Film The Redcafe Movie review thread

No idea if it's been reviewed already but it's just hit Netflix. I thought I was all zombied-out. Not so.

Train to Busan
The movie pulls inspiration from a huge number of films but comes out feeling entirely fresh and new. It feels genuine throughout and has exactly the right amount of set-up before the actual main body of the film starts on the train. Many characters die en-masse but the single death scenes occur to characters that feel meaningful, despite those characters only have a small amount of screen-time to attach themselves to you. As always, the worst monsters in the movie are the humans and the character arcs of the CEO, Fund Manager and well-dressed Hero are well crafted. The token kid has some scene stealing lines and is cute as all hell.

TL/DR - Perfectly paced satirical social commentary with fast-zombies (because who wants slow zombies) - 8/10
 
LennonNL said:
Just watched Usual Suspects for the first time, have to say my head is blagged but I get most of it besides a few things:
1. After all that, after Keyser Soze duped those lot into taking out the Hungarian ship and further ruining their organisation for raping and (partly) killing his family, who the feck is the guy who survived? Burnt to feck but is sat in a bed telling his story? How didn't he die?

2. Why's it so incredibly important to Soze (Verbal) to remain anonymous? Why can't one Hungarian fella know what he looks like? I assume it's the guy he let go in the flashback, so why did he if it's so important to remain anonymous? Did he have to set up what would be months of planning in order to deceive the thieves to take out the boat? Couldn't he just have his 'guys' do it?

3. A bit less blaggy and probably more of a pointless addition but why did he use the board behind him to make shit up? At any moment the detective could've turned round to have a think and seen 'Radford' 'Guatemala' etc. It was a nice touch, and an iconic film moment I suppose but it was bloody daft for such a smart guy.
Anyway it was a good film. Slightly flawed but still a classic. 7.5/10
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1. He didn't die as the cops pulled him out of drainpipe. So either he flew in there due to the force of the boat explosion or he hid in there to avoid the guns.
2. He needed onto the boat to so he could pull the trigger himself to make sure he got his man. The one guy (stool pigeon) who could identify ks. But he needed the thieves help to get on the boat.
3. The detective only had 2 hours to interview him before he posted bail. He used the wall behind to give nothing stories some detail which only delayed matters and stopped the cops asking the right questions.
 
Rake said:
The Dark Tower - 5/10

No, just no. We will never understand how they managed to ruin it so badly.
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For fecks sake, one of my favourite book series of all time.

Just knew they would ruin it.
 
When The Bough Breaks (2016)

Available on Netflix. A formulaic psychological thriller about a successful, but barren couple who enlist the services of a surrogate to bring their first child into the world. Unbeknownst to them though, they fall prey to a scam but to make things more complicated, the surrogate mother falls for the idyllic husband. At this point the film plays out by the numbers with all the usual elements you would expect in this genre as the surrogate becomes more and more unhinged in her attempts to win the husband over.

Now this takes me back to the golden age of the thriller...the 90s when they just kept churning out those fantastic movies with those seminal moments, brilliant acting and great taut direction. Misery, The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, Unlawful Entry, Single White Female, Breakdown, Cape Fear, Double Jeopardy, The Game, Arlington Road, Falling Down....I could go on. While there have been some good attempts to continue this genre recently, this film sadly falls way off the mark, though it did try to be fair.

However it suffers from very wooden acting with the protagonist sounding like she is reading her lines from a cue card and a couple with no chemistry whatsoever. Where the film does excel is building a certain level of tension but as it is so predictable, it just ultimately fails to deliver in the end. The viewer is just left with a feeling of indifference towards the main characters but in their defence they do the best with what they are given. Still worth a watch but don't expect too much. Think it's time to break out those classics again though.

I'm giving this a 5/10.
 
Mockney said:
You're making the understandable, but nevertheless misguided assumption that films in the 90s had any intention of adhering to the same kind of stringent, connective plotting as modern high end TV dramas. They didn't. All you're really supposed to take from it is "OMG he was Keyzer Soze the whole time!?"

As much as I absolutely loved the twist at the time, having re-watched it several times, my main gripe with the iconic evidence board scene is how inconsequential most of it ultimately is. Kobayashi aside, most of the things he picks off it are pointless asides he makes whilst trying to waste time, like making fresh coffee in Guatemala, or knowing a fat guy once.
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Yeah, I get you, but that's what let it down for me; poor logic. A great film nonetheless, but it could've done with a bit more.
 
