I prefer House of Flying Daggers in terms of pure visuals. It's a truly stunning movie.
Film The Redcafe Movie review thread
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I prefer House of Flying Daggers in terms of pure visuals. It's a truly stunning movie.
Wong Kar-Wai, Edward Yang and Hou Hsiao-hsien are the masters.
I watched it expecting to be swooned by Tony Leung/Maggie Cheung and enjoy some occasional sword dancing interludes, so I ended up a pretty happy customer. Jet Li served mostly as a distraction if anything iirc.
Ride Along
Cliched buddy cop film but did have a few laughs, mainly because of Kevin Hart, who I quite enjoy watching 6/10
Cliched buddy cop film but did have a few laughs, mainly because of Kevin Hart, who I quite enjoy watching 6/10
Had a couple of Yang ones planned, what are the go-to Hsiao-hsien's?
Hard: A City of Sadness, In the Hands of a Puppet Master
Easy: Three Times, Millennium Mambo
The harder, the better.
Obliged. Early Tony Leung makes A City of Sadness look a good jumping off spot.
He really knows how to use the medium to convey the passage of time and the weight of history.
Doctor Strange
Above average Marvel gumpf elevated by the superb fx. Must remember to watch again on LSD.
A Monster Calls
Really good. Not afraid to admit I had a bit of dust in the eye come the end of this one. Only minor criticism was the cliche bullying sub plot. Not sure it needed it.
Above average Marvel gumpf elevated by the superb fx. Must remember to watch again on LSD.
A Monster Calls
Really good. Not afraid to admit I had a bit of dust in the eye come the end of this one. Only minor criticism was the cliche bullying sub plot. Not sure it needed it.
Villeneuve has apparently signed on for Dune.
I think he was egging the bully on so that the pain from the bullying can detract him from the pain of his mother dying. I thought that was really well done.
The Girl With All The Gifts - Held off seeing this until I had finished the book. Was left a little disappointed especially after seeing some of the rave reviews. Key elements were removed/changed - book and movie spoilers:
Overall i think it suffered from having a small budget which is a pity as i think it deserved better.
- No Junkers - I liked them in the book; the non infected savages that made you think the human race wasn't really worth saving. No junkers led to the strange scene of Melanie attacking one of the innocent soldiers, which took away a lot of her moral ambiguity.
- The cure - so the movie makes it clear that a cure can be made from Melanie and Caldwell is certain about it all along. In the book though Caldwell is unable to identify the cause of Melanie's abilities until the end when she finally identified there can be no cure and they are doomed. I liked that ending much better, there never was any hope.
- Confronting the young hungries - Really cringey scene where she is telling the young hungries that Helen and Parks are hers. Not a bit believable. The young hungries in general were a bit too staged as savages and I didn't find the girl who played Melanie to be all that great of an actor.
- The seeds - in the story the plants containing the seeds ran for miles and miles. In the movie we get a huge dick in the middle of London. Ok I get the phallic connotations of a new life starting but it just didn't strike me that this plant would carry across continents and bring about the end of the human race
Overall i think it suffered from having a small budget which is a pity as i think it deserved better.
Arrival (2016)
Meh... Had Big hopes, but nah.
Decent first 1/3 of the movie, then It gets so silly and basic.
4/10
Meh... Had Big hopes, but nah.
Decent first 1/3 of the movie, then It gets so silly and basic.
4/10
Hmmmm fair point. My problem was less with motivations of the kid but more the generic bully character flanked by his 2 henchmen.
Agree with all of that, especially the last 2 points. Was really disappointed in this adaptation. I thought the casting was pretty awful tbh.
Now that's a proper film. Possibly enjoyed it more than Oldeuboi. 8/10 I'd say, plus 0.5 making it a 13.5/16 'cause I love me dem Asians.
The Daughter - what started off as an intriguing Ibsen adaptation devolved into soap opera hysterics. Waste of an excellent cast; Geoffrey Rush, Paul Schneider, Sam Neill, Miranda Otto. Shame.
@Wibble it was filmed around Tumut and Batlow, in New South Wales. Beautiful area, didn't know Australia had that kind of landscape.
@Wibble it was filmed around Tumut and Batlow, in New South Wales. Beautiful area, didn't know Australia had that kind of landscape.
Gertrud - Incredibly dour yet quitely transcending in a way I can't really explain. The stripped down visual style and diffuse lighting gave a strange effect.
Lovely part of the world. Tumut is at the base of the most Northerly NSW snowfields and can be used for a base to drive in for a days skiing. The are is also very popular with mountain bikers, walkers and on a great route for motorcyclists in summer. We stayed there once and it was lovely (if a bit dull at night).
Arrival
Tralfamadorians Space Squids visit earth and set the clock running, for the humans must solve the Space Squid space sudoku in time, in order to win space cash.
With the aid of Science! and a DVD of Interstellar, these wikipedia-reading, jargon-spewing, humanist wankers save the day. Turns out that there was no clock at all [Twilight Zone theme].
With the aid of Science! and a DVD of Interstellar, these wikipedia-reading, jargon-spewing, humanist wankers save the day. Turns out that there was no clock at all [Twilight Zone theme].
Saying there's a twist also ruins the twist.
Have you seen it* yet?
*or Plan 9, or Vonnegut, or South Park, or Contact, or Interstellar, or 'Eternal Return', ad infinitum (Geddit!!?).
It was actually alright.
