Reviews by johanlefourbe

I wasn’t sure what to expect from this flick but since there was an interesting cast involved, I thought I might as well check it out. First of all, it has been a while since I have seen such a misleading title. Indeed, with such a title and such a poster, I was expecting a thriller, some kind of ‘Fatal Attraction’ wannabee, but it turned out to be actually something completely different. Indeed, it was in fact a drama with a really interesting main character with a very strong performance by Debra Winger but, even though Winger did a fine job here, the rest of the movie was unfortunately rather weak. The main issue was the fact, expect for Gabriel Byrne’s character who was not bad, all the other characters were just actually rather lame and they were also poorly developed. I mean, the best example would be the introduction which seemed at first intriguing. Indeed, it is not very often that you get to see a movie starting with a car in high-speed ramming into a porch but, in fact, this whole scene was just a mess.  What was the point of showing Maggie Gyllenhaal’s character if she won’t show up afterwards? Same thing with Laurie Metcalf’s character, she basically showed up in only 2 scenes which both had barely anything to do with the main story. Above, it was a really awkward way to introduce the main characters. Then, even though they should have simply focused on Debra Winger, they kept adding some rather underwhelming interactions between her and some boring characters and it never worked. The ending was especially ludicrous and simply there to add some kind of dramatic climax. Anyway, basically, the whole thing never worked but it’s a pity because Debra Winger was actually really good here. 

I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but since it was available on Netflix and since the ratings were rather decent, I thought I might as well check it out. Well, it is rather sad that such a movie is considered to be one of the ‘best’ original movies delivered by Netflix so far this year. It’s not that it was really weak like ‘Mute’, ‘Anon’ or ‘The Cloverfield Paradox’, it was actually a fairly decent romantic-comedy, the point is that it was still nothing really amazing whatsoever. Indeed, first of all, the whole concept was pretty weak but it’s apparently something inherent to the genre nowadays and I can’t remember the last time I saw a romantic-comedy without a seriously far-fetched idea. Then, it was rather disappointing that they gave such a negative view on being a personal assistant. By now, it has become such a boring cliché and it would be more interesting to show why so many people are doing this kind of job which seems more humiliating than really fulfilling. And, yet, the whole thing was still fairly entertaining mostly thanks to Zoey Deutch and Glen Powell. Indeed, they both gave some solid performances, they were both really charming and they had some great chemistry together. Seriously, if they would have dumped the whole set-up thing and just focused on these 2 characters falling in love, it could have been actually really good. Anyway, to conclude, in spite of its flaws, it was a still decent watch and it is worth a look, especially if you like the genre but it would be nice if Netflix could deliver something really amazing this year.

I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but since I have a weak spot for James McAvoy, I was quite eager to check it out. On top of that, the title did sound really cool. Well, the beginning was really promising with a kick-ass intro and I really enjoyed how they made this cop and this criminal follow their own investigation on the same murder case. However, if McAvoy managed to do a lot with his character, Mark Strong’s character felt eventually too limited. A bigger problem was that there were just too many supporting characters involved and, as a result, none of them was developed at all and they were all rather boring. Another huge mistake they made was that half way through the movie almost all the cops turned out to be corrupt. It was such a lame choice and, from this point, the whole thing seriously lost some steam and I kind of pretty much lost interest. To make things worse, the ending was even more tedious when, suddenly, it turned out that virtually all the characters were involved in some far-fetched conspiracy. Anyway, to conclude, even though the whole thing really had some potential, it turned out to be actually poorly developed but I still think it is worth a look, especially if you like the genre.