Film The Redcafe Movie review thread

Ghost in the shell (2017).
Science fiction, robots and bionic humans, with Scarlett Johanson.I didn´t like. I think I fell asleep a couple of times during the movie 4/10
Red Sparrow (2017)
Russian and American spies, with Jennifer Lawrence. The plot is simple but it´s quite entertaining 7/10
 
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
Finally got around to watching this last night and I've got to say it was excellent and very funny, loved the first story and the one with Tom Waits while the rest were very watchable. 7.5/10
 
Mowgli
I didn't love the recent live action adaptation of jungle book and I'm not even that big a fan of the Disney cartoon (apart from the songs) but this rendition is an absolute farce. The CGI was disgusting, the boy playing Mowgli was probably the worst actor I've seen in my whole life and the story just felt flat and soulless. It's too violent for kids and too boring for adults so not sure who this is aiming at. I did like the route of trying to go darker with the story and some of the voice actors were ok but it was a huge waste of time 3/10
 
The House That Jack Built
A magnificent film with brilliant direction and performances. Von Trier presents a blackly comic philosophical deconstruction of morality and aesthetics, framing his enquiry through the work of Blake, Dante and Lars himself. Returning to themes previously explored in Nymphomaniac the film is again focused on, and in praise of, artistic folly. The Epilogue section of the film contains the most beautiful series of film scenes I've seen in years, with Von Trier displaying his visual mastery. The final shots seem to reveal the crux of this self-critical film, as the director steps out on a ledge to make a final futile reach for paradise. I wouldn't quite call it a masterpiece given the debt it owes to his previous film, but it's a thrilling and invigorating film. Film of the year so far.
 
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

I don't get it.
 
Creed II
Enjoyed this. Always been a fan of the original Rocky films, thought Creed was a good continuation, and Creed II keeps it all moving in the right direction. 3/5

BlacKkKlansman
Thought this was terrific. Incredible story, some really good performances, fabulous soundtrack and some outstanding music from Terence Blanchard. 4/5
 
dumbo said:
The House That Jack Built
A magnificent film with brilliant direction and performances. Von Trier presents a blackly comic philosophical deconstruction of morality and aesthetics, framing his enquiry through the work of Blake, Dante and Lars himself. Returning to themes previously explored in Nymphomaniac the film is again focused on, and in praise of, artistic folly. The Epilogue section of the film contains the most beautiful series of film scenes I've seen in years, with Von Trier displaying his visual mastery. The final shots seem to reveal the crux of this self-critical film, as the director steps out on a ledge to make a final futile reach for paradise. I wouldn't quite call it a masterpiece given the debt it owes to his previous film, but it's a thrilling and invigorating film. Film of the year so far.
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I preferred Cold War but I've just finished this and it's a close second. Dillon is amazing in it, and Von Trier is a genius. I thought the film was excellent throughout and then the final 20mns elevated it to something else. Not for everyone but really really good film.
 
Rooney in Paris said:
I preferred Cold War but I've just finished this and it's a close second. Dillon is amazing in it, and Von Trier is a genius. I thought the film was excellent throughout and then the final 20mns elevated it to something else. Not for everyone but really really good film.
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Oh cool. Now I won't be the only pervert trying to defend something indefensible. The scene with the farmer's and their scythes has really stuck with me for some reason and that Delacroix on the Styx reproduction looked incredible.
 
Sorry To Bother You is a hot mess. It's encouraging to see a genuinely political film concerned with workers rights, race, gender get some notice but the film lurches from one idea to the other, leaving some in the dust whilst picking up others, wasting interesting characters and spending too much time with its barely sketched lead. The final act is absurd and pretty boring.
 
Annihilation: 7/10
Saw this on an old airplane screen, roughly smartphone-sized, with terrriblef audio that I had to sometimes lipread, and no subtitles.
From whatever I understood, it seemed to be a really good sci-fi/first-contact movie in the style of Arrival - it was more about understanding a totally alien (and scientifically impossible) phenomenon than fighting an invader.
I think the climax was supposed to have a lot of meaning for the main character and about human distrust or something but uhhh I couldn't hear any of the dialogue.
 
dumbo said:
Oh cool. Now I won't be the only pervert trying to defend something indefensible. The scene with the farmer's and their scythes has really stuck with me for some reason and that Delacroix on the Styx reproduction looked incredible.
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Yay now we're two perverts!

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I watched some Christmas films.

