Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2003
	Director: Gore Verbinski (The Ring, The Lone Ranger)
	Actors: Johnny Depp (The Ninth Gate, Transcendence), Geoffrey Rush, Orlando Bloom (The Lord of the Rings 1-3), Keira Knighley (Love Actually)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Action, Fantasy
	Conditions of visioning: 30.03.2015, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: While Pirate Captain Jack Sparrow (Depp) lands at Port Royal, his former crew on board the Black Pearl led by Barbossa (Rush) is called for by a golden coin owned by the Governor's daughter (Knighley). A coin that actually belongs to Will Turner (Bloom) who doesn't know yet he is a Pirate's son.
Review: A successful attempt at renewing the Pirate movie genre with this very free adaptation of a Disneyworld attraction, although on second thought it didn't lead to any other pirate movie out of this franchise that will eventually span six movies. After having seen The Curse of the Black Pearl many times, I don't appreciate it as much as the first, but I remember that it was quite nice back in 2003 to see some pirates, massive ships, cannon and sword fights with the extra fun of getting zombies and modern special effects of pretty good quality. In addition, a "Ménage à trois" of characters that are at the heart of the story, played by Keira Knighley (for those who like her looks), Orlando Bloom (similar but better than in the LOTR trilogy) and a Johnny Depp that we discovered playing his character in a delightfully exaggerated way (he has done it many more times since and the charm has passed). They try very hard to be funny or loveable and manage most of the time. What annoys me in the movie especially after several viewings is the length: it could have been shortened from 2,5 to less than 2 hours by cutting both dialogs and fight scenes equally. Also I found the music too invasive at times, this is still OK in this first movie but will disturb me more and more in the following ones. Also the jokes are sometimes too much, for example the repetitive dumb couples of Pirates and British guards. Well, the kids probably love it.
Rating: 6 /10

Marshland (2014)

	Also Known As: La isla mínima (original)
	Year of first release: 2014
	Director:  Alberto Rodríguez
	Actors: Javier Gutiérrez (Crimen ferpecto), Raúl Arévalo, María Varod
	Country: E
	Genre: Polar
	Conditions of visioning: 29.03.2015, CINEMA theater, MFFFN15
Synopsis: In 1980 Spain, two policemen are sent to the countryside to investigate the disappearance of two teenage girls.
Review: This is a polar like we rarely see anymore: set in the 80's, faithful to the period clothes, look (moustache rules), music, cars, furniture and spirit. It also has an 80's look: brown tones, faded colors. In fact it reminds a lot in its topic (really a lot) of the British TV-film series in three episodes Red Riding. The main differences are of course in the setting (marshland Spain vs. industrial rural England) but also in the main characters: two cops vs. one journalist. Well, in at least one of the Red Riding movies the main character is a cop too. Marshland sets itself apart with the display of beautiful landscapes, often shown in static aerial views shot at the vertical and with bright colors. I don't know if that was done using drones or more traditional methods like helicopter (I would think the latter), but it brings a lot to the visual quality and identity of the movie. The main characters (in particular the cops) are complex and have a deep background. For example we believe at the beginning one of the cop to be lazy, incompetent and a drunk, while he actually spent his night befriending some local people and collecting information about the case. On top of that you add some corruption, perversion, drug traffic, lies, secrets and political background, and you get a very pleasant polar.
Rating: 8 /10

Autómata (2014)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2014
	Director: Gabe Ibáñez (participated to Visual Effects on The Day of the Beast)
	Actors: Antonio Banderas (The 13th Warrior), Birgitte Hjort Sørensen, Dylan McDermott
	Country: E, USA, CDN, BG
	Genre: SF
	Conditions of visioning: 28.03.2015, CINEMA theater, MFFFN15
Synopsis: In a Future when only few humans survive in enclosed cities helped by robots, insurance agent Jacq Vaucan (Banderas) investigates some units that present peculiar malfunctions.
Review: Shot in Bulgaria for a modest budget by a Spanish director and resting on the shoulders of its main actor, this is an atypical and ambitious production. The robots are very realistic, I was often expecting them to jump and do incredible stunts like in I Robot but they in fact always follow the rules of simple mechanics. The two fundamental behavioral rules to which the robots obey are of course inspired by Isaac Asimov's three laws of robotics, and we spend the movie with the insurance agent trying to understand if some robots really were tempered with and by whom. It raises some interesting questions about the future of mankind and the definition of life/consciousness, the desertic landscape and futuristic city are well rendered and the robots visual effects very realistic. On the down side, the pace of the movie may be a bit slow especially in the second half. An interesting endeavour nevertheless.
Rating: 6 /10