Hidden Figures (2016)
Follows 3 black women human computers (a computer programmer, a mathematician and an aeronautical engineer) working at NASA in Virginia in the run up to Glenn's orbit of the earth in 1962. Basically a true story with some slight embellishment. A brilliant film altogether and should be a contender for best picture Oscar. 9/10
Follows 3 black women human computers (a computer programmer, a mathematician and an aeronautical engineer) working at NASA in Virginia in the run up to Glenn's orbit of the earth in 1962. Basically a true story with some slight embellishment. A brilliant film altogether and should be a contender for best picture Oscar. 9/10
Sister Act (1992)
Watched this again on Now TV. Still stands up today as a great classic comedy movie despite coming up to it's 25-year anniversary. From the opening scenes (young Whoopi) and musical number right to the end credits with the hilarious pun-filled magazine front covers, this still had me laughing all the way through. Perfectly casted with Whoopi Goldberg, Harvey Keitel, Maggie Smith, Kathy Najimy and Wendy Makenna and some great nuns, the laughs come thick and fast in this fantastic movie. Brilliantly acted, razor-sharp script and great songs thrown in. What's not to love about this movie. Enjoyed it as much now as I did back then. Easily, one of my top 50 films of all time. Absolutely loved it!
I'm giving this a 9/10.
Watched this again on Now TV. Still stands up today as a great classic comedy movie despite coming up to it's 25-year anniversary. From the opening scenes (young Whoopi) and musical number right to the end credits with the hilarious pun-filled magazine front covers, this still had me laughing all the way through. Perfectly casted with Whoopi Goldberg, Harvey Keitel, Maggie Smith, Kathy Najimy and Wendy Makenna and some great nuns, the laughs come thick and fast in this fantastic movie. Brilliantly acted, razor-sharp script and great songs thrown in. What's not to love about this movie. Enjoyed it as much now as I did back then. Easily, one of my top 50 films of all time. Absolutely loved it!
I'm giving this a 9/10.
Arrival
TralfamadoriansSpace Squids visit earth and set the clock running, for the humans must solve the Space Squid space sudoku in time, in order to win space cash.
With the aid of Science! and a DVD of Interstellar, these wikipedia-reading, jargon-spewing, humanist wankers save the day. Turns out that there was no clock at all [Twilight Zone theme].
It was really bad. The most convoluted way to tell a story in order to get an underdeveloped emotional payoff.
All I could think of were of these:
I couldn't believe they used On the Nature of Daylight. Shutter Island is only 7 years old, they really need wait longer before appropriating a song used prominently in another big mainstream movie.
I've watched it. There is no twist. Never mind a huge one.
Intelligent sci-fi with an actual emotional payoff. The film Interstellar could have been without the gibberish.
The writer is gay. I think there was supposed to be some sort of sexual tension in those scenes, reflecting his own experience of being bullied at school. Only it didn't quite work and made them feel really awkward. Agree that it was the only flaw in the film. Although the whole sub-plot was almost worth it for the scene when he kicked off in the cafeteria, with the monster at his back. That was great.
7 Days In Hell - A pretty bizarre 45 minute mockumentary about two Tennis stars played by Andy Samberg and Kit Harrington... featuring some pretty good cameos, a short profile on courtroom artists, some actual laughs, some misses and lots of weirdness. If you like Lonley Island stuff you'll probably like it, and if you don't, you won't.
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That's a weird running length.
It's a short HBO film, so I imagine they had it in an hour TV slot.
Its the right length for what it is.
That's interesting because I definitely picked up on the sexual thing with those long stares. In fact that's where I thought it was going and when he said (paraphrasing) "I know what you want now" but was a little disappointed it kind of veered away from it.
Imdb closes its message boards. While often source of garbage, lots of great posts as well, really a shame. Regularly checking them out after seeing some interesting films. Going for social media instead.
Edge of Seventeen
Quite predictable and by the books, but still a sweet movie with great acting. 8/10
Quite predictable and by the books, but still a sweet movie with great acting. 8/10
The Siege (1998): 7.5/10
Why the 6.3 on IMDB? The direction was pretty slick and the movie had some notable powerful scenes. Oh and pretty unlikely that such a movie will be made today.
Why the 6.3 on IMDB? The direction was pretty slick and the movie had some notable powerful scenes. Oh and pretty unlikely that such a movie will be made today.
I googled this and I got a page full of Twitter cnuts, Gizmodo, Techcrunch and the like telling me how bad the boards were and how it is of no great loss. The fecking cheek of it.
It was a great place to visit after watching a film. You don't want to hang around too long but there were often smart posts, funny observations and interesting interpretations below the rubble. If you had a question about something that had happened in the film, the answer was usually there. And it's hit and run anarchic style meant it was free from the insufferable pomposity of some of the reddit filmies and other online film communities.
I'll miss it.
I also used the message boards...
I always thought the layout was horrible, made it a pain to trawl through.
It is a pain, always had to click 'flat' for every thread. Guess for registered members you could set it at that by default. Never bothered thou.
I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I'm sensing that you liked this film.
Manchester by the Sea - Kenneth Lonergan film about a man taking custody of his teenage nephew when his brother dies, starring Casey Affleck. Difficult and sad. Its most admirable quality, that it acknowledges some people can't be fixed and some grief is too great to overcome, also makes it a little hard to get inside of. Affleck does a lot without doing much, I think he has as good a case as anyone for that Oscar.