Better Watch Out
An interesting black comedy curio, it plays as a sort of Malcolm in the Middle meets Funny Games. It mixes up a fairly standard formula with a few pretty wild ideas (that red-yellow paint scene is alarming), some genuine nastiness and riffs on Home Alone, Scream and Michael Haneke. It has a unique tone and confounds expectations. One of the better recent Christmas horrors.
8 Jesuses out of 10

Home Alone 1 and 2
It'd been a few years, so I watched these films back to back and found them as fresh as ever. MC and the supporting cast kill it and the scripts are the perfect mix of seasonal sentiment and close to the bone anarchy. When adjusted for the target demographic, release season, age of the performer, etc. these must rank amongst the most violent films ever made. Punctured flesh, concussions, electrocutions, bricks beamed from roof tops, scarring, brain damage and 3rd degree burns. The Angels With Filthy Souls video props are glorious, and seamless in a way that most retro footage rarely is. My favourite John Hughes movies.
10 Jesuses out of 10

Mickey's Christmas Carol
Up there with Sim and the Muppets for me, the ablaze coffin at the end has freaked me out since childhood.
9 Jesuses out of 10

Babes in Toyland
Likeable fairytale pageant featuring Stan and Ollie, quite creepy in places which seems only partly intentional.
7 Jesuses out of 10

Christmas in Conneticut
Fairly uninteresting christmas screwball romance made watchable by it's star cast.
6 Jesuses out of 10

Elf
High concept low quality jerk off comedy. Shoddily cobbled together in a way that makes its romance and father son estrangement plots seem insincere and its ablist jokes cheap. A typical slightly-below-decent Favreau effort.
4 Jesuses out of 10

Miracle on 34th Street
A really sweet Christmas fantasy. Really likeable characters and solid performances all round. It is an odd film though. It takes a big verbal swipe at the callous commercialism of Christmas (thumbs up), yet the film bases the ideas of good will and Christmas miracle around the receiving of stuff. The most egregious example sees a young girl asking for, and recieving a fecking luxurious house in the burbs.
8 Jesuses out of 10

Love Actually
Smug, patronising, nasty piece of shit. It opens with Hugh Grant extolling the virtues of the very selfish, evolutionary-directive tribal love, and the very selfish, evolutionary-informing sexual love. The film bottles these up and mis-sells them as milk of human kindness. So within the context of the movie the love that Hitler has for his dogs represents a moral bearing and the primal lizard brain lust becomes the love-conquers-all redemption theme.

Within the first 5 minutes the film has made its first hilarious transphobic gag - at the expense of Brazilian prostitutes no less, and exploited a woman's body as a prop for male awkwardness. Both these things become a trend. The film's range of female characters - from the ditsy to the fat, the lower class to the topless - are all presented as obedient objects to smug male power. All this is apparently allowed when it's a product of upper Middle class liberalism, that sells sexual permissiveness as faux subversion.

Utterly shit filmmaking as usual but here It wasn't saved by a likeable script. I wasn't expecting anything amazing, maybe a naff, light hearted Christmas comedy. Instead I got two-plus hours of complete shit. I didn't want to turn this into a rant but it is such an awful film, made for awful people by awful people. It's a film that celebrates an insidious cultural and communal corrosion, and it genuinely angered me.

No compassion, no charity, all greedy self serving, masturbatory love. Love actually? How about you feck off Actually Richard, you fecking horrible, hateful, cnut.
Herod massacring babies out of 10

The Shop Around The Corner
Another nice but odd Christmas movie. It features a secret admirer romantic mix up. The performances from Stewart and co. sell it. The romance doesn't really work but it has a very nice spirit of Christmas moment late on.
8 Jesuses out of 10

Scrooged
Christmas comedy that doubles up as a satire on the tv industry. Largely good fun with some nice cutting comedy but it doesn't really know how to do sincerity.
6 Jesuses out of 10
 
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

So...apparently this movie had a 170m budget? Was it all used on the volcano explosion? :lol:
Man, what an abomination.
 
Wonder Woman & Justice League
Watched these on a flight and honestly can't really differentiate between them anymore. DC really doesn't click with me. It just takes itself way too seriously and when it tries to be funny, it just isn't. Also, I was quite surprised that there wasn't more backlash over all amazones looking like super models (literally since Doutzen Kroes plays one of them). Not that I mind ofcourse, but still.

Oh and what's his face is a shit Batman.

Meh (I guess 6.5?)/10
 
VorZakone said:
The Big Short

So....half of the dialogue was basically as clear as Chinese to me. :lol: They tried to give very very basic explanations but that's kinda the problem, they were so basic that I still couldn't connect all the dots because there was clearly information missing.
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Maybe it’s because I had seen stuff like The Inside Job etc before it but I thought it was fairly easy to follow.

