The Fourth Protocol (1987)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 1987
	Director: John Mackenzie
	Actors: Michael Caine (Zulu, The Dark Knight 1-3, Harry Brown), Pierce Brosnan (Dante's Peak, Mars Attacks!), Ned Beatty (Deliverance)
	Country: GB
	Genre: Polar, Thriller
	Conditions of visioning: 26.05.2015, DVD, Home cinema
Synopsis: John Preston (Caine) is a British agent with the task of preventing the Russians detonating a nuclear explosion next to an American base in the UK.
Review: I heard about this movie in an article about Kingsman: The Secret Service and Michael Caine's career in British spy movies. The movie, adapted from a novel, is not bad and well-timed as it was released towards the end of the Cold War. It reminds me a bit of the adaptation of Tom's Clancy adventures of Jack Ryan in The Sum of All Fears but with a reduced scope of course, the movie being British and not American. The stories of the characters played by Cain and Brosnan (as a Russian agent surprisingly) progress slowly in parallel until the final confrontation of course. One thing that disturbed me about this movie though: everybody speaks English, even people in Russia! I think this was typical of that period, nowadays movie-makers prefer to add a bit of foreign language for realism (or exoticism) and rather add an American character in the group to justify the continuous use of English. It is otherwise a nice European Spy movie, in a different style than the French ones with Lino Ventura like Le Silencieux (1973) or La 7ème cible (1984).
Rating: 7 /10

Pinocchio (1940)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 1940
	Director: Hamilton Luske (Peter Pan, 101 Dalmatians), Ben Sharpsteen (Dumbo)
	Actors (voices): Dickie Jones, Christian Rub, Mel Blanc
	Country: USA
	Genre: Animation, Adventure
	Conditions of visioning: 26.05.2015, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: In a small village, wood-worker Gepetto gives the final touch to a string-puppet and wishes that it could be a real boy.
Review: I am slowly acquiring all the Disney classics in Blu-ray although their price is usually quite high because targeted at children to whom parents cannot refuse anything. I have thus recently seen Bambi, Lady and the Tramp, Fantasia and The Lion King. By classics I mean not the more recent ones or the Pixar movies which I also try to see. I am doing the same with the Ghibli movies, also distributed by Disney at an excessive price. My next choice was Pinocchio since I read a lot about its making in The Lost Notebook: Herman Schultheis and the Secrets of Walt Disney's Movie Magic (article to come). I was indeed looking forward to see in Blu-ray some amazing shots that led people to say that Pinocchio is technically the pinnacle of what Disney has ever produced in animation. And there are in particular two scenes that use the technique of multi-plane cameras to produce incredible effects, for an outrageous cost at the time (25 000 dollars for 30 seconds which was huge in 1940 and would be 450 000 dollars today with inflation adjustment). And those scene are pretty impressive even though the great quality of the Blu-ray transfer makes all defects pop-up. I remember being amazed by a modern use of this technique in the Japanese Steamboy, and notice its use (with less success) in Heavy Metal. The rest of the movie is also very good-looking and the animation of the characters very smooth and realistic, but I found that the living beings seem to have no bones, i.e. all rigidity is removed from the animation of their movements. This could to be a Disney trademark of that period. On to the story: I have read that it was adapted a lot from original novel (1883) by Carlo Collodi, in order to be more fantastic and less crude. And what remains looks a lot like a lesson to naughty kids teaching them what happens when you are bad. And many possible bad behaviors are addressed: lying, not listening to parents, skipping school for an easier but short-lived life, smoking, drinking... But in the end there is redemption. Actually not much happens in this 88-minute movie: Introduction, Pinocchio is alive, First adventure: Stromboli the puppeteer, Second adventure: Pleasure Island, Third adventure and conclusion: Monstro the Whale. But this means that the rhythm is slow and easy to follow, giving the movie a dreamy quality. Below you can find the original poster for the movie. My next Disney classic: Dumbo.
Rating: 8 /10

The Oil Crash (2006)

