Reviews by johanlefourbe

Since I kept hearing some good things about this movie, I was quite eager to check it out. Well, eventually, it turned out to be a decent watch but not much more than that, to be honest. Indeed, after such movies like ‘Blade Runner’, ‘Her’ or ‘Ex Machina’, it is rather tricky to come up nowadays with something really original and interesting about AI and, this movie, even though it was entertaining enough, never managed to really impress me. I mean, they tried to combine the whole robot thing with an old man obviously suffering from Alzheimer disease and the guy happened to be as well some kind of master thief but, in my opinion, they chose this mix above all to allow this movie to stand out from the other movies in this genre. Anyway, I still have a weak spot for such minimalistic features dealing only with 1 or 2 characters and as long as the movie was focusing on Frank Langella and Peter Sarsgaard, the whole thing still worked fine. Anyway, to conclude, even though I think I will forget the whole thing really soon, I have to admit that it was still not bad at all and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre. 

I wasn’t sure what to expect from this flick but since there was a decent cast involved, I thought I might as well check it out. Well, even though the concept of focusing on the last days of Edgar Allen Poe was pretty neat, unfortunately, pretty much everything else didn’t really work though. In fact, somehow, it reminded me of ‘In the Heart of the Sea’. Indeed, in this recent movie from Ron Howard, instead of simply adapting ‘Mody Dick’, they went for an adaptation of a book  about how Herman Melville was inspired by a true story to write his own literary classic which was such a convoluted concept. In this case, instead of really telling the life of Poe or simply adapting one of his classic tales, they went for some typical serial-killer inspired by Poe’s work which was such a weak idea. Furthermore, I thought that John Cusack was rather miscast to play the famous writer. Indeed, Cusack is one of these actors who always play every characters pretty much the same away everytime again and his usual quirkiness didn’t work here. In my opinion, they should have chosen someone else to play the famous dark and tormented writer. Still, the whole thing was not completely worthless. Indeed, James McTeigue has a nice visual style and the whole thing looked really good. Furthermore, Alice Eve remains such a charming actress. Anyway, to conclude, in spite of its flaws and  even though the whole thing was still rather misguided , it was still watchable and I guess it might be worth a look, at least, if you like the genre. 

I already saw this movie but since it was a while back and since I had it on DVD, I thought I might as well check it out again. Well, even though my wife always had a weak spot for this movie, I always had a hard time to care about  the damned thing. I have to admit it, it was still a decent watch and probably the most ambitious adaptation I have seen dealing with the musketeers but I'm afraid it was actually victim of its own ambition. I mean, sure, there was an impressive cast involved  (Leonardo DiCaprio, Jeremy Irons, John Malkovich, Gérard Depardieu, Gabriel Byrne, Anne Parillaud, Judith Godrèche, Peter Sarsgaard, Hugh Laurie) but it was so over-crowded that there was barely any room to develop any of these characters. The funny thing was that, even though they all delivered some decent performances, DiCaprio, easily one of the best actors around nowadays, was probably the weakest of them all. Indeed, even though it took some balls to play such a rather despicable character just after becoming overnight a huge star thanks to 'Titanic', he was never convincing here and I always had the feeling that I was watching a young American pretending to be a very mean king. Anyway, in spite of its flaws, it is watchable and I guess it is worth a look, especially if you like the genre.