Film The Redcafe Movie review thread

Good to hear that there are more of us that liked it mate! :D

And yes the visuals were somethhing else agreed!




Hehe it is annoying when you understand the plot twists from start that i an understand mate :D And i totally agree that the AI would bury us long before we could fight back.

But the thing that made me think is that it is only us humans that think that we need to control and dominate others. If you take out the emotions then it does not make sense to go to war or dominate others or risk dying ?

I mean a AI would not think that would make any sense, cause it is not primitive and have emotions.
I enjoyed it too, mainly due to the visuals.
 
You just know that once he hits the big leagues as a Hollywood director he'll move heaven and earth to scrub the internet of his Alex Kidd obsession. We need to keep receipts.
I'm loud and proud about that. Even have an Alex Kidd keyring :lol:

Now I'm really confused, as Dirty Schwein is a well-known filth merchant.
It's technically a very worthwhile achievement. The narrative is full of holes but I'm ok with that.
 
@Sweet Square there's a Verhoeven discussion taking place
The best type of discussion. I did rewatch Starship Trooper after the super bowl ended and it was really on point.

It did make me think of The Zone Of Interest
which has been getting a lot of praise with even Alfonso Cuarón calling it the most important film this century(He is wrong as the important film is still Children Of Men but I guess Cuarón is the one guy who can’t say that). But imo it misses something important which how stupid the modern world is. Verhoeven never misses this and has been only more vindicated over time.
I finally watched Benedetta yesterday and once again Verhoeven walks a tight rope and pulls it off. There's many different themes that are at the heart of the film, such as sexual freedom and its relationship to religion, ambition, etc. but it never feels messy or muddled. It's also a very pretty film to watch, and I'm not only referring to the fact that Virginie Effira is nude in large parts of it, though I'm also mainly referring to the fact that Virginie Effira is nude in large parts of it (helps that she's been a massive crush of mine for the best part of 2 decades). It's exhilarating, it's a lot of fun, seeing a sword swinging Jesus on a horse beheading people in visions was pretty fecking awesome, and yeah it's just a really great film.

Verhoeven needs to make more films.
“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a person's enemies will be those of his own household.”

I haven’t read it yet but Veroheven has a book on Jesus and I’ve heard him in interviews say Jesus is for him a Che Guevara revolution figure. The depiction of the class divisions and how openly patriarchal the society was from bottom level all the way to top with the church was brilliant out on screen. Poor women were treated as no better than farm animals and while this brings sympathy from the nuns, they also view poor women as a threat to their status.

Imo what really makes this film stand out from other greats like The Gospel According to St. Matthew or The Last Temptation Of Christ is the miracles don’t have to be true for Veroheven. The cheat code bread spawning isn’t the radical element of Jesus instead it’s the message of universal love. And not in the hippy sense but love as a act of violence. If a lesbian nun is the chosen one of Jesus then this society hierarchies are destroyed.

Plus in true Veroheven style it’s so vulgar and entertaining. Piss, shit, farts, beheadings and Jesus dildos. A beautiful artwork from the Dutch god.
I believe he's returning to make American films soon.
Yep. It’s going to be about a woman who works as a Republican Party operator. Also I think script is from the same guy who did Robocop.
 
Fat Joe as a therapist, I’m here for it.
Only 18 reviews so far but 78% on RT!

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/this_is_me_now_a_love_story

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Sandra Huller, so good in TONI ERDMANN, is astonishing in ANATOMY OF A FALL. Can’t wait to see THE ZONE OF INTEREST.

End Of Line.
 
I'm not particularly au fait with Bollywood generally, but you're quite right, and it's all the things my wife mentioned to me prior to watching (although she did say his first movie Kabir Singh was much better, but I have no inclination to watch it).

There's also homages to No Country for Old Men and Oldboy in there, which I'm not sure quite worked.

Most of the bullet points above is leans in to why it's such a crap movie - it's a relic of a day / time that's gone. I also found it, not necessarily Islamophobic, but intentionally putting the Muslims in a really poor light (maybe that is Islamophobic) and maybe its the wider propaganda angle we're seeing being pumped out of Bollywood at the moment where Muslims = Bad (eg Baaghi 3). For example, the scene where the protagonist is literally cheating on his wife is shown as poetic love making, with a acoustic hindi song, and very sensual and soft shots of two bodies in rhythm. The wedding night for Bobby Deol's character (a Muslim), is shown to be forceful almost violent, where the groom has blood on his face after murdering someone, where there's no sensuality, and the two other wives are having to witness it. It's just such hammy screenwriting and really on the nose...even for Bollywood!

