Reviews by johanlefourbe

Ever since the massive failure of ' Batman & Robin', Joel Schumacher always had a rather lousy reputation but the guy actually had a rather prolific career and not all his movies were complete garbage. This flick is for example is a fine example. If I really correctly, I saw it in the movie theater when it was released while I was living in England at the time. Basically, it was a rather standard bootcamp drama but I thought it was a solid entry in this genre and, at least, they didn’t make the mistake of adding a third act in Vietnam like in 'Full Metal Jacket'. Here, everything happens during the bootcamp which was a much wiser choice. Anyway, the best thing in this flick was to see the rise of a new star as you could witness Colin Farrell in his breakthrough performance. Eventually, Farrell never became a huge box-office draw as they were hoping for but the guy certainly had and still has some acting skills and it was really obvious when you watched this movie. Indeed, like I said before, it was some rather standard material but Farrell really carried the whole thing on his shouders and made it really compelling to watch. To conclude, I really liked this flick and I think it is definitely worth a look.

Honestly, I wonder how I ended up watching this flick. I mean, to be honest, the whole thing looked pretty lame and it didn’t have what you could call a stellar reputation but, eventually, I thought it was actually not bad at all. At the time, Kevin Costner was still struggling to reach again his A list status after the massive failure of 'Waterworld' and the even more abysmal 'The Postman'. Well, to star in B movie like this one certainly didn’t help and more than a decade later, we are still waiting for his comeback at the top of the box-office. Still, even though I would usually didn’t care for a movie like one, I thought it was actually fairly enjoyable. Indeed, I did like the tone (in fact, it seems that Kurt Russell and Kevin Costner didn’t agree on this as Russell wanted to focus more on the comedy and Costner wanted to focus on the action) and it was a nice surprise to see Costner playing for once a rather dark character instead of his usual righteous guys. To conclude, even though the whole thing was nothing really amazing, it was still a decent watch and I think it is worth a look, especially if you like the genre.

I wasn't expecting much from this flick but since I have a weak spot for Djimon Hounsou and Kevin Bacon, I thought I might as well check it out. Actually, I discovered only after watching the damned thing that it was actually directed by Prachya Pinkaew, the guy responsible for the awesome 'Ong-Bak' so the whole thing actually had some potential. Unfortunately, the whole thing was just terribly underwhelming. Indeed, it reminded me a little bit of 'Bangkok Dangerous'. Basically, those movies take place in Bangkok and provided a dark and ominous world but the plots were just so weak, it was just barely watchable. I mean, Djimon Hounsou really did what he could and he has the potential to be a pretty cool action star in a better movie. Here, I seriously had a hard time to get what was actually the motivation of the main character. The whole gimmick of the young prostitute following him was also terribly lame and poorly executed. On top of that, even the usually dependable Kevin Bacon was completely lost here and really miscast as an English strip-club owner/weapons saler/former secret agent/whatever. To conclude, I think I'm being rather generous with my rating here, it is a really weak action flick and I don't think it is really worth a look.

Even though I had pretty much enough of the fanatism surrounding Christopher Nolan, I still have to admit that the guy displayed once again an impressive set of balls. Indeed, nowadays, the box-office is pretty much ruled by the super-heros, the young adult book adaptations, the sequels, the remakes, the reboots and you don't see many directors coming up with something really original and without 3D, on top of that. It seemed that Nolan's ambition is pretty much limitless as he decided to tackle this time an epic science-fiction feature reaching out for a seminal masterpiece like '2001: A Space Odyssey' and the guy almost pulled it off. I say almost because even though the whole thing was really entertaining, emotional and gorgeous to look at, the story was actually rather shaky and half of it didn't make much sense whatsoever. Above all, with this movie, you finally got a glimpse of Nolan's actual limitations. By now, we all pretty much agree that he is one of the most talented directors at work today but if you want to go all the way and make a really awesome masterpiece like his example Stanley Kubrick, he has to stop to please the average movie watcher by throwing some random action scenes here and there. It didn’t bother me with 'Inception' but, here, it was really obvious and rather annoying. Still, you get here some rather deep thoughts about life, death, love, the relativity of time and space and it was just exhilariting to see a blockbuster at least trying to tackle such ideas.

Since I have a weak spot for Audrey Hepburn and even more for Henry Fonda, I was quite eager to check this flick, even though it was a rather daunting prospect. Indeed, to be perfectly honest, I haven't read the classic book written by Tolstoy but I know it is pretty huge so I knew beforehand that they would try to make a very long epic of this story with this adaptation. I mean, don’t misunderstand me, I do like very long movies but like Roger Ebert used to say, a bad movie can't be short enough and a good movie can't be long enough. In this case, even though I admired the work done, especially how they reproduced the time periode and the cast did a decent work but I seriously had a hard time to care about the story. Basically, it deals with some people belonging to the Russian aristocracy during the war against Napoleon and, to be honest, I thought they were rather dull. Maybe in the book, they were fascinating to follow for 100s of pages but I got rather bored to follow them in their romantic intrigues for more than 3 hours. Anyway, even though it didn’t really blow me away, it was still a decent watch and I think it is worth a look, especially if you like the genre.

