Lucy (2014)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2014
	Director: Luc Besson
	Actors: Scarlett Johansson, Morgan Freeman, Min-sik Choi, Amr Waked
	Country: F
	Genre: SF
	Conditions of visioning: 28.07.2014, Schauburg, OV Sneak preview
Synopsis: It was supposed to be a simple job. All Lucy (Johansson) had to do was deliver a mysterious briefcase to Mr. Jang (Choi). But immediately Lucy is caught up in a nightmarish deal where she is captured and turned into a drug mule for a new and powerful synthetic drug. When the bag she is carrying inside of her stomach leaks, Lucy's body undergoes unimaginable changes that unlocks her mind's full potential 100%. With her new-found powers, Lucy turns into a merciless warrior intent on getting back at her captors.
Review: The first 20 minutes of the movie are excellent and very promising, with a very original cut mixing wildlife scenes and the current story. This was a very powerful cut! Then Professor Norman (Freeman) gives indices on what is happening or going to happen via his lectures. The parallel setting of science and story is really good and reminds me the great Mr Nobody. Then each step of her mind evolution is enhanced by the display of percentage but no more supported by wildlife or scientific pictures. Except at the very end. But the lecture explaining that mastering the world is one goal but feelings are another human goal is forgotten. And this is a pity to see SPOILER that mastering one's brain/mind makes a supercomputer or a self-acting superinternet out of the human.  The modern special effects and the relatively simple acting are mastered by Luc Besson as at its time in The fifth element. I liked also seeing again Choi (Old boy) and Morgan Freeman, even if their roles are unfortunately not very developped. The actor Amr Waked has also a good charisma, even if his role here is hidden in the shadow of Scarlett Johansson.
Rating: 7 /10

Hector and the search for happiness (2014)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2014
	Director: Peter Chelsom
	Actors: Simon Pegg, Rosamund Pike, Toni Collette, Stellan Skarsgård, Jean Reno
	Country: CDN, D
	Genre: Comedy, Adventure
	Conditions of visioning: 14.07.2014, Schauburg, OV sneak preview
Synopsis: Hector (Simon Pegg) has a quiet life with his wife Clara (Pike). Both think first about their career and these are relatively successful. When he suddenly think about his own happiness, Hector decides to search the globe to find the secret of happiness.
Review:  In this search Hector encounters all the typical answers about happiness: money, sex, security, helping people, love. This kind of review is nice to watch especially with the humour of Simon Pegg (Shaun of the Dead, Hot fuzz, Paul, The world's end). The story is rich. Nevertheless the rythm of other Simon Pegg movies is missing.  The movie is full of stars acting well. It might be the dialogues lacking of spice or the cut lacking of dynamism, but something is missing in this movie to make a really good comedy out of it.
Rating: 5 /10

John Carter (2012)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2012
	Director: Andrew Stanton (Finding Nemo, Wall-E)
	Actors: Taylor Kitsch (Battleship), Lynn Collins, Willem Dafoe (Spiderman, The Grand Budapest Hotel)
	Country: USA
	Genre: SF
	Conditions of visioning: 20.07.2014, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: Deserting American soldier in the confederate army, John Carter (Kitsch) find himself propelled in the middle of a civil war on Mars.
Review: The big blockbuster of 2012, one of its most expensive movie with 200 million dollars, ambitious like Avatar, with hopes for the same success.... turns out to be the biggest flop of the year. You can tell it is an expensive movie by the amount of special effects (there is at least one CGI creature in all the shots on Mars) and their quality. I cannot deny that the aliens look as good as in Avatar (details of the faces and accuracy of the motion capture), the animals look good as well, and the flying ships are beautiful. The Martian landscape is different from what we know it to be, but probably fits with the imagination of the early 20th century, when the novel from which is adapted the movie was written (by Edgard Rice Burrough). When watching John Carter I was thinking about what George R. R. Martin said at his masterclass at the NIFFF2014: recent Action movies keep you interested by throwing things at your face during the whole movie, but they are nothing without a good story and structure, and this is where where John Carter fails. Indeed something is wrong in the storytelling, the presentation of the stakes, the editing... all making the movie look like a patchwork not really self-consistent. I don't know if this failure is imputable to Disney trying to make a movie for everybody in the family to enjoy, or to the director Andrew Stanton who didn't succeed in the transition from directing Pixal animated movies, unlike John Lasseter (Toy Story, Mission Impossible 4). And this is without mentioning trendy actors that are not really playing well. I didn't get bored during the two hours and twelve minutes of the movie, but didn't feel involved either, in spite of the grandiose scale of things. This is the kind of movie I will watch every 6 months when too tired to think. I am surprised a sequel John Carter: The God of Mars is even in development, it will probably never see the light.
Rating: 4 /10

