Film The Redcafe Movie review thread

R.N7 said:
Don't comic book fans usually get really arsey when they change things/do things different in the film adaptations?

It looked great, had a superb soundtrack and was a refreshingly mature and dark take on the superhero genre. It's certainly no masterpiece but I don't understand all the flak it gets.
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I read the comic book and though I'm not a comic buff, I don't think, I read quite a few of them and enjoy them. However, I really didn't give a shit about it being not as good as the source material (which is, it has to be pointed out, probably the best comic book ever along with From Hell and Sandman) and enjoyed it for what it was. It was never going to have the depth of the book, but I think Snyder did very well with what he had and managed to put in there most of the important themes of the comic.

Sir Matt said:
The worst part of the Watchmen was the like 8 minute awkward sex scene set to "Hallelujah." Watching non-porn sex scenes gets awkward after a bit.

I loved the book, but the movie could have been better. It could be turned into an amazing film, imo, with the right director.
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Definitely, Snyder really doesn't know how to film a sex scene, I think the one in 300 was even worse actually.

Mockney said:
I've always thought that sex scenes in general are odd. There's so few things that actually need a sex scene in it. Only things that deal in sex thematically do. So I've always been quite suspicious of them in mainstream or non-sex focused films, especially ones that linger too long. I always just assumed it's due to the director being a bit of a pervert or the studio knowing a particular naked actress will be a selling point.

This is really a whole new thread topic tbh. Films that actually warranted a sex scene.
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This. Though there are quite a few films where the sex scene is justified and actually serves the purpose of the story. A history of violence springs to mind.
 
Mockney said:
I always just assumed it's due to the director being a bit of a pervert or the studio knowing a particular naked actress will be a selling point.
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Sometimes sex scenes/general nudity won't even be in the script, but when it's running past the producers they're going to do everything they can to get a few money shots for the trailers.
 
Terminator 2 and it's still epic as feck. We need True Lies on Blu-ray already, I refuse to watch a sub-par quality of it until it happens. What happened Cameron? Why did you bail on us?

BRING BACK THE OLD JAMES CAMERON
 
Rooney in Paris said:
This. Though there are quite a few films where the sex scene is justified and actually serves the purpose of the story. A history of violence springs to mind.
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Silva said:
Sometimes sex scenes/general nudity won't even be in the script, but when it's running past the producers they're going to do everything they can to get a few money shots for the trailers.
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If you think about it from a "only including things that further the plot" angle, which is generally how people write stories, there's probably no other type of scene more superfluously used than the sex scene. There's definitely loads of films that require them, obviously, but there's significantly more that don't, and have just whacked one in because they could.

When it's lower budget arty ego driven stuff it's often just down right creepy & borderline control freak misogynist. Vincent Gallo's a great example of this. Man has issues. Ditto Larry Clark (though tbf his films do deal in sex and require them, but the lengths he goes to to watch adolescents fecking each other is still way beyond the call of duty)
 
Anyway, back onto film reviews, and linking nicely into the theme of weird, unnecessary sex bits, Trance is an odd film, that's good in some notable ways, but absolutely terrible in all the others.

It starts well, then gets bogged down in an OTT too-clever-for-it's-own-good-but-not-as-clever-as-it-thinks-it-is psychodrama and then completely unravels about two thirds of the way through, coincidentally about the time they introduce a bizarre sub plot about a character liking his women shaved, that gets called back to, but is a completely bonkers way of representing the thing it's supposed to story-wise, and feels crowbarred in by someone with a fetish (it's also treated with a farcical amount of reverence. On appearing nude & shaved, the characters lover gasps and stares at it like Indiana Jones upon finding the Holy Grail, reaching out to touch it like it's some mythical lost artifact. I'm amazed anyone on set could keep a straight face.)

I also really don't like Danny Boyle's taste in music of late. Which is annoying from the guy that brought us Trainspotting, Sunshine & 28 Days Later.
 
I don't think so. He seems to have gone the way of "picking stuff he likes off his iPod" but his taste has gotten notably more sedate and rubbishy since he did it in Trainspotting. It's now just loads of bland electronic chill out room music..He's also partly responsible for Emili fecking Sande.
 
Personally I have a problem with Hack Snyder's irony free film making. Even if you mainly blame Frank Miller for 300 and it's rather iffy politics (personally I blame them both), there is enough problematic material in Snyder's other films to warrant questioning. Maybe he's an arch satirist ala Paul Verhoven but having heard interviews with him, I think he is just rather thick.

The biggest problem, although by no means the only one, I have with Watchmen the film, is that the dialogue and imagery itself, in the Watchmen comic, plays as a deconstruction of fetishised violence and the fascist aesthetic. Snyder on the other hand seems to just look at the pictures and thinks 'Kapow that looks cool, I'll stick that in my movie'. As an adaptation it totally misses the point but even as a stand alone film I think it is vacuous film making, that leaves an unpleasant taste in the mouth. Sucker Punch, in my opinion, just further underlines Snyder's intent.
 
Yep, he's a completely shallow filmmaker. Nothing he's ever made before or since gives any indication he had any desire or ability to make a thought provoking film. He just copied the pictures and words and by osmosis it created the effect.
 
Rooney in Paris said:
This. Though there are quite a few films where the sex scene is justified and actually serves the purpose of the story. A history of violence springs to mind.
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Although I thought they cocked it up a bit there. There was nothing wrong with the idea that she got off when she was taken roughly by the suddenly unknown man who she'd thought was her husband. It was just odd that they'd already established at the beginning that they had a pretty good, mildly kinky sex-life, with the cheerleader role-playing thing. I'd have thought the 'Oooh, I'm getting almost-raped by the stranger pretending to be my husband' storyline would work better if they'd had a loving but sexually dull marriage.

Mockney said:
If you think about it from a "only including things that further the plot" angle, which is generally how people write stories, there's probably no other type of scene more superfluously used than the sex scene. There's definitely loads of films that require them, obviously, but there's significantly more that don't, and have just whacked one in because they could.

When it's lower budget arty ego driven stuff it's often just down right creepy & borderline control freak misogynist. Vincent Gallo's a great example of this. Man has issues. Ditto Larry Clark (though tbf his films do deal in sex and require them, but the lengths he goes to to watch adolescents fecking each other is still way beyond the call of duty)
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Tarantino has issues. If you peeked through his window at night, he'd almost certainly either be reading comics, or wanking at a woman locked in a box. Or, to be fair, writing a script about comics and women locked in boxes.
 
Mockney said:
Anyway, back onto film reviews, and linking nicely into the theme of weird, unnecessary sex bits, Trance is an odd film, that's good in some notable ways, but absolutely terrible in all the others.

It starts well, then gets bogged down in an OTT too-clever-for-it's-own-good-but-not-as-clever-as-it-thinks-it-is psychodrama and then completely unravels about two thirds of the way through, coincidentally about the time they introduce a bizarre sub plot about a character liking his women shaved, that gets called back to, but is a completely bonkers way of representing the thing it's supposed to story-wise, and feels crowbarred in by someone with a fetish (it's also treated with a farcical amount of reverence. On appearing nude & shaved, the characters lover gasps and stares at it like Indiana Jones upon finding the Holy Grail, reaching out to touch it like it's some mythical lost artifact. I'm amazed anyone on set could keep a straight face.)

I also really don't like Danny Boyle's taste in music of late. Which is annoying from the guy that brought us Trainspotting, Sunshine & 28 Days Later.
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It was a bit odd wasn't it. The film went from good, to bad, to down right ridiculous and back round to good again about 5 times.

They should rename it. Shaved beaver fetishists art and hypnosis caper would be a good title.

How can we prove that she previously knew him to all the people that were too unobservant to have noticed the obvious show of recognition when she first met him. Oh I know, we'll get her to shave her pussy for him and have a gratuitous shaved beaver shot.
 
Mockney said:
Anyway, back onto film reviews, and linking nicely into the theme of weird, unnecessary sex bits, Trance is an odd film, that's good in some notable ways, but absolutely terrible in all the others.

