Reviews by johanlefourbe

In my opinion, this James Bond was the best one starring Pierce Brosnan. I mean, ‘Goldeneye’ was definitely decent but I really didn’t like much ‘Die Another Day’ and ‘The World is Enough’ and this one was the best of the bunch. To be honest, I think the circumstances during which I have seen this flick also helped me to enjoy it even more. Indeed, back then I was in the Netherlands on holiday, for the first time without my father, I was there with my best friend at the time. We were having a blast and on the 1st of January (if I recall it correctly), we went to see this flick in the oldest movie theater in the Netherlands. It is in Amsterdam, it is called the Pathé Tuchinski and it looked gorgeous. Anyway, it was the perfect movie for us at this moment as it was rather brainless with tons of cool action scenes but the whole thing was really entertaining. As usual with those James Bond features, the story was not really amazing but I thought it was good enough. On top of that, I thought that Michelle Yeoh did a great job and, in my opinion, she was one of the most interesting James Bond girls as she was a little bit more than the usual eye-candy. To conclude, even though it is nothing really ground-breaking, I thought it was a decent watch and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre.

Since I kept hearing some really good things about this flick, I was quite eager to check it out. To be honest, I have never been really impressed by Guillaume Canet's career as an actor and, so far, his biggest achievement is to have been married with Diana Kruger and then to be Marion Cotillard's boyfriend for already 7 years. Still, as a director, he definitely displayed some potential and I really have to check now his directing debut, 'Mon idole' (I have the damned thing already for at least 3 years on dvd so I really have no excuse). Anyway, coming back to our main feature, it was definitely a very well made thriller and the whole thing was really entertaining. It reminded me of Hichtock's work and 'Spoorloos', easily one of the best Dutch movies ever made but, to be honest, the story was a little too far-fetched for my taste. Indeed, when the revelations did start to come out, at least half of it didn't make much sense. Still, all the actors gave some really solid performances and Canet definitely managed to create a nice mood and, if you don't analyse the plot too much, it is definitely a nice watch. Anyway, to conclude, even though it wasn’t really a masterpiece, I still think it was pretty good and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you are interested in French movies.

I already saw this movie but since it was a while back, I was quite eager to check it out again. Well, first of all, I was actually surprised by how little I actually remembered it and, on top of that, I have to admit that, this time around, it turned out to be actually fairly entertaining. I mean, even though it is a huge classic from the 80's, I'm still not a huge fan but I think I was at first too harsh. It is also funny that the only thing I did remember were the impressive dogfight scenes but, in fact, I was also surprised by the fact that there were only a few of them after all. In fact, it turned out that at least half of the movie was about the romance between Maverick and his instructor. So, basically, it is an action flick mixed with a fairly generic romance. Eventually, what actually impressed the most was to see a young Tom Cruise in his breakthrough performance. Indeed, even if it was hardly his best work, the guy was just really charismatic and it was also quite neat to see the similarities between Maverick and himself. Basically, Maverick wanted to be the best pilot and to rule the sky and Tom Cruise wanted to be the biggest movie star and to rule the box-office (which he did for a very long time) and Cruise was actually a perfect choice to play this character. Anyway, to conclude, I'm glad it a second chance and even it still might not be a masterpiece, it is actually quite entertaining and it is definitely worth a look.

Since I have a weak spot for Dakota Fanning, I was quite eager to check this flick. To be honest, I thought she was eventually a rather odd choice to play the main character. I mean, either you move the story to the USA (it has been done before, see for example 'High Fidelity') or just pick up an English actress, it's not as if there wouldn’t have been any suitable candidate. I mean, it's not that Fanning was bad, she actually gave a solid performance but it was really distracting and a rather misguided choice. On top of that, after watching ' The Fault in our Stars', it was just so similar, it felt a little bit like a déjà vu. Furthermore, both movies basically had the same issues, in the sense that they were based on some strong emotional and rather realistic tales but they were both pulled down by the usual tricks and gimmicks of the genre. At least, this one didn’t have a twist towards the end but I can’t say it was actually better. Anyway, to conclude, even though it wasn't great, it was still a decent drama and I think it is worth a look, especially if you like the genre.

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.