Film The Redcafe Movie review thread

Paju (2009)

Recommend this if you like slow-burning thoughtful Korean dramas. It's about a man and a woman torn by conflicting emotions; both scared by a freak gas explosion that tore another woman limb from limb. There's sexy scenes, some tears, and even a big ass digger that rips down a building to make way for a park so poor people can't live there anymore.

Only available if you submit your absolute disgust at its availability on some very well-known and completely lamentable Torrent sharing sites.
 
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Currently watching a doc on the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps.

It's one thing reading about the camps, it's a whole other thing actually seeing the footage. Makes it all so much more real. The horrors that happened are just mind boggling.
 
VorZakone said:
Currently watching a doc on the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps.

It's one thing reading about the camps, it's a whole other thing actually seeing the footage. Makes it all so much more real. The horrors that happened are just mind boggling.
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Is it Shoah ?
 
A Taxi Driver (2017)

South Korean movies rarely disappoint! Based on a true story about the Gwangju Uprising in South Korea in 1980. There are some cheesy Hollywood moments and the chase scenes were probably not as dramatic in real life, but it was probably pretty damn intense nonetheless. Not a masterpiece or anything, but definitely worth a watch!
 
OleBoiii said:
A Taxi Driver (2017)

South Korean movies rarely disappoint! Based on a true story about the Gwangju Uprising in South Korea in 1980. There are some cheesy Hollywood moments and the chase scenes were probably not as dramatic in real life, but it was probably pretty damn intense nonetheless. Not a masterpiece or anything, but definitely worth a watch!
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Is it available online?
 
OleBoiii said:
A Taxi Driver (2017)

South Korean movies rarely disappoint! Based on a true story about the Gwangju Uprising in South Korea in 1980. There are some cheesy Hollywood moments and the chase scenes were probably not as dramatic in real life, but it was probably pretty damn intense nonetheless. Not a masterpiece or anything, but definitely worth a watch!
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I generally like South Korean movies, but found this a bit bland. Feels like a mediocre Hollywood movie which happens to take place in Korea. Kind of lacks the stuff that usually make their movies good.
 
Vidyoyo said:
Is it available online?
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Everything is:smirk:

pierrethesnack said:
I generally like South Korean movies, but found this a bit bland. Feels like a mediocre Hollywood movie which happens to take place in Korea. Kind of lacks the stuff that usually make their movies good.
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I agree that it's a bit bland(especially compared to other South Korean movies). I think it being a true story kind of forced the director to tone things down.

The true story aspect of it is the most fascinating part for me.The foreign actor is also decent. Usually when Korean(and Japanese) movies feature foreign actors they tend to be jarringly bad.
 
Green Book: A New York Italian becomes the chauffeur of Black piano player Don Shirley (Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali) who does a tour of the Midwest and Deep South in the early 1960s. Based on a real story that the film sticks fairly closely to. I really liked it. It's kind of a feel-good buddy film despite not hiding any of the racism and differences between the main characters. Great acting and beautifully shot. Quite amazing that one of the Farrelly brothers did this!
 
Cheimoon said:
Green Book: A New York Italian becomes the chauffeur of Black piano player Don Shirley (Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali) who does a tour of the Midwest and Deep South in the early 1960s. Based on a real story that the film sticks fairly closely to. I really liked it. It's kind of a feel-good buddy film despite not hiding any of the racism and differences between the main characters. Great acting and beautifully shot. Quite amazing that one of the Farrelly brothers did this!
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Amazing film, easily one of my top 3 ever
 
Godzilla vs Kong :

Finally got to watch it. Quite an entertaining movie. Of course, the plot is nonsensical, humans have no personality, the villain is cliched as hell and the dialogue is really cheesy, beside I didn't like the Mecha Godzilla idea. However, the fight scenes are awesome and some times even epic, and the screen time Kong gets in this movie pleased me. Seriously this big Gorilla has better personality and character than all these human beings in this movie.

Definitely worth it as a pop corn flick movie if you want to turn your brain off for 2 hours.

7/10.
 
Love and Monsters

Maybe a biased review as had to import, but it's pretty good. Think The Last of Us vs. Armageddon vs. The Road-ish. It's coming of age, desolation end of world kind of stuff. Worth a watch and doesn't take itself too seriously for the most part.

7/10
 
MoskvaRed said:
Just to avoid confusion, there was another film called “The Courier” released last year which is actually quite good. A Cold War spy film based on a true story with Benedict Cumberbatch. A 7/10.
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To add to confusion, that movie was originally called Ironbark and they changed the title at almost literally zero hour for reasons and it had a character named Oleg while the other Courier movie starred someone named Olga and an old Gary Oldman.
 
