IMO, this shouldn't matter. Obviously a cinematic experience is the best but a good movie should be good on tv too.
Film The Redcafe Movie review thread
- Thread starter golden_blunder
- Start date
At home. Didn't even get a release at the cinema here afaik.
Watched it at home but a friend of mine literally said the exact same thing as you do maybe it needs to be experienced that way.
Sharknado 5: Global Swarming
Make America Bait Again
As a hardcore fan of the Sharknado series, I'm to blame for missing the sequel for this long. Finally caught up to it and it's as mind numbing as ever. Lots of cliched dialogues and a plot that would make a amoeba dizzy! The movies pokes a stick at many other franchises like Iron Man, Indiana Jones etc. If you've seen any of the previous movies, you can expect the same.
Just heard Sharknado 6 is coming out in July and has time travel and Nazis. Can't wait for it. Go Sharknado!
* / 10 as it's too good to fit into any conventional rating.
Also dinosaurs, knights and Noah's Ark apparently.
Anon
In a world without anonymity or crime, a detective meets a woman who threatens their security. Flat, boring, style over substance. I could imagine the director thinking he's making the next Blade Runner but instead, he made this steaming pile of shit. At least you see some tits 3/10
The Collector
Desperate to repay his debt to his ex-wife, an ex-con plots a heist at his new employer's country home, unaware that a second criminal has also targeted the property, and rigged it with a series of deadly traps. Very Saw-esque film with some cool deaths and gore if you're into that but some completely silly character motivations, which is a pet peeve of mine. Seen worse and it's quite short so wasn't too annoyed 5.5/10
Tragedy Girls
A twist on the slasher genre, following two death-obsessed teenage girls who use their online show about real-life tragedies to send their small mid-western town into a frenzy, and cement their legacy as modern horror legends. Quite fun scream style slasher, everything's quite tongue in cheek and the death scenes are quite fun but at the end of it, the film has no point. Should have been either more gruesome or funnier but it fits somewhere in the middle. Weird how Brianna Hildebrand looks like a 12 year old boy in Deadpool but quite hot in this 6/10
In a world without anonymity or crime, a detective meets a woman who threatens their security. Flat, boring, style over substance. I could imagine the director thinking he's making the next Blade Runner but instead, he made this steaming pile of shit. At least you see some tits 3/10
The Collector
Desperate to repay his debt to his ex-wife, an ex-con plots a heist at his new employer's country home, unaware that a second criminal has also targeted the property, and rigged it with a series of deadly traps. Very Saw-esque film with some cool deaths and gore if you're into that but some completely silly character motivations, which is a pet peeve of mine. Seen worse and it's quite short so wasn't too annoyed 5.5/10
Tragedy Girls
A twist on the slasher genre, following two death-obsessed teenage girls who use their online show about real-life tragedies to send their small mid-western town into a frenzy, and cement their legacy as modern horror legends. Quite fun scream style slasher, everything's quite tongue in cheek and the death scenes are quite fun but at the end of it, the film has no point. Should have been either more gruesome or funnier but it fits somewhere in the middle. Weird how Brianna Hildebrand looks like a 12 year old boy in Deadpool but quite hot in this 6/10
I really enjoyed this, its the kind of film you can just sit back and enjoy the dialogue which is quite dry and very funny as Stalin's comrades in government react to his death and the subsequent consequences regarding the appointment of a successor. A solid 7.5/10
Take Me (2107)
Picked from Netflix!
A quite light and funny movie about a guy who runs a designer kidnapping business, i.e. He contracts with people to kidnap them for the experience. Obviously things don't go as planned leading to some funny moments. Light, yet well scripted and acted movie that keeps you interested all through.
7/10
Deadpool 2:
If you enjoyed the original, you'll enjoy this. Very similar in tone, although at times it seemed like it tried too hard to cram in jokes and references.
Having said that, there were some very funny scenes and make sure you hang around for the very funny credits.
