Reviews by johanlefourbe

Even though this movie seems to be rather forgotten nowadays, especially outside the Netherlands, I really liked it a lot and I should definitely re-watch it at some point.  Basically, this movie was the last one directed by Paul Verhoeven before he left the Netherlands and it is my favorite one from this period just behind 'Turks Fruit'. Above all, I thought that the story was just fascinating and, in my opinion, I believe it was in fact a better version of 'Basic Instinct'.  Indeed, to be honest, I always had some mixed  feelings about 'Basic Instinct' because, even though the set-up was great, the plot was after all really far-fetched and rather half-baked. Here, Verhoeven gave us another erotic thriller about a man falling in love with a seemingly dangerous woman but the end-result was this time much more rewarding, at least, that’s my opinion. Instead of Rutger Hauer, the lead was played this time by Jeroen Krabbbé and he gave a really solid performance. Above all, Paul Verhoeven was just at the top of his game at the time and delivered a steamy dark and spellbinding thriller. To conclude, I think it is a great feature and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you are interested in Paul Verhoeven’s work.

Nowadays, Marvel is pretty much ruling the box-office but there was a time when they were nowhere to be found and it was DC who came out with some very successful super-hero features. First, at the end of the 70's, with 'Superman', and then 10 years later with this movie focusing this time on the Dark Knight. I remember it very well when it came out, there was a huge buzz about this movie. Indeed, you could see the famous logo all over the place, there was some Batman merchandising everywhere and me and my little brother even got some Batman sweaters at the time. Basically, it was huge and pretty much the biggest film event  at the time. With all this excitement, I just had to see it pretty bad and , back in those days (I was 9-10 years old), I was just really blown away by the whole thing. Indeed, I had never seen anything like this before and I thought it was just awesome. Eventually,  I think it is above really enjoyable when you are just a kid and, of course, 20 years later, it does look pretty cheesy, especially when you compare it to Christopher Nolan's trilogy but back in those days, it was really groundbreaking and it still deserve a lot of respect. To conclude, this movie is really a childhood favorite and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre. 

To be honest, it has been a while since I have seen this flick. If I recall it correctly, when it was released in France, there was a pretty good buzz about it so I went to see the damned thing in the movie theater. Eventually, I thought it really deserved all the praise it had received. Indeed, even though it was nothing really ground-breaking, it was still a refreshing and fairly entertaining  romantic-comedy. Of course, there was something ‘meta’ about this project as Yvan Attal and Charlotte Gainsbourg were a real life couple (by now, for more than 2 decades already) and, of course,  Gainsbourg was/is a fairly famous actress. Even though this whole concept could have been rather self-centered, Attal managed to keep enough distance from the material (above all by making his character an ‘average’ guy)  to make it really enjoyable. Eventually, it was pretty obvious that it was Yvan Attal’s directing debut as the whole thing was cute and charming but not much more than that, I’m afraid. To conclude, even though it wasn’t really a masterpiece, I thought it was pretty good and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you are interested in French movies. 

Back in the 90's, I used to be a huge fan of Takeshi Kitano and I ended up watching 9 of his movies. I have to admit that, nowadays, I don't follow much his work anymore but it doesn't seem that I'm missing much. Anyway, this flick was one of the last features directed by Kitano that I had the pleasure to watch. Indeed, since his reputation was growing exponentially abroad, Kitano went to the USA to direct ‘Brother’ which turned out to be decent but still not really amazing. For this follow-up, he was back in Japan to make this feature which would be easily his most poetic movie. Compared to ‘Brother’ which was his least interesting movie but easily to swallow, this one was probably his least accessible one for the mainstream audience but I really enjoyed it a lot. This time, he also decided to give us 3 different stories and while I’m usually not really fan of this approach, I thought it worked fine here. Basically, you get 3 love stories, all filled with symbolism, and it was quite spellbinding to behold. To conclude, I really enjoyed this movie a lot and I think it is really worth a look, especially if you are interested in Takeshi Kitano’s  work.