Feel the same. I cannot fathom how anyone would find the The Anchorman or Old School, or anything else he's done on the big screen even remotely funny. However, he had some fantastic creative comedy on Saturday night Live. What is it that happens to these SNL comedians? These guys create such funny stuff on the show and then make these god awful unfunny movies. I'm sure the taste of the Hollywood suits is a major factor, but still, wtf?
Film The Redcafe Movie review thread
- Thread starter golden_blunder
- Start date
Feel the same. I cannot fathom how anyone would find the The Anchorman or Old School, or anything else he's done on the big screen even remotely funny. However, he had some fantastic creative comedy on Saturday night Live. What is it that happens to these SNL comedians? These guys create such funny stuff on the show and then make these god awful unfunny movies. I'm sure the taste of the Hollywood suits is a major factor, but still, wtf?
He was funny in Jay and Silent Bob strike back but that's about it for me, all my friends love his stuff though and quote it all the time which is fun.
Five year engagement - completely forgettable and probably about 30 minutes too long but it has enough funny moments to make it watchable. Helped along by the fact I find Jason Segel very watchable, Chris Pratt and Chris Parnell brilliant and Alison Brie lovely (although her English accent is all over the place, but mainly california) it is a decent rom com effort.
The Bourne Legacy - I hadn't seen any of the other Bourne films. A now apparent moron told me that it wouldn't matter and I'd be able to follow it. In actual fact as I now understand it this film is set simultaneously with the last one so there is a lot of crossover and references that I didn't even begin to understand. I was bored to tears and would have walked out had I been on my own.
I was able to understand the action scenes, and they were mostly meh. The main character seemed to kill quite a few people who didn't really deserve it. There's also a bike/car chase near the end that seems to go on forever. Then it just ends. Which I was pleased with as I'd been praying for the credits to roll for the previous hour, but it was still a crap ending.
I might have enjoyed this had I seen the other ones, but I hadn't so I didn't. The cinema seat also hurt my arse after a while so that may have affected my opinion of the film.
I was able to understand the action scenes, and they were mostly meh. The main character seemed to kill quite a few people who didn't really deserve it. There's also a bike/car chase near the end that seems to go on forever. Then it just ends. Which I was pleased with as I'd been praying for the credits to roll for the previous hour, but it was still a crap ending.
I might have enjoyed this had I seen the other ones, but I hadn't so I didn't. The cinema seat also hurt my arse after a while so that may have affected my opinion of the film.
Vertigo
Watched this Hitchcock thriller a few months back, and again last night.
Cracking film with Jimmy Stewart, the lovely Kim Novak and a cute young Barbara Bel Geddes.
the finale in Mission San Juan Bautista is great, and even better as the area still looks the same today.
great stuff.
Watched this Hitchcock thriller a few months back, and again last night.
Cracking film with Jimmy Stewart, the lovely Kim Novak and a cute young Barbara Bel Geddes.
the finale in Mission San Juan Bautista is great, and even better as the area still looks the same today.
great stuff.
Bruno 6/10
Not nearly as good as Borat, but some parts are genuinely, tear-inducingly funny. And I've got to give it to him, he's got some stones.
Not nearly as good as Borat, but some parts are genuinely, tear-inducingly funny. And I've got to give it to him, he's got some stones.
Well it's hard to explain why something would make someone laugh and not another, it's so subjective.
I can watch The Anchorman, Stepbrothers, Talladega Nights over and over again and still be amused by those films. I also like Semi Pro and Blades of Glory (but to a lesser extent). I would also argue that Will Ferrell is a comedy genius. But it doesn't really matter in the end, I know I like his stuff so I watch it, you don't so it's not really worth wasting your time. Anything I say to explain why I find him amusing would be pointless, it's not going to change your mind and have you saying "aaaah right, so that's why it's funny, I'll laugh now". There are many comedies that are meant to be hilarious that I just can't even smile to, it's impossible to explain why one actor is someone's favourite comedian and wouldn't even bring a smile out of the next person.
Yesterday I went to see Abraham Lincoln Vampire Slayer or whatever it's called. Dear me. It's a very ugly film where you feel a lot of it has been shot for 3D effects (but I went to see it in 2D cos 3D annoys me). I don't know what to say about the film. It wasn't funny in an "over the top" kind of way, it was just mediocre all along. I think they definitely lost me when a vampire used a horse as a sledge hammer and chucked it at Abraham Lincoln who was jumping from one horse to another. Hum. Went on for 105 minutes I think, felt like an eternity. I don't recommend it one bit.
