Reviews by johanlefourbe

Since it is a rather obscure flick, I had really no idea what to expect from this flick but since I was starring both Gene Hackman and Morgan Freeman, it was really eager to check it out. I didn’t know at the time but it was in fact a remake of  a really good French thriller, ‘Garde à vue’, and even though you could argue that the whole thing was another rather pointless remake, I thought it was actually pretty neat. Indeed, even though the story itself was nothing really amazing,  Gene Hackman and Morgan Freeman were both really impressive, giving some of their best performances. Just to see them facing each other is really worth watching the damned thing. Something disappointing about this movie though was the fact that, once again, Monica Bellucci was rather poorly used. I mean, she  was another reason why I wanted to check this flick and, as usual, she looked really stunning but, to be honest, she did’t have much to do except for looking completely gorgeous. To conclude, even though it was maybe not a masterpiece, it was still a really solid thriller and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre. 

To be honest, it has been ages since I have seen this movie and maybe I should re-watch it at some point. In fact, I still remember very well the first time I saw the damned thing. In fact, at the time, I had never heard of this flick before and it is my brother-in-law who brought it to our attention saying that it had a very notorious reputation, that it was one of the scariest movies ever made. So, we sat there with the 3 of us (my sister, her boyfriend and myself), expecting something really horrible to happen but, to be honest, we didn’t care much for the whole thing. I mean, sure, it was well made and Michael Rooker gave a really solid performance but, in my opinion, the movie didn’t have much else to offer. Basically, it is a decent serial-killer flick and the only original thing was that the guy didn’t get caught at the end. Apparently, that was something that deeply shocked the viewers at the time, that someone so evil would get away with doing something so terrible but, to be honest, I thought this approach was clever but not much more than that, I’m afraid. To conclude, even though it didn’t really blow me away, it was still a decent watch and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre.

To be honest, I wonder how I actually ended up watching this flick. The main reason was probably that I kept hearing some really good things about this movie and it seemed to be a really cool cult-classic. Eventually, even though I thought it was a decent watch and I was definitely able to appreciate it, I can’t say it really blew me away though. It’s not that the whole thing really shocked me, not at all, in fact, it was pretty much the whole point of this flick. Honestly, I think I just didn’t care much about these characters and what they were going through. At the end of the day, it all depends where you stand regarding such over-the-top extravagant characters. If you love this kind of characters, you will probably love this movie, otherwise, I’m not sure this movie will be really for you. Anyway, eventually, after this promising directing debut, it would take John Cameron Mitchell 5 years to finally come up with a follow-up which would be the even more controversial ‘Shortbus’ which was equally flawed but still interesting to watch.  To conclude, even though I didn’t really connect with the whole thing, it was still something quite original, only therefore it already deserves some extra credit, and I think it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre. 

To be honest, I wonder how I actually ended up watching this flick. Indeed, it really looked lame but, somehow, I still ended up watching the damned thing. Anyway, for once, I have to admit that it turned out to be in fact a rather decent comedy which I really didn’t expect. In fact, by now, I have seen about half of the movie starring Jennifer Love Hewitt and it is by far the best one she has made in my opinion. At the end of the day, it doesn’t mean that this movie was in fact great, it means that, even though I have to admit that she is extremely lovely to look at, her career has been rather underwhelming after all. Anyway, coming back to our main feature, I thought it was a rather effective dark comedy and, above all, Sigourney Weaver and Jennifer Love Hewitt were perfectly cast here. Unfortunately, at some point, they decided that the whole thing couldn’t be mean all the way, so they softened up the tone slowly towards the end and, as a result, it all became rather sentimental and boring which was too bad. To conclude, in spite of its flaws, I still think it is actually a decent comedy and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre. 

I wasn’t really expecting much from this flick but since my wife and I have a weak spot for romantic-comedies, I thought we might as well check it out. Eventually, the whole thing pretty much used the same concept as  ‘Alles is Liefde’ which was already a copy of ‘Love Actually’ so the whole thing felt really derivative, that’s for sure. The main issue with this kind of movies (even with ‘Love Actually’ which I always found rather overrated) is that, instead of giving the viewers a fully-fledged story, they give a whole bunch of half-baked little tales. There were still here and there some really solid scenes though. For example, the best scene was easily the one involving Fabian Jansen (obviously playing a character inspired by what Zach Galifianakis did in ‘The Hangover’ franchise) during the most disastrous date you could think of. It was really awesome and quite hilarious but, unfortunately, everything else afterwards involving this guy had nothing to do with this brilliant bit and, completely at random, he meets a woman in a supermarket and falls in love with her. The worst thing about this is that they first convince us that the guy is pretty much a nightmare and, yet, this very cute girl falls for him for no obvious reasons.  And that’s basically how all those love stories were handled. To conclude, even though I have seen worse, I didn’t really care much for this movie and I don’t think it is really worth a look. 

To be honest, it has been ages since I have since this movie and maybe I should check it out again at some point. Anyway, I have noticed that it didn’t really get much love but I thought it was actually a fairly decent dark satire. Indeed, even though it was maybe not really amazing, I thought it was quite entertaining and it worked well for me.  Basically, it shows how we try to kid ourselves that we are all fine people, when, in fact, people tend to be rather messed up and this movie tried to play around with this idea. Eventually, it never became really dark  like, for example, ‘The King of Comedy ‘ (such an amazing movie directed by Martin Scorsese that really deserves much more love) . As a result, I have to admit that the whole thing never really did reach its full potential and, with such a neat concept, with a such a great cast, I should have been in fact much better but I still think it was quite entertaining. To conclude, I really have a weak spot for this movie, I believe it is quite underrated and it is definitely worth a look.