Film The Redcafe Movie review thread

I actually found the debate around the philosophical meaning of the Stone Island brand to intellectually stimulating!

The Guardian smashes The Brutalist: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/jan/29/architecture-the-brutalist-marcel-breuer

I think “I find our conversations intellectually stimulating” is ripe for memedom.
Now I realize - a day late and a dollar short - that you were already introducing this phrase into the meme generator. You are too quick for me, Square!
 
I'm glad I read it though because the movie sounds awful. Any curiosity has been snuffed out.
Now I realize - a day late and a dollar short - that you were already introducing this phrase into the meme generator. You are too quick for me, Square!
Tbh I’m glad I saw it and I somewhat admire what’s it’s attempting. Plus I’ve been listening to the soundtrack ever since(Which is probably the most memorable thing about it).

Yeah most of the “intellectually stimulating” conversations amount to quotes from an Etsy store.

From interviews Brady Corbet seems like a fun guy but lightweight on any serious ideas.
 
Tbh I’m glad I saw it and I somewhat admire what’s it’s attempting. Plus I’ve been listening to the soundtrack ever since(Which is probably the most memorable thing about it).

Yeah most of the “intellectually stimulating” conversations amount to quotes from an Etsy store.

From interviews Brady Corbet seems like a fun guy but lightweight on any serious ideas.
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Get it embroidered on a throw pillow.
 
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Bad Boys: Ride or Die

I think it's time for the bad boys to hang up their bad boots.

They went for a John Wick/Fast franchise combo with the stylised action and team-building but it just doesn't come together. The humour is stale, the performances lacklustre and some of the camerawork is outright bizarre. I'm shocked that it appears to have been generally received by critics and fans alike...and made a killing at the box office.

Huge disappointment, as I quite enjoyed the third one.

5/10
 
Bad Boys: Ride or Die

I think it's time for the bad boys to hang up their bad boots.

They went for a John Wick/Fast franchise combo with the stylised action and team-building but it just doesn't come together. The humour is stale, the performances lacklustre and some of the camerawork is outright bizarre. I'm shocked that it appears to have been generally received by critics and fans alike...and made a killing at the box office.

Huge disappointment, as I quite enjoyed the third one.

5/10
Did Will Smith slap anyone?
 
Syndromes And A Century

Slow cinema perfection by Apichatpong Weerasethakul. The film is based around two hospitals and broken into two parts but the dialogue from first is repeated almost word for word again in the second. Essentially a repeating story that produces different results.

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Themes of lost love, regrets, reincarnation, rural living, illnesses, new technology and memories. It’s all very dreamy and slow with lots of static shots although when Apichatpong does move the camera it results in some incredible set pieces.

Brilliant film.

FmhrK-KaUAIkLN_


10/10
 
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I’m a big Wes Anderson fan (recent films notwithstanding), and The Darjeeling Limited I feel is his most soulful. Once they dig into what’s happening, the 3 brothers dealing with grief, it’s very elegiac and beautiful. It doesn’t get enough love.
Pretty much the only film of his I liked.
 
Pretty much the only film of his I liked.
You know that guy [Louis Wain] who painted cats and slowly went mad, his images getting progressively staticky and jagged and dense? I think the same thing is happening to Wes Anderson. I think he doesn’t care about narrative clarity, only cares about playing with his sets. Asteroid City is the lower right image.

wain-8-cats_NO-CROPS.jpg
 
Symptoms And A Century

Slow cinema perfection by Apichatpong Weerasethakul. The film is based around two hospitals and broken into two parts but the dialogue from first is repeated almost word for word again in the second. Essentially a repeating story that produces different results.

Ghr7fPgWwAAcW2n


Themes of lost love, regrets, reincarnation, rural living, illnesses, new technology and memories. It’s all very dreamy and slow with lots of static shots although when Apichatpong does move the camera it results in some incredible set pieces.

Brilliant film.

FmhrK-KaUAIkLN_


10/10
Syndromes, innit. Anyway, sounds cool. Where did you see it?
 
Nosferatu - As confirmed by his previous films, Eggers is just a totally vapid filmmaker, without a single original bone in his body and nothing interesting say. This one, mind-numbingly empty with overwrought fx and no interesting actors to look at was a tough one to sit through. Another minute of Lily Rose Depp and I would have been dead.

Watch The Girl With the Needle instead. Vic Carmen Sonne, now that's an interesting actor to look at. A beautifully rendered world of the past.
 
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Infinity Pool

One of those films where the concept and themes surrounding it were potentially very interesting but rather than explore them fully the director (Brandon Cronenburg) chooses to instead indulge in shock tactics which might have worked for his Dad back in the 80's but don't even register these days. That said it's still worth a watch as Alex Skarsgaard goes all in but be prepared to put up with Mia Goth's annoyingly whiny voice for the entire 2 hr run time.
 
Infinity Pool

One of those films where the concept and themes surrounding it were potentially very interesting but rather than explore them fully the director (Brandon Cronenburg) chooses to instead indulge in shock tactics which might have worked for his Dad back in the 80's but don't even register these days. That said it's still worth a watch as Alex Skarsgaard goes all in but be prepared to put up with Mia Goth's annoyingly whiny voice for the entire 2 hr run time.
JAAAAAAMES!
 
Carry On

Why does this get such good reviews? If you take your brain out and replace it with a bag of popcorn and then sit dribbling watching it , then it might just be OK.
Even if you forget about the strung of totally impossible events, well no you cant because its a ridicules film.
OK as an action film, it had some merit, but even that is not a great deal.
There was a good film in there, the concept behind it was sound but the execution was poor.

3/10
 
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Longlegs

Severely overrated. Not particularly scary and too reliant on a handful of jumpscares to elicit a response from the viewer.