I wasn't really sure what to expect from this movie but since I have a weak spot for Ed Harris, I thought I might as well give it a try. To be honest, I really had a hard time to connect with this story. Basically, it was a typical good-hearted uplifting drama based on a true story but, personally, I thought the whole thing was rather misleading. Indeed, for at least a third of the duration, I thought it was a rather standard (American) football feature and I was expecting Radio at any moment to come up with a magic trick which would help his beloved team to win the game/cup/championship/whatever. Hell, even the main character didn’t have much a clue about what he was actually trying to achieve. I guess it was maybe be a little too slow for me. Still, towards the end, when it was finally clear what is actually all about, it started to grow on me but I'm afraid it was a little bit too late. The way the rest of the characters were developed was also rather underwhelming (the teenager who doesn't get daddy's attention, the wife who just stands there approving her husband, the sensible school principal, the evil banker who wants to ruin it all) . Still, it remains actually an original and heartwarming story and I think it is worth a look, especially if you like the genre.

Since I have always been interested in Terry Gilliam’s work, I was really eager to check this flick. Basically, it is another cult classic directed by Gilliam but, to be honest, I wasn’t completely blown away by the whole thing. Indeed, like many other movies coming from this interesting director, I thought that it was visually impressive but I actually had a rather hard time to connect with the story. I don't know, I guess, the story was not bad but, somehow I didn’t think it was really entertaining and I was rather bored from time to time while watching this flick. On the other hand, it has been a while since I have seen this movie so I should definitely re-watch it at some point to make up my mind for good about the damned thing. 4 years later, Gilliam would come with up ‘Brazil’ which would be a huge critical hit and it has been considered as Terry Gilliam’s magnum opus ever since. Coming back to our main feature, to conclude, even though I thought it was slightly disappointing, it was still an interesting and original feature and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you are interested in Terry Gilliam’s work.

Since I had this dvd for so long (almost 2 years), I thought it was really time to watch the damned thing. First of all, there was a really nice cast (Keira Knightley, Sam Worthington, Eva Mendes and Guillaume Canet) and they all gave some solid performances. I mean, I really did believe that all these people were either attracted or in love with each other. Except though for the couple Knightley-Worthington. Indeed, right from the very first scene in their appartment, you could feel that there was something off between them. Later on, they gave us some really nice and cosy moments between those two but I wasn't really convinced. With this in mind, it became rather difficult to care about their supposed struggle since they seemed much more infatuated with their possible lovers. On top of that, I didn’t really care about the gimmick about having both spouses more or less cheating each other pretty much at the same time. Indeed, both love affairs were pretty intense but they would have worked better on their own, especially with such a short running time. Still, in spite of its flaws, I still enjoyed the directing and the mood created, it was a decent watch and I think it is worth a look.

Obviously, I wasn't expecting much from this flick but it managed to be even worse than I expected. To be honest, I have never been a huge fan of parodies in general but this one was just awful and probably the worst one I have ever seen. Of course, you had Leslie Nielsen once again involved as he was apparently incapable of doing anything else and he provided his usual oblivious and obnoxious character. I suppose it was to be expected that they would try to make a SF parody with this guy at some point which wasn't a really bad idea but they couldn't possibly deliver something even more underwhelming. Personally, I never really understood his appeal but, by now, it was just getting really tiresome. Ophélie Winter, a famous French bimbo at the time, ended up here and probaby hoped that this movie would launch an international career but since it was a massive flop, nobody really noticed her. What could I add? The jokes were just terrible and there were even a bunch of pathetic look-a-like celebrities towards the end with no real purpose whatsoever. To conclude, it has been a while since I have seen such a bad movie and it is definitely not worth a look.

At the end of the 70’s, Don Bluth decided to leave Disney and, right away, he went to direct his own animated features. In the 80’s, he had some major success with ‘The Secret of NIMH’ and, above all, with ‘An American Tail’ and ‘The Land Before Time’. Unfortunately, after those movies, he kept making some underperforming features. He did make a slight come-back with ‘Anastasia’ at the end of the 90’s but this movie was a huge box-office flop and it pretty much ended his career which is a terrible shame. Since I always had a weak spot for Don Bluth’s work, I was really eager to check it out and, eventually, I thought it was actually pretty good. Indeed, as usual with Bluth, the animation was really nice but, I guess, with the rise of the CGI animation at the time, the audience didn’t care much for something like this. On top of that, I thought that the story was also fairly entertaining even if it was rather pedestrian and nothing really mind-blowing. To conclude, I think it is actually a decent SF animated feature and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre.