Reviews by johanlefourbe

Not to be confused with ‘Howl's Moving Castle’, another movie directed Hayao Miyazaki, to be honest, even if I was really eager to check this movie, I still struggled to get into the damned thing. I mean, you have to agree that the beginning was pretty much a huge mess during which most of the main protagonists were displayed without any introduction whatsoever during some rather chaotic action scene. My guess is that, since the whole thing already had a running time of 120 mins, they had to rush things somehow so they skipped a more standard introduction. As usual with Miyazaki, the main character was once again one of his typical pure and innocent girls but I always find them rather boring. At least, Pazu was slightly more interesting and entertaining. And yet, I have to admit that the damned thing slowly won me over somehow. First of all, even though it is now 30 years old, the animation was quite impressive, especially during the action scenes which were just so amazing to look at. There was also something quite mesmerizing about this mysterious floating island and the ending was quite powerful. To conclude, even though it was eventually too chaotic and messy for my taste, it was still pretty good and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre or if you are interested in Hayao Miyazaki’s work. 

I already saw this movie but since it was maybe 20 years go and since I had it on DVD, I was really eager to check it out again. Well, eventually, even though it turned out to be pretty good, I still didn't completely blow me away though. Eventually, the biggest problem was that the damned thing was too short in my opinion. Indeed, it could have easily lasted 3 hours and, then, they would have had enough time to properly introduce the story and the characters involved. As a result, the introduction was seriously rushed and you barely got the time to understand who was involved and what was their agenda. Indeed, within 10 minutes, you get introduced to such various groups like the British army, the French army, various Indian tribes fighting for one side or another, some colonials eager to fight for England, some not,... And, of course, it was rather hard to believe that a British lady from the upper-class would fall in love with a rough white man raised by the indians and, the other way around, you wonder why this free-spirited fellow would ever care for her. But, I guess that was the whole point of this tale as it was probably the most romantic Western I have ever seen and, in spite of a rather weak start, the rest worked actually really well. Indeed, back in those days, Michael Mann certainly knew how to direct a movie and it was visually quite impressive. On top of that, as usual, Daniel Day-Lewis was completely mesmerizing to behold and, even if the love story didn't really make much sense, he was just so convincing. Anyway, to conclude, even though it wasn't really a masterpiece, it was still pretty good and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre. 

I already saw this movie but since it was more than 20 years ago, I was quite eager to check it out again. Well, to be honest, even though I thought it was pretty neat when I was a kid, in fact, it is not really a good movie, I’m afraid. I mean, there were some nice bits, here and there, Jack Nicholson had a lot of fun with this character and they couldn’t have picked up a more gorgeous trio of actresses but, unfortunately, the whole thing was just too silly and convoluted. For example, Daryl van Horn first tries to seduce Alexandra who rejects his proposal , which made made sense, but then, he gives her another speech and she falls for him which was completely unconvincing. In the following scene, Daryl seduces Jane and it really worked fine this time. Finally, it seemed that they ran ouf of time so they just skipped  a similar scene involving Sukie. As a result, the motivation of these 3 women was never properly developed and they focused too much on the one-man-show delivered by Jack Nicholson. Furthermore, there were also some major plot-holes like, for example, why had Veronica Cartwright’s character such a fixation towards these women and Daryl? Towards the end, they also used some magic book to stop Daryl but how did they know that he had this book, how did they know where to find it and how to use it? In fact, this movie was actually the first one made by George Miller in the USA and it was apparently a really difficult shoot with many conflicts with the studio and he really struggled to get more or less the movie he wanted to shoot. Anyway, in spite of its flaws, I still think it is a decent watch, above all thanks to a strong Jack Nicholson and it is worth a look, especially if you like the genre. 

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Since I have a weak spot for Noah Baumbach’s work, I was quite eager to check this movie. Well, the tricky thing with this director is that he very often focuses on some usually rather unlikeable characters and, to be honest, as a result, it is rather difficult to really care for them or what they are going through. This movie was a good example, I’m afraid. Indeed, this time around, Baumbach decided to focus not on one but two douchbags. The first one was Josh who was another self-rigtheous pathetic loser that Ben Stiller has played too many times by now. Seriously, towards the end, he even gave us one of his typical hysterical scenes. Of course, the other douchebag was Jamie who was at first rather annoying but then he seemed to be for while some kind of generous freewheeling selfless hippy . However, at some point, it became pretty obvious that it was an act and that the guy was rather phony and terribly manipulative and calculating. Unfortunately, since Josh was not really a nice or interesting guy, it didn’t really care about what happened to him. Still, I did like how they managed to show that success in the movie business  has absolutely nothing to do with being actually genuine. In fact, if you have a decent idea and you are rather ruthless, you are actually more likely to succeed and nobody will really care if you are a major *sshole. And indeed, documentaries have never been about telling truth, they are just another way of telling a story. Anyway, to conclude, even though the whole thing didn’t really convince me, it was still a decent watch though and it is worth a look, especially if you are interested in Noah Baumbach’s work.