Film The Redcafe Movie review thread

Had to google it just to make sure it wasn’t a joke and it 100% the real name of the film. Looks god awful but in a enjoyable way.
Imagine seeing a trailer for Apocalypse Now and when they show the movie title it says ‘Boat’.
 
To be fair I watched a movie called Brick years ago and it was bloody brilliant.

On that note...

Knives Out 2: The Second Stabbing

Benoit Blanc returns after being invited, alongside a rag tag group of characters, to solve the mystery of a billionaire's coming demise.

It's a genuinely fun movie that doesn't try to copy/paste from the original. Absolutely stellar cast with extra props to Janelle Monae and Edward Norton.

Arguably the best film to come out under the Netflix brand. Saying anything more risks ruining it so just go and watch it.

9/10
 
Dances with Smurfs 2: The Wetness of Water

It looks pretty. Eventually the pretty things don't cover up the fact that the film is absolutely shite.

5/10
 
There's something about Gerard Butler, like, he's awful, and his films are awful, yet I still want to watch him in them?
He’s got the Russel Crow, muscle guy who is now sort of fat charm. There’s something likeable about a leading man who looks like shit.

Also I’ve got a soft spot for because he was in Reign Of Fire(A very odd “gritty” dragon hunting film set in England).
Imagine seeing a trailer for Apocalypse Now and when they show the movie title it says ‘Boat’.
:lol:

I honestly thought Snakes On Planes was the low bar for film titles.They didn’t even use a nice front or any colour
 
He’s got the Russel Crow, muscle guy who is now sort of fat charm. There’s something likeable about a leading man who looks like shit.

Also I’ve got a soft spot for because he was in Reign Of Fire(A very odd “gritty” dragon hunting film set in England).

:lol:

I honestly thought Snakes On Planes was the low bar for film titles.They didn’t even use a nice front or any colour
I wish I looked as shit as Gerard Butler
 
He’s got the Russel Crow, muscle guy who is now sort of fat charm. There’s something likeable about a leading man who looks like shit.

Also I’ve got a soft spot for because he was in Reign Of Fire(A very odd “gritty” dragon hunting film set in England).

:lol:

I honestly thought Snakes On Planes was the low bar for film titles.They didn’t even use a nice front or any colour
Looks like shit? Dude is 53 and looks better than me :lol:

It's the accent that gets me, he sounds Scottish when doing an American accent and he somehow still sounds fake Scottish when doing his normal, Scottish accent. Oh and his accent in P.S I Love you

 
Looks like shit? Dude is 53 and looks better than me
Looking like shit and looking ugly are two very different things Imo. Butler looks like he hasn’t slept in about 4 years and is on a diet of meat covered in jack daniels, thats movie magic compared to Pat Butcher(RIP, no offence). It’s a pro for him as it makes it somewhat relatable.

It's the accent that gets me, he sounds Scottish when doing an American accent and he somehow still sounds fake Scottish when doing his normal, Scottish accent. Oh and his accent in P.S I Love you


Jesus never seen that before. They should have just stuck to his normal Scottish accent as Americans wouldn’t of been able to the difference.
 
I watched a great little Thai film the other day called Last Life in the Universe. It's in that reflective style that loads of great indie movies were around the early 2000s. Largely about experiences in a foreign place. Takeshi Miike is in it. 4/5

Elsewhere...

Summertime Machine Blues - An off-beat Japanese comedy about some high-school students who find a time machine. Very jaunty in that Japanese way but not particularly original and I lost a bit of interest halftime through. 2/5

The Novelist's Film
- One of Hong Sang-soo's recent films and typically about awkward relationships and stuff. It can't have been that good as nothing stands out about it now. His wife is in it and she's really fit so it can have an extra point. 3/5

The Little Girl Who Leapt Through Time
- A live-action version of that animated movie everyone likes. It's not especially memorable but it's directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi who is fecking amazing so I'm not going to give it a bad review. 3/5
 
What was silly about it?
The premise, the overacting, the plot, and the ending.
Specifically: the entire premise of the film is that there is a community of rich white people who steal the bodies of young black men. That’s the level of a Twilight Zone episode, not something that can be sustained for a feature run time.