Sound of Metal

Excellent film with excellent performances, especially from Riz Ahmed in the lead. There were a few times I thought it was going to draw on a Hollywood trope or cliche but it didn't and was all the better for it. Incredible sound work too. Make sure your sub woofer isn't set too high. :smirk:
 
Drawfull said:
Love and Monsters

Maybe a biased review as had to import, but it's pretty good. Think The Last of Us vs. Armageddon vs. The Road-ish. It's coming of age, desolation end of world kind of stuff. Worth a watch and doesn't take itself too seriously for the most part.

7/10
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Just watched it. I think I’d add Zombieland to the comparisons. The effects on the monsters are great, and I was impressed by Dylan O’Brien, having only really seen him in the Maze Runner films.

7/10 seems a fair score.
 
Spiderman: Into the Spider-verse (Netflix). This is a very cool film. Great art and style, with lots of creativity with style mixtures, framerate variations, cartoon effects, and so and so forth. That's pretty amazing in such a blockbuster film, which usually play it much safer Tons of great jokes and references as well. And it's a fairly progressively minded film overall. (Well: it's got a mixed-race, non-white protagonist; but also a lack of female characters and aserious case of white-saviour syndrome.)

I couldn't really care about the narrative though; I felt like that was secondary to everything else, which was a pity, as it actually gradually caused me to lose interest in the film. The action didn't help either, as those scenes are so I credibly full and quick and busy that it's hard to make much sense of everything. So near the end, I had largely checked out.

So all in all, very cool, as I said, and lots of fun and entertainment - but as a two-hour film ultimately a little lacking, I think.
 
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Love and Monsters - 7.5/10

Made me write my first review in a few years, so I must have enjoyed it. I did. Hope that helps.
 
Promising Young Woman - 8/10
Very enjoyable thriller. Carey Mulligan comes across as instantly iconic in the lead role, as the titular woman who's been hurt by sexual abuse in her past, and now seeks out revenge on male predators she finds in the wild. Slightly too much 'style over substance' in the film, and I read that it was quite a rushed production, which I can believe. It felt as if the trailer and the ending had been well thought through, and everything else was tacked on to turn it into a full length feature.
Interested to hear thoughts on it, in particular around the decisions made in the ending. I think
it improved the film to give you such a bleak example of how evil and powerful the men in this world are, as opposed to if Cassie was able to achieve her revenge plan unimpeded and continue making the rapists look weak and pathetic. Though I do think there were plenty of unexplored avenues in there - the lawyer, the college dean, were all 'let off' to a degree, rather than the film following the threads it had put in over how the wider elements of society protect these men.

The Mauritanian - 7/10
About 80 minutes in, I would have given that this a much lower rating, with it coming across as a poorly-written, chiche-filled legal thriller, clearly not making the most of its setting. But the section showcasing the lead character's torture at the hands of the US military, around two-thirds of the way through, was so harrowing and well-done that it drags the whole film up. That, combined with just learning more about Guantanamo Bay and the subsequent cover-up of atrocities committed there (under multiple administrations) makes it worth a watch.
 
CassiusClaymore said:
Sound of Metal

Excellent film with excellent performances, especially from Riz Ahmed in the lead. There were a few times I thought it was going to draw on a Hollywood trope or cliche but it didn't and was all the better for it. Incredible sound work too. Make sure your sub woofer isn't set too high. :smirk:
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Watched this last night - fantastic film.

Ahmed kinda reminded me of Al Pacino in this. Maybe it's the eyes?

Anyway... Great cast, lovely naturalistic lighting and above all very impressive sound design. Really liked the ending too, which rarely happens for me in films.
 
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Breakaway (2011 film; on Netflix). It's a feelgood comedy about a group of Indian Canadians who like playing hockey and form a team to compete in a regional competition, while their best player has to deal with his ego and the traditional Sikh family expectations of his dad. The acting isn't great, there are some plot holes, especially who suddenly everything comes together in the last scene (that's not a spoiler, a good ending is inevitable from the start) - but if you don't think about it too long, this is really a fun feelgood film with lots of good jokes. Not sure why it got panned by the critics this much; it isn't quite the worst film out there and isn't pretending to be anything more than it is either.
 
Prospect - Amazon

Really good little original sci-fi film. Good performances from the leads and a great reminder that lower budget films can still be brilliant.

Father daughter relationship that gets thrown a massive curveball and then finds itself transformed into into an awkward and strained buddy movie.

8/10
 
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Leave no trace

Never heard of it prior to watching but took the plunger after positive reviews. Great film about father and daughter relationship undergoing massive transition when they are forced to move from their simple, outdoor life to the confines of modern life with knockout performances from the leads.

8/10
 
Bedeviled (2010)

I'm struggling to remember where I found this but it's a S. Korean thriller in the vein of Oldboy, Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, etc - only nowhere near as good.