Instant swamp (2009)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2009
	Director: Miki Satoshi
	Actors: Kumiko Aso, Morio Kazama, Ryo Kase
	Country: J
	Genre: Comedy
	Conditions of visioning: 22.06.2014, DVD, Japanese with Englisch subtitles
Synopsis: Haname (Aso) is very imaginative. She looses her job as a journalist but does not worry. She perceives this as bad luck, that she has since her father left the house and threw her toys, especially a black cat in a swamp. She decides to look for this cat talisman. On the way, she meets her hippie father Light bulb (Kazama) and a young punk Gas (Kase).
Review: Miki Satoshi draws once again the portrait of people disconnected from the society. This time a joyfull and creative woman, Haname, and her hippie father (Kazama). The portrait is full of nice scenes and funny/weird scenes. In a Japan plagued by the economic crisis and where rationalism is required by both the state and the private companies, this movie is like an island of freedom tending to be irrational, where main characters are happy without thinking about economics. These anachronisms make the charm of the movie. The directing is a bit cheap but what disturbs meis the voices of the main characters (Haname and Light bulb), extremely exagerated. Voices with more subtility in the tone would have done a huge effect out of these weird dialogues.  The craziness of the story is pushed until the end with the creativity of the main characters and SPOILER with the creation of a real swamp!!! This is good in a movie, risky and funny.
Rating: 4 /10

Finisterrae (2010)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2010
	Director: Sergio Caballero
	Actors: Pau Nubiola, Pavel Lukiyanov
	Country: E
	Genre: Fantasy
	Conditions of visioning: 29.06.2014, DVD, OV Russian with Spanish subtitles
Synopsis: Two ghosts getting bored of their ghost life decide to find the door tothe real world. On the way they meet strange creatures and humans who help them finding their way.
Review: I wanted to watch this movie because it was an experimental movie with ghosts. The story is very slow and the interaction with humans and other creatures is more theoretical as we see pictures of these but there is no real interaction. The dialogues are actually interesting, even if not much. I was expecting a bit more development of the ideas put on the table at each step of this strange travel. The voices are amazingly boring, told so slowly and monotoneously. It would be interesting to make the sound track new, to put more energy on these amazing pictures. Or maybe I did not have the right version of this DVD. The acting is perfect for ghosts and the nature photography is really amazing. Motion pictures of real animals, even if there are also cheap artificial animals. Unfortunately the good pictures are not enhanced by the dialogues nor music.
Rating: 3 /10