Ian Reus said:
I'm guessing Lennon has me on ignore. :rolleyes:
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Hahaha sorry! I just realised I couldn't be arsed delving into a debate about it, but might aswell.

Cheers for 1 and 3, but with 2 it still doesn't answer the question as to why it was so important for him to remain anonymous. Keyser Soze to most people is just a mythical threat, so what if he turns out to have a face?
 
LennonNL said:
Hahaha sorry! I just realised I couldn't be arsed delving into a debate about it, but might aswell.

Cheers for 1 and 3, but with 2 it still doesn't answer the question as to why it was so important for him to remain anonymous. Keyser Soze to most people is just a mythical threat, so what if he turns out to have a face?
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"One cannot be betrayed if one has no people."
He didn't need to remain anonymous to the Hungarians, only the cops which would lead to his business empire.
Verbal had a petty criminal record. Soze had much more including murder, drugs etc.
The cops only had details on verbal though. Not soze, or so they thought.
 
Ian Reus said:
"One cannot be betrayed if one has no people."
He didn't need to remain anonymous to the Hungarians, only the cops which would lead to his business empire.
Verbal had a petty criminal record. Soze had much more including murder, drugs etc.
The cops only had details on verbal though. Not soze, or so they thought.
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Fair enough. Shit cops if you ask me
 
Guardians Of The Galaxy 2 More of the same only far less plot and far fewer laughs. What plot there was could have been written on the back of a postage stamp and was both banal and stupid. 2.5/10
 
Valerian was pretty enjoyable for a teen scifi romp. The beginning was very well put together, I felt, showing the evolution of Alpha, but the plot holes were pretty big as well. Cara Delivigne is fit. Plenty of action, lots of CGI. Most two dimensional villain I've seen in a long time (not Clive Owen's finest hour). If the writing had matched the visuals, it could have been epic. I still preferred it to the new Planet of the Apes, though.

7/10
 
I Am Not A Serial Killer
A boy with homicidal tendencies begins to stalk and plan to stop the town's local serial killer whilst keeping his own murderous urges at bay. I quite enjoyed this. Well acted by the kid from Where The Wild Things Are, Lydia from Breaking Bad and the Doc from Back To The Future. Very slow burn of a film but builds atmosphere really well and really has a WTF ending that no one will see coming. It does drag in parts though, but that's expected from a film like this. It's only 99 minutes so give it a Sunday evening whirl 6.5/10
 
Wibble said:
Guardians Of The Galaxy 2 More of the same only far less plot and far fewer laughs. What plot there was could have been written on the back of a postage stamp and was both banal and stupid. 2.5/10
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Only got through the first 20 minutes, really weak so far
 
Artificial Intelligence (2001) - This was surprisingly very good. There was lack of subtlety to make it truly great and the use of narration when there is no need for any is a pet peeve of mine but this was still very good. It's impossible not to compare it with Blade Runner though which is twice as good.

The Holy Mountain (1973) - Loved it. Surreal, bizarre and full of symbolic imagery that noone other than Jodorowski himself will be able to fully comprehend. It's a wonderful and existential journey full of visual treats and it was surprisingly funny too. If a movie was an acid trip, this would be it.

El Topo (1970) - Not as bizarre as The Holy Mountain and also not as good but enjoyable nonetheless. Santa Sangre is next

Infamous (2006) - Meh
 
Had a bit of a binge of crappy action flicks lately.

Fate of the Furious - considering I hadn't watched one of these since that dogshit Tokyo Drift one, a real pleasant surprise! 6/10

XxX 3 or whatever it's called - again, way better than the previous one I watched. Another 6/10

Power Rangers - again a pleasant surprise! Half cogent plot and reasonable acting, lots of fun references to the original series. You guessed it, 6/10.

John Wick 2 - Meh. Maybe slightly less meh than John Wick 1. 5/10.
 
Something in the Air - The original title 'After May' is a much better tittle, although less catchy. Sort of autobiographical, it follows a couple of young French people after the May 68 events, as they get wrapped up in the revolutionary spirit of the time, the 'sexiness' of it all and etc. I liked it's fairly neutral tone, nostalgic, but not too nostalgic, critical, but not too critical. Great soundtrack too.



