Reviews by johanlefourbe

Like everyone else, I'm not a huge fan of Brett Ratner's work. I mean, his movies are sometimes not bad actually but they are usually terribly generic. This movie is a pretty good example but since there was a nice cast, I still wanted to check it out. Honestly, I have to admit, even though this movie was nothing amazing, I still think it was rather entertaining. Indeed, the cast was really nice (Pierce Brosnan, Salma Hayek, Woody Harrelson, Don Cheadle, Naomie Harris, Chris Penn) and since I always had a weak spot for heist movies, I thought the whole thing was rather entertaining and the characters were actually pretty funny. Unfortunately, like most movies directed by Ratner, the whole thing still feels pretty lazy and remains rather shallow. It is like the casting, even though all the actors involved were pretty good, I still feel like the casting was not really original. I mean, Pierce Brosnan as the suave thief, Salma Hayek as the femme fatale and Woody Harrelson as the corruptable cop, there is nothing here which was really surprising. Since it is supposed to be a fun heist movie without much substance, I think it reached its goals without going beyond which should be asking too much from a director like Brett Ratner. Still, to conclude, I still think it is a rather fun caper feature and it is worth a look but don't expect too much from it.

Since I have a weak spot for Denzel Washington, I was really eager to check this movie. Furthermore, I have always been intrigued by South African history which is really controversial, sad and quite shocking. This movie deals with one of the most famous figures involved in the fight for equal rights. This man was called Steve Biko, very well portrayed by Denzel Washington who was not yet a huge star at this time. He gave one of typical performances, you know, the righteous guy, but he does it really well and Biko was a really intriguing guy. Unfortunately, he wasn’t even the main character, the main character was Donald Woods, played by Kevin Kline. Of course, I know it is a true story based on Woods’ books but I always find it disappointing when a movie focus on African people but still manages to put a white guy as the main character (‘Blood Diamond’, ‘Shooting Dogs, ‘Machine Gun Preacher’,…). Especially in this case, even though Biko is actually the historical figure, we still spend here a good chunk of the movie with Donald Woods, trying to escape from South Africa. As if his faith was more tragic or interesting than the black people living in South Africa. So, it is not really a perfect tale but like I said before, Steve Biko was a fascinating man and this subject remains really compelling. To conclude, in spite of its flaws, it is a pretty good historical drama and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre.

Just before breaking through with ‘El laberinto del fauno’, Guillermo Del Toro made this comic-book adaptation. Since Del Toro was not yet widely well known, when it was released, it was only a modest success but it is has nowadays reached a cult status. To be honest, I’m not really familiar with this comic-book character but I must admit it, he is definitely a really cool and bad-ass fellow and Ron Perlman was perfect for this part. His background was also pretty interesting and I also enjoyed the other characters like Liz Sherman and Abe Sapien. Furthermore, it was visually quite appealing and there were plenty of impressive action scenes. Still, even though I enjoyed most of it, I still don’t think the whole thing was really amazing. I mean, the story was not bad but nothing really impressive but, above all, I didn’t care much about the tone. Indeed, the whole thing was constantly tongue-in-cheeck, after a while, it really wore me down and I think I would have enjoyed it more if the whole thing would have been darker. To conclude, in spite of its flaws, I still think it is a decent comic-book feature and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre or if you are interested in Del Toro’s work.

I came across this documentary while watching a talk-show where a Dutch actress was mentioning some very interesting movies and this movie was one of those she chose to talk about. Eventually, it is a very peculiar and interesting documentary dealing with a rather unsettling subject. The interesting approach is that the makers used their own footage but also had unlimited access to the Friedmans own home videos which is really surprising that the Friedmans would allow this, especially considering the controversial nature of this documentary. The other interesting thing is how neutral they managed to keep the whole thing. Eventually, it is some pretty heavy stuff since you see this family basically melting down and you are never sure if they actually deserve it or not. It works also as a cautionary tale. I mean, can you imagine how many unaware kids get back home and tell their parents ‘My teacher told me to touch his penis’ when, in fact, nothing happened but the kid is just pissed off with the guy. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t take such accusations seriously but such false accusations can and have ruined many innocent lives before. I mean, there is today such an hysteria, such an obsession about pedophilia and people seem to forget that it has always been there ever since men has discovered they could have sex. It used to be taboo and nobody would talk about it but nowadays, it is everywhere and people are scared to leave their kids with their teacher, with their sport instructors, with their neighbors, even with their own kin and I’m not so sure if it is really an improvement. Anyway, let’s get back to this movie. Even though I think it was pretty good, I still think there was still one major flaw though. Indeed, even though we are never sure if Arnold Friedman did molest those children or not, the fact remains that the guy is a pedophile since he had this huge stash of pedophile magazines hidden in his house. Surprisingly, it is actually never mentioned by his sons and wife during the whole thing and instead they keep focusing on the molesting charges, which were false according to them. I mean, if I would discover that my dad would have such magazines in his house, I would probably drop him and never see him again for the rest of my life. So, maybe the guy was innocent from touching those kids, but he sure was a sick pervert and that aspect was really undermined during the whole thing. Still, it remains a very distressing documentary and it is definitely worth a look, if you are up to it because it is honestly rather depressing.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from this flick but, at least, I thought it would be a decent action flick. Back then, there was some tough competition at the box-office with similar movies like ‘The Expendables’ and ‘The A-team’ and this flick was eventually a flop making its title even more relevant. Honestly, I’m afraid it actually deserved this faith. Indeed, after 10 minutes, I was already seriously bored by the whole thing and it never got better, I'm afraid. I mean, the first (action) scene was just terrible (They are on top of a hill and they have 8 minutes to go down, kill a whole bunch of henchmen, put 25 kids on a bus but their leader still has even the time to make some small talk with the evil drug leader/terrorist before the whole thing was blown to pieces). Not only was it really ridiculous but, above all, it was just plain tedious. And the rest of the movie was not much better as it was basically a succession of generic preposterous action scenes. Furthermore, some of the actors were not bad (Chris Evans, Idris Elba and, above all, Jason Patric who was pretty good as the bad guy) but some others were really not convincing (Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Zoe Saldana, Columbus Short). On the other hand, maybe they shouldn’t be blamed since the dialogues were laughable and the characters were not interesting whatsoever. To conclude, even though it was watchable, it remains a really average action flick and I don’t think it is really worth a look.

If you are not from the Netherlands or Belgium, you have probably never heard of this TV show but it was very popular in the Netherlands. Basically, it is a show mixing 'Sex and the City' and 'The Real housewife of Beverly hills' and, it might surprise you but I actually enjoyed this show, at least, during the first 3 seasons. Then, they killed off my favorite character and, as usual, the whole thing lost its edge and I just dropped it. Of course, they had to make a movie about this and, of course, it was a huge success. I must admit, it was not bad at all. Obviously, it reflected the same lack of quality that you had during the last seasons and there was not much of a plot but a combination of half-baked sub-plots. Still, I thought it was pretty neat to see all these characters again and some of those stories worked pretty well. Still, the whole thing felt like a huge lazy cash-grab like most of the successful Dutch movies. Anyway, to conclude, even though it is definitely nothing amazing, I thought it was mildly entertaining and it is actually worth a look, especially if you enjoyed this show like I did.

Even though it seems to be a long time ago and most of us have forgotten about it but, at first, DreamWorks animation started out with some good old hand-drawn animation but expect for ‘ The Prince of Egypt’ which was financially and critically successful, the rest didn’t work very well and after only 4 hand-drawn features, they completely left out this medium and focused solely on CGI animation (just like Disney). Eventually, out of this 4 movies, this movie was their biggest flop ever and it has the dishonor to be the only DreamWorks Animation picture not to earn a profit at the box-office. I think it’s too bad for two reasons. First of all, this flick was actually pretty good. The animation looked really good and it was pretty neat to make a story about this subject. My guess is that even though the story was entertaining enough, it was still too pedestrian and after decades of sugarcoated Disney features, the audience want a little bit more from those stories instead of all always the same characters going through basically the same issue over and over again. I still think it ‘s a real shame though that they dropped this way of making animated features. Basically, when they noticed that Pixar popularity kept on growing with every movie and above all, after ‘ Shrek’ massive success, they found their new cash cow and nowadays, you have actually an overdoses of CGI features. Not only from Pixar and DreamWorks (whose features are not always amazing) but also from maybe 5 or 6 different studios and, in my opinion, the quality is not always there (even with Pixar nowadays..) and they make those movies above all because they are usually profitable. Anyway, this movie was basically a victim of this new hype and that’s too bad because it is actually pretty good and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you are interested in animated features.

