Film The Redcafe Movie review thread

Donut said:
Fault in our stars

Very emotional and heart breaking, yet still in a way a feel-good movie. 8.5/10

Disappointed to hear Jon Green is a massive Liverpool fan :annoyed:
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Watched this last night. We have a bunch of free movie channels at the moment so I'm playing catch up. Hard for me to believe that this is the same pair that's in Divergent, Insurgent and possibly Detergent, Metallurgent...).
Both actors were great and the story while overall is sad, it's not too much.
Didn't like the Isaac character much. If they cut his presence down to the 1st meeting it would've made for a better flick, imo.
 
Child 44 (2015)

"A disgraced member of the military police investigates a series of nasty child murders during the Stalin-era Soviet Union."

Tom Hardy, Gary Oldman... it was never be the best movie ever, but had decent potential. I tried and actually enjoyed the movie a bit but...

Noomi Rapace is shit as always. Movie killer.

5/10

 
Vato said:
Ex Machina - Great film about AI, nuff said. 8/10

Avengers: Age of Ultron - Alright for a superhero flick but why do these films always have to be at least 30 minutes too long? Also had a bit of a Michael Bay feel towards the end, which isn't a good thing. 6/10

Slow West - Was alright, had higher expectations. Nicely shot though. 6.5/10

Coherence - A few friends come together for dinner and some weird stuff starts to happen to them due to some comet flying close to earth. An ok story about alternate universes with some of the most hilariously bad acting performances you will ever see. 6/10

Before I go to sleep - Great thriller starring Nicole Kidman about a woman that suffers from amnesia and only remembers everything for one day since something happened to her. Kidman is great as always. 7/10

John dies at the end - Horror/comedy about some new kind of drug that enhances your senses and opens portals to some very weird worlds. Started very promising but fizzled out towards the end. Could have been so much better if the humor hadn't been so absurd at times. 5.5/10

Mindscape - Thriller starring Mark Strong about a man who can access people's memories and has to investigate a troubled 16 year old girl that has gone on hunger strike. Had my hopes up for this one after reading the plot but alas, the story was pretty weak and the ending disappointing. 5.5/10
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Love posts like these. Multiple films with a quick description and a rating.

I watched Coherence last night because of it. I actually really enjoyed it. Love this type of films. If anyone can recommend me anything similar I'd really appreciate it.

Plus @Vato I was reading a few things about the film afterwards and reading an interview by the director, it seemed as if they told the actors very little about what was to happen and what not. It's quite interesting. They didn't necessarily have a script or something apparently, and were just told what to bring up. Also, if an actor had a significant role to play in the house for that scene, the other actors weren't actually told that it would happen.

Just thought that was quite interesting going with your "bad acting performances", given how their reactions were supposed to be rather genuine it seems.
Like they had no idea when the windows/doors would be knocked to scare them
 
About A Boy (2002)

I was obliged to watch this, and anticipated a godawful, schmaltzy film; as it happens, AAB turned out to be good.

7/10
 
:lol: It made me laugh, and - surprisingly - didn't fall into the bathos trap. Decent stuff.
 
Cheesy said:
Glengarry Glen Ross

Really good movie that I'd been meaning to watch, good ensemble cast. Baldwin's cameo scene is absolutely fantastic, and sets the tone for the movie. Dialogue is fairly memorable - felt it sort of had a Tarantino vibe at times to it, albeit obviously without all the violence. Well worth the watch, though.

8/10
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Need to watch that one yet, your review makes me excited.
 
Hernandez - BFA said:
Love posts like these. Multiple films with a quick description and a rating.

I watched Coherence last night because of it. I actually really enjoyed it. Love this type of films. If anyone can recommend me anything similar I'd really appreciate it.

Plus @Vato I was reading a few things about the film afterwards and reading an interview by the director, it seemed as if they told the actors very little about what was to happen and what not. It's quite interesting. They didn't necessarily have a script or something apparently, and were just told what to bring up. Also, if an actor had a significant role to play in the house for that scene, the other actors weren't actually told that it would happen.

