Reviews by johanlefourbe

I wasn’t expecting much from the damned thing but since there was a decent cast involved, I thought it might as well check it out. Well, from all the lame direct-to-DVD features starring Bruce Willis I have seen recently, this must have been the worst one so far. As usual, Willis was displayed prominently on the promotional material and, as usual, he wasn’t even playing the lead character but that wasn’t even the biggest problem with this movie. Indeed, the biggest issue was that the story was just so generic and tedious. Basically, it was some kind of rip-off of such movies like ‘The Equalizer’ or ‘John Wick’ about an average guy who seems to have a dark past and happens to be an actual killing machine. Well, I have never been a huge fan of the genre and to see such a weak movie in this genre was just terribly tedious. To be honest, I’m trying to think if there was anything that really worked in this movie but, no, I can’t think of any redeeming feature. Anyway, to conclude, the whole thing was just a waste of time and you should definitely avoid it, even if you are a big fan of Bruce Willis. 

After ‘Klein Teun’, Alex van Warmerdam took his time and, 5 years later, he finally came up with a new directing effort but, unfortunately, it turned out to be his weakest movie so far, I’m afraid. At least, the DVD I watched was of much better quality than the DVDs I saw for his previous movies and it was pretty neat that half of the movie was taking place outside of the Netherlands which was a first for van Warmerdam. Unfortunately,  that was pretty much the only things I enjoyed about this movie. Eventually, what bothered me the most were the huge ellipses that they would make. For example, at some point, Maria and Jacob end up in some town and, then, completely out of the blue, they seemed to be living in some homeless tent under a bridge without any explanation whatsoever. How the hell did they end up there? Then, later on, they decide to go to Spain with their scooter and, within minutes, they end up in Spain. That was something that kept occurring throughout the whole thing and I thought it was just so lazy and annoying. On top of that, I never really cared about the story or the characters involved. In fact, I discovered afterwards that Alex van Warmerdam hated the original cut of this film and he had since completely rejected this flick. More than 15 years later, he has actually released a new director's cut and it would be interesting to check it out at some point since this theatrical version had been actually rather underwhelming. Anyway, to conclude, even though it was the most disappointing movie delivered by this director so far, I still though it was a decent watch and it is worth a look, especially, if you are interested in Alex van Warmerdam’s work. 

I wasn’t really planning to watch this movie but since it was given as a bonus with my Pusher trilogy DVD box, I thought I might as well check it out. Well, the interesting thing about this movie was that, even though the outcome was actually really positive (Nicolas Winding Refn indeed managed to make both ’Pusher II’ and ‘Pusher III’ which turned out to be some critical and commercial success), it was still a really sad story. Indeed, for about 2 years Winding Refn and his wife had to live under a huge amount of pressure because they were so much in debts. Furthermore, even though ’Pusher II’ and ‘Pusher III’ were both some pretty cool movies, it turns out that the Danish director never really wanted to make them in the first place but he had to, otherwise, it would have been pretty much the end of his career. Finally, it shows that making a movie can be a gruelling process, even for one of the most highly regarded directors in Denmark. Eventually, it is pretty obvious that a director spends most of his time dealing with a variety of things which don’t have much to do with actually directing a movie. Anyway, to conclude, I thought it was a decent watch and it is worth a look, especially if you are interested in Nicolas Winding Refn’s work. 

Since this movie was recently added to the book ‘1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die’, I was really eager to check it out. To be honest, I’m pretty sure that it will be one of these movies that they add every year but which end up being removed directly the year after or at least very soon. Anyway, I have to admit that it is not very often that you get to see a horror movie with so many layers. Indeed, there was first the fact that Iran, after the Islamic revolution, drastically changed and, since then, if someone would speak too loud about their opinion in this country, they could get into some real trouble, like the main character in this movie. As a result, many people would rather stay at home because they could then create their own free world with their own specific set of rules. Still, the fear that someone could show up and report you to the authority was always present. On the other hand, since the outside world was so threatening, by spending so much time inside, their home actually became some kind of a prison as well. Another layer was also the huge impact of the Iran-Irak war which was, according to the movie, the longest conventional war taking place in the 20^th century. So, there was also this neverending fear of being attacked or bombed for years. So, it was definitely an intriguing context for a horror flick and, yet, the whole thing still didn’t completely convince me though. Basically, the main problem I had was that, sure,  the horror stuff was not bad, in fact, it was even visually pretty neat, but it was also terribly generic. Seriously, from the moment the little girl tells her mother that she saw some djinn, it became just so predictable and nothing really surprising ever happened afterwards. Anyway, to conclude, even if it didn’t completely blow me away, it was a still a really original horror flick and it is definitely worth a look. 

Since I really loved ‘De jurk’, I was really eager to check Alex van Warmerdam[Link removed - login to see][Link removed - login to see][Link removed - login to see]directing effort. Well, unfortunately, even though it was a decent watch, it still turned out to be his movie which had the least impact on me so far. As usual, there was no real plot but some rather weird and absurd tale which can be rather tiresome to watch but, this time around, the whole thing was even more minimalist then usual with only one location and only 3 characters involved. To make things worse, I didn’t really care much for these characters and, while some of van Warmerdam’s movies can be quite hilarious, the whole thing was not so much fun, even if some scenes still made me chuckle. At least, it was really nice that Alex van Warmerdam and his wife, [Link removed - login to see][Link removed - login to see][Link removed - login to see][Link removed - login to see][Link removed - login to see], were playing the leads for once. On top of that, Annet Malherbe was just really good in this movie and she has definitely become one of my favorite Dutch actress. To conclude, even though the whole thing didn’t really blow me away, I still enjoyed this movie and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you are interested in Alex van Warmerdam’s work.