Even though I’m well aware of the fact that his movies are not really good, I always had a weak spot for Renny Harlin’s work, and his movies are among my guilty pleasures. However, I thought this time it could be a real gem though. Indeed, even though it was not really successful when it was released, it has since reached a cult status. Furthermore, the story was rather intriguing, some kind of female Jason Bourne, from a screenplay written by Shane Black (sold at 3 million dollars, it is the most expensive screenplay ever). Geena Davis looked pretty badass and with Samuel L. Jackson as sidekick, how could it go wrong? Unfortunately, even though all the ingredients were there to make a really awesome action flick (even the title was cool), the end result was still pretty underwhelming. It’s pretty obvious that Geena Davis and her then-husband Renny Harlin tried really hard first with ‘Cutthroat Island’ and then with this movie to launch her career as a female action star but it just wasn’t meant to be apparently. I mean, she wasn’t bad but compared to other actresses such as Sigourney Weaver, Angelina Jolie, Milla Jovovich or even Noomi Rapace, she wasn’t really convincing. On the other hand, in my opinion, it was above all the story which was honestly pretty weak (I don’t really understand why they spent so much money for this). I mean, it started pretty good but really quickly it became just another really pedestrian action flick with some really bland and boring characters. Even the action scenes were not bad, but still nothing remotely impressive. At the end of the day, the whole thing remains watchable but it could have been so much better. To conclude, in my opinion, it was yet another underwhelming movie directed by Renny Harlin and I don’t think it is really worth a look.

Of course, a movie about Chauvet cave (la grotte de Chauvet in French) was really intriguing and after watching ‘Grizzly Man’ and ‘Encounters at the End of the World’, I have become quite fond of Werner Herzog’s documentaries. However, I didn’t expect it to be so awe-inspiring. I mean, at first, I thought ‘Great… I’m getting to spend 90 minutes in some cave, I’m going to get bored so fast…’but no, it never got boring. Indeed, from the very first second we entered this cave, the whole thing was quite spellbinding. Basically, those paintings are the oldest ever found (about 35000 years old) and about twice as old as the previous oldest painting. When watching these, it’s basically watching the birth of Art which was quite overwhelming, at least, if you have any interest in Art like I do. The striking thing is that even though those paintings were obviously primitive, they also had some impressive artistic qualities to them, like some amazing shades and contrast effects and those were just simply beautiful to look at. It was also kind of emotional to realize that those ‘primitive’ cavemen actually had some artistic aspirations already 35000 years ago, something that really has defined us as human-being and one of the major differences we have with other animals. As usual with Herzog, you have this rather weird narration provided by Herzog and it can be annoying (sometimes, he throws the weirdest questions to the people he interviews and they often look at him giving him this look ‘what the f*ck are you talking about?!’) but I think it’s an asset because its enhances the whole surreal aspect of this situation. Apparently, it was released in the theaters in 3D and, according to Roger Ebert, it worked pretty well so I really wonder how the whole thing looked in this format. To conclude, I thought it was pretty awesome, you’ll never get closer to this cave and it’s a lifetime opportunity to see those amazing paintings so I think it is definitely worth a look, especially if you are interested in Art.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from this movie, but since Kate Winslet was starring, I was really eager to check it out. Basically, it is one of her more obscure movies and even though she is shown very prominently on all the promotional material, she is not in fact the main character. But, it didn’t matter and I thought it was actually a really decent WWII feature. The biggest issue I have with movies dealing with WWII is that I have seen so many of them and, nowadays, to really impress me, they either need to be really brilliant or they need to tell me something I haven’t heard already 100 times before. And this movie, even though it was nothing really amazing, definitely belonged to this 2nd category. Indeed, I thought it was pretty neat that they focused on those cryptanalysts (the people who were cracking those codes) , to see approximately how they worked and I also enjoyed the fact that we were dealing here with some men and women actually using their brain to solve some issues instead of the usual macho trigger happy kind of guys. Of course, the twists were rather far-fetched and the love story was rather unnecessary, especially after you read that the main character was based on a real life person called Alan Turing who was notoriously homosexual, prosecuted for it and even chemically castrated via estrogen hormone injections (!) (That could have made a great story actually) . Still, the directing by Michael Apted, a usually underrated director, was pretty solid, there was a nice cast (Dougray Scott, Kate Winslet, Saffron Burrows, Jeremy Northam, Tom Hollander , Matthew Macfadyen, Corin Redgrave) and, above all, it was a very interesting subject. To conclude, even though it is nothing really mind-blowing, it remains a decent WWII feature and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre.