Film The Redcafe Movie review thread

Sky1981 said:
New World (Korean Movie)

Very good movie, better than Infernal Affair (its just that it probably copy them in a view aspect)

All and all very satisfying watch.
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I have to watch this if that statement is true as Infernal Affairs is one of my favourite films.

Stand Up Guys

Great humorous film bringing together some golden oldies in Al Pacino, Christopher Walken and Alan Arkin. Very funny and is also touching and heart-warming. Pacino and Arkin a re brilliant but for me, Walken as usual steals the show by not really doing much, but just being on screen. Thoroughly enjoyed this. 8/10
 
Oh Dirty Schwein, I followed your recommendation for V/H/S 2 and really enjoyed it!

I enjoyed the first short with the ghost story, it was a bit original, nothing brilliant but set the tone pretty well I thought. The zombie one was brilliant and rather touching at the end, very original. As you said, the Safe Haven short was exceptional, just the last shot with the beast saying 'papa' to the character was a bit silly, but the rest of it was truly brilliant with so many sick moments and some good atmosphere setting before it all went tits up. By far my favourite. But the alien one was just shit, which was a real shame, especially to finish with that one. Still really enjoyed the film as a whole and was much better than VHS 1. The fact it was 30 minutes shorter was also good, as the first one dragged on and some of the shorts just felt like fillers.
 
Rooney in Paris said:
Oh Dirty Schwein, I followed your recommendation for V/H/S 2 and really enjoyed it!

I enjoyed the first short with the ghost story, it was a bit original, nothing brilliant but set the tone pretty well I thought. The zombie one was brilliant and rather touching at the end, very original. As you said, the Safe Haven short was exceptional, just the last shot with the beast saying 'papa' to the character was a bit silly, but the rest of it was truly brilliant with so many sick moments and some good atmosphere setting before it all went tits up. By far my favourite. But the alien one was just shit, which was a real shame, especially to finish with that one. Still really enjoyed the film as a whole and was much better than VHS 1. The fact it was 30 minutes shorter was also good, as the first one dragged on and some of the shorts just felt like fillers.
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Your thoughts on it pretty much echo mine. A few days until The Conjuring! Pure excited.
 
Dirty Schwein said:
I have to watch this if that statement is true as Infernal Affairs is one of my favourite films.

Stand Up Guys

Great humorous film bringing together some golden oldies in Al Pacino, Christopher Walken and Alan Arkin. Very funny and is also touching and heart-warming. Pacino and Arkin a re brilliant but for me, Walken as usual steals the show by not really doing much, but just being on screen. Thoroughly enjoyed this. 8/10
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Yes it is, acting wise it is very good

It could have been better if not for the fact that Infernal Affair are the original "mole a mole" inventor
 
pauldyson1uk said:
Really want to see The Conjuring, looks like it could be a decent horror film, not see one that has scared me for a long time.
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Have you seen Sinister? Scariest shit I'd seen in years, watched it with a chick, and she wasn't pleased at how scary it was, I had to escort her to the toilet, then she closed the door, then 2 secs later opened it and said "you'll have to come in with me" :lol: Then when we came back upstairs, she walked into the bedroom first and I had a jacket hanging on a mirror, she turned round, ran into me, knocked drinks everywhere while having a mini panic attack. Good fun that film! Lent it to my sister a few days later and she seemed quite angry with me next time she seen me.
 
One Night Only said:
Have you seen Sinister? Scariest shit I'd seen in years, watched it with a chick, and she wasn't pleased at how scary it was, I had to escort her to the toilet, then she closed the door, then 2 secs later opened it and said "you'll have to come in with me" :lol: Then when we came back upstairs, she walked into the bedroom first and I had a jacket hanging on a mirror, she turned round, ran into me, knocked drinks everywhere while having a mini panic attack. Good fun that film! Lent it to my sister a few days later and she seemed quite angry with me next time she seen me.
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Yeah , I have and thought it was a decent film, there was a few bits that scared me and it is the best horror I have seen for a long time, quite a few people it proper scared them.
I just want to see a film that proper scares the crap out of me and to be honest that has not happened since the original Nightmare of Elm Street film many years ago, maybe I have just watch too many bad horror films.
 
pauldyson1uk said:
Yeah , I have and thought it was a decent film, there was a few bits that scared me and it is the best horror I have seen for a long time, quite a few people it proper scared them.
I just want to see a film that proper scares the crap out of me and to be honest that has not happened since the original Nightmare of Elm Street film many years ago, maybe I have just watch too many bad horror films.
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It was easier to be scared years ago due to being young and naive, plus, now we get a billion films a year, half of them the same, and using tired old cliches.

