Reviews by johanlefourbe

[Link removed - login to see][Link removed - login to see][Link removed - login to see][Link removed - login to see], I obviously had to watch this flick at some point. Basically, it is not of one of his most famous movies, that’s for sure, but I still think it was interesting, even if I really had a hard time judging it. Indeed, to start with, the beginning was a complete misfire, in my opinion. Indeed, the whole thin was about some seemingly false accusations of witchery and, yet, they did start with a sequence which really looked like some witchcraft which was rather bewildering. From this point, the movie really needed to recover and I'm not sure if they actually really managed this. However, thanks above all to some impressive performances by Day-Lewis and Joan Allen, I still enjoyed it even though it was far from being entirely satisfactory. The point is that the whole movie would have worked better if the approach would have been more subtle. Still, in spite of its flaws, I thought it was a decent watch and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you are a fan of the great Daniel Day-Lewis.

Since I kept hearing some pretty good things about this movie, I was quite eager to check it out. Well, after making for at least a decade some worthless straight-to-dvd action flicks, Jean-Claude Van Damme finally decided to do something drastically different, a satire about himself and it really worked fine. Basically, it was some kind of remake of 'Dog Day Afternoon' taking place in Belgium and starring Jean-Claude Van Damme. To be honest, the whole thing could have been a misfire if the guy took himself too seriously but he didn't, even if he remained maybe a little too calm during the proceedings. The main issue was that even though the concept was good,  after 5 minutes, they didn't really know how to further develop it. Still, it was really sometimes quite hilarious and Van Damme provided a pretty good performance (there was even a six minutes monologue during which he honestly quite blew me away). When I was a kid, I was a huge fan of JCVD and it was quite awesome to finally see him in a decent movie after all these years of crap. To conclude, even though it was nothing really mindblowing, it was still a well made and entertaining satire and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you want to see something different with Van Damme.

I already saw this movie but since it was a while back and since I had it on Blu-ray, I thought I might as well check it out again. I remember it very well when I first saw this movie though. Indeed, finally, four years after 'King Kong', Peter Jackson directed another movie and it took me 3 more years to eventually watched it so my expectations were quite high at the time. To be honest, I was eventually actually slightly disappointed and I had a hard time judging this flick. Basically, Jackson tried the same trick he did with 'Heavenly Creatures' which was seamlessly combining a murder story with some fantasy elements. Unfortunately, whereas this mix was quite awesome and spellbinding with 'Heavenly...', here the detective story and the 'afterworld' didn't mingle well together. Indeed, the fantastic elements should have underlined the emotional impact of such a tragic event but, instead, it constantly undermined it and, as a result I was never sure what I should think or feel about the whole thing. Basically, they tried to turn a gruesome story into some kind of whimsical tale and this approach was just seriously misguided. Still, there were some visually striking scenes and all the actors involved (Saoirse Ronan, Stanley Tucci, Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz, Susan Sarandon) were all pretty good. Anyway, to conclude, I think I was probably generous with my rating since the whole thing never really worked but I still think it is worth a look, especially if you are interesed in Peter Jackson's work.