Not quite as good as the original, but you'll be entertained and amused.
Worth a watch.
If you enjoyed the original, you'll enjoy this. Very similar in tone, although at times it seemed like it tried too hard to cram in jokes and references.
Having said that, there were some very funny scenes and make sure you hang around for the very funny credits.
Not quite as good as the original, but you'll be entertained and amused.
Worth a watch.
Isle of Dogs - all bark and no bite. Long, sporadically fun, inconsequential. Reminded me a lot of the The Wrong Trousers but Anderson has none of the action chops of Nick Park.
Terrifier
A maniacal clown named Art, terrorizes three young women on Halloween night and everyone else who stands in his way. If you want tonnes of mindless gore with no plot or character development, watch this. Otherwise, ignore. Pointless movie. Complete and utter waste of time 1/10
A maniacal clown named Art, terrorizes three young women on Halloween night and everyone else who stands in his way. If you want tonnes of mindless gore with no plot or character development, watch this. Otherwise, ignore. Pointless movie. Complete and utter waste of time 1/10
I'd totally forgotten this was out! Is it as good as his Fantastic Mr Fox?
Ah cool, I always thought 2 hours wasn't enough time to kill myself.
Dunno if even I could handle that...
No 'extra dinosaurs' though.
No. Mr Fox is my favourite Anderson.
I find it a bit meh. 6ish meh.
The jokes arent funny, first one somehow is better. They tried to blend action and comedy and fails on both account.
The best action sequence is actually the opening scene. The part with x squad is cringey as feck
I suppose it's mine too, as I have been watching it with my kids since they were very young. Otherwise it's probably Rushmore.
Mr. Fox is a a wonderful film.
Game Night
Its a film that doesn't take itself seriously and has a couple of lol moments especially the 'dog' scene but ultimately falls short and is totally forgettable. 5/10
Its a film that doesn't take itself seriously and has a couple of lol moments especially the 'dog' scene but ultimately falls short and is totally forgettable. 5/10
Damien: The Omen 2
Seen for the first time. Not bad, not great. Some cool set pieces but overall, it felt flat compared to the first one 5.5/10
Seen for the first time. Not bad, not great. Some cool set pieces but overall, it felt flat compared to the first one 5.5/10
It's a shame the third was so cack.
This John Wick 2 is so stupid. He's been shot about 57 times, loads of which were point blank, but he still saunters on.
Isn’t he wearing some sort of bullet-proof suit?
Must be a bloody good one and he keeps bleeding.
War For The Planet of the Apes
This Ceaser guy: does he have another facial expression? Can someone get him a drink or something? I appreciate it's tough being a monkey Moses and all, but change it up a bit. And the feck is Woody all about? I'd expect a sociopathic antagonist to have a better backstory.
Still better than expected. 13.8125/20.
This Ceaser guy: does he have another facial expression? Can someone get him a drink or something? I appreciate it's tough being a monkey Moses and all, but change it up a bit. And the feck is Woody all about? I'd expect a sociopathic antagonist to have a better backstory.
Still better than expected. 13.8125/20.
Early Man is ostensibly a world cup fever cash in. It's a predictable, derivative, quaint family adventure, but it's made with such skill and care, and is pushed out into a marketplace so bereft of creativity that it stands out a mile. It's a spectacular film. The set pieces and special effects, camera work and attention to detail are extraordinary. I found the usual mix of old school vaudeville and surreal slapstick hilarious. The carrier pigeon routine is inspired and the perspective duck is an old gag but I don't think it has ever looked better.
The action effects and choreography puts the likes of Marvel and DC to shame. It really highlights the down right shite we've been fooled into settling for when it comes to design in our action movies. A plasticine duck looks and moves better than your billion dollar super hero, you feck.
The action effects and choreography puts the likes of Marvel and DC to shame. It really highlights the down right shite we've been fooled into settling for when it comes to design in our action movies. A plasticine duck looks and moves better than your billion dollar super hero, you feck.
I watched this just a week ago and was thinking "dog scene? Don't remember that"
Reasons to be cheerful.
https://www.theguardian.com/film/20...new-film-spell-the-end-for-provocative-cinema
Does Lars von Trier’s ‘vomitive’ new film spell the end for provocative cinema?
Cannes 2018
There was a mass walkout at the Cannes premiere of von Trier’s The House that Jack Built. From A Clockwork Orange to Driller Killer, cinema has always courted controversy – but could we be entering a more cautious age?
There is a stampede to get into The House That Jack Built and then, not long after, there is a stampede to get out. At the morning screening of the new Lars von Trier film at Cannes, I try to keep tabs on the number of mass walkouts. The first occurs when Matt Dillon’s bug-eyed psychopath sticks a kitchen knife in a breastbone; the second when a serene little boy cuts the leg off a duckling. I think the third might take place during the shooting at a picnic, although, by this point, I confess I am slightly losing track. On screen, Dillon’s character embarks on a lengthy discourse about wine – and, for some reason, this scene provokes a mass exodus of its own. Has the wine-making speech thrown these filmgoers a lifeline? It is barely 10 in the morning and they are running away to get loaded.
If one had to dramatise Von Trier’s recent history at the Cannes film festival, it could play as a series of entrances and exits, like a Feydeau farce without the laughs. The director walks into the press conference and jokes that he is a Nazi. The festival declares him persona non grata and has him bundled out. The director walks in with his comeback production. The public recoils, turns its back and walks off. One hundred invited guests reportedly absconded from Monday night’s world premiere, and a similar number exited the press screening on Tuesday. The House That Jack Built (a metaphysical serial-killer tale, constructed along similar lines to his previous film, Nymphomaniac) has been variously described as “vomitous”, “disgusting” and “irredeemably unpleasant”. Entertainment reporter Roger Friedman called it a “vile movie” that “should never have been made”. Except that, wouldn’t you know it, Friedman bailed out before the end, too.
Cannes normally loves a good scandal, but this year it feels different. The festival is nervous, chastened, still struggling to accommodate the #MeToo movement and adapt to a crumbling business model that has led pundits to question the festival’s relevance. Or maybe it is reflecting the culture as a whole.
Film used to thrive on controversy and danger. These days, it has had its shadowy corners exposed. Tastes are changing, a new morality bites and cinema’s underground beasts find they have fewer places to hide. Increasingly, it seems, the provocateur is being shown the door.
It is almost enough to make you nostalgic for the bad old days of “satanic” Kenneth Anger with his Scorpio Rising, Herschell Gordon Lewis (AKA “the Godfather of Gore”) and the incorrigible Russ Meyer, who peddled a personal interest in women’s breasts into a lucrative career totalling 23 feature film credits.
Cinema is a broad church that caters to all tastes. But it began its life as circus sideshow, on the magic-lantern and peepshow circuit of the late-19th century, and a disreputable pedigree has defined it ever since. So it is a thrill-seeker’s medium, a peddler of sensation, always best enjoyed under cover of darkness.
Or rather, it was until recently, before the advent of Netflix and smartphones and the white noise of social media. Once upon a time, underground cult films were consumed by the faithful, produced for the particular taste of a small diehard audience and often fiendishly difficult to find (which only added to their talismanic dimensions). Andy Warhol’s movies, such as Flesh and Trash (actually directed by Paul Morrisey) were projected as artworks in galleries. Abel Ferrara’s grisly Driller Killer and Ms 45 crowned him the king of the New York grindhouse scene. And John Waters’ early shockers (Mondo Trasho, Pink Flamingos) were shot for the amusement of a small cohort of pals down in Baltimore, many of whom doubled up as his cast. I remember plucking Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre from the top shelf of a garage’s DVD rack where it sat alongside all the other video nasties. It was a simpler age.