The silliness of the plot is multifold. First, the doctor’s daughter is the recruiter. We see a box of photos at one point that are the men she’s duped. There are dozens of them. The way it works in the film is that the daughter gets a boyfriend and eventually brings him home to meet the family. In the real world, how long does a couple date before that happens? 1 year minimum? So the daughter has been recruiting boyfriends since she was 3, since we saw about 24 photos, and if she sticks to the schedule it’s one year in, then it would immediately be out to find the next one within a week or two.

Despite social media. And apparently this girl has zero friends or even work acquaintances who would notice the pattern, or ask when each of her boyfriends suddenly disappears. We see one of these black men stay after the transfer, but where are all the others? Presumably the white brain/soul now in the black body abandons their entire family and goes out to live a new, second life. None of these boyfriends have any friends *** either, who would have met this girl and grown suspicious when their friend disappeared and she takes up with a new boyfriend.

***the friend who saves the day is ultimately a ridiculous reshoot idea. More later.

So that’s the way it’s supposed to happen. To even try to think how this would work in the real world is a waste of time, but it would involve something like: the daughter moves to a new city or state each time with a brand new identity. Despite being intimate for months (years?) each time she is willing to essentially kill her boyfriend so her daddy can use their body for one of her daddy’s friends.

Why does she do this? Does she need money? Seems like she spends the bulk of her existence recruiting boyfriends and getting them to the stage of meeting the parents. It’s not a one-off, but basically her job. You’d have to expect the girl’s father to be cool with this idea of fecking as many dudes as she can to get one on the hook, repeat as necessary.

The movie did not show that the couple were shy of social media, left no digital fingerprints, or were otherwise loners. Therefore someone would have figured it out, as someone did in the movie. Why this final time instead of all the others? Unknown. The wise-ass buddy in this film was rewritten for a new ending. Initially the main character ended up in prison with no one believing his story. The new ending has his buddy (a security guard?) randomly driving hours on a whim to magically show up in the woods at heroically the right moment to kill the crazy white bitch, who has transformed minutes earlier from a normal strength woman to some kind of raging killing machine. It’s a cop out, almost literally in this case, and it’s stupid and insulting to an audience.

I found the acting to be very arch but that could be down to taste. I like Bradley Whitford. I like Daniel Kahlua (whatever his name is). Everyone else was a ham sandwich. Special mentions to the glue-sniffing brother who also happens to be a skilled anesthesiologist and OR nurse, the slap happy buddy, Whitford’s cronies, the therapist, and the daughter. They all acted as if they were in different movies from each other, like the only pages of the script they received were ones they were in, and so had no idea what the rest of the movie was about. I’ve heard it described as a comedy, a horror, a horror-comedy, and a suspenseful thriller. It was none of those things. It was supposed to be some damning indictment of white America (which could use some damming indictments, but this was not it), or social satire, or some bitter criticism — but I found it lazy and underdeveloped.
Like I said, it had some cool imagery, like when he sinks down into that black space while being hypnotized. It should have been a 50 minute episode of something like Black Mirror and should have kept the original ending. Black Mirror has done damning indictments of white America brilliantly already, though, in Black Museum.

I think the hoopla surrounding Get Out was because of the crescendoing sense that black filmmakers were being intentionally snubbed in the cases of Spike Lee, and the whole controversy of La La Land and Moonlight being Best Picture etc. I thought Get Out was okay but it wasn’t even the best independent movie about American racism made around that time (2017-2018), and that movie was Blindspotting.
 
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To be fair I watched a movie called Brick years ago and it was bloody brilliant.

On that note...

Knives Out 2: The Second Stabbing

Benoit Blanc returns after being invited, alongside a rag tag group of characters, to solve the mystery of a billionaire's coming demise.

It's a genuinely fun movie that doesn't try to copy/paste from the original. Absolutely stellar cast with extra props to Janelle Monae and Edward Norton.

Arguably the best film to come out under the Netflix brand. Saying anything more risks ruining it so just go and watch it.

9/10

Knives Out 2 Glass Onion 6/10
Not bad, tries a bit too hard to be comedic. One of the better, if the not the best recent Netflix releases but compared to the first one it loses marks. But like you said it’s different. Some of the comedy works, some doesn’t. Overall it’s a fun movie.
 
