Film The Redcafe Movie review thread

Finally watch Casino Royale

Good movie though a touch too long

Bad guy sounds like Martin Jol

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THE DEPARTED

Kurt Vonnegut once said: “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.” If you do it for long enough, sometimes you don’t even have to pretend any more. People tend to think of themselves as two people; there’s the façade we present to others and then there’s the true self, the person we are when alone. But what makes one more real than the other? It's a subjective world, where who we are is simply what others perceive us to be. We succeed when we are thought of as successful, fail when we are failures.

“Twenty years after an Irishman couldn’t get a job, we had the Presidency” says crime boss Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson) in Martin Scorsese’s intriguing gang world opus The Departed. Of course, Kennedy was fantastically rich, a blue-blood prince of American royalty; it didn’t prevent his brains from being smeared across the windshield of a convertible, either. “Man makes his own way. No one gives it to you. You have to take it.” Frank still believes in the American Dream, or at least a form that excuses his own windshield-smearing.

Like the other quintessential New York City filmmaker, it seems a change of scenery has done Scorsese some good. While Woody Allen set his tale of duplicitous class warfare/envy in London (Match Point), the third film into Scorsese’s DiCaprio Period relocates just up the coast to Boston, Massachusetts. Freud once claimed the Irish were the only people impervious to psychoanalysis; Scorsese goes about proving him wrong. The Departed consists of two parallel, frequently overlapping stories of two state police cadets recruited as moles: Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio) is assigned to infiltrate Costello’s Southie mob while ***** Sullivan (Matt Damon, phenomenal) is enlisted by Costello to infiltrate the organized crime unit of the police. Their paths cross as each try to root out the other (and bed the same woman) before their dual identities can be revealed.

So much of The Departed is compulsively watchable. Scorsese demonstrates a refreshing disregard for conventional pacing or structure; it’s fantastic and (protracted conclusion aside) it works. The film is the yin to the yang of United 93 - where the latter removes God from human tragedy, The Departed is Catholic to its rosary-clutching core. There is no moral authority in the cautionary world it creates where cop and criminal are separated by uniform but not much else. “I’ll always have a job,” Sullivan tells his girlfriend, Madolyn (Vera Farmiga). “I’ll just arrest innocent people.” It’s of particular relevance to the conflicts we currently find ourselves entangled (the film is a rather overt parable at times on the War on Terror, but one pleasingly short on didactism); just when we should distinguish ourselves from our enemies, we instead fashion ourselves in their cruel image. Even this lapsed Catholic knows: to be good you must do good things, even if it’s just pretend. We are all devils, except some of us are hypocritical devils who cloak their horns with halos.

Scorsese and The Departed ask that we take a good look in the mirror – at our fears, our paranoia, our windshields smeared. What we think is a mask just might be our own face.

Interesting footnote: The Departed is a remake of the 2002 Hong Kong thriller Infernal Affairs. That film did exceptional well at the Asian box office, ultimately garnering a sequel and a prequel. The director, Andrew Lau, had this to say about the remake: "Of course I think the version I made is better, but the Hollywood version is pretty good too. I have to admit that Martin Scorsese is very smart. He made the Hollywood version more attuned to American culture." Andy Lau, an actor in the film, said “The Departed was too long and it felt as if Hollywood had combined all three Infernal Affairs movies together." Asked to rate it, he gave it an 8/10.

http://pretentiousmusings.com/the_departed.html
 
George and The Dragon: How badly can you screw up such a classic tale? I'll tell you. Make half the cast americans and don't bother to get them to even attempt an English accent, use special effects that any 12 year old could produce on a Mac, badly dub Piper Parebo so that it appears that she is possesed by a demon with an English accent and generally remove anything of interest from the megre plot and replace it with the instruction "ham it up". Even my 8 year olf son thought it was dumb. 0.1/10 - So terrible it should have been funny. But it wasn't.
 
Wibble, you seem to watch a lot of shit movies. Just pull up the Top 250 movies list on imdb.com and watch some off it. Most of them are pretty good.
 
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The Man Who Would Be King

Based on Rudyard Kipling's The Man Who Would Be King, this movie is one of the best adventure movies out there. Starring two of the finest actors ever in Michael Caine and Sean Connery, and Saeed Jaffery as Billy Fish, the movie is full of brilliant acting performances.