Spring (2014)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2014
	Director: Justin Benson & Aaron Moorhead (Resolution, a segment of VHS)
	Actors: Lou Taylor Pucci, Nadia Hilker, Vanessa Bednar
	Country: USA
	Genre: Horror, Romance
	Conditions of visioning: 29.03.2015, CINEMA theater, MFFFN15
Synopsis: After the death of his mother, Evan (Pucci) escapes the daily life by going to Italy where he meets an intriguing woman (Hilker) and settles down in the village where she lives.
Review: The movie was introduced at the Munich Fantasy Filmfest 2015 as "finally something new". It is indeed the story of a fantasy character told in an unusual way but after the projection I didn't know what to think of it, until I came to the conclusion that it is a Horror movie for women, or if you prefer a Horror movie you can go watch with your girl, or yet another vision: a Horror movie your girl can trick you into watching. In fact the horror is very rare and not scary, instead there is a very large portion of Romance between the atypical woman (a scientist) and a charming guy that could be the Prince Charming: he is sensitive and just lost his mother, he refuses to have sex with the girl when he first meets her and prefers to wait and date her later... This approach is probably a good thing as the Genre is known to attract a vast majority of males, but I felt cheated and in spite of the amazingly beautiful Italian landscapes, I failed to enjoy the adventures of this young couple and its conclusion. I am nevertheless looking forward to watch Resolution, the previous realization by the same two directors that I missed at the Fantasy Filmfest last year, because they know how to tell an original story.
Rating: 5 /10

Cub (2014)

	Also Known As: Welp (original)
	Year of first release: 2014
	Director: Jonas Govaerts
	Actors: Stef Aerts, Evelien Bosmans, Titus De Voogdt
	Country: B
	Genre: Horror
	Conditions of visioning: 28.03.2015, CINEMA theater, MFFFN15
Synopsis: A group of scouts go camping for a week-end. They are forced to enter deeper in the forest. Sam, a disturbed kid, takes seriously the campfire story of a wild kid living in the forest.
Review: After watching movies like Calvaire, Alleluia, Frontiers or this Cub, you definitely don't want to get lost in the Ardennes forest between France and Belgium! Cub could have been just another forest survival movie (and it does sometimes get too predictable) but its originality is in the groups of scouts that face the dangers of the forest (even their three accompanying adult look very young), and I can tell you that not all of them will survive the adventure, which is something rare to see in a movie. We get to like the character of Sam, and watch him face the dangers with a different approach than his friends or leaders do. The movie is well shot, but some scenes and characters reactions are not realistic, and some too elaborate murders take you out of the atmosphere of realism that the movie has previously established. That is too bad, because apart from that the movie keeps the tension high all along and until the very end.
Rating: 5 /10

German Angst (2015)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2015
	Director: Jörg Buttgereit (Nekromantik 1&2), Michal Kosakowski (Zero Killed), Andreas Marschall (Tears of Kali, Masks)
	Actors: Milton Welsh, Stephen Patrick Hanna, Annika Strauss
	Country: D
	Genre: Horror
	Conditions of visioning: 29.03.2015, CINEMA theater, MFFFN15
Synopsis: Three horror stories taking place in Berlin.
Review: An anthology movie in three sections supposed to start a revival of the German Expressionist style. I like this kind of idea and how it was applied by Phil Mucci for the video The Devil's Orchard of the band Opeth. The three not-so-young directors are Jörg Buttgereit (Nekromantik 1&2), Michal Kosakowski (the documentary Zero Killed that I am interested to see) and Andreas Marschall (Tears of Kali, Masks). The trailer is a bit overdone, and in the end the movie has not much of Expressionism in it. Actually two of the directors present at the projection at the Munich Fantasy Filmfest Night 2015 explained that instead of doing a local Horror movie following American modern codes for the Genre, they wanted to tell a German-spirited story, and the title German Angst ironically means that. I think they succeeded, so that I can recommend the movie but not to anybody, only to fans of Horror and bizarre, as it contains very disturbing scenes. The first segment Final Girl is rather short and a torture-porn, mixed with educational (as called by the director) information about how to raise and love a Guinea Pig. Weird and disturbing. The second part Make a Wish shows some racism-related violence done to a couple, and what happens if roles are reversed. The conclusion is ambiguous. Finally the longest segment by Andreas Marshall Alraune reminds of a good old Italian Giallo (or the recent Tulpa) with the story of this artist that enters an Elite club in which some curious events happen and follow him. Intriguiging and good-looking.  German Angst does have defects, and some of the violence and graphical excesses are uncalled for, but I can only praise the directors' approach of going against censorship and the established conventions (Jörg Buttgereit produced Nekromantik 30 years ago just for that purpose).
Rating: 6 /10