It starts well, then gets bogged down in an OTT too-clever-for-it's-own-good-but-not-as-clever-as-it-thinks-it-is psychodrama and then completely unravels about two thirds of the way through, coincidentally about the time they introduce a bizarre sub plot about a character liking his women shaved, that gets called back to, but is a completely bonkers way of representing the thing it's supposed to story-wise, and feels crowbarred in by someone with a fetish (it's also treated with a farcical amount of reverence. On appearing nude & shaved, the characters lover gasps and stares at it like Indiana Jones upon finding the Holy Grail, reaching out to touch it like it's some mythical lost artifact. I'm amazed anyone on set could keep a straight face.)

I also really don't like Danny Boyle's taste in music of late. Which is annoying from the guy that brought us Trainspotting, Sunshine & 28 Days Later.
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This is exactly how I felt about Inception...

Fools Gold
Had to watch this for the other half after making her watch 'I Saw The Devil' with me on the weekend and my god was it one of the worst films I have ever seen. I'm not a huge fan of romcoms but I can sit through them and find a few scenes to laugh at but this film just made me :mad:

I think Matthew Mcconaughey must have had a clause in his contract that he has to be topless to 75% of this film, even though he didnt need to be in many of the scenes. I am glad he has started to fulfil his early promise as of late but it baffles me how he got casted in other movies following this pile of shit.

Kate Hudson was as annoying as ever and not even that hot and I don't know how they managed to persuade Donald Sutherland to act in this. The bad guys were too comical and then suddenly violent, it didnt make any sense. The plot was paper thin and there was absolutely 0% character development. I know this is a romcom and you cant expect too much character development but you can at least expect some. None was apparent here.

The only point it gets is for some nice scenery shots. 1/10
 
Dirty Schwein said:
This is exactly how I felt about Inception...
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Agreed. Inception was a massive disappointment.

The biggest problem was that it solved the 'no real jeopardy' issue inherent in dream stories by inventing a random rule that if you died in a lower dream-state you couldn't come back up. The problem was, it wasn't at all convincing, which meant that the film had... no real jeopardy.

Also, it's criminal to make a film about dream-worlds and then set it largely in dull corporate buildings and streets. What a waste of hundreds of millions of dollars.
 
Bill.s.preston said:
Shaved beaver fetishists art and hypnosis caper
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I'd watch it. You know what you're getting.

How can we prove that she previously knew him to all the people that were too unobservant to have noticed the obvious show of recognition when she first met him. Oh I know, we'll get her to shave her pussy for him and have a gratuitous shaved beaver shot.
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:lol:

It also got really gory at a couple of points, and then turned into an episode of Black Mirror, and then a bed-hopping sex romp, and then a Tarantino film. It had absolutely no idea what it was or wanted to be.
 
Plechazunga said:
Agreed. Inception was a massive disappointment.

The biggest problem was that it solved the 'no real jeopardy' issue inherent in dream stories by inventing a random rule that if you died in a lower dream-state you couldn't come back up. The problem was, it wasn't at all convincing, which meant that the film had... no real jeopardy.

Also, it's criminal to make a film about dream-worlds and then set it largely in dull corporate buildings and streets. What a waste of hundreds of millions of dollars.
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Would Zack Snyder have set it in corporate buildings, empty streets and had a dull video game-esque snow level at the end of it? I'm not sure he would have...


Ghost World - It was alright but lacking a bit of a spark and didn't really bring enough to the table in the end. As an indie comedy I think it hasn't aged that well and it was fairly predictable.
 
The "Inception was shit because it didn't have flying surreal magic manga dreams" lot confuse me. It's very explicitly plotted that they need to keep the dreams as realistic as possible so as not to alert the dreamer.

Now, whether you like that or not is fair enough, but films can only really be critiqued on what they intend to be, rather than what you think they should've been if you'd been making it. There was a very specific plot reason why it wasn't mental.

Now, Plech is completely right about the Limbo bit. Because they set that up, and then completely ignore it at the end when all the characters just escape it in about 2 minutes because the film's ending. That's shit.

Zack Snyder would've set the whole 3rd act of Inception in slow motion to a Scissor Sisters track.
 
Well next time I have a dream I'll remind myself to make it as real as possible to trick my subconscious into thinking it was a... dream.
 