9/10.
 
A good two thirds of the films I see are governed by having an 8 year old. I would never ever have watched either of the last two left to my own devices. The only good thing about SOAP is that my wife will never live it down given the violence, language and sex scene. I have visions of my son asking his teacher what motherfecker means today :nervous:

I had a look at the list on IMDB and I have seen 75% or more of the films on there. Some very odd choices. Shawshank Redemption at number 2? A good film but not that good. Million Dollar Baby above Blade Runner FFS.

Etc

I will review Thumbsucker and Bronx Tale later if I can be arsed.
 
mehro said:
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The Man Who Would Be King

Based on Rudyard Kipling's The Man Who Would Be King, this movie is one of the best adventure movies out there. Starring two of the finest actors ever in Michael Caine and Sean Connery, and Saeed Jaffery as Billy Fish, the movie is full of brilliant acting performances.

9/10.
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One of my favorites
 
Wibble said:
A good two thirds of the films I see are governed by having an 8 year old. I would never ever have watched either of the last two left to my own devices. The only good thing about SOAP is that my wife will never live it down given the violence, language and sex scene. I have visions of my son asking his teacher what motherfecker means today
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That makes sense.

Wibble said:
I had a look at the list on IMDB and I have seen 75% or more of the films on there. Some very odd choices. Shawshank Redemption at number 2? A good film but not that good. Million Dollar Baby above Blade Runner FFS.
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Well, I did say most.
 
That is the problem with lists based on ratings that anyone can vote for.
 
Thumbsucker: A story about a kid with some academic abilitiy lacking confidence which means he still sucks his thumb. The story bumbles along with him having issues with his parents, being diagnosed with ADHD, getting on Ritalin, becoming a model student, getting over confident and arrogant, stopping the Ritalin, dropping out of the debating team, starting to smoke dope with a girl and eventually getting in to his Uni of choice by bullshitting them because his grades aren't good enough. All a bit of a pointless bore TBH. 3.5/10
 
Zodiac - Close to 3 hours long but more an up-tempo rush through the very lengthy investigation of the Zodiac killer, characteristic David Fincher, though being based on real events it goes without the unique premise of films like Fight Club, Seven or The Game.

Biggest weakness is there is little room for imagination, the Zodiac has zero menace or charisma, and so is made a secondary character (With no real mystique or promise) with the various investigators relied on to carry the film. No real standouts (Except Downey Jnr perhaps) but the large cast is hugely reliable. Fincher is the star with his immaculate direction, transforming what seems a weak case for a film into something watchable and interesting, always hitting the correct pace and dealing with the visuals with his usual aplomb. So many isolated characters all over the place with different demands, he manages to keep things seamless when so many directors undoubtedly would've made a filthy mess of things. He probably could've stretched things to well over three hours as well. Another big notch on Fincher's tomahawk, on par with the excellent The Game but prevented from reaching towards Seven or Fight Club by it's pretty uninspiring subject matter. 8/10
 
Wibble said:
A good two thirds of the films I see are governed by having an 8 year old. I would never ever have watched either of the last two left to my own devices. The only good thing about SOAP is that my wife will never live it down given the violence, language and sex scene. I have visions of my son asking his teacher what motherfecker means today :nervous:
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I use the site http://www.kids-in-mind.com/ to check out beforehand whether a movie is suitable for kids. It looks a bit like it's written by 17th century Puritans, but at least you get the fuller idea of what to expect.
 
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ZODIAC


WHEN I DIE I WILL BE REBORN IN PARADICE [sic] AND ALL THE [sic] I HAVE KILLED WILL BECOME MY SLAVES I WILL NOT GIVE YOU MY NAME BECAUSE YOU WILL TRY TO SLOI [sic] DOWN OR STOP MY COLLECTING OF SLAVES FOR MY AFTERLIFE

- translated Zodiac cryptogram

We tend to make our own monsters. There are the ones born into the world as babies only to be shaped into maniacs and murderers. Then there are others that only truly exist in the collective mind, where one attention-starved madman can collude with media to create headlines and fear. What was it about the late 20th century monster incubator that created such a uniquely-deranged killer like the Zodiac, a man who manipulated the press, quoted films, gave himself a logo, and took his moniker from a wristwatch advertisement?