Frustrating main character, highly predictable plot/ending and a Cage performance that veered too far towards weird instead of creepy.

Cinematography and sound design were good but brought nothing new to the genre. I'll give Perkins another chance with The Monkey next month but i'll be tempering my expectations.

6/10
 
Encanto - 5/5

Watching our fair share of kids movies with the little one, and this is one of the best so far. Great for younger audiences as it’s so colourful and the music is fabulous, but we parents really enjoy it too. Only downside is it’s now on repeat quite often and every time a song comes on I get “dad, let’s dance!”

Good fun, recommended for parents wanting something to watch with younger kids.
 
The Wild Robot (2024)
I must be dead inside because this movie felt like all the usual beats and all the usual platitudes from every kids movie. I know somebody here wrote that they liked it, but I don’t know why. It was basically the second half of WALL-E but with a robot and a gosling, crossed with the Iron Giant. It didn’t crater like most Disney / Dreamworks animation, and definitely IP infringement with the Fox character that was remarkably similar to Will Arnett’s cynical squirrel in The Nut Job, not to mention the cynical Fox played by Jason Bateman in Zootopia. It didn’t have even half the charm and magic of a Studio Ghibli movie.
Too old/10
 
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The Wild Robot (2024)
I must be dead inside because this movie felt like all the usual beats and all the usual platitudes from every kids movie. I know somebody here wrote that they liked it, but I don’t know why. It was basically the second half of WALL-E but with a robot and a gosling, crossed with the Iron Giant. It didn’t crater like most Disney / Dreamworks animation, and definitely IP infringement with the Fox character that was remarkably similar to Will Arnett’s cynical squirrel in The Nut Job, not to mention the cynical Fox played by Jason Bateman in Zootopia. It didn’t have even half the charm and magic of a Studio Ghibli movie.
Too old/10
You and @Wibble should start a YouTube channel to hate on every film you see!
 
He’s kinda right tbh. I enjoyed it but it definitely feels like it was made by an algorithm trained on those films, and the uplifting finale music basically crescendoing on repeat for the final 40 minutes feels very manipulative after a while
 
My Old Ass Girl on the verge of college keeps meeting her future self after a trip on shrooms. But the future self is confusingly played as real, with real knowledge of the future. Performances are tolerable but predictably her old self gives cryptic advice that is predictably ignored. The film drifts along to a dull and anticlimactic end. Not terrible but not memorable or great either. 5/10
 
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My Old Ass Girl on the verge of college keeps meeting her future self after a trip on shrooms. But the future self is confusingly played as real, with real knowledge of the future. Performances are tolerable but predictably her old self gives cryptic advice that is predictably ignored. The film drifts along to a dull and anticlimactic end. Not terrible but not memorable or great either. 5/10
We started this movie and gave up about 20 minutes in. The actress playing the younger version is unwatchable. I generally love time travel / time manipulation movies but this was rubbish.
 
You and @Wibble should start a YouTube channel to hate on every film you see!

Could be a winner.

You would get lots of views.
I’ll set it up!
I reviewed films for my local paper for about a year. It’s a thankless job and Hollywood never learns from its mistakes.

I agreed to do it because I had planned on being the Sweet Square/Salt Bailly of the paper, hunting for rare, under the radar gems that I could bring attention to. Instead, I kept getting invited to big dumb studio pictures, the kind that Dirty Schwein champions. I couldn’t win for losing. Although I did go to some advance screenings and correctly predicted they would win Oscars. A couple of these little indie companies framed my reviews (I was told) so in some circles my jaded opinion was revered, revered I say!!
 
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He’s kinda right tbh. I enjoyed it but it definitely feels like it was made by an algorithm trained on those films, and the uplifting finale music basically crescendoing on repeat for the final 40 minutes feels very manipulative after a while
The music was especially egregious. Similar to that Beyoncé animated film, Epic. The music in Studio Ghibli films is usually garbage too, so on that they are even.
 
My Neighbours the Yamadas. A 1999 Ghibli film about a middle class family and their daily life adventures. Well, 'film' is stretching it a little: it's a really a series of vignettes around various themes, some as short as a minute. Unsurprisingly, it's based on a regular newspaper cartoon strip - cause that's how it feels, too. Still, it's great fun: brilliant observations and very numerous. It's interesting stylistically as well, since the whole film is done in a sketch style. That's a far cry from Ghibili's usual style, but it's of course perfectly executed and works really well here. (And I was quite surprised that it's actually all done on computers!) So not quite a film in the usual sense, but a good watch anyway. 7/10
 
We started this movie and gave up about 20 minutes in. The actress playing the younger version is unwatchable. I generally love time travel / time manipulation movies but this was rubbish.
You probably made a good choice because the point/twist/reveal at the end is distinctly meh.
 
Just the theme songs! The ones that play over credits with vocals, not the music during the actual story. TO! TO-RO!
Well alright then.

Though Country Road was nice in Whisper of the Heart. But then it played throughout the film, so I suppose you're not counting it.
 
Mr. Holmes (2015)
This proves that I like some movies.
Ian McKellan is great in pretty much everything, so he elevates this movie just with his voice and gravitas. He plays a 93 year old (the actor was 75 during filming) Sherlock Holmes whose memory is failing as he tries to remember the details of his last case. Seeing him aged up was disconcerting but he plays his normal age in the flashbacks. The details of the case are not that perplexing but it’s interesting enough. It was good, McKellan was very good, served its purpose for a movie night. The director, Bill Condon, is fairly traditional in his directorial style. As such, this doesn’t have a signature, if that makes sense, you couldn’t define a Condon movie because his previous works are really different (Twilight, for one) and this could have been directed by anyone. Could have been a BBC production. 7/10