 
Peyroteo said:
Artificial Intelligence (2001) - This was surprisingly very good. There was lack of subtlety to make it truly great and the use of narration when there is no need for any is a pet peeve of mine but this was still very good. It's impossible not to compare it with Blade Runner though which is twice as good.

The Holy Mountain (1973) - Loved it. Surreal, bizarre and full of symbolic imagery that noone other than Jodorowski himself will be able to fully comprehend. It's a wonderful and existential journey full of visual treats and it was surprisingly funny too. If a movie was an acid trip, this would be it.

El Topo (1970) - Not as bizarre as The Holy Mountain and also not as good but enjoyable nonetheless. Santa Sangre is next

Infamous (2006) - Meh
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Santa Sangre's probably my favourite Jodorowsky film, not as bonkers as the other ones (still fairly weird though) but a way more accomplished and fully realized one.
 
R.N7 said:
Santa Sangre's probably my favourite Jodorowsky film, not as bonkers as the other ones (still fairly weird though) but a way more accomplished and fully realized one.
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That's good to hear. I'll probably give it a while before I watch it since I feel like I need to return to some regular non-Jodorowsky films. I've been watching some of his interviews on youtube and it's easy to see where the madness of his films comes from :lol:
 
Peyroteo said:
That's good to hear. I'll probably give it a while before I watch it since I feel like I need to return to some regular non-Jodorowsky films. I've been watching some of his interviews on youtube and it's easy to see where the madness of his films comes from :lol:
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I feel you. I rarely watch films by the same director in a row, what films are you planning to watch next?
 
R.N7 said:
I feel you. I rarely watch films by the same director in a row, what films are you planning to watch next?
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I finally watched Resnais's Mon Oncle d'Amerique yesterday night which was fantastic so I'm thinking of watching Destroy, She Said next. Directed by Marguerite Duras who wrote Hiroshima mon amour.

I'll be in Spain for a while with a shitty wifi connection so I'm limited to the films I already have. From 2017, I still need to see Dunkirk and Guadagnino's new film sounds good too. Then I have a bunch of movies like La Belle Noiseuse, Le quai des brumes, Les enfants du paradis, Cronenberg's Crash, Polanski's Macbeth, etc. that I'll probably watch soon since I've been meaning to watch them for way too long and of course I still need to properly watch Kitano's Hana-Bi too.

Wht about you?
 
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets

Stunning visuals makes for a decent sci-fi flick in a way that Besson does best. Cara Delavigne is a big star in the making if she picks the right projects...she was great in this. Playing one of the lead Special Agents tasked with preserving the order of Alpha, a sprawling cosmopolis of thousands of intergalactic species, along with the not so brilliant Dane DeHaan, the two embark on a perilous mission to unravel the mystery that is threatening the very existence of this new community.

Running at around two and a half hours, you don't get the sense that the film is dragging, with the plot and action driving at a decent enough pace to keep you watching. It was evident that with a big enough budget to work with, Besson was able to realise his vision and really put his mark on this film with great set, costume and creature designs. This would have been great in an IMAX. Thankfully, we are not subjected to the obligatory pointless, cringeworthy and over-the-top characters (apart from the Guide) that these sci-fi films feel impelled to include and even the love interest between the two leads is tastefully done and not to the detriment of the overall story and tone of the film. Solid supporting cast including Clive Owen and the legendary Herbie Hancock as the Defence Minister (didn't realise it was him till the end though I kept thinking he looked very familiar), this was on a par, if not better than Guardians of the Galaxy 2.

The opening sequence was great and just to reiterate, the visuals are just fantastic. A sci-fi movie with a slightly original plot albeit with the all so predicable outcomes, it's a reminder of how these types of movies can be made, if done correctly and with a bit of effort. By all means not a classic but better than most.

I'm giving this a 7/10.
 
King Arthur: Legend of the Sword

At times it looks fun, even interesting. By the time it finishes you are fully aware that it's just one big mess of a movie.

I did love the actress who played Mage and has magic skills. One beautiful creature.