Just thought that was quite interesting going with your "bad acting performances", given how their reactions were supposed to be rather genuine it seems.
Like they had no idea when the windows/doors would be knocked to scare them
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Oh, really? That's interesting indeed. In retrospection, it was ironically only the guy that played an actor in the film who was pretty dreadful. There was a bit at the start of the film, just when the shit went down, where everyone was in panic mode and he asked what was supposed to be a serious question while he had a smile on his face, which annoyed me somehow. Altough it can also be errr... directed at the director for not editing it out or reshooting the scene I guess.
 
I think it's fair to say trailers have gone to their advanced stage of killing the films they are marketing. I've just, or somewhat tried to watch Genisys and Southpaw.....only to have my attention to them go due to the fact they were nicely covered in their trailers. Hell I didn't even search the trailers out, just endless tv spots murdered them.

Southpaws half decent if you like that kind of thing, the obvious targeted crowd will love it. Genisys just has nothing, it's terrible, and it must've wasted so much fecking money on marketing, how did these guys think that giving it such an epic campaign would remotely get it anywhere near breaking even? Typical death of hollywood style overmarketing.

Far more looking forward to Everest from Gyllenhaal, thankfully not seen too much on it, or even read up on it's true story....not a huge fan of these "transformation" baity roles, but he's solid in Southpaw.
 
A Hard Day - Really fun Korean thriller that is both incredibly tense and funny - often at the same time. It's basically about a (already fairly shady) detective who fecks up at the very beginning of the movie, and tries to cover his tracks, only for things to get worse in the process. It lags a bit in the middle, but the opening and closing 30 minutes more then make up for it.

Have you seen this one yet @Werder Herzog ?
 
A Most Violent Year
A very good film that I enjoyed. Despite thinking it was good and enjoying it, I did expect more given some of its reviews and ratings. Oscar Isaacs was a good lead. He was convincing as a man who was trying to expand his business while dealing with different pressures and problems (people stealing from him as well as an investigation into his company with his business suffering as a result) and as someone who claims to be a good person, that does the right thing but leaves a bit of ambiguity in that regard (you question whether he takes the decisions that he does because he believes them to be the moral thing to do or whether he takes them because he believes them to be pragmatic and what is best for business).

Jessica Chastain (who is one of my favourites actors/actresses at the moment and who I think very highly of) played her role well too, but given the praise she received for it and her Golden Globe nomination, I did expect more personally but that's just my opinion. Maybe if I had ignored the good reviews then I would have enjoyed the film more due to not having high expectations. Overall though, I still enjoyed it and thought it was a good watch. I would definitely recommend it. 8/10
 
Sinister 2
Continues from the first but loses all the atmosphere, likeable characters and most importantly, scares. Average film, should have went straight to Netflix 5/10
 
Raul Madrid said:
A Most Violent Year
A very good film that I enjoyed. Despite thinking it was good and enjoying it, I did expect more given some of its reviews and ratings. Oscar Isaacs was a good lead. He was convincing as a man who was trying to expand his business while dealing with different pressures and problems (people stealing from him as well as an investigation into his company with his business suffering as a result) and as someone who claims to be a good person, that does the right thing but leaves a bit of ambiguity in that regard (you question whether he takes the decisions that he does because he believes them to be the moral thing to do or whether he takes them because he believes them to be pragmatic and what is best for business).

Jessica Chastain (who is one of my favourites actors/actresses at the moment and who I think very highly of) played her role well too, but given the praise she received for it and her Golden Globe nomination, I did expect more personally but that's just my opinion. Maybe if I had ignored the good reviews then I would have enjoyed the film more due to not having high expectations. Overall though, I still enjoyed it and thought it was a good watch. I would definitely recommend it. 8/10
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I enjoyed the film, it felt like a lesser version of the Godfather, and Isaac is great, but even though I'm a bit in love with Jessica Chastain, I thought she was miscast for that part.

J. C. Chandor is a great director, don't know whether you've seen his other two films, Margin Call and All is lost, both are very good with different styles.
 