:lol: ffs.

There's something about Gerard Butler, like, he's awful, and his films are awful, yet I still want to watch him in them?

I'm not sure where, but at some point he crossed the line between "terrible and I won't watch anything he's in" and "terrible but I'll watch anything he's in". It's a thin line, but an important one.
 
Knives Out 2 Glass Onion 6/10
Not bad, tries a bit too hard to be comedic. One of the better, if the not the best recent Netflix releases but compared to the first one it loses marks. But like you said it’s different. Some of the comedy works, some doesn’t. Overall it’s a fun movie.

Yeah I'm with you. I enjoyed it, but the more I thought about it, the more the plot holes appeared.

Like:
Why would you have that manual override button for the Mona Lisa protector??
 
I genuinely wanna watch that plane movie, its got Luke Cage in it!
He was the reason I watched the trailer to the end. :D

But I gotta say, recently rewatched (tried to) Luke Cage and although I could appreciate it as one of the few at the time it aired first it was unbearable now. Liked the whole Bushmasta fight though - top cheese.
 
Passengers (2016)

I honestly enjoyed the movie a lot. I understand from the internet that a lot of people hate Chris Pratt's character, but I find it interesting how the situation effects his decision making and emotions. Being alone drives every person insane and become an emotional wreck. Basically a love story and I like how it ended, but when you think about it, it is kinda messed up ending: it's either a forced romance or love for heroism.

9.5 out of 10
 
Yeah I'm with you. I enjoyed it, but the more I thought about it, the more the plot holes appeared.

Like:
Why would you have that manual override button for the Mona Lisa protector??

Not sure if there was a reason other than
Milles being stupid AF
 
Glass Onion: Knives Out 2

Pale imitation of the first. Long, draggy, not funny and not really a good mystery either.

So many obvious or stupid stuff happens just to further the plot. And the ending was just plain idiotic and makes the whole mystery solving redundant!

3/10. Just for Craig despite his excessive droning.
 
Bullet train on Netflix

saw Brad Pitt and thought it would be decent. It was shit. Too much science fiction, bad plot, people dying and comes back alive. Too long.

product placement of audi and fiji water.

5/10.
 
Passengers (2016)

I honestly enjoyed the movie a lot. I understand from the internet that a lot of people hate Chris Pratt's character, but I find it interesting how the situation effects his decision making and emotions. Being alone drives every person insane and become an emotional wreck. Basically a love story and I like how it ended, but when you think about it, it is kinda messed up ending: it's either a forced romance or love for heroism.

9.5 out of 10

I think people object to the fact that the female protagonist ends up falling in love with a man, who basically handed her a death sentence. His actions are redeemed in a way due to a technicality, but it doesn't change the fact that her falling in love with him after what he did is completely messed up. It's basically the classic "abduction as romance" trope.
 
All Quiet on the Western Front (2022)

Caught this the other day and really liked it. One of the best antiwar movies I have seen, it does a great job in showing the senselessness of it all, but also how young men at the time were drawn into the meatgrinder. I also quite liked how they also show passages with the politicians and military commanders, who largely show a complete disregard for the people actually fighting and dying. The performances are great, and the unusual score does a good job of creating a sense of dread early on in the film. I did make the mistake of watching it in English rather than the original German, which did put me off a few times.

It did get a little silly for me in the end, when the protagonist is killed literally seconds before the armistice takes effect. I get the point about thousands of additional soldiers dying for nothing, but it's almost a little cartoonish to have it happen so close to the end.

Great film. 9/10.
 
JFK

Hadn’t seen this in a while & broke it up over a couple of nights as it is quite long. Enjoyed it thoroughly again. The two books after which the movie was portrayed are also quite good, ‘Crossfire’ being one of the seminal tomes about the assassination being a conspiracy.

8
 
I think people object to the fact that the female protagonist ends up falling in love with a man, who basically handed her a death sentence. His actions are redeemed in a way due to a technicality, but it doesn't change the fact that her falling in love with him after what he did is completely messed up. It's basically the classic "abduction as romance" trope.

Maybe that's one of the reasons I enjoyed the movie. It's quite interesting, how many people would wake up another passenger due to loneliness? It's messed up, like Aurora said best in the movie: it's murder, but we humans are social human beings, I wonder what if the movie ended differently and Aurora was in the same position as Jim. Will she want to wake up a passenger?

