Check out "The Langoliers" also. Very dated, but incredibly entertaining.
Film The Redcafe Movie review thread
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Check out "The Langoliers" also. Very dated, but incredibly entertaining.
I actually really enjoyed that as a kid. Not sure if it holds up though
Jumanji 2: More evidence that I need to stop judging the movies that I want to watch based on trailers as I thought this would be a total dud based solely on the underwhelming trailer. I’m glad to say however I was completely wrong and this happens to be one of the better action adventure movies I’ve seen within recent years. A very funny and well thought out script provides the basis for the success here with frequent laugh out loud moments throughout. However it’s really the physical performances of each character that really sell both the comedy and the premise providing the basis for suspension of disbelief that is required in what is mainly a body swap comedy. Even the video game elements work with very good use of a three lives rule throughout. There are a couple of clichéd elements in term of pathos and familiar tropes that you would expect with this genre as well as a pretty uninteresting antagonist (which is a shame as Bobby Cannavale is a better actor than he’s allowed to be here) but the humor and sense of inventiveness with the overall scenario is enough to make this a highly enjoyable watch. Probably haven’t enjoyed an action adventure this much since Edge of Tomorrow; hopefully this one won’t end up as a similarly overlooked minor gem.
7.5/10
7.5/10
Yeah Armand Hammer, sounds like a Bond villain. Which is apt, considering his grandfather is rumoured to have had a massive stash of stolen Nazi art.
Bright (2017)
Now available on Netflix, and probably their biggest project to date. Set in an alternate LA where 2000 years ago, mythical races settled on Earth, Will Smith plays a cop caught up in a sinister plot to usurp the current balance of things by means of a magical wand with untold powers but only able to be wielded by a 'Bright'. Now it might sound a bit fairytale-ish but fairy tale it ain't. We're not treated to any back story really as to how or why these species settled on earth but they're well established now. Orcs, fairies, elves, centaurs......all part of the daily grind of life on earth really makes for a compelling back drop. Elven exclusive and wealthy communities, Orc neighbourhoods and gangs, Centaur cops....all just a part of everyday life. If you've seen Alien Nation, District 9, Training Day etc. you'll spot some familiar themes running here.
While the premise is fairly original, it tends to lose its way toward the end as it draws to its predictable conclusion. Will Smith does what Will Smith does and the acting is pretty solid throughout. SFX are used where necessary and not to the point of overpowering the film. It's pretty violent throughout so not for the little ones. With the different races living side by side, the film avoids getting too heavy on the expected themes of profiling, discrimination and intolerance as in Alien Nation and District 9 but the differences are there to see, especially at the beginning of the film. It's a difficult one to categorise but was enjoyable nonetheless. The premise does just enough to keep the interest peaked throughout.
I'm giving this a 7.5/10.
Now available on Netflix, and probably their biggest project to date. Set in an alternate LA where 2000 years ago, mythical races settled on Earth, Will Smith plays a cop caught up in a sinister plot to usurp the current balance of things by means of a magical wand with untold powers but only able to be wielded by a 'Bright'. Now it might sound a bit fairytale-ish but fairy tale it ain't. We're not treated to any back story really as to how or why these species settled on earth but they're well established now. Orcs, fairies, elves, centaurs......all part of the daily grind of life on earth really makes for a compelling back drop. Elven exclusive and wealthy communities, Orc neighbourhoods and gangs, Centaur cops....all just a part of everyday life. If you've seen Alien Nation, District 9, Training Day etc. you'll spot some familiar themes running here.
While the premise is fairly original, it tends to lose its way toward the end as it draws to its predictable conclusion. Will Smith does what Will Smith does and the acting is pretty solid throughout. SFX are used where necessary and not to the point of overpowering the film. It's pretty violent throughout so not for the little ones. With the different races living side by side, the film avoids getting too heavy on the expected themes of profiling, discrimination and intolerance as in Alien Nation and District 9 but the differences are there to see, especially at the beginning of the film. It's a difficult one to categorise but was enjoyable nonetheless. The premise does just enough to keep the interest peaked throughout.
I'm giving this a 7.5/10.
Seen it a few time.
My review of it.
Gerald's Game
While trying to spice up their marriage in their remote lake house, Jessie must fight to survive when her husband dies unexpectedly, leaving her handcuffed to their bed frame.
WOW what a film, Carla Gugino was excellent has Jessie.
Some parts were hard to watch and the handcuff scene was brutal.
The best Stephen king adaptation I've watched.
10/10
Even the bad King adaptations have something about them...even Sleepwalkers, as it stars the incredible Alice Krige from my favourite ghost story...um...Ghost Story.
Interesting that professional critics and people serious about movies loved this, but it totally bombed at the box office.
I doubt it'll do Jennifer Lawrence's career much good: she's had a lot of misfires in the last few years. One too many strikes and you're out in Hollywood. If she can't prove she's an actual box office attraction without her bow and arrow, not being paid as much as top male stars might soon be the least of her worries.
To be fair, it is an art house film that was marketed horribly so was inevitable it will fail.
A Ghost Story: A frequently interesting but occasionally exasperating meditation on both love and the transience of life. This has frequent moments of insight although it still remains populated by a few moments of navel gazing where it never feels quite as profound as it believes it is being. The moments that work are generally when focusing on the relationship between the main couple with good performances from Both Casey Affleck (Mainly when he’s not wearing a giant white sheet over his whole body) and Rooney Mara, the few problems come when the film is trying to expand its scope to beyond a story of tragic separation and into something dealing more with transience and letting go of the past. Perhaps even in it’s less effective moments it is helped by being beautifully shot to the point that you spend those less effective movements waiting for something more profound to emerge which occasionally does happen. Overall it feels like a film that could have been shorter and could have told a more effective story whilst losing about 10-15 minutes of its running time; and by no means is it a long movie at 1hr 30 minutes or there about, but its premise is pretty simple so a more streamlined story would have worked more effectively for me. As for what is there this is a good watch, even if the high points are punctuated by occasional moments of unnecessary navel gazing.
6/10
6/10
That's next on my list, along with Kidnap.
Rambo III
Oops he's helping the Taliban fight Soviets- ITV4. Some films age better than others.
Oops he's helping the Taliban fight Soviets- ITV4. Some films age better than others.
I hope he beats ITV4.
Has she though? Even mother! has made 44 million on a 30 million budget. It’s not Ishtar.
Only about half the 44 million goes to the studio though. I'm not sure, and everything depends on promotion budgets etc, but I think the typical film needs to earn ballpark twice its production costs to break even.
They’ll recoup their money and it’s been in the headlines so won’t have damaged her brand at all.
Jennifer Lawrence has had a lot of strikes? Seems like she's one of the most 'bankables' actors out there, surprised to read that.
Aside from that Susanne Bier flop she seems to have starred in nothing but mainstream box office successes in the last couple of years.
I found Mother increasingly frustrating and then flat out annoying when it became clear what Darronofsky was doing. At 90 mins I would have let it off as an ambitious failure but at over two hours it felt like it was wasting my time. The surrealist allegorical stuff was failing to do in ten pompous steps what Bunuel would do in a single succinct, playful skip. I found the finale very shreiky. Her passivity was a problem for me, dramatically at the very least.
Mudbound is a film steeped in the concerns of a 2017 liberal hollywood audience, much to it's detriment. Everytime I thought it was getting towards good a character had to stand up and either shout some bland progressive platitude or signal their villainy by being sexist, joining the clan or putting the recycling in with the rubbish. If you are to retrofit your modern political worldview onto the past then you have to be a lot subtler than this.
It's telling that the flawed yet challenging and insightful Miracle at St Anna (that deals with similar issues) got kicked around, whilst this bland, pandering safe-space, with all the complexity of a Hillary rally, gets all the praise.
Good writing of any age can tackle common human moral concerns by tapping into timeless wisdom and artistic universalities. Something old like Jane Eyre can still speak to us today, revealing subtle insights through intelligent writing and character complexities. Woke twitter campaigning is so hot right now but it offers only cheap gratification, and man does it so often make for dull, dull art.
Tldr: bah humbug! pc going mad I tell thou feck Tiny Tim I hate everything.
Mudbound is a film steeped in the concerns of a 2017 liberal hollywood audience, much to it's detriment. Everytime I thought it was getting towards good a character had to stand up and either shout some bland progressive platitude or signal their villainy by being sexist, joining the clan or putting the recycling in with the rubbish. If you are to retrofit your modern political worldview onto the past then you have to be a lot subtler than this.
It's telling that the flawed yet challenging and insightful Miracle at St Anna (that deals with similar issues) got kicked around, whilst this bland, pandering safe-space, with all the complexity of a Hillary rally, gets all the praise.
Good writing of any age can tackle common human moral concerns by tapping into timeless wisdom and artistic universalities. Something old like Jane Eyre can still speak to us today, revealing subtle insights through intelligent writing and character complexities. Woke twitter campaigning is so hot right now but it offers only cheap gratification, and man does it so often make for dull, dull art.
Tldr: bah humbug! pc going mad I tell thou feck Tiny Tim I hate everything.
Against The Wall (1994)
A TV movie made by HBO but it didn't 'feel' like a TV movie at all to be honest. Good thriller/drama based on the Attica prison riot.
A TV movie made by HBO but it didn't 'feel' like a TV movie at all to be honest. Good thriller/drama based on the Attica prison riot.
Any movie I've read about whose gross revenues were no more than 150% of production costs was described as a loss maker.
As for Jennifer Lawrence, examples of actors who rose to prominence in big budget blockbusters only to have their subsequent careers fizzle are legion. Lawrence has participated in two such projects, X-Men and The Hunger Games, but her only hit outside of those franchises was the idiosyncratic Silver Linings Playbook.
It came out like 3 months ago, they'll still make millions in streaming/DVD sales. TV and movies are also creatively accounted so that the people who worked them on get no/little residuals.
If a film making so little money can break even, almost every movie released is profitable. And we know that's not the case. If nothing else, the high attrition in the ranks of studio executives tells us that.
It also depends on expectations and initial budget. I doubt a studio expected a film like Mother to make astronomically high profits. If they did expect that then they are idiots.
It also didn't help that it got released alongside IT, a far more forgiving and casual friendly horror film.
The film didn't do great, but many factors are responsible for that.
American Hustle also did quite well at the time. She hasn't really done that many films to make any real assessment of her longevity and is still one of the most bankable stars out there. There'll always be a box set TV series for her somewhere down the line when the big screen work dries up...which won't be for a while yet anyway.
Winters Bone got her an Oscar nod and to be honest in my opinion it’s the best film she has been in. Guess critical success vs Box office is a different thing.
Mudbound. 8.5/10.
The best description I've heard of King is that he's a great storyteller but a poor writer.
He is a great storyteller and a great writer when at his best. He does however have a habit of not nailing the landing because he lets the story go where it naturally does as he writes. He doesn't have an end in mind so his endings aren't always very satisfying.
The Killing of a Sacred Deer Bizarre flat acting (I can only image from the instruction of the director) and an utterly nonsensical plot. Literally no aspect of it is explained (or explainable) as it wanders to an end as idiotic as the rest of the film. 2 hrs long and it seemed so much longer. -3/10
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King collaborated on a book, The Talisman, with another famous horror writer, Peter Straub, in the 1980s. Things may have gotten a little competitive with the two writers vying to outdo each other with the speed of their contributions. Straub said later that no matter how fast he wrote, King always wrote faster.
I've had no desire of watching this as soon as I saw that it was directed by the same guy who did the lobster. What a nonsensical piece of garbage that was..
I'm watching Don't Look Now - should the Italian scenes have subtitles or is it not important?
Marshall (2017)
Decent court room drama involving the to-be first African American Supreme Court Justice, and on his behalf a Jewish attorney arguing his first criminal case, and a black defendant in 1940 US of A. Solid movie, just not that compelling, and average acting.
6.5/10
Decent court room drama involving the to-be first African American Supreme Court Justice, and on his behalf a Jewish attorney arguing his first criminal case, and a black defendant in 1940 US of A. Solid movie, just not that compelling, and average acting.
6.5/10
Bugger. If I'd made the connection I wouldn't have started watching. This is an even bigger waste of time.
The Disaster Artist
Good fun. James Franco's on-point as Wiseau, and despite the criticism I've seen him get I thought Dave did a fairly good job portraying Sestero as the contrasting ambitious but reluctant everyman type, and sold his own inner conflict well throughout the movie.
Felt like the film managed to balance the comedic aspects of being a bit of a piss-take with the more serious aspects of the movie's impact on Wiseau. Was weird sitting there laughing at the repeated scenes with the jarring contrast of Wiseau getting upset at the same time.
Occasionally veers into the cliched 'achieve your dream' big city type movie, but the situation surrounding said dream is unique enough to make the movie very interesting in its own right. Worth a watch.
Plus there's Zac fecking Efron as Chris-R.
Good fun. James Franco's on-point as Wiseau, and despite the criticism I've seen him get I thought Dave did a fairly good job portraying Sestero as the contrasting ambitious but reluctant everyman type, and sold his own inner conflict well throughout the movie.
Felt like the film managed to balance the comedic aspects of being a bit of a piss-take with the more serious aspects of the movie's impact on Wiseau. Was weird sitting there laughing at the repeated scenes with the jarring contrast of Wiseau getting upset at the same time.
Occasionally veers into the cliched 'achieve your dream' big city type movie, but the situation surrounding said dream is unique enough to make the movie very interesting in its own right. Worth a watch.
Plus there's Zac fecking Efron as Chris-R.
If there was any role James Franco was born to play, it is that of Tommy Wiseau.
Yeah he was excellent. Won't win but should definitely get an Oscar nomination I reckon.
Had about 18 hours in flights, so I watched all the action movies I could find.
Speed: 9/10, I can't imagine a better movie in the genre.
The action is in a way grounded, and physics/biology really puts a limit on what people can do (barring 2-3 scenes).
Michael Clayton: 7/10 competent, forgettable.
Transporter: 6/10 forgettable and after Speed, the out-of-place CGI and random cutaways and superhero-like feats were really jarring.
Battle Royale: 8/10 The 'outside' plot/premise (why those kids are in the island) makes no sense. But it hardly matters.
Speed: 9/10, I can't imagine a better movie in the genre.
The action is in a way grounded, and physics/biology really puts a limit on what people can do (barring 2-3 scenes).
Michael Clayton: 7/10 competent, forgettable.
Transporter: 6/10 forgettable and after Speed, the out-of-place CGI and random cutaways and superhero-like feats were really jarring.
Battle Royale: 8/10 The 'outside' plot/premise (why those kids are in the island) makes no sense. But it hardly matters.
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