Transformers 4: Age of Extinction (2014)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2014
	Director: Michael Bay (Armageddon)
	Actors: Mark Wahlberg (Pain and Gain), Nicola Peltz, Jack Reynor
	Country: USA
	Genre: SF, Action
	Conditions of visioning: 16.07.2014, CINEMA theater, 3D
Synopsis: Cade Yeager (Wahlberg), a mechanic, finds an old truck that turns out to be Optimus Prime, the leader of the Autobots. Although friends of humans, those are being hunted down by a special section of the CIA and an alien bounty hunter.
Review: After three Transformers movies, we were promised a brand new cast and a new turn in the story. I had some good hopes at the beginning, as the movie starts in a theater and an old man complains that recent movies are only remakes and sequels, a way for Michael Bay to maybe announce that he will deliver a real movie this time, not a secession of good-looking images and unreadable fights. Next, we learn what happened after the Chicago battle of the third movie, how much it did cost in terms of lives and money. This is something I have always criticized in the Transformers movies (and other recent blockbusters): you see cities being destroyed but you never see one person dying, or the nation having to rebuild after the events. And then we spend some time with the Yaeger family, introduced with feelings and less stupid humour as the Witwicky was in the previous movies. But then after half an hour all my hopes vanished: useless comic characters are back trying to fill the gap left by the genius John Turturro (even when one dies, he is replaces by another one that looks the same), the story is filled with gaps and there are huge problems of continuity in the editing. The motivations of the characters are fuzzy at best and the movie contains about an hour of useless exposition shots, so that I am convinced the movie could have been made to last 1h45 instead of the absurd 2h45. Note that I didn't get bored, but I spent 1 hour watching useless scenes. Typically from Michael Bay the camera angles keep on getting lower and lower, and there are five sunsets per day with helicopters flying in slow motion in front of them, while the next scene is in broad daylight. On the positive side, there are a few good ideas like the new kind of robots (created by humans), the improved look of Optimus Prime and of course the presence of Dinobots which you have to wait for two hours but then they do kick ass. The 3D is subtle and well done. The best in this movie remains the quality of the special effects, obviously created by very talented computer artists. I found one scene in which Bumble Bee is caught in slow motion by a giant flying reptile-robot emerging from a cloud of dust quite breathtaking. I remember noticing in the very last images of the robot in Transformers 3 a clearly higher quality, and in Transformers 4 half of the robots apparitions look that good. I like particularly the looks of the samurai Autobot ('Drift') that turns into a chopper, and of the one with something that looks like a long green coat ('Crosshairs'). See below pictures of those two guys and an iconic poster for the movie, at least if you like robots and dinosaurs. I rate the movie pretty low, maybe lower than the previous ones, not because it is that bad but because of the unfulfilled promises.
Rating: 3 /10

Sherlock Holmes (1984)

	Also Known As: Meitantei Holmes (original), Sherlock Hound (English)
	Year of first release: 1984
	Director: Kyôsuke Mikuriya, Hayao Miyazaki (Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, Porco Rosso)
	Actors (voices): Taichirô Hirokawa, Kousei Tomita, Yôko Asagami
	Country: J
	Genre: Animation, Adventure
	Conditions of visioning: February-June 2014, DVD, Home Cinema
Synopsis: In the England of the late 19th century, the gifted Sherlock Holmes and his assistant Doctor Watson investigate the most curious cases that Scotland Yard cannot solve.
Review: My motivations to watch this 30-years old Japanese TV-series are triple. First, I have recently read a good part of the original Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle so I am now quite familiar with it. Second, this TV-series was created and partly directed by Hayao Miyazaki, whose movies as director I am currently (re-)discovering ; in particular I have come to Sherlock Holmes after watching The Castle of Cagliostro. Finally, I remember watching and loving the series when I was a kid, so nostalgia is my third motivation, and also the reason why I bought the collector DVD-set in French. The dubbing in my mother tongue brings an additional level of comedy because even if not true to the original voices, it was made in a funny way that also reminds me of the French version of City Hunter. The poor quality of the first image of the opening credits made me fear the worst but actually the video quality is good (but not as good as for a film). The colors are a bit pale but I could fix that with the auto-adjust function of my projector (mainly increasing the contrast). The sound is a bit muffled but acceptable. The DVD box-set comes with an informative booklet. The series consists of 26 episodes that were aired between 1984 and 1985. The idea of having all characters with dog faces could seem odd in the first place, but turned out to greatly help make the success of the series, also thanks to a mix of comedy, adventure and steam-punk action. The first episode The Four Signatures is quite cheap-looking and very slow, with long pauses and static shots on the faces of the characters, but I guess it is the fate of pilot episodes. The quality improves dramatically with the following episodes (The Crown of Mazalin, A Small Client, ...) thanks to a more detailed story, more action, more characters on screen and the general energy that I remembered from the series. Some episodes have been written and directed by Miyazaki himself and you can feel his influence because they are a little more complex and feature much more flying and diving machines, in particular the episode 8 Treasure Under the Sea involving boats and submarines and episode 9 The White Cliffs of Dover with its plane races. In general throughout the series I liked the good design of Moriarty steam-punk machines. Towards the end of the series some episode depart from the usual scheme and cross-over with other universes: episode 16 The Secret of the Sacred Cross Sword takes place at Stonehenge and reminds strongly of an Indiana Jones adventure although in the heart of England. And episode 17 The Adventure of the Thames Monster is definitely inspired by Jules Verne's 20000 Leagues under the Sea. But apart from those two special episodes, the stories are quite repetitive: a mystery occurs, Scotland Yard fails, Holmes intervenes and solves it all with few clues. It is already a bit the case in the original books, but the wonderful writing by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle makes of each adventure something new. However the single bad thing I found about the TV-series is that Moriarty is the villain in every episode, making it too repetitive after a while. I wouldn't ask for a mysterious villain appearing from nowhere in each episode (like if is often the case in the book, or in the Scooby Doo animated TV-series), but a bit of variety would have been welcome. In spite of those reservations, it is a pleasant TV-series to watch and I recommend it.
Rating: 6 /10