There is alot of discussion on the internet with people suggesting rearranging the scenes order. I watched one edit clip on Youtube and I didn't like it. It felt like a horror/thriller movie with a creepy Chris Pratt. This movie is a love story. So I quite liked the simple lineair storyline.

Thank god Lawrence got woken up by Pratt. It sounds weird, but what if a dispicable guy woke her up and rape her or whatever. It just shows that the movie's premise is really difficult to deal with.
 
Maybe that's one of the reasons I enjoyed the movie. It's quite interesting, how many people would wake up another passenger due to loneliness? It's messed up, like Aurora said best in the movie: it's murder, but we humans are social human beings, I wonder what if the movie ended differently and Aurora was in the same position as Jim. Will she want to wake up a passenger?

There is alot of discussion on the internet with people suggesting rearranging the scenes order. I watched one edit clip on Youtube and I didn't like it. It felt like a horror/thriller movie with a creepy Chris Pratt. This movie is a love story. So I quite liked the simple lineair storyline.

Thank god Lawrence got woken up by Pratt. It sounds weird, but what if a dispicable guy woke her up and rape her or whatever. It just shows that the movie's premise is really difficult to deal with.

To be clear, I think the actions of Chris Pratt's character are quite believable and realistic. Lots of people would succumb to that. The actions of J-Law's character, however, are not believable, in my opinion, and it's a problem that the guy ends up being rewarded for extremely selfish and manipulative behavior. And to say that it is good that she was woken up by Pratt, because she could have been woken up by someone worse doesn't make much sense.

As you say there are many ideas on the web about how the movie could have been structured in a different way. In my opinion it would have been better if either A) It was structured like a mystery from J-Laws perspective, where it wasn't clear in the beginning that she was deliberately woken up, or B) Chris Pratt's character ends up dying and it is left unclear whether J-Law will make the same decision he did. At least that would have made it interesting.
 
Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence

Gay WW2 prison drama directed by Nagisa Oshima, staring the likes of David Bowie, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Takeshi Kitano and Tom Conti.

Brilliant and emotional piece of art which deals with such topics as closeted homosexuality in a extreme conservative era, the strange bond between soldiers and the insanity of war.

Some of the imagery in the film is staggeringly beautiful(My only complaint is that I
could have done with some longer takes)with a incredible synth soundtrack layered on top.

Doesn’t really get much better than this.

9/10
 
Home Alone
A comfort film for me and one of my favourite xmas films. Love it 9/10

The Amazing Maurice

Based on theTerry Pratchett book, not too bad and my daughter loved it 6.5/10
 
Thor Love and Thunder.

OK it was not fantastic and compared to Ragnarok, well it doesn't.
It had its moments, Portman and Hamsworth I thought were very good, Bale was decent enough.
Enjoyed the music.
One thing I really did not like Crowe, he was just annoying.
It wont win any awards, but I thought it was ok

5/10
 
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21 Bridges (Netflix)

A cop thriller that delivered more than I expected. A crime with bad timing kicks off a chain of events with unexpected consequences. Chadwick Boseman carries the movie. The movie is engaging despite a slightly predictable plot and contrived ending. Good time pass.

7/10
 
Had a couple of films on in the background today.

Thor Love and Thunder - Seemed like a good pop corn film, decent humour, good action, soundtrack bangs.

How the Grinch stole Christmas - Don't think this has aged well. The character design and production is brilliant but other than that it only really works on a kids level, as a 10 year old I liked it. As a 31 year old it's a bit :/

Spider Man No way Home - Maybe it's because I knew what was coming from spoilers, it didn't have the impact it would have done if seen in the cinema. Felt like the screenplay was a fans fiction attempt at giving everything you would have wanted. But sometimes that's not a good thing. Just felt lazy relying on nostalgia. Not in a rush to see again. I was more interested in the personal relationships rather than the action.

Rocky - Been a while since I've seen this. And boy it's better than I remember, genuinely nearly teared up at the end. The character drama, the background of Philly, the music, urhg. Brilliant brilliant film.
 
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Had a couple of films on in the background today.