All in all, it's a shit movie, and the end credits scene where they're teasing a sequel looked even worse.

You're not wrong on the Islamophobia front. The issue is that other Bollywood movies are so blatant in their Islamophobia that this one pales in comparison. It's fashionable to have negative guys be Muslims since it's what the narrative in the country is and the spineless bunch of celebs we have here are crawling when asked to bend.
 
36 hours of flights either side of 30 days off!

Maqbool: Bollywood adaptation of Macbeth, set in the Mumbai underworld. 8/10
Very Urdu-ised, really felt like a foreigner having to read subtitles half the time. Going to use the excuse that plane audio was hard to hear. Full thing is up on Youtube.

Parasite: Lived up to the hype 9/10

Glass onion knives out 2 whatever:
Awful. Totally neglects the detective story in favour of trying to shit on Elon Musk. The left's answer to Ben Shapiro movies where every culture war grievance is laid out and everything else including plot is forgotten. A few jokes land. 3/10

Crimes and misdemeanours
: Annie Hall is my favourite movie. This doesn't hit those highs - is less funny and more serious - but still works well. All the scenes with his niece are super uncomfortable now :lol: 8/10.

Shinde Ka Viral Video: The first Netflix movie I watched and exactly as bad as I expected from Netflix's reputation here and on twitter. Bad acting, stupid everything. Was hoping it was leading up to the Gone Girl twist, which would have made it interesting, but ignored that in favour of getting its social messages across. 2/10

A Wednesday:
A tale of two cities two movies in one city. The first half is a 10/10 B-movie. Great over-the-top caricatures of tough cops, fat corrupt cops, naive journalist, cool internet hacker!!. Plus the most useless police chief in human history, delusions of Mumbai police professionalism that are so transparently rubbish, using the same few 360 pan shots again and again, insane sense of commuting which should be an obvious joke to anyone who's ever been in Mumbai*. Loved all of it. Second half is a super serious ode to vigilantism. The two halves average out to a 5/10.
Continuing the previous page discussion - it was probably a bit Islamophobic, but wouldn't have cared a bit if the silliness of the first half continued.

Get Out: Lived up to the hype despite almost knowing the full plot by osmosis. 9/10.

Manhattan Murder Mystery: pleasant light film, Woody Allen always plays the same character and hits the same themes, surprisingly good action sequence at the end. 7/10.

Past Lives: In the mood for love and Frances Ha are great movies. This one reminded me of both, and didn't come close to either. Cliched, self-pitying. A protagonist who has it all, very unlike those other two movies, hard to empathise with. The absolute perfect husband and crush for the story, Disney-like if you want a semi-sad ending. Wiki says that it parallels the writer-director's life - least surprising news ever. The immigrant stuff didn't work for me, for a while, every second word in the movie was "Korea", "Korean", "Seoul".
"I want to understand the language of your dreams". Oh feck off!!!! 5/10.


*For anybody from there -- cop moves from CST to Goregan/Borivali by road, a 2+ hour journey, in under 30 minutes, reaches back instantly, while the Chief Minister goes from Bandra to CST, half the distance, in a longer time. All this in a movie with a ticking clock element where time is supposed to matter. Small detail which I loved: while taking the prisoners from CST to Juhu, they keep showing them on Marine Drive going in the opposite direction, towards Nariman Point, in maybe 5 different shots.
 
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36 hours of flights either side of 30 days off!

Maqbool: Bollywood adaptation of Macbeth, set in the Mumbai underworld. 8/10
Very Urdu-ised, really felt like a foreigner having to read subtitles half the time. Going to use the excuse that plane audio was hard to hear. Full thing is up on Youtube.

Parasite: Lived up to the hype 9/10

Glass onion knives out 2 whatever:
Awful. Totally neglects the detective story in favour of trying to shit on Elon Musk. The left's answer to Ben Shapiro movies where every culture war grievance is laid out and everything else including plot is forgotten. A few jokes land. 3/10

Crimes and misdemeanours
: Annie Hall is my favourite movie. This doesn't hit those highs - is less funny and more serious - but still works well. All the scenes with his niece are super uncomfortable now :lol: 8/10.

