Tropic Thunder (2008)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2008
	Director: Ben Stiller (Zoolander)
	Actors: Ben Stiller (Meet the Parents), Jack Black (Nacho Libre, Be Kind Rewind, King Kong), Robert Downey Jr. (Iron Man 1-3), Tom Cruise (Mission Impossible)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Comedy, War
	Conditions of visioning: 13.01.2013, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: Three famous actors and a rap singer are shooting a movie about a Vietman veteran war hero. But their conflicting egos hinder the progression of the movie, and the director under pressure has to take drastic measures.
Review: Although drected by Ben Stiller, I found that the movie had a lot of Jack Black humor in it, that is jokes that are supposed to be funny by lasting 30 seconds instead of 5. This kind of humor made me stop watching Nacho Libre after half an hour. Too bad, because the idea was good to group those three comedians in this movie, and Downey Jr. is playing quite well. Some misunderstandings and jokes are well written, and the idea to start with fake movie trailers from the three main actors is excellent, but in overall I found the movie quite annoying and boring. Note that there are plenty of cameos (Christopher Walken, Christine Taylor, Tobey McGuire) and secondary roles (Matthew McConaughey as good as usual, and a special mention to Tom Cruise that plays an incredibly irritating fat bald producer, far from his usual super-spy role).
Rating: 4 /10

Death proof (2007)

	Also Known As: Todischer
	Year of first release: 2007
	Director: Quentin Tarantino
	Actors: Kurt Russell, Zoe Bell
	Country: USA
	Genre: Action
	Conditions of visioning: 01.01.2013, DVD
Synopsis: Two separate sets of voluptuous women are stalked at different times by a scarred stuntman who uses his "death proof" cars to execute his murderous plans.
Review: The action movie that all the fans of ZZtop ever dreamt! Girls, cars, rock'n'roll. As usual with Tarantino, the music and dialogues are great. Most of the scenes are around a table in bars. The highlight of the movie is the car chase, maybe the most spectacular ever. So, this good action movie could seem to be for men, but the emancipation of women is one big topic, even if it appears like in Russ Meyer's movie Faster, pussycat! Kill! Kill!
Rating: 7/10

The Hunger games (2012)

	Also Known As: Die Tribute von Panem
	Year of first release: 2012
	Director: Gary Ross (Pleasantville)
	Actors: Jennifer Lawrence, Liam Hemsworth (The Expendables 2), Woody Harrelson (EdTV, Zombieland), Josh Hutcherson (Detention, Voyage to the Center of the Earth)
	Country: USA
	Genre: SF, Thriller
	Conditions of visioning: 01.01.2013, DVD
Synopsis: Katniss Everdeen voluntarily takes her younger sister's place in the Hunger Games, a televised fight to the death in which two teenagers from each of the twelve Districts of Panem are chosen at random to compete.
Review: The screenplay is co-written by the author of the novel, Suzanne Collins. Nevertheless, the interest of the book being both the local stories (mockingjay, etc) and the relationships of Katniss with Gale, Cinna, Peeta and Rue are mentioned but not very present in the movie. The movie would have deserved 3-4 hours, like other fantasy book adaptations. It is a pity, because the cast was good (at least Jennifer Lawrence was completely in her role) and the book is also very good.  The potential big scenes like the Girl on fire with Katniss's dress, the evening with Rue or the final fight, are not written nor filmed to be big scenes.
Rating: 3/10

Sucker Punch (2011)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2011
	Director: Zack Snyder
	Actors: Emily Browning, Gerard Plunkett, Scott Glenn
	Country: USA, CDN
	Genre: Fantasy
	Conditions of visioning: 01.01.2013, DVD
Synopsis: A young girl (Baby Doll) is locked away in a mental asylum by her abusive stepfather where she will undergo a lobotomy in five days' time. She plans to escape the asylum. She and four other female inmates follow the plan. In each act of collecting an item, they dive in their imagination.
Review: The story is quite basic, but the inscenery is well thought, by the use of different environments, via textures, colours, design (computer game / reality), clothes, music. It is well entertaining and could be a good start for the director. There is no complex actor's play. It feels like having computer game characters being more living.
Rating: 6 /10

