Film The Redcafe Movie review thread

R.N7 said:
Prometheus - If a tree or a giant bloody spaceship is falling over you, run to the sides not straight ahead. Man will forever be doomed to the eternal quest for knowledge until she finally learns this. Anyhat way, the film was alright for a while before it turned a bit shitty. Shoddy writing, cardbboard cut-out characters, shallow Von Däniken insightfulness. I never expected to entertained on a cerebral level but as a suspense piece it wasn't really good either, and about as atmospherical as the planets atmosphere. It seems like the Science Fiction genre, well "science" would be a bit too much, is now lost to hacks like Abrams and Lindelöf.
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I seem to be in the minority when it comes to Prometheus. I saw in the cinema in 3D which I think helped as the visuals were excellent. For some reason the plot holes and questionable plot didn't bother me and in the end I thought it was intense and visually striking, if a little stupid. Fassbender was great too. I actually really liked it.
 
Keenst said:
I seem to be in the minority when it comes to Prometheus. I saw in the cinema in 3D which I think helped as the visuals were excellent. For some reason the plot holes and questionable plot didn't bother me and in the end I thought it was intense and visually striking, if a little stupid. Fassbender was great too. I actually really liked it.
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It's that kind of attitude that keeps hacks like Lindelof in the business, shame on you!
 
R.N7 said:
It's that kind of attitude that keeps hacks like Lindelof in the business, shame on you!
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It did look great though and I loved the soundtrack, too much style over substance though. I guess it's a guilty pleasure of mine!
 
Out of the Furnace

Enjoyed this. Bit of a nothing story (well nothing you haven't seen done before) but a really good cast elevate it somewhat and Bale is quite understated in the lead. Worth a watch as long as you don't expect the earth.
 
Dead of the Nite.

I low budget British horror and you could tell.
It was part normal film and part found footage.
It was neither scary or very horrific, the story was typical haunted house stuff a group get locked in over night and well you can guess what happens.
There is a twist at the end but by the time you get to it , you dont care.
The acting was dreadful, the worst by far was Gary Mavers has Detective Anderson, some of the worst acting I had seen for a while.
Just how they got Tony Todd to appear in it is anybody's guess.

Early contender for worst film of the year.

1/10
 
R.N7 said:
It's that kind of attitude that keeps hacks like Lindelof in the business, shame on you!
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Lindelof seems to have somewhat of a cult following somehow, I guess thanks to Lost especially. It annoys me how some people feel that just throwing out some unanswered and unanswerable questions in a half arsed way is intelligent in some way, he seems like a really lazy producer/writer/whatever he is.
 
Just watched the 1984 TV movie Solomon Northup's Odyssey based on the same book as 12 Years a Slave. Directed by Gordon Parks (Shaft), it's a more coherent and better effort than McQueen's version. I'd also guess that McQueen and his crew drew on Parks' film but I haven't seen that mentioned in any interviews.
 
Animal Kingdom - Fantastic Aussie crime drama. It was clever, tense and brutal. There was a typically sombre mood throughout, as I've come to expect from Australian cinema - not quite as dark but it reminded me of Snowtown in terms of style. The young actor playing the lead was superb I thought, while Guy Pearse was impressive as usual. Considering this was the director David Michoud's firm film is was extremely impressive.
 
Keenst said:
Animal Kingdom - Fantastic Aussie crime drama. It was clever, tense and brutal. There was a typically sombre mood throughout, as I've come to expect from Australian cinema - not quite as dark but it reminded me of Snowtown in terms of style. The young actor playing the lead was superb I thought, while Guy Pearse was impressive as usual. Considering this was the director David Michoud's firm film is was extremely impressive.
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Excellent film loosely based on a true story. I think it was a lot better than Snowtown, probably the best Australian film of the last decade.
 
Robocop (1987)
Re-watched the film that destroyed my childhood dream of wanting to be a cop. Bloody brilliant, and watching this again pisses me off even more how they remade it and take the piss out of it at the same time. If I remade this, all I would do is fix up the ED209 shots by replacing the machine with CGI and release it like that. One of my favourite films of all time. The film was waaaay ahead of its time. 9.5/10
 
New mastered-in-4K blu-ray of Robocop came out recently, but unfortunately, they didn't do a great job with it. Don't think Verhoeven was a part of that, probably some studio suit. Still improvement over older releases.