It's very contrived as most things happen only to be extreme and violent. The main character is beaten and raped several times by her monstrous husband, who also happens to hire prostitutes and molest his step-daughter. A sense of catharsis is eventually provided by seeing her fight back, which comes as she bludgeons to death all the island-folk with a sickle (not exactly undeserved tbh). Then we realise she's gone absolutely nuts and any sense of sympathy is quickly taken away.

What's annoying is that there's a semblance of commentary in it. It considers women being abased; as well problems normalising violence. It's just all the characters are cut-outs and it ends up being laughably OTT.

Cinematography is very good.

2/5
 
Minkaro said:
Just watched it. I think I’d add Zombieland to the comparisons. The effects on the monsters are great, and I was impressed by Dylan O’Brien, having only really seen him in the Maze Runner films.

7/10 seems a fair score.
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Expected it to be trash and was initially put off by his US version of Martin Freeman impression but it was relatively enjoyable Sunday Morning hangover fare, with surprisingly decent effects and Jessica Henwick being beautiful.

Followed up by Anti-Life which was actual trash, hilariously bad, even worse than The Titan as a netflix sci-fi offering.
 
Molly Maguires (1970)

Decent Connery flick. About Irish miners rebelling.
 
Space Sweepers

Korean sci-fi film on Netflix.

Synopsis nabbed from IMDb: Set in the year 2092 and follows the crew of a space junk collector ship called The Victory. When they discover a humanoid robot named Dorothy that's known to be a weapon of mass destruction, they get involved in a risky business deal.

This is a lot of fun, with a very likeable central cast. It’s got real charm, with a very Rogue One feel to it, and it looks fantastic. I don’t think it needed to be as long as it is, and some of the supporting cast are...not great. Overall though, I’d say it’s worth a watch, with the action scenes being a real highlight.

7/10
 
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Andrei Rublev (1966)
I realize it's probably me, but I found it quite dense and hard to get into. Didn't realize who half the characters are until halfway through the movie. Really liked the feel of it though, has that weight to it which Tarkovsky does really well. Also, never knew much about iconography before, cool to think that there was a sort of Michelangelo of the East. 7/10

Waltz with Bashir (2008)
An Israeli animated documentary showing how war affects the memories of those involved. The filmmaker is trying to figure out what he was actually involved in during his time in the service, but soon finds out that he's not the only one with a shady memory. 8/10

The Lair of the White Worm (1988)
Really liked this. Blends dry humour and horror in a cool way. 9/10
 
Cheimoon said:
Green Book: A New York Italian becomes the chauffeur of Black piano player Don Shirley (Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali) who does a tour of the Midwest and Deep South in the early 1960s. Based on a real story that the film sticks fairly closely to. I really liked it. It's kind of a feel-good buddy film despite not hiding any of the racism and differences between the main characters. Great acting and beautifully shot. Quite amazing that one of the Farrelly brothers did this!
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I liked it but there as a nagging undertone of white bloke saves black bloke while becoming less racist.
 
Volumiza said:
Leave no trace

Never heard of it prior to watching but took the plunger after positive reviews. Great film about father and daughter relationship undergoing massive transition when they are forced to move from their simple, outdoor life to the confines of modern life with knockout performances from the leads.

8/10
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Absolutely brilliant flick.
 
Wibble said:
I liked it but there as a nagging undertone of white bloke saves black bloke while becoming less racist.
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Yeah, kinda. It's actually addressed on Wikipedia - the director was aware of the issue, and tried to avoid it as much as possible. I think it wasn't too bad; after all, they help each other, it's not just one way. But yeah, I see what you mean. At least it's a true story though, they didn't invent the white guy. :)
 
Cheimoon said:
Yeah, kinda. It's actually addressed on Wikipedia - the director was aware of the issue, and tried to avoid it as much as possible. I think it wasn't too bad; after all, they help each other, it's not just one way. But yeah, I see what you mean. At least it's a true story though, they didn't invent the white guy. :)
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I agree and I did enjoy it but then had that nagging feeling later when thinking about it.
 
The Dry is a pretty solid Aussie crime drama with Eric Bana

has a bit of a nordic noir feel about it and it's a lot more polished than yer typical gritty Aussie outback film
 
Synchronic

Designer drug time travelling shenanigans, with the Fifty Shades guy and one of the shit Avengers (Anthony Mackie). Not to be confused with the earlier time travel film of similar name which sounds better than this, to be honest.

Anyway, it's a bit hit and miss. I thought the premise of how the drug works could have been used in much grander ways, and so it feels a bit constrained from time to time. The acting is adequate, and for what it is the story is OK.

5.5/10
 
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