The Lazarus Effect (2015)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2015
	Director: David Gelb
	Actors: Olivia Wilde (In Time, Tron Legacy), Mark Duplass, Evan Peters
	Country: USA
	Genre: Thriller, Horror
	Conditions of visioning: 28.03.2015, CINEMA theater, MFFFN15
Synopsis: Looking for processes to cure aging cells, a group of researchers brings back a dog to life, but their experience is soon stopped. They go back to their lab for one last test.
Review: As I had read, the story of this movie reminds of the 1990 half-forgotten and under-rated Flatliners (L'Experience Interdite in French) with Julia Roberts, Kevin Bacon and Kiefer Sutherland, in which students in medicine play at recreating NDEs (Near Death Experiences) by killing and reviving themselves in order to discover what is beyond. In The Lazarus Effect only one person is effected, and the consequences are a bit similar to the ones in Flatliners (childhood trauma coming back to haunt you) but are otherwise more gore than anything else. The movie abuses of the easy jump-scare effect of putting characters in the dark with a few blinking neon lights and making the "ghost" appear from the side of the screen. And in the end all of this is not very scary nor interesting.
Rating: 4 /10

The Guest (2014)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2014
	Director: Adam Wingard (You're Next, segments of VHS, VHS 2 and The ABCs of Death)
	Actors: Dan Stevens, Sheila Kelley, Maika Monroe (The Bling Ring, It Follows), Leland Orser (Alien Resurrection)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Thriller
	Conditions of visioning: 28.03.2015, CINEMA theater, MFFFN15
Synopsis: Some time after the death of the their son in the Army, a family receives the visit of David (Stevens) who served with him. He made a promise to his dead friend to take care of this family.
Review: When introducing this movie at the Munich Fantasy Filmfest Nights 2015, the organizer said that it would never be released on a big screen in Germany and that day was the only opportunity to see it like that. I don't understand this behavior from the distribution companies, because to me The Guest looks very much like Drive by Nicholas Winding Refn which was a huge hit. There is not more violence in it, we find the same pastel colors, the deep bass instrumental soundtrack sounds as good, the movie looks as good and the lead actor even looks like Ryan Gosling although he talks more and for me acts better. Maybe it is because the topic of Drive in the end is more classic: revenge, protect your family or your business... While The Guest deals with more recent cinema themes: home invasion, the fear of the other, the daily life of teenagers, and a hint of (spoiler, highlight to read) government conspiracy. I can also understand that the third act of the movie may differ from one's expectations, and I have to admit that some easy story telling choices, or shortcuts, could testify of the less mature cinema by Adam Wingard and his writing partner Simon Barrett. But for my part I enjoyed a lot the free style of the movie and was fully satisfied by it. I definitely have to watch Adam Wingward's You're Next.
Rating: 8 /10

Wyrmwood: Road of the dead (2014)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2014
	Director: Kiah Roache-Turner
	Actors: Jay Gallagher, Bianca Bradey, Leon Burchill
	Country: AUS
	Genre: Action, Horror
	Conditions of visioning: 29.03.2015, CINEMA theater, MFFFN15
Synopsis: After a meteor shower, most people become blood-thirsty zombies and Barry (Galhagger) struggles to survive. With some other survivors, he will armour up and start a road trip to go find his sister.
Review: I should have followed my first instinct of not going to see this movie at the Munich Fantasy Filmfest Nights 2015. I feared it would be as cheap as The 25th Reich, another Australian production I saw last year, while in fact it looks much better but tells an empty story that does not bring anything to the Zombie genre. There are so many zombie movies (and TV-series) nowadays and so few good ones, from the top of my head I would name only Shaun of the Dead, 28 days later, Dawn of the Dead and the segment A Ride in the Park of the VHS 2 anthology. The only good ideas in Wyrmwood is that petrol is of no use and the main characters' car runs on zombie breath! That brought one or two laughs, but that's all.
Rating: 2 /10

Tusk (2014)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2014
	Director: Kevin Smith (Clerks 1-2, Red State)
	Actors: Justin Long (Jeepers Creepers), Michael Parks (Kill Bill), Haley Joel Osment (The 6th Sense, A.I.), Johnny Depp (The Ninth Gate), Genesis Rodriguez (Man on a Ledge)
	Country: USA, CDN
	Genre: Horror, Black Comedy
	Conditions of visioning: 29.03.2015, CINEMA theater, MFFFN15
Synopsis: In search for unusual people, a podcaster (Long) travels to Canada and ends up meeting a man telling fantastic stories about his life, and in particular of his encounter with a walrus.
Review: After his two last bad experience in cinema for different reasons (Cop Out because of the Hollywood system and Red State because of the self-distribution and poor results), the genius "king of Geeks" Kevin Smith (Clerks, Clerks 2, Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Dogma) preferred to spend his time with his main passion: podcasting. But during one of those sessions he found out about a very strange add for lodging on a British website: a man offering a room for free on the condition that the lodger wears two hours per day a walrus costume, and behaves like one! And during the course of the 1.5-hour show one can hear Smith setting the basis for what he thinks would make a good movie, that he then managed to direct. You can listen to the whole podcast here (jump straight to 11:45). It turned out that the add was just a hoax (as I learned in that article), but it did give Smith the motivation to go back to cinema. Smith added a bit of himself to the story: the man answering the add is indeed a podcaster looking for a story, and infinitely more than Smith the guy is impolite, vulgar, irrespectively and making fun of the misery of others. This difficult character is payed brilliantly by Justin Long that I loved in the other original Horror flick Jeepers Creepers. Smith's habitué Michael Parks completes the cast together with the very natural Haley Joel Osment (yes the kid from The 6th Sense and A.I.) and the new bomba latina Genesis Rodriguez. And one should not forget Johnny Depp barely recognizable in a role that pushes his talent for acting weird characters beyond what he did with Captain Jake Sparrow in The Pirates of the Carribean franchise. After this long preamble, is the movie any good? I would say yes, if you like to discover something bizarre and out of the ordinary. Oh the story is easy to follow, the actors play very well and the movie looks good, but the structure and changes of rhythms often take you by surprise, like they already did in Red State. During the projection people often laughed at the ridicule of the situations almost against themselves. And as always with Kevin Smith the dialogs are great. Even if Tusk is not a big success yet (at the time of writing it earned 1.8 M$ for 3 of investment), it launched Smith into two more movies to complete a "True North Trilogy" starting with Yoga Hosers for which he even postponed the making of the long-awaited Clerks 3.
Rating: 8 /10

Paycheck (2003)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2003
	Director: John Woo (Broken Arrow, Face/Off)
	Actors: Ben Affleck (Armageddon, Argo), Aaron Eckhart (The Dark Knight), Uma Thurman (Pulp Fiction)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Thriller, SF
	Conditions of visioning: 27.03.2015, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: Jennings (Affleck) is reverse-engineering new products for a concurrent company and getting his memory erased afterwards for confidentiality reasons. After his last and biggest project, he find out that he has been manipulated.
Review: I remembered this movie to be better, more fun to watch. When watching it this time I found a lot of weak points during the first half hour in the scientific basis (OK it is a SF movie but there are limits to extrapolations: reading the palm of the hand to predict the future!), the logic (how can an engineer learn and stay competitive if you erase his memory after each project?) and most importantly the motivation of the characters (why do they want to kill him by the way?). After that came the fun part, when the main character manages to escape using the few items he sent himself. But in the third act it becomes confused again and sometimes laughable (the usual face off between two characters with gun drawn in front of the face of the other) in spite of the best efforts of the good three main actors. I think to remember the same structure and weaknesses in other John Woo movies: Face/Off, Broken Arrow, Mission Impossible 2. Paycheck was the last movie he shot in Hollywood. Maybe I should finally watch the one he did next in China and that has been sitting on the Blu-ray shelf for a while: Red Cliff.
Rating: 4 /10

47 Ronin (2013)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2013
	Director: Carl Rinsch
	Actors: Keanu Reeves (Speed, The Matrix 1-3), Hiroyuki Sanada (Sunshine, The Wolverine), Ko Shibasaki, Rinko Kikuchi (Pacific Rim)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Action, Fantasy
	Conditions of visioning: 26.03.2015, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: After their Master is dishonored, his now Lordless samurais (=Ronin) vow to avenge him. They will be helped by the mysterious Kai (Reeves) who was found by the Master when he was a kid.
Review: You would think that an American Action movie around some part of Japanese culture and with Japanese cast would have been shot earlier. There has been the entertaining Ninja Assassin, and before that there was Rising Sun although it is not an Action movie. But what is interesting in 47 Ronin is that it could have been a Japanese movie. The only things not Japanese in this movie are Keanu Reeves, the director and the Hollywood way of telling the story. All the cast is somehow Japanese (except for a few Dutch during five minutes) but the language is English. Actually there have already been several Japanese cinema versions of this story in 1941, 1962, 1994. That old legend of the 47 Ronin is very well known in Japan, and often told as a model of loyalty, sacrifice and honor. In this version, some parts of the history have been modified (but there are doubts anyway about the truth behind the details of the story), and a Fantasy note added to justify the action. I liked this approach. It is nice to see Keanu Reeves doing Kung Fu moves 14 years after The Matrix and he fits well the role, maybe it was written for him. At the beginning it is disturbing to see special effects which are not fully photo-realist as we are used to see in modern productions. But the ambition of 47 Ronin is smaller, and the unnatural effects (often some beautiful colorful sets and landscapes) actually add to the Fantasy side. The weak part of the movie is in the story telling, which is not as well done as it could have been. Indeed it doesn't manage to get the audience immersed enough in the story that we really enjoy the last act.
Rating: 6 /10

Kung Fu Panda (2008)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2008
	Director:  Mark Osborne, John Stevenson
	Actors (voices): Jack Black (King Kong), Ian McShane (Death Race), Angelina Jolie (Beowulf), Dustin Hoffman (All the President's Men), Jackie Chan (Rush Hour), Seth Rogen (Knocked Up), Lucy Liu (Kill Bill)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Animation, Action, Comedy, Adventure
	Conditions of visioning: 22.03.2015, SD VOD, Home cinema
Synopsis: The Panda Po (Black) is dreaming about Kung Fu but is stuck with cooking noodles. When great peril approaches, he can't miss the event of selecting the Dragon Warrior that will protect the Valley.
Review: Quite a voice cast on this Dreamworks production. I like the topic of the movie and the fact that it respected all the codes of the Martial Arts Genre: the Master, the selection of an apprentice, the unexpected hero, his initiatory journey (like in the excellent The 36th Chamber of Shaolin with Gordon Liu). The animation is colorful and fast and fits very well that Genre. As I wrote in the post about Megamind, the quality of the Dreamworks animated productions has been catching up with the one of Pixar's, and even exceeding them with those two movies. Recommended for kids and adults alike.
Rating: 7 /10

Particle Fever (2013)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2013
	Director: Mark Levinson
	Actors: Martin Aleksa, Nima Arkani-Hamed, Savas Dimopoulos
	Country: USA
	Genre: Documentary
	Conditions of visioning: 23.03.2015, HD VOD, 11" computer screen
Synopsis: About the building of the Large Hadron Collider and the discover of the Higgs Boson.
Review: The 30-years story that leads to the building of the European LHC Particle Accelerator and the discovery of the Higgs Boson is an amazing scientific odyssey. Its last years are reflected in this movie: from a few months before the first beam (opening of the LHC) to this mediatic event, then the accident that delayed the project of many months, the first collisions, the wait and finally the announcement of the discovery of the so-called "God's particle" in presence of its name-giver Peter Higgs. We follow some actors in the field: a post-doc experimentalist, three generations of theoriticists, and the manager of one of the instruments that made the discovery. Unfortunately the documentary looks and feels cheap at times, although it is edited in a way to build up tension and create suspense at times. In the end barely better than a TV report.
Rating: 4 /10

Inglourious Basterds (2009)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2009
	Director: Quentin Tarantino (Django Unchained, Pulp Fiction)
	Actors: Brad Pitt (Tree of Life, Fight Club), Diane Kruger (National Treasure), Melanie Laurent (Enemy), Eli Roth (Piranha, Deathproof), Christoph Waltz (Horrible Bosses 2), Michael Fassbender (Prometheus, Xmen: First Class & Days of Future Past)
	Country: USA
	Genre: War
	Conditions of visioning: 17.03.2015, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: Lt. Aldo Raine (Pitt) and a team of Basterds are sent to occupied Europe during WWII to kill Nazis. Meanwhile Colonel Landa (Waltz) terrorises the Jews, and a girl who escaped from him Shosanna (Laurent) now owns a movie theater in Paris.
Review: As this movie is not yet reviewed on JoRafCinema I realised I haven't watched it in at least two and a half years. I had to fix that. Noticing the length of 2h20 I couldn't remember what was filling this time, but I was quickly reminded of the relaxed Tarantino rhythm. As in probably all his movie, Quentin starts with a scene that puts you right in the mood: loud music, beautiful image, strong characters, tedious but exhilarating dialogs. And then he doesn't let go for the whole length of the movie. Every one of the chapters that compose the movie is an incredible display of offbeat humor and unlikely character interaction. Loosely inspired by the 1978 movie The Inglorious Bastards (with which it actually has little in common, I have seen it), this Inglourious Basterds definitely fits the style of its director. I am in fact having a hard time finding anything I don't like in it, so let me just list my favorite things like the meticulous dialogs in some scenes: the introductory one, the basement (in particular the deduction of the King Kong name on the card), and basically all the ones involving the revelation Christoph Waltz in the role of his life while he was until then only known in German movies and many TV-films. I also appreciate a lot the too short role of Michael Fassbender (discovered three years earlier in 300), expecially during the scene with Mike Myers. Visually I like the opening and closing scenes which are apparently almost the only ones that don't take place in a city or around a table (with the Basterds ones). And I like the violence that comes as a surprise every time (by the way check out this body count infographic). And of course I love the uchronic story. Tarantino is definitely a great story teller. When I think that we were almost deprived of one of his creations when someone put online the draft script of The Hateful Eight and he then announced, furious, that he would not shoot the movie. Fortunately for the History of Cinema, he changed his mind and the release is planned for the end of 2015. After the deeper and deeper exploitation references in Kill Bill and Grindhouse, the critics (and most of the public) who were increasingly unsatisfied since Jackie Brown were happy too see him tackle a more "classic" theme and torture it in his style: the War movie. But for me it is as much an homage to the 70's-80's exploitation movies as all the other in his filmography, including the following Django Unchained. The only Genre that Tarantino has not yet paid homage to may be Science Fiction. I would be very curious to see that. Meanwhile, I have realised that Tarantino's cinema is still refreshing in the current boring landscape dominated by pre-formatted Hollywood productions. So much that I give it the highest rating.
Rating: 10 /10

Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2014
	Director: Matthew Vaughn (Layer Cake, Kick-Ass, X-men: First Class)
	Actors: Colin Firth (Love Actually), Taron Egerton, Samuel L. Jackson (Do I really need to name movies?), Mark Strong (Green Lantern), Mark Hamill (Star Wars 4-7), Michael Caine (Zulu, Harry Brown, Interstellar)
	Country: GB
	Genre: Thriller, Action
	Conditions of visioning: 16.03.2015, Mathaeser Kino
Synopsis: Young delinquant Eggsy (Egerton) is contacted by Galahad (Firth), member of the same team of secret agents for which his father got killed seventeen years before.
Review: Reading that Matthew Vaughn declined the offer to direct the sequel to his successful and quite refreshing X-men: First Class in order to produce this spy movie immediately rose my interest. He also refused the same job on Star Wars VII. The movie is inspired from a comics book also based on Vaughn's original idea, so the guy is really attached to the project! The idea is indeed quite different from the usual spy movie (I read an article about the 10+ British such movies in which Michael Caine played in his career), mainly thanks to the contrast between the tradition Kingsmen agents issued from rich families, and Eggsy in which Galahad believes. Secondly the visual tone is interesting, reminding me sometimes of the explosive Kaboom! in its excesses of colors but actually also its new ideas in film-making. The spy scenes are as good as in a Bond movie, and there is an interesting parallel quoted even in the movie itself. During that scene is said: "A Bond movie is only as good as its villain", and Vaughn learned from that realisation: we get a modern villain (Internet billionaire with the special character it implies) played by the unavoidable Samuel L. Jackson in his best recent role. We also have a strong right-arm with a special skill reminding of Jaws in Moonraker for example: this time it is a woman with sharp metallic legs, Pistorius-style. And of course a bunch of anonymous henchmen. The movie evolves very slowly which is a bad point at the beginning, but the totally f***ed-up last 30 minutes makes up for it. Quite an interesting movie in the contemporary context of Hollywood Cinema.
Rating: 7 /10