Thor Love and Thunder - Seemed like a good pop corn film, decent humour, good action, soundtrack bangs.

How the Grinch stole Christmas - Don't think this has aged well. The character design and production is brilliant but other than that it only really works on a kids level, as a 10 year old I liked it. As a 31 year old it's a bit :/

Spider Man No way Home - Maybe it's because I knew what was coming from spoilers, it didn't have the impact it would have done if seen in the cinema. Felt like the screenplay was a fans fiction attempt at giving everything you would have wanted. But sometimes that's not a good thing. Just felt lazy relying on nostalgia. Not in a rush to see again. I was more interested in the personal relationships rather than the action.

Rocky - Been a while since I've seen this. And boy it's better than I remember, genuinely nearly teared up at the end. The character drama, the background of Philly, the music, urhg. Brilliant brilliant film.
Wtf? This is the ultimate Christmas film and is fecking hilarious. It's so deranged and fun. Can't believe anyone would think it hasn't aged well. If anything it's aged super well and is major entertainment for kids and adults. Way too edgy to be made nowadays but so timeless.
 
Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence

Gay WW2 prison drama directed by Nagisa Oshima, staring the likes of David Bowie, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Takeshi Kitano and Tom Conti.

Brilliant and emotional piece of art which deals with such topics as closeted homosexuality in a extreme conservative era, the strange bond between soldiers and the insanity of war.

Some of the imagery in the film is staggeringly beautiful(My only complaint is that I
could have done with some longer takes)with a incredible synth soundtrack layered on top.

Doesn’t really get much better than this.

9/10

Out of interest, are you still of the opinion that David Bowie is just about on a cultural par with… Amy Winehouse?


If so, Moonage Daydream is a pretty good watch, btw. It’s a semi audio-visual art collage much more fitting for Bowie’s career than a standard biopic doc… im sure it might not be quite Kapida’s Amy, but it’s up there :smirk:
 
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Riders of Justice (2020)

Finally got around to watching this the other night. It's a classic Anders Thomas Jensen movie in the same mold as Flickering Lights, Adam's Apples, The Green Butchers, etc., with dark comedy, quirky characters, absurdism, crime/violence, and the all-important incorporation of emotional depth.

Gruff and stoic military man, Markus (Mads Mikkelsen), is recalled from active duty in the Middle East to care for his daughter, when his wife is killed in a train accident. Things quickly develop, when he is contacted by another passenger from the train, math genius Otto (Nikolaj Lie Kaas), who has deduced that it wasn't an accident, but a deliberate assassination of a key witness in an on-going trial. They set out for revenge aided by Otto's two strange colleagues, while simultaneously trying to care for Markus' daughter.

The film primarily deals with finding meaning in the meaningless and how to emotionally deal with trauma. It is nicely paced and the humorous bits are balanced well with the more serious elements. Mads Mikkelsen and Nikolaj Lie Kaas in particular deliver strong performances as the two leading men, while the rest of cast also does fairly well. It's a fairly predictable plot and final conflict is perhaps resolved a bit easily, but it's never boring.

Very watchable action-comedy. 7.5/10
 
Amelie - whimsical comedy about the introverted Amelie (Audrey Tautou is beautiful), and her attempts to make the people in her life happier. She eventually falls in love with the equally awkward Nico. The biggest feat of this movie is how safe, clean and pleasant the director makes Paris look. 7/10

Boiling Point -
Stephen Graham stars as the chef whose personal and professional life unravels on one busy Christmas night at the restaurant he runs. It’s a ‘one take’ movie, showing what happens over 90 mins. The supporting cast and Graham are all great. 8/10

Battle Royale -
the classic that inspired Hunger Games, Squid Games and a host of others. In a dystopian future Japan, a group of 40 school kids are dropped on a remote island with an array of weapons being told the sole survivor gets to leave with their freedom. 8/10
 
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She Said

Recreation of the New York Times expose on Harvey Weinstein's (and subsequently other powerful men's) sexual harassment and abuse. Carey Mulligan and Zoe Kagan are excellent. It's really good - if you like newsroom dramas like Spotlight, then you'll enjoy this and simultaneously be horrified by the sheer levels men will go to over decades to protect their positions of wealth and/or power, much like in Spotlight.

9/10