3/10
 
SteveJ said:
Bored of blockbusters? Why Hollywood needs another Bonnie and Clyde moment

https://www.theguardian.com/film/20...-why-hollywood-needs-another-bonnie-and-clyde
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Yeeeee.... kind of. The revolution will happen on its own without much conscious effort. Trouble is no one can really predict the quality of the revolution. And '67-'79 had plenty of crap come out, too. It wasn't some golden age. Simply the decade when the post-WW2 generation with their post-WW2 generation values really came into purchasing power at the box-office. Studios took chances on young directors to target their contemporary demographic and voila. Same thing happens today.

The revolution always happens, in a 100 Years of Solitude type way.

What Hollywood is really suffering from is something else. (Audience fatigue)
 
Jackie. Mopey, middle of the road Portman is perhaps the biggest fraud in the business. Here she gives a weird, indulgent, piece of shit performance. Less Jackie Kennedy, more a Bo Selecta rendition of Marilyn Monroe. If nothing else this film proves that Orson Welles was wrong when he said that anyone can act in close up. The closeup stuff here is excruciating.

The film shoots for that cold Brechtian-detatchment thingy PT Anderson does so well and there are breif moments where it works - usually the scenes accompanied by Mika Levi's excellent score. It's quite a boring story told in an odd way with a pseudointellectual air, a bunch of superficial insights and some flawed attempts to portray psychological and emotional depths. The only moments with any real substance are the body horror splatter glimpses.

There are ingredients here to have made an irreverent surrealist horror that might have been of some worth. As it is the film is too super cereal and too shallow to be anything.
 
dumbo said:
Jackie. Mopey, middle of the road Portman is perhaps the biggest fraud in the business. Here she gives a weird, indulgent, piece of shit performance. Less Jackie Kennedy, more a Bo Selecta rendition of Marilyn Monroe. If nothing else this film proves that Orson Welles was wrong when he said that anyone can act in close up. The closeup stuff here is excruciating.

The film shoots for that cold Brechtian-detatchment thingy PT Anderson does so well and there are breif moments where it works - usually the scenes accompanied by Mika Levi's excellent score. It's quite a boring story told in an odd way with a pseudointellectual air, a bunch of superficial insights and some flawed attempts to portray psychological and emotional depths. The only moments with any real substance are the body horror splatter glimpses.

There are ingredients here to have made an irreverent surrealist horror that might have been of some worth. As it is the film is too super cereal and too shallow to be anything.
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Larrain's follow up Neruda is much better because the closeups and overacting are played as ridiculous, whereas Jackie is incredibly po faced.
 
dumbo said:
Cheers. Actually comparing the films to Brecht is probably wrong too, different types of estrangement, different style of techniques. Perhaps similar in their ultimate aims. I don't know enough about theatre really.
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I think the comparison is fairly apt, although not as drastic as in Brechtian theatre where estrangement is the literal breaking of the fourth wall. But applied to film, I get what you mean.

I liked Neruda, one of the best Spanish language films I've seen this year.
 
I wonder if part of the problem is that Jackie - for all the glamour and tragedy - wasn't all that interesting as a person.
 
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Peyroteo said:
I finally watched Resnais's Mon Oncle d'Amerique yesterday night which was fantastic so I'm thinking of watching Destroy, She Said next. Directed by Marguerite Duras who wrote Hiroshima mon amour.

I'll be in Spain for a while with a shitty wifi connection so I'm limited to the films I already have. From 2017, I still need to see Dunkirk and Guadagnino's new film sounds good too. Then I have a bunch of movies like La Belle Noiseuse, Le quai des brumes, Les enfants du paradis, Cronenberg's Crash, Polanski's Macbeth, etc. that I'll probably watch soon since I've been meaning to watch them for way too long and of course I still need to properly watch Kitano's Hana-Bi too.

Wht about you?
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That's some really good films.

Hmm, I've got some 50's Polish films lined up (The Last Day of Summer, Night Train), at least one De Oliveira film (Abraham's Valley or Amor de Perdicao) and some obscure 70's UK titles (Whistle and I'll Come to You, The Other Side of Underneath). Oh and Yang's Taipei Story if I finally will be able to get hold of it.
 
SteveJ said:
I wonder if part of the problem is that Jackie - for the glamour and tragedy - wasn't all that interesting as a person.
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I agree with this. I'd also add that JFK isn't all that interesting aside from his assassination.
 
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