I didn’t really like some of the analogies that they gave for stuff though to be fair.
 
Berbaclass said:
Maybe it’s because I had seen stuff like The Inside Job etc before it but I thought it was fairly easy to follow.

I didn’t really like some of the analogies that they gave for stuff though to be fair.
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The analogies felt extremely basic to me. Not really explaining much at all.
 
Bumblebee

Just watched it tonight, didn't have much expectation, just watch it because Hailee Steinfeld is in it. Surprisingly, it's pretty good, it's definitely the best movies in Transformers franchise. The story is solid, the human characters are interesting and not obnoxious, the action is easier to watch, and the design of the Autobots and the Decepticon is so much better than before, some scene gives you the feeling of watching the cartoon, which I really enjoy. That being said, the relationship between Bumblebee and Hailee Steinfeld is definitely the highlight for me, it's really sweet and sometimes pretty emotional

Overall it's a pretty good movie and a solid foundation for this rebooted franchise after 5 awful Michael Bay's movies, hope he never direct any other future Transformers movies.

And Hailee Steinfeld is a really great actress, every movie she's starred in, she's been absolutely amazing

8/10
 
KirkDuyt said:
Wonder Woman & Justice League
Watched these on a flight and honestly can't really differentiate between them anymore. DC really doesn't click with me. It just takes itself way too seriously and when it tries to be funny, it just isn't. Also, I was quite surprised that there wasn't more backlash over all amazones looking like super models (literally since Doutzen Kroes plays one of them). Not that I mind ofcourse, but still.

Oh and what's his face is a shit Batman.

Meh (I guess 6.5?)/10
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Yes, because what we need is more outrage over some stupid shit...

They're supposed to be this super human godlike creatures, let's cast a bunch of out of shape fat, ugly women for the roles. That will instantly improve the film.
 
Vato said:
Yes, because what we need is more outrage over some stupid shit...

They're supposed to be this super human godlike creatures, let's cast a bunch of out of shape fat, ugly women for the roles. That will instantly improve the film.
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I obviously don't mind, I just thought others might.

What I found most silly is them bringing wooden sticks to a gun fight. Can't their God tell them to get with the fecking times?
 
Spider-Man: Into the Spider Verse - name doesn't scan but the film is the best superhero movie in at least a decade.
 
lawliet354 said:
Bumblebee

Just watched it tonight, didn't have much expectation, just watch it because Hailee Steinfeld is in it. Surprisingly, it's pretty good, it's definitely the best movies in Transformers franchise. The story is solid, the human characters are interesting and not obnoxious, the action is easier to watch, and the design of the Autobots and the Decepticon is so much better than before, some scene gives you the feeling of watching the cartoon, which I really enjoy. That being said, the relationship between Bumblebee and Hailee Steinfeld is definitely the highlight for me, it's really sweet and sometimes pretty emotional

Overall it's a pretty good movie and a solid foundation for this rebooted franchise after 5 awful Michael Bay's movies, hope he never direct any other future Transformers movies.

And Hailee Steinfeld is a really great actress, every movie she's starred in, she's been absolutely amazing

8/10
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This seems quite hard to believe
 
mehro said:
This seems quite hard to believe
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What @sullydnl said. Me and my brother both were totally surprised with how different it was compared to Bay's movies. I only watched the first one, the other 4 I couldn't even finish watching because it's so terrible and boring. But this on is much more down to earth and more human, and quite fun as well


sullydnl said:
No Michael Bay = better film. I think that scans.
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Exactly, this has the same director with Kubo and the Two Strings
 
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pauldyson1uk said:
Bird Box I thought was excellent, watched it last week , not go round to a review yet, but worth watching.
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El Royale has exactly the plot of that other thriller/whodunnit movie set at a motel with strangers. Can't remember the name, but it was quality.

Edit: Identity (2003)
 
berbatrick said:
Annihilation: 7/10
Saw this on an old airplane screen, roughly smartphone-sized, with terrriblef audio that I had to sometimes lipread, and no subtitles.
From whatever I understood, it seemed to be a really good sci-fi/first-contact movie in the style of Arrival - it was more about understanding a totally alien (and scientifically impossible) phenomenon than fighting an invader.
I think the climax was supposed to have a lot of meaning for the main character and about human distrust or something but uhhh I couldn't hear any of the dialogue.
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Is it sci fi horror? The trailers I've seen make it seem that way, whixch puts me off. But based on your review, it sounds up my street.
 
The Devil's Advocate

Interesting movie...entertaining, just not sure what to think of it.
 
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