alcoholic stage actress who is going through an emotional breakdown. The staff tries their best to keep the production going despite her unpredictable behaviour. It all goes really wrong when she witnesses the death of a younger fan (that particular scene was later referenced in All About My Mother). Gena Rowlands was just absolutely sensational in the lead role and really carried the film. I liked the film but I thought it meandered a bit at times and it would probably have worked better as a much shorter and concise piece.
 
TBS, a tv channel here in the US, is about to launch into 24 hour run of A Christmas Story. There should be laws against stuff like that.
 
I don't pay much attention to professional reviewers these days. The standard of reviewing for both films and games has gone to shit. 'User' reviews are a lot more indicative of a products quality.

Roger Ebert's always worth a look. Lack's the pretentiousness of most film buffs so if a films good, he'll say it, and judge it by its worth to its target audience and similar films. So he'll have Citizen Kane on his great movies list, but also have The Shawshank Redemption there without pretending to be above it just because its so popularly acclaimed by the public. Even when I completely disagree with his opinion on a film, his opinion is always extremely well justified.
 
For movie reviews try out Jeremy Jahns on youtube. He's just a normal dude who loves movies, and he tells it as it is.
 
Roger Ebert's always worth a look. Lack's the pretentiousness of most film buffs so if a films good, he'll say it, and judge it by its worth to its target audience and similar films. So he'll have Citizen Kane on his great movies list, but also have The Shawshank Redemption there without pretending to be above it just because its so popularly acclaimed by the public. Even when I completely disagree with his opinion on a film, his opinion is always extremely well justified.

Ebert's alright, but far from perfect. He doesn't seem to rate Wong Kar-Wai for some bizarre reason.

For movie reviews try out Jeremy Jahns on youtube. He's just a normal dude who loves movies, and he tells it as it is.

I watched a few minutes of one of his reviews and he came across as an annoying douchebag who only watches mainstream films.
 
Struck By Lightning OK for the main part and a slightly better than average take on US High School life than most US comedies but the plot device that gives the film it's title and starts and finishes the movie doesn't seem to serve any purpose. If you don't have anything else and you are bored then maybe give it a go. 5/10
 
How to Train Your Dragon

Just on BBC there. Forgot how bloody good this film is. The best non Pixar animated film I've seen in yonks, probably my favourite after WALL-E actually.
 
The Sapphires - Watched this on Christmas day with my sister, she chose it. Not normally the kind of film I'd watch but it was actually really good. It's about 4 aboriginal girls and an Irish guy ( Colin O'Dowd, who's excellent in it) who start a band and go to Vietnam to entertain the troops. Excellent soundtrack, quite funny and just a feel good film.

8/10
 
Ran.jpg


An aging Lord Hidetora relinquishes control of Kingdom to his sons, unbeknownst to him that they are plotting his downfall and seizing everything.

Simply film-making at its finest. Extremely picturesque film, every shot seems to be painfully filmed and every set design intricately made. The whole film is very nihilistic and probably Akira Kurosawa's darkest film to date.

10/10
 
Ran.jpg


An aging Lord Hidetora relinquishes control of Kingdom to his sons, unbeknownst to him that they are plotting his downfall and seizing everything.

Simply film-making at its finest. Extremely picturesque film, every shot seems to be painfully filmed and every set design intricately made. The whole film is very nihilistic and probably Akira Kurosawa's darkest film to date.

10/10

It's quite simply one of the greatest films ever made.

Every shot in Ran was based on storyboards Kurosawa painted himself.

Several hundred costumes were all created by hand, a process that took two years.

The castle destroyed in the middle of the movie was specially constructed on the slopes of Mount Fuji for the film and then burned down. No miniatures were used for that segment, although an optical of another castle being burned at the end was used.

Akira Kurosawa referred to his previous film, Kagemusha, as a "dress rehearsal" for this film. He spent ten years storyboarding every shot in the film as paintings. The resulting collection of images was published with the screenplay.

