Reviews by johanlefourbe

To be honest, I had never heard of this flick but since I have a weak spot for Danny Devito, I thought I might as well check it out. Eventually, it turned out to be a rather weird but still intriguing family drama. Indeed, I really enjoyed the directing, the kids performances were decent enough and Danny Devito was really good in this. He usually plays some supporting parts so it was pretty neat to see him playing the lead for once. On top of that, I thought it was a really interesting character, DeVito managed to not overplay it and he gave the character many different layers. However, even though I did enjoy the directing, it did get a little bit over-sentimental and over-dramatic (For example, what the hell was this all about with the psychopatic Nazi neighbour?!?). Furthermore, I wish they centered the movie on the father and not on the oldest son. Indeed, in  my opinion, stories narrated by children are usually not really convincing and satisfying. I mean, even though it might have been narrated by a child, in fact, the screenplay was written by an adult and as a result, you end up with some  projections of what a grown up would expect from a child to say, to do and to think. Anyway, in spite of these flaws, it was still a decent drama and it is definitely worth a look.

I already saw this movie but since it was a while back and since I have it on DVD, I was quite eager to check it out again. Since I am a huge fan of the original version directed by Abel Ferrara, I was definitely intrigued by this 'remake'. Usually, remakes are rather useless but when I heard that this one would be directed by Werner Herzorg and starring Nicolas Cage and Val Kilmer, I was most definitely interested by the damned thing. Eventually, I wasn't disappointed. First of all, it was a completely different movie. Indeed, the location was different, the directing was different, the acting was different and the tone was different. Basically, Herzorg and Cage went so over-the-top, they just blew up the roof and I was really glad to see again Nicolas Cage finally in a good flick. Eventually, it was some rather dark and completely amoral material so the mainstream audience probably won't dig it but I really loved the damned thing. This time, they even added some dark funny moments and I thought it was a very nice twist compared to the original version. Eventually, I wish Val Kilmer had more to do in this movie since I really enjoyed his performance as well and I think I still prefer Ferrara's version  as it was more intense and even more awesome but, in my opinion, it is easily one of the best remakes ever made. Anyway, to conclude, if you don't mind really dark movies, it is definitely worth a look, especially if you are interested in Werner Herzorg’s work. 

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.