Mockney said:
The "Inception was shit because it didn't have flying surreal magic manga dreams" lot confuse me. It's very explicitly plotted that they need to keep the dreams as realistic as possible so as not to alert the dreamer.
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The point is that dreams are fecking mental and you still don't realise you're dreaming, despite being a dolphin in a top hat. Inception was a bit crap.

Trance was fecking awful.
 
I reckon I have far more mundane dreams than I do mental surreal ones. And anyway, it was a bit surreal. People were floating and shit and there was a train in the street. If a giant penguin in hot pants turned up half way through and claimed to be Leonardo DiCaprio's mum, and then 50 smurfs started fighting Bruce Forsythe, I don't think it would've fit in the film very well.

Inception wasn't amazing, I just don't get that particular criticism of it. It's like complaining The Ark of The Covenant doesn't exist and it's really silly it went all mental at the end of Raiders.
 
MikeUpNorth said:
The point is that dreams are fecking mental and you still don't realise you're dreaming, despite being a dolphin in a tophat. Inception was a bit crap.

Trance was fecking awful.
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Wasn't there a plot point about them having trained their subconscious to recognize when they were dreaming?
 
MikeUpNorth said:
The point is that dreams are fecking mental and you still don't realise you're dreaming, despite being a dolphin in a tophat. Inception was a bit crap.

Trance was fecking awful.
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Yes. There are some triggers but trying waking yourself up during deep sleep.
 
When Superman catches someone falling from the sky, in reality the sudden stop would kill them and he'd break all their bones.
 
That's just one more reason why superhero movies are rubbish.
 
Mockney said:
The "Inception was shit because it didn't have flying surreal magic manga dreams" lot confuse me. It's very explicitly plotted that they need to keep the dreams as realistic as possible so as not to alert the dreamer.

Now, whether you like that or not is fair enough, but films can only really be critiqued on what they intend to be, rather than what you think they should've been if you'd been making it. There was a very specific plot reason why it wasn't mental.
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But that's like setting a film on the moon ("On the moon!"), and then creating a plot device whereby gravity is at earth levels, and also there's an air atmosphere and oceans and plants and people. If I go and see a moon film I want it to be set on the fecking moon.

The whole thing that's cool about a film set in the dream world is that dreams are often fecking mental. Yes there are boring dreams, but why make a film set in a boring dream? isn't it better to make a cool film, set in a cool dream?

But yeah, I don't just mean random 'crazy' surrealism, but I do mean something of the texture of dreams, their essential strangeness.

Memento was more dream-like than Inception.
 
Dreamscape had a good go at it. That bastard Spielberg has removed all copies of the versions with Kate Capshaw's tits out though.

Powerful bastard.
 
Well a) It's nothing really like your moon premise at all is it, as dreams can quite easily be mundane and are massively different and subjective, whilst the moon isn't, and there are plenty of films set on terraformed worlds that people don't bitch about not conforming to their ideas of realistic alien planets.

and b) don't you think a bit of it could be people wanting it to conform to their specific ideas of dreams? Which, being inherently subjective and personal things anyway, is an odd thing to demand of a mainstream Hollywood blockbuster. How do you know what you consider the texture of dreams is what I, or Christopher Nolan do?

Meanwhile, the texture of the moon remains constant.

Again, I'm not trying to extol the virtues of Inception as an all time classic, I just don't see that particular criticism as any fault of the film itself. It addressed it. It's a viewer problem IMO.
 
MikeUpNorth said:
The point is that dreams are fecking mental and you still don't realise you're dreaming, despite being a dolphin in a top hat. Inception was a bit crap.

Trance was fecking awful.
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But do we dream in this way? I think of dreams as uncanny rather than fantastical.

Mulholland Drive is the film I think of as having the most recognisable dreamlike qualities, more so than the works of Bunuel and company.
 
Also, it did have fantastical elements. A city folded on itself, streets and rooms appeared out of nowhere, people turned into other people, shit got weightless, it just wasn't a constant Paprika like nonsense. The only really big omission from common realistic dreaming was completely random and sudden narrative shifts. But then that would've been terrible in a narrative film with a specific story. Just as a dolphin in a hat would've been.
 