Akira Kurosawa's eyesight had deteriorated almost completely by the time principal photography began. He could only frame shots with the help of assistants, who used his storyboard paintings as guidelines.

Akira Kurosawa's wife of 39 years, Yôko Yaguchi, died during the production of this film. Kurosawa halted filming for just one day to mourn before resuming work on the picture.

A scene which required an entire field to be sprayed gold was filmed but left out of the final film during editing.

The film used approximately 1400 extras (1400 suits of armor were fabricated, designed by Akira Kurosawa) and 200 horses. A number of the horses had to be imported from the United States. Kurosawa used the extras and horses so efficiently that when the film was ready for premiere, newspapers in Japan were reporting that thousands of extras and horses were used to stage the battles.
 
Burning Man The best Aussie film in quite some time. The casting of a pom, Matthew Goode, as the lead actor was a great decision and his performance raised this film above the ordinary as does the cinematography. The disjointed timeline confuses at first but is also one of the films's strengths because it makes you think and once you know what is going on then it is perhaps closer to merely being a good emotive chick flick. Personally I thought it was a brilliant examination of grief and loss. 8/10
 
The Hunger Games (2012) - 4

Too much suspension of disbelief and shaky camera nonsense. Somehow they made a movie about 24 people killing each other with loads of sweet weapons incredibly dull. I actually quite liked the set/costume design though.
 
Django Unchained 8/10 Great film by QT. Lots of laughs, huge amounts of blood. Waltz and Foxx have good chemistry together. I think your avg QT fan will love the film.

QT put himself in the movie of course and I thought that whole scene was horrible. I understand Django needed to escape but I think it could of been done in a different way.
 
Saw Premium Rush last night. 6/10

Absolutely pointless movie. Still can't understand why JGL took this sorta movie when he is far much better.
 
Hesher - A metal Mary Poppins that although perhaps loses its way a bit is still a thoroughly enjoyable film. The acting is also very good, Joseph Gordon Levitt really is racking up on strong performances.
 
Watching Double Indemnity. I firmly believe old movies like this are generally overrated. Usually about half of the cast are poor actors. Most of them speak in the same tone the whole time. Don't know what this movie would be like without Edward G. Robinson.
Some great lines in it though.
 
Watching Double Indemnity. I firmly believe old movies like this are generally overrated. Usually about half of the cast are poor actors. Most of them speak in the same tone the whole time. Don't know what this movie would be like without Edward G. Robinson.
Some great lines in it though.

Yeah, I'm not that crazy about Double Indemnity either. It was very influential at the time but there's so many better film noir films from that era.
 
Yeah, I'm not that crazy about Double Indemnity either. It was very influential at the time but there's so many better film noir films from that era.

Robinson is great though isn't he. Almost giggled when he said 'see'.

Decent plot and writing from Wilder. Not much wrong from him but the acting just isn't up to par.
 
Like most films of its time, no matter how good, it now seems very dated and the acting very unnatural and stiff. They also talk too fast, no time to absorb what the other person said, as seemed to be the norm then. It doesn't make it a bad film, far from it, but it isn't something I'd watch for entertainment.
 
Robinson is great though isn't he. Almost giggled when he said 'see'.

Decent plot and writing from Wilder. Not much wrong from him but the acting just isn't up to par.

I was in agony the first time I saw him in Key Largo, as I couldn't figure out who he reminded me of and then it finally hit me, Chief Wiggum!

Like what? I also happened to rewatch it recently and still think its top class.

I'd say I enjoyed all of these more than Double Indemnity.

Sunset Boulevard
The Third Man
The Maltese Falcon
Strangers on a Train
The Big Sleep
Key Largo
To Have and Have Not
Shadow of a Doubt
Detour
The Killing
White Heat
 
Like most films of its time, no matter how good, it now seems very dated and the acting very unnatural and stiff. They also talk too fast, no time to absorb what the other person said, as seemed to be the norm then. It doesn't make it a bad film, far from it, but it isn't something I'd watch for entertainment.

Talking fast and smart is in part what defines noir. And Double Indemnity had some the slickest dialogues from that period.