The Gift - taut, tense thriller from Joel Edgerton that unravels a bit in the final third like most films of this nature.

Rosemary's Baby - one of the best. Cassavetes you weasel. Hard to believe Polanski would go on to direct The Ninth Gate which is a risible imitation of this masterpiece. You can see Alex Ross Perry used a lot of this for Queen of Earth.
 
Trainwreck - Amy Schumer plays a commitmentphobe who fall in love with the excellent Bill Hader. It's a pretty enjoyable film and only started to lose my attention about 20 minutes before the end, which is about an hour later than everything else by Judd Apatow, so it's got that going for it. John Cena and Lebron James just about get away with their performances but their amateurness helps cover the fact that Schumer is definitely more of a comedienne than an actress.

Tilda Swinton is unrecognisable as Schumer's boss, she's also insufferably annoying, pretty much ruining every scene she's in. Brie Larson is adorable.

Overall it's a decent film, albeit a little bit too long, a comedy like this, told from a female perspective, is still a refreshing thing and although you don't necessarily like her character it's at least something somewhat new.
 
The last film told 'from a female perspective' was Friends with kids, directed by Jennifer Westfeldt, and it was atrocious. It was basically a film about herself or a fantasized self, and it was dreadfully boring.
 
Forgot to mention, saw The Wolfpack last week which was outstanding. Great documentary about a family of nine siblings in the middle of Manhattan who were banned from going outside, home schooled by their Mother, and effectively only learned about the outside world from their extensive DVD collection.

Interestingly non-judgemental of the parents, even if it does paint a clear narrative. For anyone else who's seen it, am I right that the Dad didn't actually break any laws?
 
:lol:

I meant more that

Despite the fact that he's emotionally damaged his children, mistreated his wife, and there were some vague suggestions of domestic violence, nothing appears to have happened to the father. Is that it, or is he now liable to any charges as a result of the film?

Also wondered a lot about the daughter. The ending hinted that she hadn't escaped the father's 'plan' for them all. Did anything change for her?
 
Nobody Knows - Hirokazu Koreeda (2004)

Japanese film based on a true story of child abandonment. A very well acted film, especially by the child actors, and from what I understand it was a much less grim account of the story. However, in the way it was presented it was hard to believe and the film dragged on wayyy to long taking away from the poetry of a well made film, cinematographically speaking.

7.5 cocks up


Also saw Philomena but was disappointed with it. Steve Coogan´s genius didn´t come out too often and the flashbacks to the 50s were laughably bad and melodramatic. By the end I think Coogan must have felt a bit embarrassed delivering some of the lines he probably had written. Dame Judi Dench gave a great performance acting wise, as did Coogan, but they suffered from an often poorly written script and poor direction. Expected much more from Stephen Frears.

Very depressing true story of yet another scandal of the Catholic church. I thought the most interesting part of this film was how different Coogan´s character and Dench´s character viewed this atrocious policy.
 
Finally saw Straight Outta Compton.

My only problem with it is what others have already mentioned, it sidesteps the whole misogyny issue completely. And in a way it's just Cube and especially Dre just bigging themselves up massively. But from the moment Cube drops the first verse of Gangsta Gangsta in the club, I had a massive smile on my face for the rest of the movie. Great performances all round, and it didn't demonise Heller the way Cube portrayed him later - it showed him to be a more complex character.

It's also crying out for a sequel, with Snoop, Suge, Tupac and Biggie.

8/10
 
Ill Manors

Been wanting to watch this film for ages and it didn't disappoint. Plan B the rapper is the narrator through a series of tracks that feature in his album Ill Manors, the music fits the story brilliantly and makes the film what it is. The film is harrowing in many aspects and it's not easy viewing, if you're in a good mood and want a cheery film this certainly isn't what you want. But what it is, is a brilliantly told story displaying some of the harsher sides of 'Broken Britian' the characters are all convincing with superb acting throughout.

For a film with a budget akin to a new Land Rover it's incredible really, well worth a watch.

9/10
 
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