Iron Man 2 (2010)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2010
	Director: Jon Favreau (Iron Man)
	Actors: Robert Downey Jr. (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang), Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle (Mission to Mars), Scarlett Johannson (The Man who wasn't there), Sam Rockwell (Moon), Mickey Rourke (The Expendables), Samuel Jackson (Pulp Fiction)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Action, SF
	Conditions of visioning: 30.06.2014, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: After revealing at the end of the first movie that he is Iron Man, Tony Stark (Downey Jr.) is facing new problems with his health, private life, the american military as he doesn't want to hand over his suit, and a new foe from Russia Ivan Vanko (Rouke).
Review: The first Iron Man was kind of a good surprise although I found it laked action, due to its mandatory lengthy characters introduction. This second movie is the opposite: the story and characters development is rather poor, but the action is plentyfull: the Monaco attack, Iron Man vs. Iron man, and especially the last scenes with the drones. Robert Downey Jr. is true to himself, Mickey Rourke well at ease, and the other actors not really worth mentioning. One scene typical of this movie and that summarizes it well is when Tony Stark removes the palladium card from his chest and his buddy A.I. robot comments on it, ending with "what is keeping you alive is also what is killing you". First of all I always found it disturbing that this robot was capable of humour or deep reflexion, and I didn't find it was necessary. Secondly, this kind of reasoning should have been left to the viewer, and hinted via a camera motion, a look by Tony Stark, a tense music... there was no need to spell it out like if the viewer was taken for an idiot. This is a bad feeling a keep from this movie. Fortunately a better balace will be found between the two first movies in Iron Man 3.
Rating: 5 /10

Sur la Piste du Marsupilami (2012)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2012
	Director: Alain Chabat (Astérix & Obélix: Mission Cléopâtre, RRRrrrr!!!)
	Actors: Jamel Debbouze (Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain), Alain Chabat (Delphine 1 Yvan 0, Didier, La cité de la peur), Fred Testot (Le Carton)
	Country: F, B
	Genre: Comedy, Adventure
	Conditions of visioning: 09.07.2014, DVD, 11" computer screen.
Synopsis: To keep his job, a cheating reporter (Chabat) is forced to go shoot a story in the remote country of Palombia, helped with his local guide (Debbouze).
Review: I was curious to see the recent French comedy with a big budget, two famous (aging) comedians and directed by Alain Chabat who did something unexpected and great with Astérix & Obélix: Mission Cléopâtre. But as I feared, the jokes are always the same (sometimes exactly the same as in Astérix...) and I didn't really laugh much, even with Christophe Lambert performs a fully dressed Celine Dion show (did this guy seriously play in Matrix Revolutions?!?). The story is inspired by Fanquin's comic book, but I guess many liberties were taken to adapt it for the screen, as was done for Astérix... The special effects of the mythical animal are very good-looking, and the movie obviously benefited from a comfortable budget, but the magic is not there...
Rating: 4 /10