Therein lies the issue. These days the market is atomised, open to all, and everyone is drinking from the same water fountain – be it the dirty-mac crowd or chin-stroking students, innocent passersby or hapless little kids browsing on a laptop. (God forbid that they should Google “duckling legs” from now on.) We can stream a feature on our phone on the bus and then tweet our outrage to the masses while the infernal movie is still playing. Film is more public and exposed than it ever was in the past. Small wonder its content is being held to account.
Repulsed by movie violence? Then steer clear of the screens. Cinema has always done violence, from the early silent westerns right through to the present day. It is just that it is now rated more prohibitively than it was in the freewheeling 1970s, when a furore erupted over instances of reported copycat violence following screenings of Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange. Yet the film was only yanked from circulation after the director stepped in to do it himself.
As for Von Trier, he is no stranger to violence (exhibit A: the infamous clitoris scene from Antichrist) and yet the male-on-female brutality in his latest work has had many people calling time on his whole career.
How about sex? That has been there from the start, the original sin; largely consensual but occasionally not. And what was first viewed as good sex is now seen rather differently. Take the case of Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris – for so long defended as a jaundiced 70s classic, now widely reviled after the revelation that its star Maria Schneider (who always claimed that the film made her feel “a little raped”) was tricked into performing its most notorious scene. Or even a film as mainstream as The Breakfast Club, which its star Molly Ringwald rewatched recently, only to realise that a scene that had been framed as harmless flirtation was in fact a violation. And it is this level of scrutiny that helps to keep the films (and ourselves) honest. There are still too many bad apples passing themselves off as fresh.
But that’s the trouble with scandals: they tend to shade towards darkness. The Cannes film festival, for instance, has always run the full gamut. I’m tempted to put a film such as The House That Jack Built (or The Brown Bunny, or Irreversible, or Elle) at the lighter end of the spectrum, in that these are basically pinatas thrown out to the crowds. But the festival has weightier, uglier matters to contend with as well. In this, its year of reckoning, it is belatedly moving to tackle a culture of entrenched sexism, clearing space in the schedule for talks on the importance of gender equality and a march of 82 women (jury president Cate Blanchett among them) to the steps of the Palais. It’s also weaning itself off a poisonous co-dependent relationship with Harvey Weinstein, who once presided over this court like a debauched Henry VIII. And here, perhaps, is where a level confusion sets in. Cannes’ current set of problems may well be commingled. But in mounting a clean-up, it risks throwing out brattish babies alongside the dirty bathwater.
One can see how it happens. The festival runs for 11 days every May. Along the way, it finds room for hundreds of movies and thousands of guests. It sits lofty artists alongside crooks and charlatans. It turns the red carpet over to Iranian art-house one night and Hollywood drek the next and tends to oversee these frivolities with a blithe disregard, like a half-deaf governess at a Just William party. It makes no logical sense; it pulls in too many directions at once. But the tug of war provides dramatic tension. And without these contradictions the event is bound to fall flat.
Which brings us back to Von Trier, a man who appears to hop between apple barrels, by turns genius and monster, utterly captivating and frequently insufferable. He won the Palme d’Or in 2000 and typically competes for the big prizes. This time he is playing out on the sidelines, away from the press, like a misogynistic old uncle who can’t be brought out in public (an image, it must be said, that is not helped by his association with a producer – Peter Aalbaek Jensen – who recently confessed that he “liked slapping arses”. Not long ago, Von Trier gave the festival its spice, rolling into town to unveil dastardly fare such as Dancer in the Dark and Dogville. Now the man’s very presence amounts to a platforming issue.
Inside the Palais, down at the beachfront, I have heard The House That Jack Built described as an act of self-immolation, or even some vile act of vengeance on the festival that once loved him. There is no appetite for the film and the first reviews have been scathing. The consensus is clear. Von Trier is no longer welcome in the new, cleaned-up Cannes. He is too much of an idiot, too much of a risk, too obvious a throwback to the event’s bad old days. Is there also a consensus on the best way to kill film? I think it might be to shoot it by consensus.