The lawnmower got me on Sinister, even though I knew it was coming :lol:
 
Seeing as everyone's discussing it:

The Conjuring

Another solid James Wan horror film, very well made, well acted and an interesting if not remotely original concept. Predictable and solid, which is high praise for a horror film. 7/10
 
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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I saw Trance yesterday, one thing I don't see mentioned on here is that:

Simon wasn't real. The whole film was a trance session on Franck, Simon was simply a representation of his violent side. The final scene we see at the end is the only real thing we see in the entire film, all of it is brought back by Franck diving into the pool. Franck is then asked whether he wants to remember the truth about what happened and still look for her or whether he finally wants to forget. She gives him the choice because after the final trance session where she "perverts the therapy" she knows he won't be the mental obssesed abusive partner he was before. The film also isn't in chronological order.
 
Dirty Schwein said:
Has anyone seen Session 9? My friend tells me it's really good, might give it a try.
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I have seen it and enjoyed it, this is what I posted.

Session 9

I was not expecting much from this , but I was pleasantly shocked , I thought it was excellent.
the acting was spot on , mind you I was expecting David Caruso to get his sunglasses out in every bit I saw him.
Story was well written and had some suspense in it.
The ending was a bit predictable but still very good.

Well worth a watch
7.5/10
 
pauldyson1uk said:
I have seen it and enjoyed it, this is what I posted.

Session 9

I was not expecting much from this , but I was pleasantly shocked , I thought it was excellent.
the acting was spot on , mind you I was expecting David Caruso to get his sunglasses out in every bit I saw him.
Story was well written and had some suspense in it.
The ending was a bit predictable but still very good.

Well worth a watch
7.5/10
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Ok brill, thanks mate, will be checking that out in the very near future.
 
Hectic said:
I saw Trance yesterday, one thing I don't see mentioned on here is that:

Simon wasn't real. The whole film was a trance session on Franck, Simon was simply a representation of his violent side. The final scene we see at the end is the only real thing we see in the entire film, all of it is brought back by Franck diving into the pool. Franck is then asked whether he wants to remember the truth about what happened and still look for her or whether he finally wants to forget. She gives him the choice because after the final trance session where she "perverts the therapy" she knows he won't be the mental obssesed abusive partner he was before. The film also isn't in chronological order.
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I've long decided I hated it anyway.
 
White House Down - Essentially exactly the same movie as Olympus has fallen but I can't decide which is better as it's over a week since I wanted Olympus and I forget what it was like already. Basically two popcorn action flicks that have identical plots and a few explosions. Switch the brain off, ignore the gaping plot holes and the predictable scripts and enjoy the ride.

Also, Jamie Foxx is a terrible actor.
 
Irwynwastheking said:
Can't say that I have. I enjoyed him in Ray, but that was a movie I was always going to love.
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Same here, I loved Ray and he was great in it, but he's done a lot of shit apart from that. Well Django was cool, I loved Collateral as well, but I was thinking along the lines of Stealth or Law Abiding Citizen.
 
Late to the party but Pacific Rim was OK. great fight sequences but boring and cliched story. The acting was also horrible for the most part, even Elba was poor and the two "comedy" guys were completely atrocious. The chinese woman had an annoying voice and the main guy was dreadful, hope I don't see him again as a 'lead' character.

6/10
 
The thing about Olympus Has Fallen, is that even if you agree to the fabled "switch your brain off and enjoy the ride" schtick, it's still absolutely awful. Unless you're actually switching your brain off to vegetable level and dribbling at the lights and colours. In which case you'd be better off sitting in front of a screensaver for two hours.

Obviously the premise is nuts and the jingoism is disgusting, and the plot and dialogue are beyond atrocious (the last line of the film is actually "God Bless America") and the less said about the acting the better, but even the CGI blowy stuffy uppy shit is bad. It looks cheap and gimmicky rather than anything approaching real and shocking, and it all happens in the first 15 or so minutes anyway, after which it descends into actually quite a cheap film about people shooting at each other in nondescript corridors.

The one thing I really don't get about it though, is that for a film that's solely and unimaginatively aimed at xenephobic patriotic backwater 'Merican simpletons, it's almost entirely about how rubbish they are at everything. Aside from one Scottish guy who turns up and rescues them from their own incompetence. The whole thing, literally the WHOLE thing is porn for people who want to watch American people and places being blown up and shot to pieces and completely fecked over for two hours. Which...you know, is odd. A bit "lets watch 9/11, but really badly done and mostly in corridors!! Woooo!"

It's like aiming a film at homophobic christian fundamentalists that's two solid hours of full on, explicit, hardcore gay sex, featuring Christian ministers being repeatedly sodomised before someone eventually turns up and rescues one of them at the end.
 
Mockney said:
The thing about Olympus Has Fallen, is that even if you agree to the fabled "switch your brain off and enjoy the ride" schtick, it's still absolutely awful. Unless you're actually switching your brain off to vegetable level and dribbling at the lights and colours. In which case you'd be better off sitting in front of a screensaver for two hours.

Obviously the premise is nuts and the jingoism is disgusting, and the plot and dialogue are beyond atrocious (the last line of the film is actually "God Bless America") and the less said about the acting the better, but even the CGI blowy stuffy uppy shit is bad. It looks cheap and gimmicky rather than anything approaching real and shocking, and it all happens in the first 15 or so minutes anyway, after which it descends into actually quite a cheap film about people shooting at each other in nondescript corridors.

The one thing I really don't get about it though, is that for a film that's solely and unimaginatively aimed at xenephobic patriotic backwater 'Merican simpletons, it's almost entirely about how rubbish they are at everything. Aside from one Scottish guy who turns up and rescues them from their own incompetence. The whole thing, literally the WHOLE thing is porn for people who want to watch American people and places being blown up and shot to pieces and completely fecked over for two hours. Which...you know, is odd. A bit "lets watch 9/11, but really badly done and mostly in corridors!! Woooo!"

It's like aiming a film at homophobic christian fundamentalists that's two solid hours of full on, explicit, hardcore gay sex, featuring Christian ministers being repeatedly sodomised before someone eventually turns up and rescues one of them at the end.
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As I said Mockers I watched Olympus a week or two ago and totally forget the film which isn't such a good sign. Did you watch white house down yet? I actually would say it's better than how you describe Olympus if only for how the action is evenly spread out and it has some cool as feck heli crash scenes.
 
Seen a lot of good reviews here for Django. Seems like I'm the only one who thought it was just alright. My mate said it was one of the best films you'd ever see, which was a gross overstatement. Wasn't keen on DiCaprio's role. Didn't like Jackson's role. Didn't like Foxx's wife, who just spent the whole film naked and screaming. The shootout was typically Tarantino, and I wasn't overly taken by that. Didn't like his cameo at the end either.

Christopher Waltz was excellent though.
 
Liam147 said:
Seen a lot of good reviews here for Django. Seems like I'm the only one who thought it was just alright. My mate said it was one of the best films you'd ever see, which was a gross overstatement. Wasn't keen on DiCaprio's role. Didn't like Jackson's role. Didn't like Foxx's wife, who just spent the whole film naked and screaming. The shootout was typically Tarantino, and I wasn't overly taken by that. Didn't like his cameo at the end either.

Christopher Waltz was excellent though.
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Best you'll ever see is an overstatement but I did think it was a very good film. The dialogue was great as always with Tarantino and there's a lot of entertaining dark comedy. While the action and blood was a bit over the top I did enjoy it anyway.

Waltz was superb as you say, but I thought most of the cast did a great job in their respective roles. Never been a big fan of Di Caprio but he was great in this as the villain and I thought Jackson was great too. The one I agree with you on though is his wife. All she seemed to be capable of doing was screaming. Didn't ruin it at all for me though.
 
shaggy said:
Late to the party but Pacific Rim was OK. great fight sequences but boring and cliched story. The acting was also horrible for the most part, even Elba was poor and the two "comedy" guys were completely atrocious. The chinese woman had an annoying voice and the main guy was dreadful, hope I don't see him again as a 'lead' character.

6/10
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:nono:

True Grit (Coen Brothers)

Excellent take and far superior to John Wayne's version, has a truly astounding debut(?) performance from Hailee Steinfeld and terrific work from Bridges and Damon, as per. Fans of Josh Brolin shouldn't get too excited, he's in it for five seconds. 8/10
 
Liam147 said:
Seen a lot of good reviews here for Django. Seems like I'm the only one who thought it was just alright. My mate said it was one of the best films you'd ever see, which was a gross overstatement. Wasn't keen on DiCaprio's role. Didn't like Jackson's role. Didn't like Foxx's wife, who just spent the whole film naked and screaming. The shootout was typically Tarantino, and I wasn't overly taken by that. Didn't like his cameo at the end either.

