Film The Redcafe Movie review thread

CassiusClaymore said:
Nosferatu

Hmmmmm I'll have to watch it again but initially this is my least favourite of Eggers work. I watched it over 2 nights as well (pretty much half and half) and on doing that it's so much more apparent how gorgeous and sparse the first half is compared to the second. I also have a major problem with the acting in this. I've seen people say it's good but I don't know if some of the cast are doing some kind of homage to early 20th century theatre ham but it pulls me right out of the film. Aaron Taylor-Johnson is by far the worst culprit for this and looks woefully miscast. But yeah, overall looks great as you'd expect but plot and acting just a solid meh. Strong first half followed by a plodding second with Taylor Johnson getting too much screen time.
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They seem like actors rather than characters. Feels like they just turn up when needed and their motivations are to move the plot forward rather than an actual want or need.

Willem Dafoe feels like he stepped off the set of Lighthouse to do his bits :lol:
 
Dirty Schwein said:
They seem like actors rather than characters. Feels like they just turn up when needed and their motivations are to move the plot forward rather than an actual want or need.

Willem Dafoe feels like he stepped off the set of Lighthouse to do his bits :lol:
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Yeah it's all very "theatre'y" bordering on "panto'y". I mean I know it's a remake of a silent movie but still, it just made it all feel a bit silly to me. None of the horror elements really hit.
 
CassiusClaymore said:
Yeah it's all very "theatre'y" bordering on "panto'y". I mean I know it's a remake of a silent movie but still, it just made it all feel a bit silly to me. None of the horror elements really hit.
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Yeah, I felt the same as your review. Great opening scene, amazing visuals and the first half was good. Second half became the world's most expensive soap opera, not helped by the dialogue.

Also, the main villain looked like Dr. Eggman, which was so distracting :lol:
 
Wibble said:
I was hugely disappointed in the film because I loved the book. Some of the many things I disliked were how far it deviated from the source material to the point where it more or less fundamentally changed the story e.g. the role of the hotel in Jack going mad, not to mention more or less missing out that Jack was a sane loving father at the beginning. In the film there was little or no transition from this to full raving insanity. Wendy was a damp pathetic squib which is very different from the character in the book. It doesn't help that I dislike Kubrick's emotionally empty film making - always style over substance. The ending is also rubbish and the scariest bit of the book - the moving hedge animals in the maze - were totally absent.

King called it a “beautiful car with no engine.” and I seem to remember that he had thought that Kubrick missed the emotional heart (and point) of the book in exchange for technical quality.
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The "disagreement" between King and Kubrick wasn't just about a few artistic choices - it was an absolutely calculated choice made by Kubrick for fundamental reasons.

Kubrick deliberately downplayed the "haunted house made me do it" vibes in the book because he was fascinated that the book was written as a "defence" of the domestic violence done by the "writer" in the story...when he believed that the ACTUAL writer of the book was violent and aggressive towards his family based on how he wrote it.

Kubrick had wanted to do a horror film and looked at hundreds of other horror novels as source materials and found them all to be straightforward morality tales. King's "The Shining" caught his attention because he believed the writer didn't even realise he was trying to defend his own actions. (I don't know if King's checkered family past was in the public domain at this point but Kubrick claimed to have seen this in the writing).

So Kubrick played it that the hotel ghosts played on Torrence's pre-existing suspicions and violent temper to bring him round to doing their bidding.

For me that's why I loved Dr Sleep...it says that you CAN overcome your own demons (Danny's traumatic past) and can be a better person despite the demons in that past...his father and the actual demons of the hotel.
 
buchansleftleg said:
Kubrick deliberately downplayed the "haunted house made me do it" vibes in the book because he was fascinated that the book was written as a "defence" of the domestic violence done by the "writer" in the story...when he believed that the ACTUAL writer of the book was violent and aggressive towards his family based on how he wrote it.
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That is utter nonsense and an urban myth.
 
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