As it happens, I found myself gripped by The House That Jack Built. It is enraging and irresponsible, brilliant and bold, an outrageous joke shouted out of the abyss. But all of that is beside the point. If I loathed the picture with a passion, I would still want it included. Von Trier needs cinema and cinema needs him right back.
No doubt about it, the film industry’s in a mess. The mood at Cannes this year has been nervous, uncertain, while there remain so many changes the organisers still need to make. The festival needs more women in the main competition (and chances are it can only do that if the industry moves first). It has to find space for a fresh generation of film-makers and make peace with the fact that its days as a crucial Oscar springboard are now done. But this, I’m afraid, is not all that’s required.
What, after all, do we look for in a film? Is the best movie the one that soothes us, reassures us; that basically tells us what we already know, but manages to do so in novel and entertaining new ways? If so, fair enough. But for cinema to remain valid, it needs the counterweight, too: some hard shadow to make the light glow more brightly. It needs films that challenge and disturb, that appal and revolt; that have us bolting towards the exit in search of a stiff drink at 10am. In these troubled times, of course, there is a natural urge to play safe. But it is at such anxious moments that we need the provocateurs most of all.
Cometh the hour, cometh the idiot. This is the very worst year for Von Trier to be in Cannes. Which is another way of saying that it is the absolute best.
Does Lars von Trier’s ‘vomitive’ new film spell the end for provocative cinema?
Cannes 2018
There was a mass walkout at the Cannes premiere of von Trier’s The House that Jack Built. From A Clockwork Orange to Driller Killer, cinema has always courted controversy – but could we be entering a more cautious age?
There is a stampede to get into The House That Jack Built and then, not long after, there is a stampede to get out. At the morning screening of the new Lars von Trier film at Cannes, I try to keep tabs on the number of mass walkouts. The first occurs when Matt Dillon’s bug-eyed psychopath sticks a kitchen knife in a breastbone; the second when a serene little boy cuts the leg off a duckling. I think the third might take place during the shooting at a picnic, although, by this point, I confess I am slightly losing track. On screen, Dillon’s character embarks on a lengthy discourse about wine – and, for some reason, this scene provokes a mass exodus of its own. Has the wine-making speech thrown these filmgoers a lifeline? It is barely 10 in the morning and they are running away to get loaded.
If one had to dramatise Von Trier’s recent history at the Cannes film festival, it could play as a series of entrances and exits, like a Feydeau farce without the laughs. The director walks into the press conference and jokes that he is a Nazi. The festival declares him persona non grata and has him bundled out. The director walks in with his comeback production. The public recoils, turns its back and walks off. One hundred invited guests reportedly absconded from Monday night’s world premiere, and a similar number exited the press screening on Tuesday. The House That Jack Built (a metaphysical serial-killer tale, constructed along similar lines to his previous film, Nymphomaniac) has been variously described as “vomitous”, “disgusting” and “irredeemably unpleasant”. Entertainment reporter Roger Friedman called it a “vile movie” that “should never have been made”. Except that, wouldn’t you know it, Friedman bailed out before the end, too.
Cannes normally loves a good scandal, but this year it feels different. The festival is nervous, chastened, still struggling to accommodate the #MeToo movement and adapt to a crumbling business model that has led pundits to question the festival’s relevance. Or maybe it is reflecting the culture as a whole.
Film used to thrive on controversy and danger. These days, it has had its shadowy corners exposed. Tastes are changing, a new morality bites and cinema’s underground beasts find they have fewer places to hide. Increasingly, it seems, the provocateur is being shown the door.
It is almost enough to make you nostalgic for the bad old days of “satanic” Kenneth Anger with his Scorpio Rising, Herschell Gordon Lewis (AKA “the Godfather of Gore”) and the incorrigible Russ Meyer, who peddled a personal interest in women’s breasts into a lucrative career totalling 23 feature film credits.