Bought Jaws on BluRay yesterday, haven't seen it in ages (since I was a kid actually), can't wait.
We Need to Talk About Kevin - Weird. Usually my kind of film but I really struggled with it, just couldn't get into it, perhaps I but it on at a bad time. It was by no means a bad film though...good acting stuff from Swinton and co.
Yeah, it's a pretty disturbing film in that it kind of leaves you with the feeling that sometimes people can be really fecked up, although very functionally so, almost normal, and it can be almost scientifically hopeless to help them, and they and everybody around them, especially the closest to them, are all victims. Seems to be a growing modern phenomenon. Bit of a scary thing to think about.
Thought for a Scottish director, Lynn Ramsey, and Tilda Swinton got the American thing down very well. Still prefer Ramsey's Rat Catcher style, though.
I watched Annie Hall on a train journey to London the otherday, may not be what I consider Allens best though it could be, but it definitely has fantastic replay value for me, about the 10th time I've seen it, and always holds and I seem to find more and more niche jokes Allen goes for each time. At 90-100 minutes, his films are almost perfect for the Crewe to London trains too.
Ides of March 7/10
Decent. I want to marry Evan Rachel Wood.
Decent. I want to marry Evan Rachel Wood.
Drive - Probably my favourite film of the last year, thought the pace of it was perfect. Gosling played the role brilliantly, so intense throughout, and I loved the soundtrack.
The violence isn't half extreme at times, but it was fine IMO, the missus didn't like how graphic it was though.
The violence isn't half extreme at times, but it was fine IMO, the missus didn't like how graphic it was though.
Stranger than Fiction is a good movie.
^I really like Stranger than Fiction... a very pleasent movie.
Bourne Legacy
Might as well be called Diet Bourne. It seemed to take an age to get going... in which most of the time was spent as if the film was jumping up and down and saying "Hey! We're part of the Bourne Cannon see!" ... and whilst it tried really hard to put it into that world, I'm not sure it succeeded.
Other then that, nothing about it was overly bad/offensive or anything... but pretty much everything in it has been done better in one of the other Bourne films. Sniper scene? Better in Bourne Identity, Running on rooftops scene? Better in Ultimatum. Bike chase scene? Not as good as any car chase scene in any of the other Bourne films. In the end, it sort of felt like a bunch of people got together, dressed up and decided to play a game of Bourne.
There was a nice tracking shot of Renner scaling a house though...
Bourne Legacy
Might as well be called Diet Bourne. It seemed to take an age to get going... in which most of the time was spent as if the film was jumping up and down and saying "Hey! We're part of the Bourne Cannon see!" ... and whilst it tried really hard to put it into that world, I'm not sure it succeeded.
Other then that, nothing about it was overly bad/offensive or anything... but pretty much everything in it has been done better in one of the other Bourne films. Sniper scene? Better in Bourne Identity, Running on rooftops scene? Better in Ultimatum. Bike chase scene? Not as good as any car chase scene in any of the other Bourne films. In the end, it sort of felt like a bunch of people got together, dressed up and decided to play a game of Bourne.
There was a nice tracking shot of Renner scaling a house though...
Finally got round to seeing TDKR having done my best to avoid all the hype. Good, enjoyable fun. A lot of plot holes, could have done with being thirty minutes shorter, and a lot of the plot seemed to be purely there so Nolan could have yet another extended set-piece. But taken at face value with a friendly Friday night audience, a solid 7.5.
I'm starting The Battleship Potemkin. It better be good.
utterly pointless to suggest what should have been included, but...my hopes were raised seeing harry lime's smirk halfway through, only to be left disappointed that imo the greatest shot (and ending) of all time from that film was left out:
i'd like to walk it one day
a belated thanks for the quattro volte rec. finally got round to watching it albeit in a pretty heretical way, without sound but with different music playing. enjoyed what i did watch, anyway.
utterly pointless to suggest what should have been included, but...my hopes were raised seeing harry lime's smirk halfway through, only to be left disappointed that imo the greatest shot (and ending) of all time from that film was left out:
i'd like to walk it one day
that's taken from this site which actually goes through most of the film's great shots, tying them to their locations.
a belated thanks for the quattro volte rec. finally got round to watching it albeit in a pretty heretical way, without sound but with different music playing. enjoyed what i did watch, anyway.
Definitely one of the places I'd like to visit if I ever go to Vienna, that and the ferris wheel, if only just to go up there and say "if one of those dots stopped moving forever".
It wasn't like there was much dialogue to miss out on anyway!
I've watched two direct cinema documentaries by the Maysles brothers. Gimme Shelter, which chronicles The Rolling Stones before and during the disastrous Altamont Free Concert, the concert which effectively ended the Hippie era, where they caught the footage of a man getting stabbed. And also Salesman about salesmen who travel across the country selling bibles to poor religous families who can barely afford it. Good stuff, especially the first one. I had some trouble getting into Salesman initially.
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou - Better than I expected. Very enjoyable and it drew a few laughs out of me.
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou - Better than I expected. Very enjoyable and it drew a few laughs out of me.
There were four parts that really made an impression on me in Gimme Shelter:
1. The trailer they were hanging out in before the Altamont show was really crap.
2. When they were walking from that same crap trailer to the stage some geezer shouting, "I hate you" (with conviction) punches Mick Jagger in the face. Shame you don't really get to see the action. Ya just hear about it.
3. Watching them watch the footage of the of the violence and commenting on it. Keith apparently remembers the Hells Angel guy as being a whackjob from even before he stabbed the black guy.
4. The Stones flying off in a chopper and leaving that fecking mess behind. Apocalypse Now-esque.
1. The trailer they were hanging out in before the Altamont show was really crap.
2. When they were walking from that same crap trailer to the stage some geezer shouting, "I hate you" (with conviction) punches Mick Jagger in the face. Shame you don't really get to see the action. Ya just hear about it.
3. Watching them watch the footage of the of the violence and commenting on it. Keith apparently remembers the Hells Angel guy as being a whackjob from even before he stabbed the black guy.
4. The Stones flying off in a chopper and leaving that fecking mess behind. Apocalypse Now-esque.
It was quite amazing that they stayed in that shitty little trailer in that chaos and how little security there was. Like when one of the band members of Jefferson Airplane got punched. Hiring the Hells Angels clearly wasn't the best of the ideas.
Understatement of the (60s) decade.
Expendables 2:
What can I say? Awful dialogue, bad acting, lots of violence and random occurrences mixed with outrageous coincidences and good fortune.
This film is so cheesy, but it knows it's cheesy and plays up to it. Overall, I found it enjoyable. There is a tongue-in-cheek jokey feel about the film, interspersed with sharp bursts of bullet ridden corpses flying across the screen.
If you liked the first one, you'll like this. If you didn't like the first one, or 80's action in general, I'd suggest that you steer well clear.
Anyone seen Perfume: A story of a murderer?
I thought it was pretty good in a grim, disturbing sorta way. The ending was a little crazy though... I mean I get it's supposed to be a dark fantasy of sorts but since it spent 2 hours grounded in reality the fairy-tale like ending just felt totally out of place.
I'd give it a 7/10.
I thought it was pretty good in a grim, disturbing sorta way. The ending was a little crazy though... I mean I get it's supposed to be a dark fantasy of sorts but since it spent 2 hours grounded in reality the fairy-tale like ending just felt totally out of place.
I'd give it a 7/10.
Read the book, it's a lot better and makes a whole lot more sense. It's one of those almost unfilmable books, but they did a pretty good stab of it.
I thought the orgy scene was pretty memorable, the ending though, predictable and meh. Good film though.
Yeah, I suspected some sort of cop-out ending and I thought there was no way he was still gonna live after all this and he would probably take the perfume with him in some way, the rest was pretty easy to piece together.
The whole thing was a bad idea. I think Jagger comes out of that doc badly too. A culmination of the misguided idea of excessive drug use as the fulcrum of a "good time", and the naivety of musicians who think they're a bit too important. Jagger spends the first half of the film poncing about acting like he's trying to organise a really important social event (rather than a glorified piss up in a park) and then the second half watching the footage in stoney silence as it dawns on him what a disaster it was.
The Angels were complete cocks, but a lot the people they were having to deal with were too. Rambling onto the stage repeatedly and generally being a fecking nuisance. On hearing about Altamont I had always lazily formed the impression it was all the fault of the Angels, but on watching Gimmie Shelter, after about 5 minutes I was thinking "I'd have hit some of these wankers tbf"...Not to mention the stabbing was of a guy who drew a gun and was running at the stage. The whole thing was a clusterfeck of misguidedness and lazy naivety.
Definitely more naive times, I mean they were handing out acid like candy. Meredith Hunter was apparently so high that he barely could walk.
Agreed. I liked Ed Norton, though.
Friends with Kids
Sunday night; my girlfriend and I have watched a few X-Files episodes (we've started from scratch as I've never seen all of them and she hasn't seen any) and as some of the episodes frighten her, she wants to watch something a bit light, easy-going. So Friends with kids.