It's not known precisely how many victims of the Zodiac there were. He claimed as much as thirty-seven, but he was a liar and lying murderers can't be trusted. Investigators only agree on seven, all in a ten month period between 1968 and 1969. Five died and two survived. No one was ever caught, but there are a number of suspects; what we know about the Zodiac is what he told us, through his taunting letters, and what we can read between the lines.

The Zodiac couldn't just kill people; he made sure people knew about it. A few weeks after taking his fifth and sixth victims on a lover's lane in Valejo, California, the Zodiac sent letters to a number of newspapers claiming responsibility and demanding they print a cryptogram he'd made on their front pages; a "kill rampage" would follow if they didn't. The San Francisco Chronicle was one of these newspapers, and they would receive many more.

Robert Graysmith (Gyllenhaal) is a cartoonist for the Chronicle, divorced with two kids. He's also socially-awkward and his coworkers call him "retard" behind his back; most importantly, he likes puzzles. Graysmith and crime beat reporter Paul Avery (Downey) are present when the first of the Zodiac letters arrive. The editors debate whether to print it, weighing civic duty and bleed-and-lead journalism. They print it, but on page five. Graysmith ultimately takes it upon himself to investigate the murders, at the expense of family, career, and whatever else cartoonists do. After the Zodiac's senseless murder of a cab driver, everyman police inspectors Toschi (Ruffalo) and Armstrong (Edwards) are assigned to the case. Bodies pile up, but questions are raised as to whether the Zodiac is responsible or simply wants people to think he is.

As in Man Bites Dog, one wonders whether someone like the Zodiac would kill if he didn't have an audience; like that film, Fincher's brilliant Zodiac carries no visceral thrill in death. Each scene between murderer and victim, confined to the picture's opening third, are as disturbing as they are meticulously crafted (one of the more psychologically unnerving sequences features no killing at all). Fincher has always been renowned/infamous for his attention to detail and the procedural minutiae on display in here is awe-inspiring even by the director's anal standards; Zodiac meticulously reconstructs investigative techniques at a time without fax machine so much as cell phone and women still accepted rides from strange men on a lonely stretch of road.

Like bringing eyebrow tweezers on an airplane, those times are gone. The Zodiac says in one letter: "I shall no longer announce to anyone. When I committ my murders, they shall look like routine robberies, killings of anger, + a few fake accidents." He also threatens to shoot school children and would like to see people wearing "some nice Zodiac buttons." He sees himself as less a killer than a marketable brand (one murder is committed in something akin to a superhero disguise, logo emblazoned across the chest); if there is something he craves more than blood, it is fame (he's not the only one: Avery undermines the police investigation in order to scoop his fellow reporters). The Zodiac wants us to be afraid; for this, he needs newspapers like the Chronicle and a people who fear calculated death by madman over freeway pile-up no matter which has the higher body count.

Interesting footnote: In a 1974 letter to the Chronicle, the Zodiac described The Exorcist as "the best saterical (sic) comidy (sic)" he had ever seen. Exorcist author William Peter Blatty would later write Legion, featuring a serial killer loosely based on the Zodiac. Blatty himself directed the big screen adaptation of his novel, released in 1990 as The Exorcist III.

http://pretentiousmusings.com/zodiac.html
 
Shotgun raisin said:
I use the site http://www.kids-in-mind.com/ to check out beforehand whether a movie is suitable for kids. It looks a bit like it's written by 17th century Puritans, but at least you get the fuller idea of what to expect.
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Thanks. However, with SOAP the M rating with a long list of "language, sex scene, etc" should have been a warning to my wife, if she had bothered to read it that is.

And in any case what are the odds of Samuel Jackson being in a film where he doesn't say "motherfeckers" at least once?
 
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THE PRESTIGE

Magic tricks consist of three parts or acts. The first act is called “the Pledge,” where a magician displays something ordinary, like a man. Sometimes he asks the audience to inspect the man, to verify that he is ordinary. He isn’t, of course, but no one notices. The second act is called “the Turn”; the magician takes this ordinary man and makes him do something quite unordinary, like disappear, except making a man disappear is not enough. For this, the trick requires a third act: “the Prestige.” That's when the man comes back.

