Reviews by johanlefourbe

To be honest, I wasn't expecting much from this flick but since I have a weak spot for Lasse Hallstrom, I thought I should check it out anyway. Eventually, I thought it was a rather weak and sappy romantic flick. I mean, the directing was decent, Channing Tatum and Amanda Seyfried were both quite charming and they were both doing their best but the whole thing was just a borefest... Everything they said, everything they did was just so plot driven. Furthermore, there was also a subplot involving autism which was rather poorly developed. Indeed, it is a dear subject to me (as a matter of fact, my step-son is autistic) and if you are going to tackle this difficult subject, you either have to do a good job or just drop the whole thing and, in this case, it wasn't really convincing, I'm afraid. For example, if his dad was autist, how did he get some income? How did he get this house and all those coins which must be worth a fortune? I was really surprised to discover that Nicholas Sparks's son is actually afflicted with Asperger's Syndrome and I would have expected in this case a better approach on this subject. Anyway, to conclude, even though it was a well made romantic drama, it was still rather tedious and it is not really worth a look, except maybe if you are fan of this genre.

To be honest, I thought it was quite difficult to judge this movie... Indeed, basically, it was a B feature movie and I guess you either love those movies or you don't. Well, I'm not a huge fan. In this case, the first half awkwardly combined some humor and horror with some elements of ‘Alien’, “Invasion of the Body Snatchers’ and any random zombie flick. The issue was that the damned thing was neither really scary or funny. However, I have to admit that it got better during the second half. Indeed, Michael Rooker got uglier and uglier, his new 'wife' was really monstruous and when the worms got free, the whole thing got quite gruesome. Still, they kept throwing some stupid oneliners throughout the whole thing and it really got on my nerves. Furthermore, the various attempts to be funny never really worked. So, I didn't really enjoy it but, again, I'm not fan of B movies in the first place so I'm not sure if  I was the right audience (my step-son for example thought it was actually pretty neat). To conclude, if you like this kind of B movies involving monsters and stuff, it is definitely worth a look otherwise you'd better watch something else.

Nowadays, I have Netflix and Popcorn and not only I have since then an endless selection of movies to choose from but, as a result, I have become slightly more picky regarding the movies I watch. Before, I used to watch pretty much anything as long as it was starring one or two actors I was interested in and, as a result, I would sometimes end up watching some really obscure features. This movie was a perfect example. Indeed, even though I had never heard of this movie before, since there was a nice cast involved, I thought I might as well check it out. Unfortunately, it turned out to be another uninteresting, unoriginal and rather short road-movie. It's just too bad because the 3 actresses involved (Jessica Lange, Kathy Bates, Joan Allen) are all some really strong actress and they deserved a better story than this one. Indeed, the whole thing was just poorly written and while those three women were rather interesting, the rest of the characters were just really stereorypical and annoying (like the hitchiker and the step-daugther, for example). The movie just went through the motion and didn't deliver anything any new or interesting concerning this genre so I was rather bored during the whole thing. To conclude, it was not really bad but it was still pretty damned average and I don’t think it is really worth a look.

To be honest, it has been ages since I saw this flick and I should probably give it a 2nd chance at some point. Back in the 90's, I was a huge fan of Abel Ferrara's work and I have watched many of his movies back then. Anyway, even though this flick didn’t have a really bad reputation, I really had a hard time to care about the damned thing and, in fact, I believe it is by far the weakest directing effort delivered by Ferrara so far.  Indeed, in spite of the decent cast and Ferrara's intriguing directing style, I still thought it was a really boring horror flick. Like I said before, maybe I should give it another try since I have seen it more than 15 years ago but I'm not really optimistic... In fact, there has been already 4 versions of this story and I think it must be the worst version so far (By the way, I really don't understand why they keep remaking and remaking this... It is as if every generation should have its own snatcher version...). In my opinion, 'The Invasion' was actually even a little better than this one. Anyway, even though I'm a huge fan of Abel Ferrara's work, I really didn't like this movie and I don’t think it is really worth a look. 

Since I kept hearing some pretty good things about this movie, I was quite eager to check it out but, to be honest, in my opinion, I think this movie is pretty damned overrated. I mean, I have to admit it, it was not bad at all, the directing was alright, Naomi Watts delivered a decent performance but compared to the Japanese version, it was actually rather weak. Furthermore, it is because this movie was so successful at the box-office that we got all those worthless remakes of Asian horror flicks... Anyway, this movie was actually a blessing for Naomi Watts because, back then, she just had her breakthrough performance in 'Mulholland Dr.' a year before and since this remake was a financial and critical success, her career definitely took off. Still, I'm always rather annoyed by viewers who says that this movie was 'totally awesome'. I mean, sure, it was not bad but compared to some Asian horror flicks, it is not really impressive, I'm afraid. The main issue in my opinion is that they spend way too much trying to explain and rationalize the weird things happening to the main characters which is a pointless and boring process. Still, for a US remake, it was a decent watch and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre.