Reviews by johanlefourbe

Watching a movie directed by Renny Harlin has always been a guilty pleasure of mine. Indeed, with this director, I already know before watching his movies that they won't be really good but I still watch them anyway because they still end up being entertaining somehow. This movie was a perfect example. Seriously, I don't know what was worse : the directing, the acting or the writing. I think I'm going to blame the writing though. Apparently, the screenplay was written by Stallone who really should stick to acting, even if he is not really such a great actor either. In my opinion, there were just way too many characters and too many subplots. On top of that, the dialogues were laughable and there were so many ridiculous scenes (when they 'stole' the cars and raced throughout downtown Chicago, when they stopped racing to save a fellow driver, when the rookie had to do a stupid test before driving with a broken foot and it went on and on like this...). Still, the driving scenes were not bad at all and the (many) crashes were quite spectacular. Actually, this racing world was quite fascinating, the whole project had some potential and they could have made something interesting with this material. Anyway, eventually, it was a really silly and ridiculous action flick but if you don't take it too seriously, it remains watchable but, honestly, I don’t think  it is really worth a look.

I had never heard of this movie but since it had a rather nice cast, I thought I should give it a shot. Well, it was basically one of these typical quirky indie comedies which tried rather awkwardly to mix 'Music and Lyrics' with 'Inception'. I know, it was a weird combination and, indeed, the movie didn’t turn out to be really convincing. One issue was that it was dealing with lucid dreaming which is a really fascinating subject but even though they wanted the viewers to take this subject seriousl,  the makers themselves didn't really handle the subject very well so it was a rather difficult to really care about the damned thing. For example, the main character decided to do some experiment and,  the very next day, without any practice whatsover, he was already able to do basically whatever he wanted while dreaming. I guess the lucid dreaming thing was not actually the main focus in this tale so I guess I shouldn't pay too much attention if it was accurate or not. Furthermore, I thought the whole cast was pretty neat (Penélope Cruz, Danny DeVito, Martin Freeman, Michael Gambon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Simon Pegg) and most of them delivered some solid performances. To conclude, even though it was rather flawed and even though the whole thing didn't really know if it should be a comedy or a drama, thanks to the cast involved, it was still worth a look though. 

Since this movie had a rather lame reputation, I didn’t expect much but, to be honest, I thougth it was not so bad at all. Basically, pretty much like 'Jumper' which was released a year before, they obviously tried to surf on the current super-hero wave but it didn't work out really well and the planned sequel was cancelled. Still, I actually liked the directing, the movie really looked good and Hong Kong was also a great location. Furthermore, the cast was all right and they all delivered some decent performances. Unfortunately, the story turned out to be really weak. Basically, it was some kind of mix of a little bit of 'Akira', a little bit of 'Total Recall' and lots of 'Heroes' but it was just really unfocused and plain average. There were also so many plot holes and,  as a result, it was sometimes rather difficult to make sense of the whole story. Eventually, it was just an average plot which happened to be really messy and it's too bad since the whole thing actually really had some potential. Anyway, to conclude, it was nothing mindblowing whatsoever but thanks to the interesting directing, the whole thing was still fairly entertaining and I still think is worth a look, especially if you like such brainless super-hero flicks.

What the hell happened to Neil Marshall?!? Indeed, back in those days, he was one  of the most promising British directors at work and he seemed to have a bright future ahead of him but, nowadays, we don’t hear much from him anymore. It’s too bad because the guy really had some skills and something I really like about his work was the fact that, with each movie, he tried something really different. This time around, he went for a peplum and I must say it, it was definitely his best looking movie so far. Indeed, I really liked the gritty look and you could see that there was no green screens involved which is a seriously overused gimmick nowadays. The fighting scenes were also pretty badass and rather bloody but it was something rather expected from Marshall. Furthemore, Michael Fassbender, Dominic West and Ulrich Thomsen all provided some solid performances, especially Fassbender who was already starting to become one of the most interesting actors around. Still, like most of Marshall's other features, the story was rather underwhelming. I mean, it was not really bad whatsoever, but it was just too pedestrian and it was never really thrilling. Anyway, to conclude, even though  it wasn’t really a great movie,  it was still a decent watch and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you enjoyed Neil Marshall's previous movies.

Nowadays, every time they try to adapt a fantasy novel, the studios involved always hope they will get the next huge franchise like Harry Potter. This, for example, was the first book of a trilogy but I guess we won't see the other books adapted anytime soon, Personally, I would blame Brendan Fraser, but that's me... I mean, the guy is just way too bland to be a lead acto but he still keeps getting starring roles and it just blows my mind. On the other hand, and this was the main reason why I wanted to watch this flick on the first place, there was a really neat supporting cast (Paul Bettany, Helen Mirren, Andy Serkis, Jennifer Connelly, Jim Broadbent) and they all delivered some solid performances. Concerning the story itself, it was at first rather boring and it took really too long to start. But then, finally, when they got to Capricorn's castle, it started to become a little bit more existing and this tale did work quite well then. To conclude, it was a rather standard fantasy feature with nothing really new or original but it was still fairly entertaining so I think it is worth a look, especially if you like the genre.