Conventional wisdom holds that any successful film also has three, roughly analogous acts: setup, complication, and resolution. For anyone who has been on a movie set, it’s clear the parallels do not end there. Filmmaking doesn’t simply resemble a magic trick but is a magic trick, albeit an expensive one: a conspiracy of lights, camera, and action that can transform a stainless-steel Delorean into a time machine and a studio backlot in Burbank to Victorian-era London.

It was a strange period, where people made an uneasy peace with the Enlightenment while embracing the age of Romantic mysticism that followed. Ghost photography and seances flourished - science did not disprove the spirit world, but employed to interact with it. Perhaps the best expression of this dichotomy was the sudden popularity of stage magicians; it is here The Prestige finds its setting. Alfred Borden (Bale) and Robert Angiers (Jackman) are apprentices to Milton the Magician, uneasy friends until a performance goes awry and Angiers’ wife is killed trying to escape from a Chinese water torture cell. It was Borden, always looking to improve on their performances, who fastened her bindings; Angiers suspects the man may have been a tad too ambitious in his knot-tying. Borden provokes disbelief by claiming not to remember.

A rivalry begins, each setting out on a path of hostile one-upmanship that’s anything but gentlemanly. While Angiers is a master of showmanship and staging, he lacks Borden’s unqualified magician’s aptitude. It’s this talent that allows Borden to create a trick called “The Transported Man.” Angiers is dumbfounded by its seamless execution and devotes his life to discovering the secret (even enlisting famed inventor/mad scientist Nikola Tesla to build him a machine capable of replicating Borden’s act). Slowly, Angiers begins to suspect there is no secret; as irrational as the idea may be, perhaps “The Transported Man” incorporates no illusion at all. Perhaps “The Transported Man” is real.

As promised by its opening voice-over, The Prestige is structured more like a magic trick than a motion picture. Ordinary men vanish only to reappear in a third act flourish of smoke and mirrors; except this time, we’re allowed to look behind the curtain and up the magician’s sleeve (the magician in this case bring writer/director Christopher Nolan, best known for his other mindfeck, Memento). All in all, The Prestige is a neat trick, even if Nolan is a little too proud of his narrative sleight of hand; magicians may never betray their secrets, but Nolan holds no such creed. Algiers is undone by his quest for answers, yet the audience is essentially rewarded for same; the picture doesn't only give us a third act but adds a fourth, "the Reveal," where the man who disappeared comes back, pulls up a chair, and tells everyone about that trap door in the floor. Some mysteries are better left unsolved and I wonder whether The Prestige might be one of them.

It’s too bad about the ending - otherwise, the picture is an astutely-observed, periodically thrilling examination on duality and faith. To borrow a phrase from Carl Sagan, it’s a demon-haunted world; we explore it with candles, illuminating a small portion at a time. When Tesla demonstrates his Alternating Current, panic ensues - people aren't ready, incapable of processing what it is they see. The leap is too large and the supertechnological becomes the supernatural, except there isn’t much difference between the two. “It’s very rare to see real magic,” one character exclaims upon seeing Tesla’s handiwork; one is left to ponder precisely what he meant.

Is the real magic in the Turn, or is it in the Prestige?

Interesting footnote: At one point in the film, Angiers and Borden attend a stage show by Chinese magician Ching Ling Foo. Foo was an actual performer of some renown during the turn of the century; his rivalry with fellow magician Chung Ling Soo partly inspired the book on which The Prestige is based. Interestingly, Soo was not Chinese but a New Yorker of Scottish heritage (given name: William Ellsworth Robinson). He would make headlines for all the wrong reasons in 1918, when he was shot on stage while performing a bullet catch trick. Soo died the next day of his wound.

http://pretentiousmusings.com/the_prestige.html
 
The three worst films ever made (apart from Swingers)

MATCH POINT

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Woody Allen's continuing love affairs with London, Scarlett Johanson, and pissing all over his legacy, combine to create this brilliantly terrible film. I advise all you cnuts to watch it, as it's so bad it's funny.

It's about a tennis player, played by a plank of wood, who bones Scarlett Johansson (fair play, and she's by far the best thing in it), gets her up the duff, regrets it, panics, and shoots her.