Dick, you're fired!

Rules to remember: no adult images or videos; mind your language; criticise the post not the poster; remain respectful to other posters;

Oops. Directive 4

http://www.imagebam.com/image/bab4a8301864308

Thank you.

Best superhero movie. Bloody brilliant. Literally.
 
Dirty Schwein said:
Robocop (1987)
Re-watched the film that destroyed my childhood dream of wanting to be a cop. Bloody brilliant, and watching this again pisses me off even more how they remade it and take the piss out of it at the same time. If I remade this, all I would do is fix up the ED209 shots by replacing the machine with CGI and release it like that. One of my favourite films of all time. The film was waaaay ahead of its time. 9.5/10
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One of my favourite films of all time.
 
rednev said:
Really enjoyed Wolf of Wall Street. I thought it was going to be another Gordon Gecho type film glorifying douchebaggery on the stock market, and it sort of was, but none of the characters took themselves seriously which made it more enjoyable. I thought the addition of Jonah Hill worked very well.
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Jonah Hill was a master class in that movie.
Some of his lines and the way he delivers them..."Do crack with me bro" had me in stitches
 
Keenst said:
Just watching Magnolia again and I really think it's a masterpiece.
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Good one. I thought this was an epic film as well. Rarely has there been a film that has said so much about so many topics. And what a cast ensemble. Even had Henry Gibson, for god's sake.

Too bad for Paul Thomas Anderson, as there's nowhere to go but directorially downhill from there.
 
Keenst said:
Just watching Magnolia again and I really think it's a masterpiece.
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Completely agree. I absolutely loved it. PSH is my favourite performance in that film but there are about 5 or 6 stunning performances worthy of awards. And what a soundtrack from Aimee Mann. It works perfectly with the pace of the film.

R.N7 said:
Nebraska - A few cute moments, typical Alexander Payne film, decent but doesn't leave much of an impression.
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Just finished watching this myself. Agree it's very typical of the director's style but I think I liked it a bit more than you, I think it's my favourite film of his that I've seen, after Sideways. I love the mood of the film and it worked well in tandem the humour. The father/son relationship was very moving and believable. And visually the film was great.
 
Archie Leach said:
PTA is a great director who isn't much liked 'round these parts. A little like Jonah.
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Who doesn't like PTA? Show yourselves!

Boogie Nights is one of my all time favourites and I really need to watch There Will Be Blood again. Left me a bit cold the first time around but I've heard it gets better with multiple viewings.

The man even got a performance out of Adam Sandler ffs.
 
Punch Drunk Love is a film that doesn't get much love I feel, I really enjoyed it. There was something about it that made me like it, and it wasn't Sandler's good looks.

PTA's a great director, no doubt.
 
CassiusClaymore said:
Who doesn't like PTA? Show yourselves!

Boogie Nights is one of my all time favourites and I really need to watch There Will Be Blood again. Left me a bit cold the first time around but I've heard it gets better with multiple viewings.

The man even got a performance out of Adam Sandler ffs.
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Yeah give There Will Be Blood another chance, it really is brilliant. The only one of his films I wasn't crazy about was Punch Drunk Love but I saw it a long time ago, I'll watch it again some time.

I haven't seen The Master yet, I've heard mixed reports but I'm looking forward to it.
 
Watch The Master for the late master Seymour Hoffman, Phoenix and Adams acting master class, the Johnny Greenwood score and the opening 5 minutes. Bemoan The Master for PTA Anderson chucking his rain of frogs all over the place.
 
R.N7 said:
I enjoyed Magnolia until the frogs arrived.
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I personally thought the whole falling frogs thing was a brilliant surreal touch to a movie filled with fecked up believable characters and their pervading general negativity, and tried not to read too much into it and just enjoy the not-quite-definable poetry of it all . . .

