Reviews by johanlefourbe

To be honest, I was rather surprised that they would come up with a sequel for ‘Jack Reacher’. I mean, sure, it was actually a decent action flick but it was still nothing groundbreaking and, above all, it didn’t turn out to be a huge success at the  box-office. However, it seems that Tom Cruise didn’t accept this semi-failure and he still pushed to make this sequel. Well, to be honest, even though it was watchable, it wasn’t really good, I’m afraid. I mean, the intro was not bad and the story was entertaining enough until Reacher managed to get Turner out of jail but, from the moment they started to work together, the whole thing became terribly generic and bairly entertaining. Another thing that bothered me was that, even though they keep hammering the fact that Jack Reacher always works alone, in both movies in this franchise, he ends up with a hot female partner. It was also a huge mistake to give Jack Reacher a daughter and it didn’t help that this character was just poorly written and poorly played by Danika Yarosh. Eventually, the only thing that saved this movie from becoming really average was Tom Cruise’s charisma and the fact that Jack Reacher remains a pretty cool character. Anyway, to conclude, I think I was rather generous with my rating here but I guess it might still be worth a look, at least, if you like the genre. 

Since I have never been a fan of the Transformers franchise, I wasn’t expecting much from this last instalment, especially since it was the lowest grossing film of this franchise (it still made $600 million worldwide though). Well, the whole thing turned out to be indeed pretty weak and it was easily the weakest instalment in this already seriously underwhelming franchise. In fact, I have to admit that there was some potential about showing that the Transformers have always been there in fact in the past but this idea was just so poorly developed. Basically, the whole thing was some kind of mix of ‘Prometheus’ with ‘Armageddon’ but it never worked. Seriously, it was just a overlong mess and it was in fact so convoluted that at times it barely made sense. Honestly, there was so much going on and, even though I saw it only yesterday, I’m afraid I forgot already half of it.  Eventually, the whole thing was just so idiotic but also sometimes rather pretentious. Anyway, the main issue was that it was again so boring and even the special effects which used to be quite amazing 10 years ago with the first instalment didn’t really impress me anymore. To conclude, this movie is basically the poster child for major franchise saturation and I don’t think it is really worth a look. 

To be honest, I have never been a huge fan of Steven Seagal but I was still intrigued by this movie since it was Seagal’s acting debut and since it was directed by Andrew Davis who had delivered some solid action flicks during his career. Well, it turned out to be seriously weak after all, in fact, even though it was barely 21:00 when I watched the damned thing, I still struggled to not fall asleep. Back then, following the release of this movie, Seagal was hailed as the next big action movie star but, to be honest, the guy was and still is such a weak actor. At least, he was a real Aikido master so the fight scenes were pretty good and Pam Grier was actually not bad at all as she was a different and interesting partner but that was pretty much the only positive things I could find regarding this movie. I mean, seriously, the story was a mess. Indeed, they tell you that the guy has learned martial arts in Japan, fought in the Vietnam war as a CIA agent and then became a cop in Chicago and that was only during the first 10 mins. Eventually, that’s probably what bother me the most with this actor, in this movie but also in general, was the fact that he is so pretentious. On a side note, Sharon Stone who was at the time was one of the sexiest actress in the world played here probably her most boring character. Anyway, to conclude, I really didn’t like the damned thing, I think I was actually rather generous with my rating here and I don’t think it is really worth a look. 

Since I have always been interested in  the writers of the Beat Generation, I thought I might as well check it out. First of all, when watching this kind of movies dealing with the life of famous writers, I do fell slightly guilty. Indeed, instead of watching such movies, shouldn’t I be reading the books written by these great artists? At least, I have read a couple of books written by Jack Kerouack but I still haven’t read anything from Allen Ginsberg and, more important, still nothing from William S. Burroughs. Anyway, coming back to our main feature, it turned out to be a decent watch even if it wasn’t maybe nothing really groundbreaking. Indeed, the beginning was rather weak as it is always a rather weak gimmick to start with a murder which will occur at the end. Then, they tried to introduce Allen Ginsberg’s home situation but this bit was just too short and it should have been either developed or removed completely.  Still, the makers chose an interesting part of their history as this murder had a huge impact on all these writers. Furthermore, the cast was really solid (Daniel Radcliffe, Dane DeHaan, Michael C. Hall, Ben Foster, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Elizabeth Olsen, Kyra Sedgwick) . To conclude, in spite of its flaws, I thought it was not bad at all and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you are interested in the Beat generation.