Shitballs, was that film crap.
The whole thing is based on the idea of two friends wanting to have a child but none of the inconvenients of mariage. They're very selfish and not very bright. The film takes care to show how crappy the lives of their friends, who have kids, are, because of course nowadays having a child means your life is finished.
Ah I've started talking about it which is annoying me. There's one good scene in the middle of the film where Jon Hamm is hammered and has an argument with the main character that looks like a weasel, but altogether it's very weak. The two leads (can't remember the guy's name and Jennifer Westfeldt who also wrote and directed the film) are very uncharismatic, unsympathetic and, did I mention, selfish. It's a tedious film that seems to go on for hours, obviously filled with all the clichés you can imagine and which underuses the supporting cast which was alright. Oh and Megan Fox can't act for shit (not that she's on the screen cos of her acting talents, of course).
The problem is, you can feel they're trying to make a defining rom-com for this day and age, this generation's When Harry met Sally, but it has very few laughs to start with, and doesn't have the charm or the chemistry of the above mentioned film. And the subject matter may appeal to some but I just found it completely stupid. A waste of 100 minutes.
Sunday night; my girlfriend and I have watched a few X-Files episodes (we've started from scratch as I've never seen all of them and she hasn't seen any) and as some of the episodes frighten her, she wants to watch something a bit light, easy-going. So Friends with kids.
Shitballs, was that film crap.
The whole thing is based on the idea of two friends wanting to have a child but none of the inconvenients of mariage. They're very selfish and not very bright. The film takes care to show how crappy the lives of their friends, who have kids, are, because of course nowadays having a child means your life is finished.
Ah I've started talking about it which is annoying me. There's one good scene in the middle of the film where Jon Hamm is hammered and has an argument with the main character that looks like a weasel, but altogether it's very weak. The two leads (can't remember the guy's name and Jennifer Westfeldt who also wrote and directed the film) are very uncharismatic, unsympathetic and, did I mention, selfish. It's a tedious film that seems to go on for hours, obviously filled with all the clichés you can imagine and which underuses the supporting cast which was alright. Oh and Megan Fox can't act for shit (not that she's on the screen cos of her acting talents, of course).
The problem is, you can feel they're trying to make a defining rom-com for this day and age, this generation's When Harry met Sally, but it has very few laughs to start with, and doesn't have the charm or the chemistry of the above mentioned film. And the subject matter may appeal to some but I just found it completely stupid. A waste of 100 minutes.
Bourne Legacy: Let me summarise this movie... A fat version of Matt Damon runs around in the snow for a bit, he wrestles and kills a wolf (this will be the most badass thing he does all film). You get to see bits of the third Bourne film and a picture of Jason Bourne (which just makes you wish you was watching any of the first three rather than this). Then a new bad guy is introduced for the final 10 minutes of the film with 'Ratings off the charts', well I don't know what chart they were using because the guy completely failed at everything and got kicked off his bike by a chick. Jeremy Renner kills about 5 things in this movie, a wolf, three security guards and my will to watch cinema.
Do not watch.
Do not watch.
I'm glad I'm not the only one to suffer through that tripe. my review
It is anger inducingly bad, so much so my friends won't let me talk about it anymore.
Cowboys and Aliens 3/10
I knew it wasnt meant to be a good, but I thought it may have had a few entertaining moments. It was awful though. With the exception of the first 5-10 mins.
Ford was a teerible character. And your one who was from another planet was one of the most pointless characters I have ever seen.
I knew it wasnt meant to be a good, but I thought it may have had a few entertaining moments. It was awful though. With the exception of the first 5-10 mins.
Ford was a teerible character. And your one who was from another planet was one of the most pointless characters I have ever seen.
Anger inducing is actually very correct, I finished the film feeling very annoyed, which doesn't happen very often.
In fairness, even my girlfriend who had insisted on watching it and who usually likes stupid romantic comedies found it crap.
In fairness, even my girlfriend who had insisted on watching it and who usually likes stupid romantic comedies found it crap.
It only took me a glance at the poster of Friends with Kids for me to know that they completely phoned it in. Adam Scott has got really great hair though.
Red Cliff: I don't know why it took me so long to get around to watching it. I very much enjoyed it, It's hard to believe the same director was responsible for Mission Impossible 2. 
Definitely worth viewing!
Definitely worth viewing!
Did you watch the near 5 hour version with Part 1 and Part 2... or just the bastardised 2 and a half hour version?