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 1984
	Director: Steven Spielberg (Jaws, E.T.)
	Actors: Harrison Ford (Star Wars 4-6, Blade Runner), Kate Capshaw (Black Rain), Jonathan Ke Quan (The Goonies, Encino Man)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Adventure
	Conditions of visioning: 11.01.2013, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: Indiana Jones (Ford) crash-lands in India while accompanied by his side-kick (Ke Quan) and a singer (Capshaw) he just met. The spiritual guide of a small village will see this arrival as a sign from their God, and Indiana will be embarqued in a new adventure
Review: I was positively surprised by this episode that I remembered poorer than the two others from the same period. It is actually pretty good and offers a nice contrast compared to the first one. Spielberg was clever enough to deliver something surprising for a sequel. First, in this movie Indiana doesn't choose his quest, but it is imposed to him. Then, only the first sequence in Hong-Kong shows him in his usual conflict with other explorers, as to mark the transition with the first movie. After that he is on his own. The side-kick is also something new, and the religion background (not Christian) is a nice change. I also appreciated the several disgusting and horrific scenes (monkey brain for dessert, insects, death by burning, heart ripped out of a chest!), which makes this movie less suited for children. It seems to me that Spielberg was at the top of his art at this period, and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom his one of his best pieces (with E.T., Jaws, Jurassic Park, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan). In particular I noticed many shots that clearly defined his filmmaking and that are now classical, like the camera travelling back from a close-up on a face and lettig characters entering in the frame from the sides, for a kiss for example. The typical apparitions by Indiana Jones when you don't see his face, or only see his back, are also fantastic. The roller-coaster ride in the mine is also impressive in quality and fun and creativity. Spielberg doesn't let you the time to question the credibility of the scene, not like what was recently done in Journey to the Center of the Earth. The image and sound quality for this movie is the same as for the first one: simply excellent.
Rating: 8 /10

La polizia chiede aiuto (1974)

	Also Known As: La Lame infernale (France), What have they done to your Daughters (USA), The Coed murders (USA), Der Tod trägt schwarzes Leder (Germany)
	Year of first release: 1974
	Director: Massimo Dallamano (What have you done to Solange?, cinematographer on A fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More)
	Actors: Giovanna Ralli, Claudio Cassinelli (The Mountain of the Cannibal God), Mario Adorf (The Bird with the Crystal Plumage)
	Country: I
	Genre: Polar, Thriller
	Conditions of visioning: 11.01.2013, DVD, Home cinema
Synopsis: The apparent suicide of a teenager girl turns out to be murder, and the police continuously fails in finding the leather-clothed killer riding a motorbike.
Review: The topics of teenage girls and their troubled lives seems dear to Dallamano, as they are already tackled in his movie of 1970 What have you done to Solange? which is very similar to this one. A difference is that here the killer has a distinctive look (leather, motorbike, helmet, preferred weapon) which brings the movie closer to being a Giallo like Dario Argento was doing them. There is no restrain in the description of the habits of the teenagers, which makes the movie sometimes quite brutal. The way the police investigation is done and the conclusions they draw are sometimes ridiculous, but on the other hand the apparitions of the killer are full of tension, and the 15-minute chase car vs. motorbike after one hour of movie is very well done (except for the continuous siren sound which is annoying). The independant editor of this DVD edition The Ecstasy of Film made quite a good job: film transfer, new cover, booklet, rare interviews. But the image compression is sometime pretty bad, defects of the film visible (vertical stripes), and the sound is too weak and muffled. A Blu-ray edition would have been welcome for this classic Giallo.
Rating: 6 /10

Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon (2011)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2011
	Director: Michael Bay (Armageddon, Pearl Harbor)
	Actors: Shia LaBeouf (Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull), Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Tyrese Gibson, John Turturro (Mr Deeds, O'Brother where Art Thou?), Frances McDormand (Fargo), Josh Duhamel
	Country: USA
	Genre: Action, SF
	Conditions of visioning: 07.01.2013, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: The giant Autobots are back to save us from a new menace: a weapon that they thought lost and that actually crash-landed on the Moon in 1961. But the nasty Decepticons are onto it as well.
Review: Michael Bay shows once more that he is the unchallenged master of urban destruction on screen. Maybe he is having a contest with his buddy Roland Emmerich. This is a good movie to watch when you don't want to use your brain, except if you watch it in 3D, then it hurts. I had a worse memory of it from the cinema, but it is actually OK, maybe better than the second. There are even more comic characters which tells you of the non-serious intentions of Bay: Sam, his parents, Turturro excellent as usual, and now the head of NSA played by Frances McDormand that you liked in Fargo. The weaknesses of the movie are that it is too long, confused at times, fails to emphasize the stakes, and replays the usual stories of good guys, bad guys, girlfriend, family etc... Fun fact: the Blu-ray edition I bought comes in a flat box that transforms into a robot! Why didn't they think of that before?!
Rating: 5 /10

Where Eagles Dare (1968)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 1968
	Director: Brian G. Hutton
	Actors: Richard Burton (Zulu, 1984), Clint Eastwood (A Fistful of Dollars, Dirty Harry), Mary Ure
	Country: GB, USA
	Genre: War
	Conditions of visioning: 06.01.2013, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: WWII. An important british general is held prisonners in a castle in Bavaria. A team is quickly set up to go and rescue him before he tells what he knows.
Review: This movie fits well in a Blu-ray collection side by side with The Guns of Navarone. Unsurprisingly they were both adapted from novels by the same author Alistair MacLean. The initial plot of the movie is very clear (rescue the general) which makes the story very linear. But as more elements are revealed, it turns out people are not who we think they are. At some point some many deceptions are even confusing (I was lost for fifteen minutes), but then it gets clearer. The movie was shot on location in Austria which provides beautiful snowy landscapes at day and night, and an inaccesible castle perfect for the story. Richard Burton is excellent as the dead-serious leader, always sure of what to do whatever the situation or adversity. Clint Eastwood is equally good and plays masterfully the American stone-cold soldier, exceedingly good at killing with any weapon. And they never divert from their roles.
Rating: 8 /10

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest (2009)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2009
	Director: Daniel Alfredson (The Girl Who Played with Fire)
	Actors: Michael Nyqvist (Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol), Noomi Rapace (Prometheus), Lena Endre
	Country: D, DK, S
	Genre: Polar, Thriller
	Conditions of visioning: 05.01.2012, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: Immediately after the events of the second movie, Lizbeth Salander (Rapace) is in the hospital recovering, while her actions have set in motion a secret group of people you don't want to mess with.
Review: Quite a nice conclusion to the trilogy and complementary to the two others. After the family business and the police investigation, now the trial / conspiracy movie. As in the other episodes, I liked that the story takes some uncommon turns. Also it is nice to see the contrast between a secret organization and a bunch of people united in their fight against the all-powerful group. Those people are the victim Girl, the reporter (Nyquist) and members of the government that will actually do their job in taking down the organization. It is good not to see only the corrupted part of the government as we usually see in this kind of movies. Not much action or suspense in this movie, but a linear story that lets us appreciate the character of the Girl at length.
Rating: 7 /10

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 1981
	Director: Steven Speilberg (Jaws, E.T., Jurassic Park)
	Actors: Harrison Ford (Star Wars 4-6, Blade Runner), Karen Allen (Starman, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull), Paul Freeman (Centurion, Hot Fuzz), John Rhys-Davies (The Lord of the Rings 1-3), Alfred Molina (Spiderman 2)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Adventure
	Conditions of visioning: 01.01.2013, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: Part-time professor, part-time adventurer, Indiana Jones (Ford) is launched in a race against the Nazis during WWII to find the mythical Ark of Alliance.
Review: The frst movie of the series is now thirty years old! My favorite might be Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, but then this one comes close second. It had everthing to make a hit in the 80's: Spielberg and Ford at their top, a lot of adventure, fights against the Nazis, mysticism. The quality of the recent Blu-ray edition is impressive (faces, landscapes, sound), an excellent job has been done at restauration, supervised by Spielberg himself. It was said that Spielberg copied videogames in tis movie (plateform games at the beginning when Jones has to avoid traps one after the other). I find it normal, it is cyclical, videogames have then been influenced by movies in the years 2000, and now we are back to movies looking like video games! The story, actors and filmmaking are good. The biggest reproach I have is about the music. I never noticed before that the soundtrack from John Williams was often not so good or innapropriate. Some moments without music would have been better appreciated. I have now to watch the much less known Temple of Doom.
Rating: 7 /10

Heartbreak Ridge (1986)

	Also Known As: Le Maitre de Guerre
	Year of first release: 1986
	Director: Clint Eastwood (Gran Torino)
	Actors: Clint Eastwood, Masha Mason, Everett McGill (Licence to Kill), Mario Van Peebles (Ali)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Drama, War
	Conditions of visioning: 04.01.2012, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: An almost retired military Seargent (Eastwood) wants to finish his carreer by instructing young recruits.
Review: I have seen this movie on TV many times in my youth, and I was expecting a bit more out of it. Good old Clint plays very well this old fart, similar to his character in Gran Torino. Two stories run in parallel: the one of his relationship with the lazy young recruits that shows you who he is deeply (a Medal of Congress-decorated Marine), and the one with his ex-wife that he tries to get back by learning from magazines how to understand women. Close to retirement, he wants to be more than a Marine, he wants to be also a good husband. Not really a spoiler: in the end you get to see him in action (real war), see how he changed his recruits for the best, and how he will manage with his wife. But I didn't find the whole process fully convincing.
Rating: 6 /10

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2012
	Director: Peter Jackson (Bad Taste, The Lord of the Rings 1-3, King Kong)
	Actors: Martin Freeman (Hot Fuzz, The Hitchhicker's Guide to the Galaxy), Ian McKellen (X-men 1-3, The Lord of the Rings 1-3), Richard Armitage
	Country: USA, NZ
	Genre: Fantasy, Adventure, Epic
	Conditions of visioning: 04.12.2013, CINEMA theater, 3D, High Frame Rate
Synopsis: Bilbo Baggins (Freeman), a Hobbit, will be pushed by the magician Gandalf the Grey (McKellen) to become part of an adventure to recover both a vast treasure and the home mountain of a company of 13 dwarves led by Thorin (Armitage).
Review: The prequel to one of the biggest cinema sucesses of all times, based on a thin book but J.R.R. Tolkien that was expanded to fill three movies of three hours each! This new trilogy is directed by the same Peter Jackson, although for a long time Guillermo Del Toro (Pan's Labyrinth) has been working on it, and was constrained to leave the project that was taking too long to start. He was pained and even sent an open letter to the fans to express it. We however feel his influence in some character designs throughout the film. The movie was shot in 3D and with the new technique of HFR (High Frame Rate) that displays 48 frames per second instead of the classical 24. Most TV sets have now the option to convert anything you watch to a rate of up to 400 Hz, which is supposed to make the vieweing experience smoother. I don't really like this effect on TVs, it looks artificial and exaggerated. It looks better in The Hobbit, as it is only twice faster and is not converted but shot on purpose at this speed. Still, it took me a good half hour (not to say one hour) to start feeling involved in the movie because of the new visual experience of HFR combined with 3D. The charaters looked to me like actors telling their text, and not Fantasy characters, but maybe this is BECAUSE the HFR+3D makes it look more real, almost like live theater... I am sure people are arguing about that all over the internet already. About the story, I found that it was also difficult to feel involved at the beginning of the movie, because the stakes are much less important than the ones in The Lord of the Rings. Indeed here the mission is to defeat a dragon and get back some gold. But as the movie progresses, this story is cleverly placed back into the context of the whole Middle-Earth History. Some action and battle scenes are great, even if they don't reach the heights of the one in The Lord... CGI characters are perfectly rendered (like the Orcs king or Gollum), with no doubt thanks to the advances made by Weta Digital while working on Tintin. However I felt that CGIs were overused sometimes (Do you need CGI for the fire in a chimney??). But by the time the movie ended I had forgotten my reservations and was quite pleased with the experience.
Rating: 7/10

Stay Hungry (1976)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 1976
	Director: Bob Rafelson (The Postman always rings twice)
	Actors: Jeff Bridges (Tron, The Big Lebowski), Sally Field (Forrest Gump, The Amazing Spiderman, Lincoln), Arnold Schwarzenegger (The Terminator), Robert Englund (Nightmare on Elm Street), Joe Spinel (Starcrash, Maniac)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Romance
	Conditions of visioning: 03.01.2012, DVD, Home cinema
Synopsis: Looking for a meaning to his life, the rich heir Craig Blake (Bridges) is torn between the soulless real estate business and a bunch of authentic friends. Those two worlds will collide.
Review: Continuing my Schwarzenegger retrospective (inspired by his excellent autobiography soon to be reviewed on this blog) I watched this first attempt at serious cinema, after the cheap Hercules in New York. The excellent Jeff Bridges is clearly leading the story, and in his book Schwarzenegger confessed that Bridges was extremely patient and helpful in teaching him acting. And you can see the result: maybe his best acting performance ever. I would partly attribute it to the fact that for the only time in his career he was not in the leading role, but in a secondary one. You see him going in and out of the story and each time delivering a honest performance for his character, the one of a bodybuilding champion also curious about everything in the world (a description very close to Arnold himself). For example he made friends with hillbillies and plays the violin with them! This character strongly contrasts with the one of the rich family people, and in the end this is what the movie is about. Unfortunately the great filmmaking (I love the musical countryside scene with the hillbillies) goes banana 20 minutes before the end with some characters changing completely, and concludes with a band of bodybuilders in underwear let loose in the street of the city. Visually a very funny scene in itself, but not at its place in this movie.
Rating: 6 /10

Journey to the Center of the Earth (2008)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2008
	Director: Eric Brevig (Visual effects supervisor on Total Recall, Hook, Men in Black...)
	Actors: Brendan Fraser (Encino Man, The Mummy 1-3), Josh Hutcherson (Journey 2, The Kids are Allright), Anita Briem (Elevator)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Adventure
	Conditions of visioning: 01.01.2013, SD VOD, Home cinema
Synopsis: Just as he is entrusted with keeping for ten days the nephew (Hutcherson) he barely know, a geology professor (Fraser) gets new hints that could proove the theories of his lost brother.
Review: Brendan Fraser is quite at ease in this role of unwillingly funny adventurer. The movie takes the time to introduce the characters which is nice, until they follow the tracks of the Jules Verne book. The story becomes then pretty linear and predictible (oh my God they get separated I wonder wat will happen next!...). Add to this some impossible coincidences (Every ten years the ocean vaporizes and it will happen 48 hours after they arrive!) and approximative special effects and you get an OK family show. At least it is better than the second movie.
Rating: 4 /10

