Reviews by johanlefourbe

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.

To be honest, I had no idea what to expect from this movie, in fact, I have to admit that I had never heard of this painter before but since this movie won the César of the best French movie of the year, I still wanted to check it out. First of all, I really enjoyed the directing and they managed to provide a pretty nice mood. Then, Séraphine was a rather fascinating character thanks to an impressive performance by Yolande Moreau. You have probably never heard of her but when I was living in France, she was famous as a comedian and it was pretty neat to see her displaying here such awesome dramatic skills. Unfortunately, from the moment she was discovered by Wilhelm Uhde, the whole thing started to really slow down. In my opinion, the issue was that they either gave Uhde too much attention or not enough and, as a result, the character felt rather half-baked. Anyway, to conclude, even if it was maybe not a masterpiece, I have always been interested by movies dealing with Art so I really enjoyed this flick and I think it is definitely worth a look, especially if you are interested in French movies.