Cinema is a broad church that caters to all tastes. But it began its life as circus sideshow, on the magic-lantern and peepshow circuit of the late-19th century, and a disreputable pedigree has defined it ever since. So it is a thrill-seeker’s medium, a peddler of sensation, always best enjoyed under cover of darkness.
Or rather, it was until recently, before the advent of Netflix and smartphones and the white noise of social media. Once upon a time, underground cult films were consumed by the faithful, produced for the particular taste of a small diehard audience and often fiendishly difficult to find (which only added to their talismanic dimensions). Andy Warhol’s movies, such as Flesh and Trash (actually directed by Paul Morrisey) were projected as artworks in galleries. Abel Ferrara’s grisly Driller Killer and Ms 45 crowned him the king of the New York grindhouse scene. And John Waters’ early shockers (Mondo Trasho, Pink Flamingos) were shot for the amusement of a small cohort of pals down in Baltimore, many of whom doubled up as his cast. I remember plucking Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre from the top shelf of a garage’s DVD rack where it sat alongside all the other video nasties. It was a simpler age.
Therein lies the issue. These days the market is atomised, open to all, and everyone is drinking from the same water fountain – be it the dirty-mac crowd or chin-stroking students, innocent passersby or hapless little kids browsing on a laptop. (God forbid that they should Google “duckling legs” from now on.) We can stream a feature on our phone on the bus and then tweet our outrage to the masses while the infernal movie is still playing. Film is more public and exposed than it ever was in the past. Small wonder its content is being held to account.
Repulsed by movie violence? Then steer clear of the screens. Cinema has always done violence, from the early silent westerns right through to the present day. It is just that it is now rated more prohibitively than it was in the freewheeling 1970s, when a furore erupted over instances of reported copycat violence following screenings of Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange. Yet the film was only yanked from circulation after the director stepped in to do it himself.
As for Von Trier, he is no stranger to violence (exhibit A: the infamous clitoris scene from Antichrist) and yet the male-on-female brutality in his latest work has had many people calling time on his whole career.
How about sex? That has been there from the start, the original sin; largely consensual but occasionally not. And what was first viewed as good sex is now seen rather differently. Take the case of Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris – for so long defended as a jaundiced 70s classic, now widely reviled after the revelation that its star Maria Schneider (who always claimed that the film made her feel “a little raped”) was tricked into performing its most notorious scene. Or even a film as mainstream as The Breakfast Club, which its star Molly Ringwald rewatched recently, only to realise that a scene that had been framed as harmless flirtation was in fact a violation. And it is this level of scrutiny that helps to keep the films (and ourselves) honest. There are still too many bad apples passing themselves off as fresh.
But that’s the trouble with scandals: they tend to shade towards darkness. The Cannes film festival, for instance, has always run the full gamut. I’m tempted to put a film such as The House That Jack Built (or The Brown Bunny, or Irreversible, or Elle) at the lighter end of the spectrum, in that these are basically pinatas thrown out to the crowds. But the festival has weightier, uglier matters to contend with as well. In this, its year of reckoning, it is belatedly moving to tackle a culture of entrenched sexism, clearing space in the schedule for talks on the importance of gender equality and a march of 82 women (jury president Cate Blanchett among them) to the steps of the Palais. It’s also weaning itself off a poisonous co-dependent relationship with Harvey Weinstein, who once presided over this court like a debauched Henry VIII. And here, perhaps, is where a level confusion sets in. Cannes’ current set of problems may well be commingled. But in mounting a clean-up, it risks throwing out brattish babies alongside the dirty bathwater.
One can see how it happens. The festival runs for 11 days every May. Along the way, it finds room for hundreds of movies and thousands of guests. It sits lofty artists alongside crooks and charlatans. It turns the red carpet over to Iranian art-house one night and Hollywood drek the next and tends to oversee these frivolities with a blithe disregard, like a half-deaf governess at a Just William party. It makes no logical sense; it pulls in too many directions at once. But the tug of war provides dramatic tension. And without these contradictions the event is bound to fall flat.