Argo (2012)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2012
	Director: Ben Affleck
	Actors: Ben Affleck, John Goodman
	Country: USA
	Genre: Drama
	Conditions of visioning: 04.12.2012, Cinemaxx, OV
Synopsis: In 1979, the American embassy in Iran was invaded by Iranian revolutionaries and several Americans are taken hostage. However, six manage to escape to the official residence of the Canadian Ambassador and the CIA is eventually ordered to get them out of the country. With few options, exfiltration expert Tony Mendez devises a daring plan: to create a Canadian film project looking to shoot in Iran and smuggle the Americans out as its production crew. With the help of some trusted Hollywood contacts, Mendez creates the ruse and proceeds to Iran as its associate producer. However, time is running out with the Iranian security forces closing in on the truth while both his charges and the White House have grave doubts about the operation themselves.
Review: The story is anyway really great and it is also real. The way it is realised is quite standard. There is no actor particularly good. One scene is good from from the camera and the acting, it is the escaping scene in the airport, even if it is a bit clownesque, and therefore not so realistic, for the military forces I had actually a very good time, but something is missing in this movie to make it great. Maybe more emotions. The movie shows the factual story, but this is not enough.
Rating: 6 /10

Beasts of the southern wild (2012)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2012
	Director: Benh Zeitlin
	Actors: Quvenzhané Wallis, Dwight Henry
	Country: USA
	Genre: Drama, Fantasy
	Conditions of visioning: 03.12.2012, Schauburg, OV
Synopsis: Hushpuppy, an intrepid six-year-old girl, lives with her father, Wink, in the Bathtub, a southern Delta community at the edge of the world. Wink's tough love prepares her for the unraveling of the universe; for a time when he's no longer there to protect her. When Wink contracts a mysterious illness, waters rise, temperatures rise, and the ice caps melt, unleashing an army of prehistoric creatures called aurochs.
Review: The movie is full of poesy and emotion. Poesy by mixing reality and the fantasy of Hushpuppy. This is the reality of the 300 millions inhabitants of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS). This is the fantasy of a kid grown up without mother. Emotion by the relationship father-daughter. The acting of Hushpuppy and Wink is very natural and warm.  The special effects are simple and efficient. The camera and sound are very accurate. The director has an intersting biography, starting very young the directing.
Rating: 7 /10

All the President's Men (1976)

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Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 1961
	Director: Blake Edwards
	Actors: Audrey Hepburn, George Peppard
	Country: USA
	Genre: Comedy
	Conditions of visioning: 01.12.2012, DVD, OV
Synopsis: Struggling writer Paul Varjak moves into a New York apartment building and becomes intrigued by his pretty, quirky neighbor Holly Golightly. Holly's lifestyle confuses and fascinates Paul; in public she flits through parties with a sexy, sophisticated air, but when they're alone she changes into a sweetly vulnerable bundle of neuroses.
Review: The story based on a novel by Truman Capote is simple but intriguing, as the really charming character of Audrey Hepburn. It is a picture of the social life in a new-rich society. Many characters are caricatures, and the three main roles are fully visible via their clothes, their objects, in particular the two women, who are financially independent. In this sense, the movie is giving to women a position they barely had before.  The music, the camera are like easy-listening, so that we can focus on Holly Golightly
Rating: 6 /10

The Taking of Pelham 123 (2009)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2009
	Director: Tony Scott (Enemy of the State, Top Gun)
	Actors: Denzel Washington (Crimson Tide, Deja Vu), John Travolta (Saturday Night Fever, Pulp Fiction), John Turturro (Transformers 1-3), Luiz Guzma (Journey 2), James Gandolfini (Crimson Tide)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Action, Thriller
	Conditions of visioning: 01.01.2013, HD VOD, Home cinema
Synopsis: An organized group of bandits take control of and stop a subway train in New York. Their leader (Travolta) wants to speak only with the subway controller (Washington).
Review: Not easy to make a post-9/11 terrorist movie in New York. But in this one it is made clear from the beginning that it is only about money (not to re-open America's wounds to much). The two main actors, as good as usual, bring credibility to this story that is otherwise pretty boring. There is a lot of talking in the movie, and the action scenes are shot either video-clip or Google-Earth style. The originality lies in the relationhip terrorist-spokesman that is shown in a different light. The use of a "normal guy" as negociator reminds me of Die Hard, in which Bruce Willis wants to talk only to the overweight police officer that helped him once. Not the best movie by the late Tony Scott.
Rating: 5 /10