Young Ones (2014)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2014
	Director: Jake Paltrow
	Actors: Elle Fanning (Super 8, Twixt), Nicholas Hoult (X-men: First Class), Michael Shannon (Man of Steel), Kodi Smit-McPhee (The Road)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Drama, SF
	Conditions of visioning: 12.07.2014, Cinema du Passage, NIFFF14
Synopsis: In a region of the USA from which water has since long disappeared, a family of farmers is struggling to survive.
Review: This post-apocalyptic movie by a young director and starring some new Hollywood talents was the closing feature to the Neuchâtel International Fantastic Film Festival 2014. As in The Road (already starring Kodi Smit-McPhee), the emphasis is placed more on the drama than on possible futuristic technologies, except for the carrier robot (see poster) and a quick glimpse at an advanced smartphone. The rest of the technology is rather backward in the isolated region we spent most of the time in. I like the design of the father's gun, half rifle half shotgun but 100% elegant (couldn't find a decent picture to share with you though). The family relationships in the movie are interesting thanks to pretty good actors, but I didn't feel fully satisfied, maybe because the movie doesn't always show what it should, I think. In the end it is the rather simple story of a family: the son and his father role-model, the absent mother, the daughter in conflict with the father and in love with an ambitious and greedy young man who would like to enter the family circle. The SF part is just to increase the stakes, as it is indeed hard to survive without water. Not brilliant but a good movie. Makes me want to watch again Waterworld and The Book of Eli.
Rating: 6 /10

Open Windows (2014)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2014
	Director: Nacho Vigalondo (Timecrimes, Extraterrestrial, the ABCs of Death)
	Actors: Sasha Grey (Sasha Grey's Anatomy), Elijah Wood (The Lord of the Rings 1-3, Maniac), Neil Maskell (Kill List)
	Country: USA, E, F
	Genre: Thriller
	Conditions of visioning: 12.07.2014, Cinema Temple du Bas, NIFFF14
Synopsis: Nick Chambers (Wood) is webmaster of a fan blog about actress Jill Godard (Grey). After he is invited to meet her, his computer is hacked by a man who will give him access to Goddard's secrets, and will oblige him to start a chase to actually save her.
Review: I rather liked Nacho Vigalondo's previous movie Extraterrestrial, and the DVD of Timecrimes has been sitting on my shelf since I heard about him again in The ABCs of Death. Like many recent Horror movies, Open Windows belongs to the category of the found footage or hand-held camera movies, but its concept is original because everything we see in the movie is actually what is displayed on the computer screen of the main character. It is close to the concept of the Horror anthologies V/H/S and V/H/S 2, but this time used in a Thriller instead. The editing is very dynamic because the camera shifts constantly between the different open windows showing videos from mobile phone cameras, camcorders, security cameras, webcams, and computer disk listings, with sometimes a zoom back to the overall screen. This is quite fluent and very interesting, also because it helps telling a story that takes place in real-time without cuts between the shots, only travelling from one window to the other. Elijah Wood is still good in his reconversion post-LOTR, and the other main actress Sacha Grey is also reconverting but in her case from porn, which allows us to see some nudity we couldn't have with any other good-looking young actress. I can only criticize that several technological feats (like cameras reconstructing the volume in 3D) are unrealistic, but if you are not too concerned about such details you will find this Thriller interesting.
Rating: 7 /10

Alleluia (2014)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2014
	Director: Fabrice Du Welz (Calvaire, Vinyan)
	Actors: Leurent Lucas (Calvaire), Stéphane Bissot, Lola Dueñas (Les femmes du 6ème étage), Édith Le Merdy
	Country: F, B
	Genre: Drama
	Conditions of visioning: 11.07.2014, Theatre du Passage, NIFFF14
Synopsis: Gloria (Dueñas), rising her daughter alone, meets Michel (Lucas) via a dating website. She doesn't know yet that he is a womanizer taking advantage of his middle-aged conquests.
Review: Loosely inspired by the movie The Honeymoon Killers (1969) and the true story of Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck that inspired it (see Wikipedia entry), Alleluia is supposed to be the second movie by Fabrice du Welz in a Trilogy des Ardennes, after the totally weird and excellent Calvaire (The Ordeal in English). It depicts in a very realistic way the broken life of the two main characters played very convincingly by two excellent actors, in particular Lola Dueñas with her bright eyes and lovely smile. Alleluia is constantly displaying a dark and quite depressing atmosphere and that's what I like in the cinema by Fabrice du Welz: he insists on showing you things you don't necessarily want to see, like old folks having sex. I didn't like so much his previous movie Vinyan with Emmanuelle Béart, finding it too long and "contemplative", but even if Alleluia is also not easy to watch, I could relate better to this story taking place in a very real world, with very real problems faced by desperate people.
Rating: 6 /10

What we do in the Shadows (2014)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2014
	Director: Jemaine Clement, Taika Waititi
	Actors: Jemaine Clement, Taika Waititi, Jonathan Brugh
	Country: NZ
	Genre: Comedy, Horror, Documentary
	Conditions of visioning: 11.07.2014, Cinema Temple du Bas, NIFFF14
Synopsis: The daily life of four vampire friends sharing a house in New-Zealand.
Review: Let me get this straight: What we do in the Shadows is not a masterpiece of filmmaking because of the simple way it is directed, shot and acted, and the unimportant music. But you will definitely laugh your ass off when watching it, preferable between friends or in a full theater room like I experienced it at the NIFFF. By coincidence I was wearing the T-shirt of the Espoo Film Festival 2011 displaying a character from another mockumentary about the vampire community, Belgian this time: Vampires by Vincent Lanoo (also responsible for the excellent In the Name of the Son). Can you believe there are already two movie of this exact same sub-genre?! There were so many good and funny ideas around the original concept in the first 10 minutes that I feared this well would dry long before the end. But it does not, and we only notice a slight slowing down of the laughing rate. The movie is a bit bloody but not scary at all. It is shot in a documentary style but there is no interaction with the crew, it is more just a gimmick to have the characters speak to the camera for more comic effect. Four vampires from different epochs struggle to find food, get invited in order to enter bars, get dressed without seeing their reflection, and decide who is going to wash the dishes. There are so many hilarious moments in the movie but I cannot describe any, you have to watch them to understand. What is amazing is how the writers (also playing two of the vampires) could come up with funny ideas around simple events like a vampire in love, being friend with a human, meeting a gang of werewolves (this bunch is also incredibly funny). I can only repeat this to conclude: the movie will probably never hit the cinema screens in Europe, but find it in DVD and watch it, or go see it as Centerpiece of the Fantasy Filmfest, I guarantee you will have a great time. It won the prize of the public at the NIFFF14, definitely not a surprise when I heard the bursts of laughter during the projection.
Rating: 9 /10

Der Samurai (2014)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2014
	Director: Till Kleinert
	Actors: Michel Diercks, Pit Bukowski, Uwe Preuss
	Country: D
	Genre: Horror
	Conditions of visioning: 11.07.2014, Cinema des Arcades, NIFFF14
Synopsis: A young police officer (Diercks) investigates the presence of a lone wolf in a small German village. He delivers a sword to a unknown transvestite (Bukowski), and will then hunt him down while he feels that this meeting has changed him.
Review: Till Kleinert has directed this movie as the end project for his cinema studies, and the quality of the product is very high when you know that. It is not as impressive as another end-of-studies movie I have recently seen: Robin Hood, but still very seriously done. The story may be a bit confusing and the references mismatched, so much that the first questions to the director at the end of he movie he just presented at he NIFFF14 were: "what is the meaning of your movie?" and "what does the samurai mean?" and "what does the wolf represent?". He patiently replied to those questions although I think the public should have more thought about it by themselves before asking. For a long time I believed the transvestite Samurai (yes that's a man on the poster) was another side of the policeman's schizophrenic brain, like Tyler Durden in Fight Club. This guess did not come true but the director confirmed that this is one message he wanted to convey. So the movie is not perfect but it is short enough (80 min) that I didn't get bored and liked the originality.
Rating: 5 /10

P'tit Quinquin (2014)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2014
	Director: Bruno Dumont
	Actors: Alane Delhaye, Lucy Caron, Bernard Pruvost
	Country: F
	Genre: Comedy, Polar, Drama
	Conditions of visioning: 12.07.2014, Cinema Temple du Bas, NIFFF14
Synopsis: On the French Cote d'Opale (in the North), a dead cow is found in a bunker, with pieces of human body inside her. While the Gendarmerie Captain is investigating, P'tit Quiquin is nosing around with his group of friends.
Review: One had to be motivated to watch the four 50-minute episodes of this TV mini-series back to back as a 3.5-hour movie starting at eleven in the morning at the NIFFF14, but I had a hunch it could be good. You should know that the cast in this movie had never acted before, and the director chose them for other qualities, mostly as it seems for their not-so-beautiful faces, their nervous tics, or their speech difficulties. And in the end this is what makes you laugh (a lot) in this movie, as it sadly reminds of a reality-TV show: the characters and incredibly realistic, and at the same time try to play a role as best as they can but with limited success. I felt a bit ashamed and voyeuristic when laughing at/with some characters/actors. At the beginning I didn't really know what to expect, and was a bit stunned by the acting but once I understood it was all done on purpose, I relaxed and could really appreciate the twisted story and the many improbable characters. The movie was presented as a "Camembert thriller" and it describes it pretty well. You spend a lot of time with characters born and raised in the deep countryside of French North, and see how they live with their defects (it is true that unfortunately we don't see much of their good sides). Don't expect a serious police investigation though, the captain in charge is very odd and his reasoning foggy (thus his surname: "The Fog"). Instead, we see a lot of repetition of comic behavior that will make you laugh every time, at least in the first 2 hours. After that the rhythm changes, we laugh less and there seems to be a lack of ideas. At the end of the article you can find pictures of the hilarious police captain, and of the touching young couple. The mini-series will be shown on Arte between September 18th and 25th, and my advice would be to watch (in French at any rate) for sure the first episode and maybe the second, well at least until the church scene. Then if you have the time watch the rest but don't expect to like it as much as the beginning.
Rating: 7 /10

Yasmine (2014)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2014
	Director: Siti Kamaluddin, Chan Man Ching
	Actors: Arifin Putra, Reza Rahadian, Liyana Yus
	Country: BRU
	Genre: Drama, Action
	Conditions of visioning: 11.07.2014, Theatre du Passage, NIFFF14
Synopsis: At 17, Yasmine (Yus) is experiencing changes in her life: new school, new friends, conflicts with her father (Rahadian). She subscribes to a Silat club (a Martial Art) against his will to get closer to a boy she likes.
Review: It is hard to find out whether Yasmine is the first feature-length film ever made in Brunei, or the first in 50 years, or the first Martial Arts movie, and I also found on Imbd a film from Brunei dating 2013. So many contradicting information, but for sure it is the first movie by its director, and she had to import many things from abroad because they don't exist in Brunei: cameras, material, and even professional actors or dialogs coach. It is not very clear from the poster but the main actress (in her first role) is 17 and the story is really about coming of age. Silat is just one activity she finds to differentiate herself. I was pleasantly surprised that unlike many other Martial Arts movies, this one is not just a random story revolving around fights, but rather the realistic depiction of the life of a teenager in this far away country (a sultanate actually) that is Brunei, and Silat training is just a way to see her from another side (OK and to insert some action in the movie as well). You cannot believe that it is the first movie from Brunei because it looks very professional in its images, music, fight choreography and even acting, the most surprising for some members of the cast that never acted before. Only sometimes it looks naive, but this is not disturbing. The relationships between all characters is very well told: a young selfish girl, her new friend trying to loose weight, the single father, the 'clown' master and the 'serious' master in a wheelchair. all those ingredients are nicely mixed to deliver a pleasant movie that I can recommend. No wonder it won the first price in the New Asian Cinema selection.   Below you can find some alternative movie posters that I find much better looking than the 'official' one.
Rating: 8 /10