Reviews by johanlefourbe

To be honest, it has been ages since I have seen this movie but, if I recall it correctly, I actually saw it in the movie theater when it was released. Anyway, in my opinion, the masterstroke was to have Rupert Everett playing one of the main characters.  Indeed, back then, I had a huge weak spot for this actor,  he was pretty much born to play Oscar Wilde’s characters and the guy was just quite awesome in this movie. The rest of the cast was pretty neat as well, especailly Cate Blanchett and Julianne Moore. Concerning the story, it was all rather silly but it was done on purpose and Oscar Wilde had such a modern and witty way to write dialogues, most of them were very often really funny. Since this Oscar Wilde adaptation was quite successful, Oliver Parker would give another try 3 years later with ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’, also starring Rupert Everett, and even though I preferred this movie, it turned out to be a decent watch as well. To conclude, even though it was maybe not a masterpiece, I thought it was pretty good and I think it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre or if you have a weak spot for Oscar Wilde’s work. 

I remember it very well, when I was a kid growing up in the 90’s, AIDS was everywhere. In the news, at school,… There was this constant warning and, if in the past, your girlfriend might get pregnant if you were not careful when having sex now, suddenly, you might eventually even die so sex was and, actually still is, something pretty scary. I’m always amazed that, 20 years later, we barely hear about this disease, even if, according to this movie, there are still 6000 people contimated by the HIV virus on a daily basis. My guess is that this epidemic is now pretty much under control in the Western world and most of the current victims are actually coming from the African continent and, exactly as it was displayed in this movie, back in the 80’s, nobody really cared about these dying homosexual men, nowadays, nobody really seem to care about all these dying Africans. Anyway, coming back to our main feature, what I liked the most about this movie was how layered the whole thing was. Indeed, they showed the fight those guys had to put to survive, but also the conflict inside their own movement and, finally, this beautiful love story involving Mark Ruffalo and Matt Bomer. Indeed, even though I wasn’t really sure about Julia Roberts, I was once again really blown away by Mark Ruffalo who gave here a really strong and completely convincing performance. I have to admit that I was rather surprised that the lesbian community was never to be seen but, apparently, that’s actually what happened back then. Anyway, to conclude, I thought it was a really strong drama and it is definitely worth a look. 

To be honest, it has been a while since I have seen this flick and I should probably re-watch the damned thing at some point. Even though François Truffaut died to soon at the beginning of the 80’s, on the other hand, Jean-Luc Godard, the other master of the Frenh New Wave, has been quite productive even nowadays but I always thought that his work has become increasingly frustrating and alienating. It’s too bad because the movies he made at the beginning of his career were just amazing and his directing debut, ‘À bout de souffle’, is still one of my all-time favorite movies. This movie is a perfect example. Indeed, basically, pretty much like in ‘À bout de souffle’, Godard didn’t really have a plot here and, instead, you just followed the 3 characters through some random scenes in Paris. Following the philosophy of the New Wave, Godard went for a very loose narration but it worked really well here and I thought the whole thing was quite spellbinding to watch. Eventually, the only small thing about this movie is that the trio Sami Frey, Claude Brasseur and Anna Karina was not as charismatic as the duo Jean-Paul Belmond and Jean Seberg but it wasn’t a big deal. To conclude, I really loved this flick and I think it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre. 

Even though the franchise developed around ‘Alien’ has been struggling through the years, it has been actually worse with the ‘Predator’ franchise. Indeed, even though the first instalment became rightfully a cult-classic, pretty much everything that came afterwards (including sequels, reboots and crossovers with Alien) never managed to be really successful and this movie was a perfect example. Indeed, since the first movie was quite successful, it wasn’t really surprising that they would come up with a sequel a few years later. At first, Arnold Schwarzenegger was actually supposed to come back but, among other things, he didn’t like the concept of having the predator going to a city. Well, I don’t agree with Schwarzenegger, I think it was a great idea to go to some urban environment and I think it was a blessing that the main character was this time played by Danny Glover. Indeed, of course, Dutch was a total bad-ass but Mike Harrigan had some different skills to fight this mighty opponent and this new dynamic was very much welcome. Unfortunately, even though Harrigan was pretty neat thanks to a solid performance by Danny Glover, pretty much all the other characters turned out to be some terrible and pathetic stereotypes. Same thing about the dialogues, there were often rather laughable. Still, in spite of its flaws, I always had a weak spot for the damned thing and I think it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre. 

To be honest, it has been ages since I saw this movie and I should probably re-watch it at some point. At some point, I saw ‘Paris, Texas’, the damned thing completely blew me away and, from that point, I became a huge fan of Wim Wenders. With this in mind, I was quite eager to check this movie and I had some rather high expectations but, eventually, I was actually slightly disappointed by the whole thing. Back then, I had no idea who the hell was Tom Ripley, indeed, I would watch ‘The Talented Mr. Ripley’ maybe 5 or 6 years later. Above all, at the time, I was barely able to follow this rather convoluted plot and many agree that this movie was above all about the mood and the atmosphere but, once again, I never felt much connection to the whole thing which was too cold and cumbersome for me. On the other hand, I was quite young and, after so many years, it is possible that I might enjoy it more if I gave it a 2^nd chance nowadays. Anyway, to conclude, even though it didn’t work for me, I still think it is worth a look, especially if you are interested in Wim Wender’s work.

If ‘Unbroken’ failed to really launch Angelina Jolie’s directing career, I'm afraid this movie however pretty much ruined her chances of ever becoming a major director in the near future. Indeed, it must have been one of the most misguided and pretentious egotrips I have seen in a very long time. I mean, sure, she knows how to pick up her collaborators and she once again had a very good DOP so the whole thing looked very nice but that’s pretty much the only thing that really worked in this movie. It seems that Jolie went for a vintage Art-house vibe this time but she failed just miserably. Seriously, you spent about 2 hours with 2 of the most unlikable characters I have seen recenly but the worst thing about them was not even the fact that they were unlikable but the fact that they were just so boring. Basically, they gave us here the 2 biggest movie stars in the world but they both ended up doing pretty much nothing except arguing about some rather obscure subject. Of course, you can’t help while watching this movie wondering what their actual relationship must have been as they shot this movie during their honeymoon and got divorced less than a year after it was released.  Eventually, even though Angelina Jolie announced that she won’t be acting again after this movie and would focus only on directing, since this movie was so terrible, I wonder what she will do next. Anyway, to conclude, the damned thing was pretty weak and I don’t think it is really worth a look.