*my fav scene of the film was the black journalist chick questioning Tom Cruise's character




Sad to see Phil Hoffman there.



http://www.culturesnob.net/2007/05/why-are-there-frogs-falling-fr/
Why Are There Frogs Falling from the Sky?
(Culture Snob’s first offering for its own Misunderstood Blog-a-thon.)

Why does nobody take the frogs seriously? Why does nobody question them?

In Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia, the cataclysmic, apocalyptic rain of frogs seems casually accepted. Nobody says: “That’s some fecked-up shit, those frogs.”

And I guess it’s a testament to Anderson’s script, direction, tone, pacing, and heavy foreshadowing that I’ve never heard anybody say anything along the lines of: “You know, I was with it right up until the frogs.” I led a small-group discussion on the movie last year, and nobody had any problem with the amphibians, and nobody ascribed a grand meaning to them. As Stanley Spector says in the library, with wide eyes but no curiosity: “This happens. This is something that happens .”

Stanley is a child, though, and it’s dangerous to confuse his extensive knowledge of trivial facts with wisdom. His statement comes in direct opposition to the words of the movie’s infrequent narrator, who admonishes the audience in the prologue not to brush off coincidences and strange events: “This is not just ‘something that happened.’ This cannot be ‘one of those things.’”

So: What are we to make of the frogs?

Most Christians and Jews will recognize the frogs as a motif from Exodus. In case that wasn’t clear, Anderson fills Magnolia with the numbers eight and two (the chapter and verse, respectively, in which the frogs appear) and several explicit references to Exodus 8:2. The frogs are one of the plagues that visit Egypt as God tries to compel Pharaoh to release the Israelites from enslavement.

You probably knew all of those things, but that basic background doesn’t illuminate what the frogs mean, or why they’re so prominently featured in a seemingly irreligious movie.

Magnolia has but one devout character — police officer Jim Kurring — and the script implicitly mocks him as a simpleton whose piety seems contingent on favorable treatment from God. When he loses his gun, he thinks the Lord has abandoned him and begs for help. Kurring is good-hearted but not rigorous in his faith.

And the movie is populated with lost, lonely people. Addicts, adulterers, misogynists. Greedy, mean, egocentric. Friendless, pathetic, stunted. They’re miserable, and many of them are wicked to boot. These characters are so far gone that only something nearly miraculous could awaken them from their moral and spiritual slumber. God’s weapon of choice? Frogs.

You might dispute the divine source of the frogs, noting that reports of natural frog precipitation are hardly unprecedented. But the movie offers no hint of a rational explanation.

More importantly, a scientific accounting for the frogs would render them meaningless as a narrative device. The amphibian downpour would merely be, in Stanley’s words, “something that happens,” no different from a spectacularly heavy rain. And if the frogs are insignificant beyond assisting the plot, then Magnolia must be a terrible, lazy movie. Either the frogs are an essential, pregnant component of the film, or they ruin it.

I subscribe to the former view, and the only way to justify the frogs is to bring God into the picture — the jealous, angry, ostentatious Lord of the Old Testament. Sometimes you gotta break out the big guns, particularly when people are this spiritually dead.

And once you have their attention, you can add a little sugar. The climatic fury is tempered in the denouement by the simple truths spoken by Stanley and Jim, and the gentle assistance offered by Jim and Phil, and the mother’s comfort given by Rose. They inject some New Testament values: Love thy neighbor, and treat others as you’d like to be treated. “You have to be nicer to me.” “Sometimes people need a little help. Sometimes people need to be forgiven.”

And sweet Phil Parma, the only character to consistently show empathy and compassion for another human being in this profane place, cries.

Phil wept.
 
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I usually like PTA films but I gave up on the Master mid-way through. It was boring me to tears. I don't know if I just wasn't getting it or what. Maybe you just need to be in the right mood and I should give it another chance?
 
Tarrou said:
I usually like PTA films but I gave up on the Master mid-way through. It was boring me to tears. I don't know if I just wasn't getting it or what. Maybe you just need to be in the right mood and I should give it another chance?
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Well, it doesn't really get any better after that, like most PTA films it fails to tie everything up in a good way.
 
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