Highlights include a posh financier who occasionally comes on, says something like, "I've been informed of a potentially lucrative business opportunity", and fecks off again; half a secretary; and a dead old woman coming back to life to confront the protagonist with the immortal line, "And what about me? I was just an innocent bystander."

1/10


CATCH 22

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Some spastics massacre the 4th best novel of the 20th century. A group of guys go swimming, then someone dies in a plane and goes on about it being cold. Those are the only bits I remember.

0/10



SPAWN

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I honestly can't remember much, except that it was berserkly rubbish. I think some sort of superhero was involved.

0/10
 
Gravity's Rainbow
Ulysses
Moby Dick

I like 'em hefty...though Tender is the Night and Portnoy's Complaint would be up there.

In fairness, Moby Dick's 19th-century, and much of Ulysses is unreadable, but it's still a work of genius.
 
Gravity's Rainbow (or whatever its called) would be in there I'd guess.

This probably needs a thread of its own. Except loads of Spazzers would put Catcher In The Rye in there because their otherwise unemployable English Teacher told them it was a classic because he had been told the same by another unemployable spazzer.
 
Here goes with another Wibble review of a film he wished he hadn't watched and knew as much before it started.

The Benchwarmers. A story about misfits taking on jocks who bully them. Heard it all before? So have I.

If I tell you that this was produced by Adam Sandler and "stars" Jon Lovitz, David Spade and Rob Schneider you probably know all you need to know to decide if this film is for you. Although not as dire as Little Nicky it is still hard work to watch most of the time even if there are a few amusing moments. If you like Sandler type stuff then 5/10 but if you don't 2/10.
 
It does indeed deserve its own thread..Personally i dont have the attention span for something like Gravity's Rainbow, so its :
Lord of the Flies
Brave New World and..
A Clockwork Orange ......... for this philistine!!
 
One Last Thing The story of a 16 year old kid with terminal cancer who wants a date with a super model as his last wish. A potentially naff theme is actually quite well handled with the 3 main youngsters in the cast working very well i.e. not scripted to act like little adults. Funny in parts, very sad in others but well worth a watch on DVD. Some of the later story links that lead to the finale aren't handled as well as they might have been but still a worthy effort. 7/10
 
APOCALYPTO

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I really enjoyed this, irrespective of what I think about Gibson

A village gets captured by the Maya, who turn out to be total mentalists. The men are taken away, painted blue, sacrificed, and chased for miles, by nutcases who are absurdly good at tracking.

Also, a tapir gets horrifically impaled in a trap.

Only problem seemed to be the budget. In the scenes in the Mayan city, it seemed a bit sparse. You get the feeling the extras were walking out of shot, round in a circle and back in again.

Cracking chasing/brutalising though

7/10
 
Plechazunga said:
:lol: good calls

I thought Catcher in the Rye was pretty irritating

Lord of the Flies, that other Eng Lit favourite, is class though
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Lord Of The Flies is excellent.

Catcher is the literary equivalent of Crash. Both annoyed me to the point of wanting to kick something.

Start that thread Plech.

Can I put THHGTTG in as an omnibus? If so we can debte if it is the 3 or 4 book omnibus version of the trilogy.
 
Plechazunga said:
kinell man, that's a lot of films
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Hehe. PLease tell me you've seen the trailer. I've been looking forward to this movie for a very long itme now.


I've picked up Ulysses on a number of ocassions and always dropped it rght back beacuse I couldn't understand anything.
My top 3:Hitchhiker's Guide
Crime and Punishment
Midnight's Children
 
I actually might not have put it on top if Wibble hadn't just mentioned it. I don't have a top whatever so I just listed some of my favorites. :D I'd probably have to put Dr. Zhivago on there. I read that book almost every year again. And Fountainhead maybe. So many good books out there, how is one supposed to pick his top 3? I could list a top 50 I think.

Did you watch the trailers?
 
I'm going to have to get back to reading some good books. I tend to just read half decent crime thrillers these days to take my mind off work before sleep.
 
Plechazunga said:
I'm as big a fan of Hitchhiker's Guide as almost anyone, but it's clearly not one of the greatest novels of the century
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Not one of, the. :)

More informative about Life The Universe and Everything than any other 10 books put together.
 
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