Which brings us back to Von Trier, a man who appears to hop between apple barrels, by turns genius and monster, utterly captivating and frequently insufferable. He won the Palme d’Or in 2000 and typically competes for the big prizes. This time he is playing out on the sidelines, away from the press, like a misogynistic old uncle who can’t be brought out in public (an image, it must be said, that is not helped by his association with a producer – Peter Aalbaek Jensen – who recently confessed that he “liked slapping arses”. Not long ago, Von Trier gave the festival its spice, rolling into town to unveil dastardly fare such as Dancer in the Dark and Dogville. Now the man’s very presence amounts to a platforming issue.
Inside the Palais, down at the beachfront, I have heard The House That Jack Built described as an act of self-immolation, or even some vile act of vengeance on the festival that once loved him. There is no appetite for the film and the first reviews have been scathing. The consensus is clear. Von Trier is no longer welcome in the new, cleaned-up Cannes. He is too much of an idiot, too much of a risk, too obvious a throwback to the event’s bad old days. Is there also a consensus on the best way to kill film? I think it might be to shoot it by consensus.
As it happens, I found myself gripped by The House That Jack Built. It is enraging and irresponsible, brilliant and bold, an outrageous joke shouted out of the abyss. But all of that is beside the point. If I loathed the picture with a passion, I would still want it included. Von Trier needs cinema and cinema needs him right back.
No doubt about it, the film industry’s in a mess. The mood at Cannes this year has been nervous, uncertain, while there remain so many changes the organisers still need to make. The festival needs more women in the main competition (and chances are it can only do that if the industry moves first). It has to find space for a fresh generation of film-makers and make peace with the fact that its days as a crucial Oscar springboard are now done. But this, I’m afraid, is not all that’s required.
What, after all, do we look for in a film? Is the best movie the one that soothes us, reassures us; that basically tells us what we already know, but manages to do so in novel and entertaining new ways? If so, fair enough. But for cinema to remain valid, it needs the counterweight, too: some hard shadow to make the light glow more brightly. It needs films that challenge and disturb, that appal and revolt; that have us bolting towards the exit in search of a stiff drink at 10am. In these troubled times, of course, there is a natural urge to play safe. But it is at such anxious moments that we need the provocateurs most of all.
Cometh the hour, cometh the idiot. This is the very worst year for Von Trier to be in Cannes. Which is another way of saying that it is the absolute best.
Loved the Early-Man United bit though.
But yeah considering the quality of Chicken Run and Wallace and Gromit, this one was a disappointment.
I didn’t like it either. And I was a big fan of the Wallace and Gromit stuff. Aardvaark seem to have lost their way IMO. Chicken Run was the start of the rot.
I know you meant Aardman Animations but I Googled Aardvark and found out that there is an animal named Aardvark and a movie (featuring Zachary Quinto and Jon Hamm) too, now if /when someone talks about an Aardvark, I won't feel lost
I know you meant Aardman Animations but I Googled Aardvark and found out that there is an animal named Aardvark and a movie (featuring Zachary Quinto and Jon Hamm) too, now if /when someone talks about an Aardvark, I won't feel lost
One of my favourite animals. Also the first word in the English dictionary (I think?)
When whats his face bled all over the pooch and left the room looking like a slaughterhouse, it was an excellent slapstick scene.
Yes remember it now, but as you said a forgettable film
case in point.I found Blue is the Warmest Colour to be a watchable coming of age story, not unlike an episode of Grange Hill - with randomly spliced in scenes form 70s french erotica. It's a feck buddy-film featuring pleasant, if rather dull, people. The acting is really good and the whole production features technically proficient workmanship. I did enjoy it.
