Reviews by johanlefourbe

Since I'm a huge fan of Ang Lee, I was really eager to check this flick even though it is definitely one of his most obscure features. Eventually, it did take me a while to get my hands on the damned thing and I wish I could say that it was worth the wait but, unfortunately , it turned to be his most disappointing directing effort I have seen so far. I mean, it was definitely nice to see Ang Lee trying another genre, the Wester/costume-drama, the cast was also pretty interesting (Tobey Maguire, Skeet Ulrich, Jim Caviezel, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Jeffrey Wright, Mark Ruffalo, Jewel Kilcher, Tom Wilkinson) and they all delivered some solid performances. Unfortunately,  even though, the directing was solid, as usual with Ang Lee, there was a big issue with the story. I mean, it was nothing really awfull but it was still pretty generic and it was definitely nothing really mind-blowing whatsoever. At the end of the day, I didn’t care much about the characters and/or what they were going through. Still, even though the whole thing was rather disappointing, I still think it is actually worth a look, especially if you are interested in Ang Lee's work.

First of all, to be honest, I'm not a really a huge fan of costume-dramas. Indeed, in my opinion, the characters in such stories are in fact always shallow, annoying and rather uninteresting. However, even if I usually don’t care for the genre, I have to admit that James Ivory manages most of the time to make his characters actually quite fascinating to watch and this movie was a fine example. This time, it took place in Shanghai, just before WWII and I have always been fascinated by this rather obscure page of history. Furthermore, the directing was really good with some really nice set-dressing and I just loved the mood they managed to create. Ralph Fiennes was, as usual, really strong and even though I have before never been really impressed by Natasha Richardson, I must say that she was really convincing in this movie. In my opinion, the story was rather generic but interesting enough and above all, thanks to Ivory's expertise in this genre, it was really compelling to watch. To conclude, even if it was maybe not a masterpiece, I actually really liked the damned thing and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre.

I already saw this movie (in fact, I even saw it in the movie theater when it was released) but, since it was a while back, I thought I might as well check it out again. Back in those days and, in fact, still right now, Leonardo DiCaprio was and is one of the most interesting actors at work and I wasn't really surprised to see him making a movie at some point with the great Ridley Scott. To complete this awesome combination, you had Russell Crowe so this flick definitely had some potential. Well, first of all, as usual with Ridley Scott, the directing was fine and there were a couple of really solid action scenes. Furthermore, DiCaprio and Crowe delivered some decent performances and I thought they were both fairly convincing. Still, even though it was pretty good and certainly entertaining, I can't say the whole thing really blew me away after all though. Indeed, like most of the movies directed by Scott, the visuals were fine but the story was rather shallow after all. I mean, the plot kept me interested but there was definitely something missing though. The main issue was that Roger Ferris was doing his best to work with the locals but, each time around, his boss Ed Hoffman would ruin all his hard work and this gimmick was repeated time and time again. It was also a poor idea to have the main character getting involved with an Arabian local girl. I mean, everything else about the main character was really convincing, except this part which was obviously added to humanize this guy but I think it would have been more efficient to only show him as a puppet at the mercy of his superiors. Still, I thought it was well made, I enjoyed it and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you are interested in Ridley Scott's work.

Since I'm a huge fan of 'Dark City' and since, according to Roger Ebert, this movie was one of the best released in 2008,  I was really eager to watch the damned thing. However, it turned out that Ebert was in fact the only person who was actually postive about this movie so I wasn't really sure what to expect. Well, after watching the damned thing, to be honest,  I don't really understand why Roger Ebert was so enthusiast about. I mean, I have to admit it, it was definitely an interesting mix of different genres such as science-fiction, thriller, horror and even the disaster genre. Furthermore, I must say that the special effects were pretty awesome and the directing was in general pretty decent, as expected from this director. However, I wasn’t really impressed by the story, I’m afraid. Indeed, this tale was just so preposterous and I had a hard time to understand the motivations of the lead character, except for moving the plot along. There were here and there some of the brilliance displayed in 'Dark City' but it never reached the level of this great underrated classic. Anyway, to conclude, in spite of its flaws, I still think it is decent science-fiction flick and it is worth a look, especially if you are interested in Alex Proyas's work.

Even though the critics were rather negative, since it was starring 2 oscar winners (Jessica Lange, Gwyneth Paltrow), I was eager to watch the damned thing. Anyway, it was basically a standard thriller but it was just very slow to take off. I mean, during most of the movie, there was nothing much happening. Furthermore, the ominous music kept coming back from time to time and everytime, they would repeat the very same shot of Jessica Lange giving her evil look. Otherwise, I actually would have had a rather hard time to notice that I was watching a thriller and, in my opinion, the story (which had some potential) was better suited for a psychological drama. The acting was not bad in general, even though Jessica Lange did push it a little but who can blame her? Indeed, most of the actions of her character didn't make much sense which is something unfortunately quite usual in such weak thrillers. As you maye have already guessed, I wasn't really impressed by this movie and it was indeed a rather generic and predictable thriller with many plot-holes. Like I said before, nothing much really happened which I didn't mind but since it was a typical Hollywood thriller, they finished up with this really over-the-top and really badly acted ending. It was apparently supposed to really dramatic but it just sounded so corny. What I found also quite ridiculous with this ending was that they tried to make us believe that Gwyneth Paltrow and her husband didn't have one single conversation after they moved in with the mother-in-law during the whole duration of the movie (Why? Even if their relationship was not doing really good, you would expect them to have at least one decent conversation about their current situation) but in the final 5 minutes, Paltrow spit finally het guts out and her husband swallowed every single word without any hesitation. They could have at least provided some kind of argument, just for the sake of it but, no, it felt as if they were thinkin 'let's wrap it up as quickly as we can'. To conclude, I have seen worse movies and I think that if they had decided to make a pyschological drama about a mentally instable mother-in-law, instead of a standard thriller, it would have worked better. But, unfortunately, it was a rather average Hollywood thriller and, frankly, it is not really worth a look whatsoever.

I wasn't really planning to watch this flick but since the reviews were fairly positive, I thought I should give it a try. To be honest, the first half was rather disappointing. Indeed, the material was pretty neat but, as it was a family feature, the tone was not dark enough, in my opinion. Indeed, Hugh Jackman's character should have been nastier, like a Billy Bob Thornton’s Bad Santa for example and the boy should have been tougher. Furthermore, the acting was seriously average from all the characters involved including Hugh Jackman, Evangeline Lilly and the young boy portraying his son. And it was just so slow... I mean, seriously, it was rather predictable that he would trash one robot but two robots! So, I pretty much lost hope during the first half but then they suddenly realized that they had some kick-ass robot and then, finally, they gave us some neat action scenes. And, I must admit it, the final fight was really awesome. It was emotional, entertaining and just very very well made and finally, I cared about the story and the characters involved. At this point, it basically became a remake of 'Rocky' with some robots but it didn't bother me, in the contrary. To conclude, it was not a masterpiece whatsoever but it was still worth a look, especially if you're looking for some brainless entertaining popcorn action flick.