Reviews by johanlefourbe

Not so long ago, I saw the last 2 directing efforts by Tom DiCillo, the interesting but ultimately disappointing ‘Delirious’ and the even more underwhelming and borderline abysmal ‘Double Whammy’, and it seems that the guy has really lost his touch which is too bad. Indeed, 20 years ago, he got his breakthrough with this indie gem and I have been following his work ever since. The story is that DiCillo managed to have a decent critical success with ‘Johnny Suede’ (an obscure indie feature starring Brad Pitt before he became famous)  and he quickly got the greenlight for his follow up feature which would eventually become ‘Box of Moonlight’. However, after years of  troubles in pre-production, he decided to make a movie about how frustrating this whole process was and the end-result was this second film. Back then, I must have been 15 years old when I saw it and I thought it was just hilarious. Indeed, Steve Buscemi just got his breakthrough a couple of years before with ‘Reservoir Dogs’and it was just really neat that the guy was playing the lead for once. To conclude, even though it is nowadays rather forgotten, it is actually a really nice comedy and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre. 

For how long Terry Gilliam had been trying to make this movie? For more than 2 decades I guess, and, in the mean time, he had directed 4 other movies (‘The Brothers Grimm’, ‘Tideland’, ‘The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus’ and 'The Zero Theorem'). Since this documentary was made, Gilliam tried again a couple of times to launch this project, once with Robert Duvall and Ewan McGregor in the leads. A later attempt,, starring this time John Hurt and Jack O’Connell, was supposed to be shooting in 2016 but I was cancelled again. Eventually, he finally managed to finish up with Jonathan Pryce and Adam Driver playing the leads though. Anyway, coming back to our main feature, it is probably one of the best documentaries ever made about film making and we get here a pretty good glimpse of Gilliam’s dream project which he struggle so much to finish. I sure would have loved to see this version starring Jean Rochefort, Johnny Depp and Vanessa Paradis but it wasn't meant to be and, to be honest, after all these years, I’m afraid Gilliam will just make something quickly just to get rid off of this nightmarish project (and, indeed, the final product 'The Man Who Killed Don Quixote' released in 2018 turned out to be rather disappointing). Anyway, to conclude, I think it is a fascinating documentary about a really messed up project and it is definitely worth a look. 

If I recall it correctly, I actually saw this movie in the movie theater when it was released. Seriously, what the hell was I thinking?!? My best guess is that  I was around 14 years old at the time,  I must have  seen a trailer and I thought it would be a fun movie to watch. I don’t know, back in those days, I was probably still thinking that Paul Hogan was really awesome and I though that it was a great idea to put this guy in a Western. Well, I was wrong, that’s for sure. I mean, when I was a kid, I thought that Hogan was pretty cool in ‘Crocodile Dundee’ but, even though you might think that his character should fit in rather well in this genre, the end-result was eventually rather lame. I mean, sure, the whole thing could have been worse but the biggest issue with this flick was that the story and the characters were just so generic and pedestrian, it was just rather boring to behold. To conclude, I think I’m being rather generous with my rating here, it is probably one of the most underwhelming Westerns I have ever seen and I don’t think it is worth a look. 

It was yet another rather obscure movie and the main reason I wanted to watch it was because Roger Ebert really loved it (in fact, he even chose it as one of the best movies released during that year). Eventually,  even though I was able to see it why Ebert really loved it, I can’t say I really shared his enthusiasm. I guess my main problem was that it was dealing with just too many subjects which all were really interesting but, with a running time of just above 90 minutes,  there was just too much to explore and just not enough time to provide something really satisfaying.  On top of that, all the dialogues were in iambic pentameter which made everyhing sound elegant and poetic but I'm not a huge fan of this artistic gimmick even if it was rather well used here as it made the conversations sound rather remote from reality.  Still, there were definitely some artistic qualities about the whole thing. Above all, the main couple was perfectly cast and they both gave some really solid performances. It was especially nice to see Joan Allen who doesn't make so many movies nowadays. She is such a fine and charming actress, really refreshing and genuine and she seems like a real woman compared to most of the unreachable and supposedly gorgeous younger actresses that we usually get. Anyway, to conclude, even though it didn’t really convince me, it was still a decent watch and it is definitely worth a look. 

To be honest, it is a rather obscure feature and it has been a while since I saw this flick. In fact, if I recall it correctly, I saw this movie in the movie theater when it was released. Anyway, the main reason I wanted to watch this flick is that it was Paul Auster’s directing debut. To be honest, at the time, even though I had heard about the guy, I wasn’t really familiar with his literary work (I would eventually read ‘Moon Palace’, ‘In the Country of Last Things’ and ‘The New York Trilogy’) but I really loved the movies he made with Wayne Wang (‘Smoke’ and ‘Blue in the Face’) and I was really wondering what he would manage to deliver on his own. Apparently, he enjoyed working with Harvey Keitel who was once again hired to play the lead and the guy delivered a fine performance. To play his love interest, you had also the charming Mira Sorvino. I have to admit it, even though she did manage to win an Academy Award at some point, Sorvino was never a really great actress but I always had a weak spot for her. Anyway, coming back to our main feature, even though it was decent watch, it wasn’t really amazing and even though Paul Auster is a great writer, he apparently still had some work to do as a director. To conclude, in spite of its flaws, I still think it was an interesting watch and it is worth a look.