Reviews

My Old Lady is one of these movies that no one watches, and for good reasons. Forced to watch, I discovered a genre I didn't know of. The movie is basically filmed stage theater in 3 or 4 locations. The Paris shots are postcard-cheesy. There is no cinematography whatsoever, and the only reasons why you are sometimes reminded you're not watching a telenovela are the gratuitous heavy-handed movie references (Taxi Driver and The Godfather, mind you). The acting is forced and cramped, except for the old lady. The story alternates between comedy and dark-serious, but it is impossible to have empathy for the characters who suffer with the great pain of inheriting a 12-million dollar apartment. French people can't speak English, they are a bit dumb, lol. Otherwise, racial stereotyping all the way - the garbage guy is black, the doctor's Jewish, the thief's a Roma. There a few comedic moments that will make you smile; any average comedy should do the trick better.

DisLocation is about African American families in Chicago. They live in one of the worse project of the country, the Robert Taylor Homes. These families will have to move soon, because their building will be demolished. Director (and Columbia sociology professor) Sudhir Venkatesh follows LeeLee and Chuck, two residents from Robert Taylor. They have a very hard time, because the Housing Authority will only help the "good" tenants - those who pay rent and bills on time, let alone the squatters.

DisLocation tells the irony of the process. While the displacement is supposed to improve the tenant's quality of life (the Robert Taylor Homes are really crappy), it shatters the existing community and the informal ties that would help the most vulnerable tenants. Some tenants benefit from the process, while other won't (at all), depending on their ability to gather support.

Under Siege has one merit : you can hear good old insults and bad words from the early nineties that you don't find anymore in nowadays action movies, and it is sometimes funny. One or two lines are indeed witty. Steven Seagal runs the ship with one machine-gun in each hand, CROSSING the arms, and killing villains by the dozen without even looking at them. The clichés are so huge that you (almost) always end up laughing after thinking for a second "it is not possible that they used such a old big fat trick ?".

By instance, when the happy ending occurs, all the admirals, generals and President's advisers display so much emotion that you'd rather figure them as the Super Bowl winning team. Or the Girl that shoots the bad guy just before he kills Steven Seagal after having said that she would not kill anybody ; of course, the scene let you think that the shot was from the Bad Guy's gun, and when the Bad Guys falls, you see the Girl with her gun. Deja vu ?

Besides, the acting is bad. Steven Seagal plays business as usual (one look, even less than Jean-Claude Van Damme), Tommy Lee Jones overplays so much that you would not believe that Under Siege was made just one year before The Fugitive. At least, Out for Justice was bettered by the stunning performance of the under-estimated William Forsythe. Gary Busey - though rather good in Point Break - does not act much better, and the Girl may be the best character - which, for an action movie, tells the whole story about acting. Of course, you can see her tits in one of the most meaningless scene of the whole movie history.

It would be too boring to detail plot holes and unrealistic events - the best being the former Playmate of July 1989 joining the Navy and serving on the battleship in two days.