Shinde Ka Viral Video: The first Netflix movie I watched and exactly as bad as I expected from Netflix's reputation here and on twitter. Bad acting, stupid everything. Was hoping it was leading up to the Gone Girl twist, which would have made it interesting, but ignored that in favour of getting its social messages across. 2/10

A Wednesday:
A tale of two cities two movies in one city. The first half is a 10/10 B-movie. Great over-the-top caricatures of tough cops, fat corrupt cops, naive journalist, cool internet hacker!!. Plus the most useless police chief in human history, delusions of Mumbai police professionalism that are so transparently rubbish, using the same few 360 pan shots again and again, insane sense of commuting which should be an obvious joke to anyone who's ever been in Mumbai*. Loved all of it. Second half is a super serious ode to vigilantism. The two halves average out to a 5/10.
Continuing the previous page discussion - it was probably a bit Islamophobic, but wouldn't have cared a bit if the silliness of the first half continued.

Get Out: Lived up to the hype despite almost knowing the full plot by osmosis. 9/10.

Manhattan Murder Mystery: pleasant light film, Woody Allen always plays the same character and hits the same themes, surprisingly good action sequence at the end. 7/10.

Past Lives: In the mood for love and Frances Ha are great movies. This one reminded me of both, and didn't come close to either. Cliched, self-pitying. A protagonist who has it all, very unlike those other two movies, hard to empathise with. The absolute perfect husband and crush for the story, Disney-like if you want a semi-sad ending. Wiki says that it parallels the writer-director's life - least surprising news ever. The immigrant stuff didn't work for me, for a while, every second word in the movie was "Korea", "Korean", "Seoul".
"I want to understand the language of your dreams". Oh feck off!!!! 5/10.


*For anybody from there -- cop moves from CST to Goregan/Borivali by road, a 2+ hour journey, in under 30 minutes, reaches back instantly, while the Chief Minister goes from Bandra to CST, half the distance, in a longer time. All this in a movie with a ticking clock element where time is supposed to matter. Small detail which I loved: while taking the prisoners from CST to Juhu, they keep showing them on Marine Drive going in the opposite direction, towards Nariman Point, in maybe 5 different shots.
fecking hell, you’re schizophrenic, my friend!
Parasite was meh (disagree)
Glass Onion 2 sucked balls (agree with you)
Crimes And Misdemeanors was brilliant (agree)
Get Out was silly as feck and one of the most overhyped films I’ve ever seen (disagree)
Manhattan Murder Mystery was minor Woody Allen at best, 4/10 (disagree)
Haven’t seen the others on your list.
 
American Underdog
The story of Kurt Warner and his rise from a nobody to an NFL MVP hall of famer. I'm a sucker for sports movies and enjoyed this. It's full of clichés and every beat is predictable but reading the true story behind this, it's actually quite accurate. I liked the chemistry between Zachary Levi and Anna Pacquet as well as their performances but he was too old for this role and she had the most ridiculous wig, so distracting. Overall I had a good time 7/10

Thanksgiving

Full of violence and gore, as expected from an Eli Roth movie but beyond the setting, it adds nothing to the slasher genre and the twist is one you can see coming a mile away, taking away any entertainment from the final act. Avoid 3/10
 
:drool:

36 hours of flights either side of 30 days off!

Maqbool: Bollywood adaptation of Macbeth, set in the Mumbai underworld. 8/10
Very Urdu-ised, really felt like a foreigner having to read subtitles half the time. Going to use the excuse that plane audio was hard to hear. Full thing is up on Youtube.

The director has done a trilogy of adaptations into Bollywood - I've only seen the last one which is an adaptation of Hamlet called Haider, and it's excellent. It's set in occupied Kashmir, and there's an excellent cameo role for Irrfan Khan as well. Definitely try and watch it if you can.
 
You're not wrong on the Islamophobia front. The issue is that other Bollywood movies are so blatant in their Islamophobia that this one pales in comparison. It's fashionable to have negative guys be Muslims since it's what the narrative in the country is and the spineless bunch of celebs we have here are crawling when asked to bend.
RRR as well. I read an analysis of that aspect after I saw it. I think it was this one: https://www.vox.com/23220275/rrr-netflix-tollywood-hindutva-caste-system-oscars-2023.

(I'll admit that I know virtually nothing about Bollywood or Tollywood and Indian films.)
 
I have to plan a rewatch.
Any version of the film is brilliant but for me I like the non criterion versions(For some reason criterion copy has a green tint everywhere)

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I feel I watched it too young, and while I appreciated it, where I am in life now will only ensure I love it much more.
I’m the same tbh as the first time watching it I was amazed by the visuals. I did somewhat get the overall doomed love story/yearning vibes but well plenty of grey hairs later I definitely appreciated the story a lot more.

Although one of the reasons why I love Wong Kar Wai work so much is because I can’t really explain why I love it. There’s just a magic to his films.
 
Past Lives (2023)
An achingly poignant meditation on lost love. Superbly acted, confidently directed in a way that never dips into melodrama. The male lead’s performance was so heartfelt it hurt, as he struggled to come to grips with his feelings for Nora. This performance when seen alongside Jeffrey Wright and Paul Giamatti makes both of the latter seem cartoonish.
Excellent film.
9/10
 
  1. Oppenheimer
  2. The Zone of Interest
  3. Past Lives
  4. Barbie
  5. American Fiction
  6. Maestro Killers of the Flower Moon
  7. The Holdovers
  8. Maestro Killers of the Flower Moon
Re-ordered.

Have yet to see:
Poor Things
Anatomy of a Fall
 
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One of those movies looks seriously out of place in that list.
True (assuming you mean Barbie). But it represents a bigger achievement than the films below it. Barbie, and all the films below it in the list had trouble with their endings. Second half of Barbie tailed off really hard and was bad. The very ending reeked of "studio notes", or at the very least Gerwig trying to show that she didn't completely sell out (although she did completely sell out). However, the way she shot the movie, the sets, the vibe, were all great in the first half. It was let down by a story that turned saccharine and pandering.

American Fiction was a very funny film but I don’t see why the accolades. It was like an extended Curb Your Enthusiasm show. Jeffrey Wright was good, but this nomination is more of a "we finally are recognizing you for your body of work" than for anything he does in the film. I enjoyed AF more than Barbie, but the achievement, the imagination and world building, were greater in Barbie.

I didn’t like any of Killers Moon except for a couple De Niro scenes. I thought DiCaprio was painful to watch, and Gladstone was somnambulistic. It was incredibly over indulgent and trying desperately to be a Scorsese movie instead of just being a Scorsese movie. The plot or action seemed to take place in a land beyond time, and none of the main characters' folie a deux
Gladstone knows DiCaprio is a coyote and only after her money, she's told this by her family, and she still marries him, and in the reverse, DiCaprio helps murder his wife's family and even his wife herself without ever appearing to think that it would affect his kids
was ever addressed to any satisfaction. The book, apparently, is told from the FBI investigator's perspective and then goes deep into Gladstone's family, which is how this should have been done. Making it from DiCaprio's perspective just undermined whatever cred they were trying to earn.

Maestro was well made but totally pointless and was total Oscar bait, with a lot of Academy fan service like changing the shooting style with each passing decade depicted, but the story was a giant “so what” (although Mulligan was great). Cooper is always BRADLEY COOPER, and this movie was a triumph of nose prosthetics and aging makeup, but not really anything special regarding acting. And unless Bernstein talked like he had a head cold, Cooper fecked up his voice too. Well made but without any substance.

Holdovers was a cartoon wannabe Hal Ashby movie. Everything about it wanted a 1971 veracity, but almost to a pathological, obsessive level. I'm still annoyed by the two main characters. The kid was about 26 and did not fit the role at all, and Giamatti was a total cartoon, just ridiculous.

Can't decide which one I dislike more out of Holdovers and Maestro. Both were better made films, the skill was higher than Barbie, but I didn't like those movies. The craft was exceptional but the experience of sitting through those movies was a fecking chore (like reading my comments).

Zone and Past Lives were highly skilled works where everything served the purpose of the film’s point. Maestro, Killers, Barbie were guilty of style over substance. American Fiction and Holdovers were made for TV movies.
 
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Saw Wim Wenders' new movie Perfect Days today. I liked it well enough, and there's certainly nothing bad about it, but it also fails to really take off (which probably is intentional given what the movie actually is, but it feels a bit meh). Great central performance though, and it is never not enjoyably, sometimes even quite funny. It reminded me quite a bit of Jarmusch' Paterson which I think I had a similar reaction to. A really solid, if a bit unspectacular, piece of filmmaking. 7/10
 
The Creator 9/10.

Really great movie that makes you think about AI and humanity.

Almost cried 2 times, so i think i need to go to my doctor and ask if i can get a shot of testosterone, the levels might be low.

The Creator

I also loved it. The visuals and music were stunning. The story was very moving, Gemma Chan was lovely again (we need a Eternals sequel with Gemma back in the lead).
The movie took some ideas from real life events i.e. Vietnam war and Tibet (I have a feeling that this movie is banned in mainland China) and other movies, like The Fifth Element and especially Avatar.

Unexpectedly, the AI in this movie was nothing special military-wise. They didn't use advanced weaponry. I mean, I think the robots could have, but my guess is they just didn't want to. It was quite interesting to see the robots embracing the spiritual side (Dalai Lama, Tibet) and advancing into a more peaceful and spiritual society, so actually the disadvantage in combat vs the Americans made sense to me.
But yeah, the robots could have easily designed super advanced weapons of mass destruction and obliterate US cities, but they didn't. Instead, the Nirmata created a child robot who could turn on and switch off devices and machines from a distance. It's like me closing my eyes and wish for world peace! The AI's goal was always to shut down Nomad in order to achieve peace instead of genociding the human race.

We need a sequel.

9 out of 10
 
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Gomorra
Absolutely amazing film. I love it that there's no main plot really and things just happen in a hazy, dreamy brutal way.

10/10
 
While there are a few hidden gems here and there, can’t say you’re missing out on much.
I don't like musicals (or more generally, films that break out into song at random moments) and I already have nowhere near enough time to watch just part of the films I'd like to to see - so I anyway wasn't planning to dig in. :D
 
The Creator

I also loved it. The visuals and music were stunning. The story was very moving, Gemma Chan was lovely again (we need a Eternals sequel with Gemma back in the lead).
The movie took some ideas from real life events i.e. Vietnam war and Tibet (I have a feeling that this movie is banned in mainland China) and other movies, like The Fifth Element and especially Avatar.

Unexpectedly, the AI in this movie was nothing special military-wise. They didn't use advanced weaponry. I mean, I think the robots could have, but my guess is they just didn't want to. It was quite interesting to see the robots embracing the spiritual side (Dalai Lama, Tibet) and advancing into a more peaceful and spiritual society, so actually the disadvantage in combat vs the Americans made sense to me.
But yeah, the robots could have easily designed super advanced weapons of mass destruction and obliterate US cities, but they didn't. Instead, the Nirmata created a child robot who could turn on and switch off devices and machines from a distance. It's like me closing my eyes and wish for world peace! The AI's goal was always to shut down Nomad in order to achieve peace instead of genociding the human race.

We need a sequel.

9 out of 10

Very good analysis mate.

Like i mentioned in this thread before, going to war and killing and dominating is a primitive act and humans and even animals are primitive. AI is not.

And yes we need a sequel!
 
Very good analysis mate.

Like i mentioned in this thread before, going to war and killing and dominating is a primitive act and humans and even animals are primitive. AI is not.

And yes we need a sequel!

I definitely agree that killing and dominating is a very primitive act. We humans are consious beings, but we are still driven by our primitive needs. To think that AI has that same primitive need to dominate groups when facing danger is a very one dimensional concept. This movie showed that we have a very skewed view of AI.

When we think of self-aware artificial intelligence, we immediately think of the Terminator and the Matrix: AI minimizing human threats to become the world's dominant species.
What if AI wants live in peace and harmony with humans, keeping the status quo? It's entirely possible.

The movie puts it nicely with the neanderthal analogy. We assume that AI will act like our ancestors or animals, but to put it simply, AI is not human, it functions on a higher, more complex level than us. Maybe AI will be so advanced that they see past the need of destruction.
 
Madame Web

It's shit, but it's at least enjoyable shit. It really is hilariously terribly written and the bad guy is school theatre level of a bad actor (the casting director got so much wrong for this). It did provide me a number of laughs (some that was aimed for, and some not) and I don't think Dakota Johnson is a bad actress. I'll give it a 4/10 for not having a bad time at least.
 
Sorcerer(1977)

4 unredeemable lads listen to Tangerine Dream while risking their lives for exceptional wages. Freidken captures the intense horror which comes with modern bourgeois society.

Its beautifully insane that he thought this could beat Star Wars at the box office. Sorcerer was the death of the “auteur director” but it went out with a bang.

Masterpiece.

10/10
 
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Wonka
I had fun with this and so did the kids. Don't think Timothy Chalamet has a great singing voice though but performs well generally and overall, this catches the spirit of the titular character and I was down with that 7/10
 
Sorcerer(1977)

4 unredeemable lads listen to Tangerine Dream while risking their lives for exceptional wages. Freidken captures the intense horror which comes with modern bourgeois society.

Its beautifully insane that he thought this could beat Star Wars at the box office. Sorcerer was the death of the “auteur director” but it went out with a bang.

Masterpiece.

10/10
Yes! Have you seen Wages Of Fear?
 
Sorcerer(1977)

4 unredeemable lads listen to Tangerine Dream while risking their lives for exceptional wages. Freidken captures the intense horror which comes with modern bourgeois society.

Its beautifully insane that he thought this could beat Star Wars at the box office. Sorcerer was the death of the “auteur director” but it went out with a bang.

Masterpiece.

10/10
It's so fecking good. In terms of conveying tension on screen, it's one of the all time greats also.

What's the story behind the rivalry with Star Wars?