The scene where the mark realises there's something odd about the dolphin in the hat, but he can't quite work out why would've been gold.
 
dumbo said:
But do we dream in this way? I think of dreams as uncanny rather than fantastical.

Mulholland Drive is the film I think of as having the most recognisable dreamlike qualities, more so than the works of Bunuel and company.
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Izo by Miike was pretty mental without having strange looking penguins pop up from time to time. Not all dreams are mental but even the ones that aren't trippy tend to be strange on reflection. And I love Lynch but I struggled to get through Inland Empire.
 
MikeUpNorth said:
The scene where the mark realises there's something odd about the dolphin in the hat, but he can't quite work out why would've been gold.
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The most constant surreal element of my dreams is people who I recognise as people I know, but who are quite clearly entirely different people. For example I could be dreaming about someone who looks like Frank Bruno, but it's actually you, and everyone else in the dream is aware of this.
 
Rooney in Paris said:
I saw The place beyond the pines this weekend and very much enjoyed it. The trailer gives you an idea of what the film is going to be and it isn't that at all so I was a bit taken by surprise, but as I enjoyed the film I actually saw, that was fine. Don't want to go into too much detail cos I think it's quite an original film, but for anyone who doesn't mind slow paced films, you should see it. Good performances by Gosling and Cooper, and I also thought the kids were impeccable as well (especially the one who was in Chronicle, can't remember his name).
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Cant wait to see this it looks brilliant, glad to hear its getting positive reviews. I think Ryan Gosling is a great actor I enjoy most of his movies gonna try and watch this within the next week.
 
Mockney said:
The most constant surreal element of my dreams is people who I recognise as people I know, but who are quite clearly entirely different people. For example I could be dreaming about someone who looks like Frank Bruno, but it's actually you, and everyone else in the dream is aware of this.
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Well that's a key element, overdetermination. That's my auntie Hilda, but it's also Arsene Wenger for some reason, without it really being a problem. Similarly, the confluence of recent stuff with old memories.

Other missed opportunities were things like the common dream experiences - flight, ability to move through mirrors, public nakedness, the Chaser leaving a gift, the instability of writing and clock faces, the failure of light switches to work, etc.

There's also loads of visual stuff specific to dreams, espdcially the light. As someone mentioned David Lynch nails this. Something he also nails is the sense of foreboding that's somehow both specific and indefinite, something sinister just round the next corner that's both unknown and the Worst Thing that you've always known...

Narrative leaps could also have been done skilfully without destroying the plot - in fact they kind of did this but kept it to the opening scene and the palace scene at the end.
 
The Host - Shit. It's slow, it's plodding, the story isn't intresting or compelling or even inventive in any way, and there's plenty of scenes, that last far too long, where nothing at all happens... and the dialogue ranges between bad and embarassing. It saddens me that the man who did Gattaca (which I quite enjoy) is now responsible for shite like this.

Note: This is of course that new American film based on a book, not the rather excellent East Asian horror/monster film.

Trance - I like this quite a bit... but then I quite like Danny Boyle, so I probably allow his films far more leeway then I probably should. I don't think it's as clever as it thinks it is, and there's some really odd/weird shit thrown in there... but regardless, it does tell a intruiging story in a fairly interesting way (if not slightly conveniant at times) and I'd say Boyles direction is good - especially when it comes to keeping the tension ramped up.

Also, I like Vincent Cassel... so there's plus marks there.
 
Smashed - Mary Elizabeth Winstead plays Kate a teacher whose partying is disrupting her life so decides to join AA and sort herself out. The film never really gets going and you don't really ever feel invested in her struggles because it falls short in conveying the worst of the disease, but the story is nice enough I suppose. Aaron Paul is peripheral as her husband but Nick Offerman is pretty good in his quirky way, but he and Octavia Spencer as Kate's sponsor never really feel like they have any real purpose other than to move the plot along while kate figures stuff out on her own. I wouldn't say I disliked it, it was a perfectly nice movie. but throughout I felt that the story was held back from really giving a convincing portrayal of what they were trying to do and lacked the grit the subject deserved so I suppose it was more disappointing than bad.
 
Just found this, which sums up my feelings of Drive :lol:

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