Christopher Waltz was excellent though.
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I think it's very good myself, but I agree it's slightly overrated. Basterds is better and the pacing of the last half hour is all over the shop.
 
Liam147 said:
Seen a lot of good reviews here for Django. Seems like I'm the only one who thought it was just alright. My mate said it was one of the best films you'd ever see, which was a gross overstatement. Wasn't keen on DiCaprio's role. Didn't like Jackson's role. Didn't like Foxx's wife, who just spent the whole film naked and screaming. The shootout was typically Tarantino, and I wasn't overly taken by that. Didn't like his cameo at the end either.

Christopher Waltz was excellent though.
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Goooose said:
Evil Dead (2013)

Shite.
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You're a hard bunch to please! :lol:
 
Liam147 said:
Seen a lot of good reviews here for Django. Seems like I'm the only one who thought it was just alright. My mate said it was one of the best films you'd ever see, which was a gross overstatement. Wasn't keen on DiCaprio's role. Didn't like Jackson's role. Didn't like Foxx's wife, who just spent the whole film naked and screaming. The shootout was typically Tarantino, and I wasn't overly taken by that. Didn't like his cameo at the end either.

Christopher Waltz was excellent though.
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Thought it was barely alright as well. The whole thing with the fecked up hooded horsemen came out very unfunny, and you get to a point where you become so sick of Tarantino's adolescent genre-geek shoot `em up crap, that it gets harder and harder to enjoy his flashes of genius, which the film did have many of, to be fair. But I'm so sick and tired of generic gun play bollocks in American movies. It stopped being entertaining or interesting or cool or creative long ago even without the growing amount of true life gun splaying massacres. I wonder if Tarantino ever sits there and reflects upon the Norwegian or Colorado or Sandy Hook et al, and thinks, gee, maybe it might be a decent idea to make my money and art on other genre-geek scenarios. That goes for all these Hollywood liberal gun control enthusiasts as well who blather about these gun idiots yet continue to come out in these films wielding guns all over the place in such fake Hollywood generic crap.
 
I liked Django, but I never got the groundbreaking praise it got. It's essentially just Tarantino's version of this.



But without the amazing theme tune.
 
Mockney, that was bloody brilliant! I'm gonna definitely watch that!

Session 9

A psychological film, makes you think a lot and if you pay attention to the surroundings, the film is a lot more fulfilling. The director doesn't spoon feed the clues so the viewer has to look and listen to all the elements of the film to comprehend the storyline. The acting was good, the plot was intriguing and ambiguous, the sound design was pretty well done and the location was superb. The only problem was that the film wasn't at all scary, although it did have a few psychologically motivated pointers, the overall resolution was too simple and not as 'clever' as the writer/director intended it to be. As long as the viewer just keeps the brain ticking, the film can be pretty easily diagnosed. Still, the setting and mood was eerie and it was a decent horror film. 6.5/10
 
The Wolverine

Pretty bad. Plot was a bit ridiculous, and some massive 'what the feck' moments.

4/10
 
Dirty Schwein said:
Has anyone seen Session 9? My friend tells me it's really good, might give it a try.
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I saw it a number of years ago and enjoyed it. It's quite creepy, particularly creepy towards the end. It gets into your head and I do recall a number of times I thought of the film at night time months later. Worth the watch in my opinion
 
Tell No One - Good fun, like the book.

In A Lonely Place - entertaining watch, though different to how I expected. I thought it would be all about the tension but there was hardly any. Maybe linked to that, I didn't like Gloria Grahame much in it. Whatever it was meant to be, it was made great by Bogart being insanely watchable. Great performance.

The Fallen Idol - had a few decent moments in terms of showing scenes through a child's eyes, but nothing really special beyond the entertaining plot.

Girl, Interrupted - really disliked it. Don't really like to shit on that kind of autobiographical writing/storytelling as what seems like crap to me likely still means a lot to someone else, but not having read the book, the film met all my negative expectations of what it would be like.

A Walk to Remember - No comment.

fecking Åmål - could have done with being even shorter I think, but it was still a good watch. His upcoming film looks...interesting (no subs).

Any Swedes seen Girl with Hyacinths? No English version seems to exist.
 
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