However the voyueristic direction feels very much an embracement of our narcissistic culture - and that's before we even get to the smut. The leery camera work is fixated on the arousing and superficial. It has a very Michael Bay-esque gaze; lecherous objectification to the point of bordem. (Her bum - whether naked or not - must have had more screen time than anything else in the film - barring her lips and eyes.)
The film reduces life to solipsistic sensory experience. From the gorging on food to sex and art, everything is in service to base gratification of the self at the expense of real nourishment. The sex seems to have been designed as a ritual of mutually beneficial self-pleasure, rather than anything approximating intimacy. Only towards the end of the film does a little humanity slip out.
It captures the zeitgeist, and such cinematic displays of flagrant narcissism are novel, but novelty is the seed from which Pinky, Perky and Donald Trump grow.
I better stop short of saying how this gay film is symptomatic of western decadence but I will say that the film could have done with a Lars Von Trier post script, lecturing us all on the director's - and our own - spiritual and moral bankruptcy.
However the voyueristic direction feels very much an embracement of our narcissistic culture - and that's before we even get to the smut. The leery camera work is fixated on the arousing and superficial. It has a very Michael Bay-esque gaze; lecherous objectification to the point of bordem. (Her bum - whether naked or not - must have had more screen time than anything else in the film - barring her lips and eyes.)
The film reduces life to solipsistic sensory experience. From the gorging on food to sex and art, everything is in service to base gratification of the self at the expense of real nourishment. The sex seems to have been designed as a ritual of mutually beneficial self-pleasure, rather than anything approximating intimacy. Only towards the end of the film does a little humanity slip out.
It captures the zeitgeist, and such cinematic displays of flagrant narcissism are novel, but novelty is the seed from which Pinky, Perky and Donald Trump grow.
I better stop short of saying how this gay film is symptomatic of western decadence but I will say that the film could have done with a Lars Von Trier post script, lecturing us all on the director's - and our own - spiritual and moral bankruptcy.
Nothing needs Lars von Trier. He's an awful, tedious cretin.
Speaking of which:
Deadpool 2 - the first half hour is as bad as anything you'll ever see; shoddy SFX mixed with forty jokes on the trot that fall completely flat, and a big fat superhero cliche, the kind this film likes to think it's above. By the end of it I'd had a pretty good time though. Occasionally it tries for actual jokes, rather than a bombardment of lame pop culture references a la Family Guy, and when it does it's really fun. There's a bit involving a team exiting a helicopter that's hilarious. Josh Brolin elevates anything he's in but the rest of the extended cast feel misused, especially Julian Dennison and Zazie Beetz.
Speaking of which:
Deadpool 2 - the first half hour is as bad as anything you'll ever see; shoddy SFX mixed with forty jokes on the trot that fall completely flat, and a big fat superhero cliche, the kind this film likes to think it's above. By the end of it I'd had a pretty good time though. Occasionally it tries for actual jokes, rather than a bombardment of lame pop culture references a la Family Guy, and when it does it's really fun. There's a bit involving a team exiting a helicopter that's hilarious. Josh Brolin elevates anything he's in but the rest of the extended cast feel misused, especially Julian Dennison and Zazie Beetz.
@R.N7 Pawel Pawlikowski's new picture, Cold War, is getting raves at Cannes. Hard not to be excited about that.
Nice.
There's a few films at the festival I'd like to watch eventually, that one, Gan Bi's Long Day's Journey into Night and Jia Zhangke's Ash Is Purest White.
Final results:
- Palme d'Or: Shoplifters by Hirokazu Kore-eda
- Grand Prix: BlacKkKlansman by Spike Lee
- Best Director: Paweł Pawlikowski for Cold War
- Best Screenplay:
- Alice Rohrwacher for Happy as Lazzaro
- Jafar Panahi for 3 Faces
- Best Actress: Samal Yeslyamova for Ayka
- Best Actor: Marcello Fonte for Dogman
- Jury Prize: Capernaum by Nadine Labaki
- Special Palme d'Or: The Image Book by Jean-Luc Godard