	Also Known As: A Crude Awakening
	Year of first release: 2006
	Director: Basil Gelpke, Raymond McCormack
	Actors: -
	Country: CH, D
	Genre: Documentary
	Conditions of visioning: 20.05.2015, SD VOD, 11" computer screen
Synopsis: Of the importance of oil in our modern society.
Review: This documentary fulfilled my expectations, i.e. it is informative about the current status of knowledge on our dependency to oil, and the status of the world reserves. It is not too alarmist (it wold be easy to be) and on the other hand manages to avoid showing interviews of industrials who will tell you that oil will last forever. Well, we see some flashbacks of such sayings in the 80's, but nobody can say that anymore nowadays. I hadn't thought about the problem in a long time, but now I wonder again: oil reserves will for sure be depleted in 100 years, maybe 50, and at some point before that time people/governments/corporations will realize it and there will be consequences, big ones. It struck me when one interviewed raised the point that our grandchildren may never travel by plane. Somebody will have to find an alternative at some point, but in any case we will have to dramatically change our way of life, especially in the USA where one quarter of the World oil is consumed, to a point that cities (and the whole country) are structured around cars and oil (everybody commutes for more than an hour every day) making it impossible to transition to a public transport system like we have in Europe. Finally, I think that a solution could be found if one invested 4 trillion dollars in research on the topic, or even 10% of that, instead of spending it on military cost for a war in the Middle-East to secure more oil.
Rating: 5 /10

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2015
	Director: George Miller (Mad Max 1-3, Babe 2, Happy Feet 1-2)
	Actors: Tom Hardy (This Means War, The Dark Knight Rises), Charlize Theron (Prometheus), Nicholas Hoult (X-men 4-6)
	Country: USA, AUS
	Genre: Action
	Conditions of visioning: 22.05.2015, CINEMA theater, 3D
Synopsis: In a post-apocalyptic future, Furiosa (Theron) escapes from her clan, and will soon be pursued by the leader Immortan Joe and hordes of followers at the wheel of terrible machines.
Review: I think Fury Road it is the best that George Miller could have done to pay homage to the saga he initiated more than 35 years ago. It builds on the legend of the Road Warrior from the three previous movies to bring us something different, although with some similarities to Mad Max 2, for me the best to date... until today. The story is minimalist: struggle of humanity for food, water, gas and survival in general under the control of tyrants. And for a movie that is supposed to be more about images than anything else, I found that the characters don't lack depth: Furiosa, the Wives, Max, Joe, Nux (hard to recognize when you know him from the X-men series). But more than story or characters, Fury Road is really a visual experience, at least this is how I took it, and it is with that in mind that one should go watch it. I was addicted from the first minutes and the shots in 3D with a camera racing forward filming at ground level, a nice use of 3D better than throwing stuff at your face. After that, the movie is basically a two-hour race with only a few interruptions to let the audience breath. The convoy doesn't even stop when something needs fixing, it is done hanging under the truck while at full speed! I read that George Miller shot real action as much as possible and used as few CGI as possible, I can appreciate that during the amazing stunts and the massive number of trucks from hell, customized to death. I really loved this avalanche of crazy car designs, which is already what people liked in the original movies, and also influenced many post-apocalyptic movies (often produced in Italy) but always with a cheap-looking results. A word about Max: he is not even the main character in this movie, he is very discreet and barely says ten sentences in the whole movie with his enigmatic deep bass voice. This definitely brings mystery to the character, like it did for Conan the Barbarian. I am almost tempted to go enjoy the show once more in the cinema, and I hope that no sequel will be made. As I wrote in introduction, I think Fury Road is the best movie one could have done on the topic and going further would spoil the experience.
Rating: 8 /10

Mad Max 2 (1981)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 1981
	Director: George Miller
	Actors: Mel Gibson, Bruce Spence, Kjell Nilsson, Emil Minty
	Country: AUS
	Genre: Action, Adventure
	Conditions of visioning: 24.05.2015, DVD, Original Australian Version without subtitles
Synopsis: Max (Gibson) is a former Australian policeman now living in the post-apocalyptic Australian outback as a road warrior. He agrees to help a community of survivors living in a gasoline refinery to defend them and their gasoline supplies from evil barbarian warriors led by the Humungus.
Review: This is the first Mad Max I remember. from TV. Andthis fits more to the image I have of Mad Max. Really post-apocalyptic. Mad Max against punk-looking bad boys and helping blond white-clothed people. In the context of the early 80s and as a ska-punk fan this feels strange. Another snap shot of the time is the shortage of the oil. Some side characters are introduced and make the story more interesting than Mad Max  because it gives more rythm. The Gyro Captain looking like Murdock from The A-Team. The Kid looks like a young savage and has the closest relationship with Max. The big boss Nilsson looks really bad and reminds me the manga Hokuto no Ken (Fist of the North star). The directing is much better than the first Mad Max. The camera, the sound. The storyline is more like a cowboy story. Lonely cowboy enters in town and helps fighting against the bad guys. The recipe works quite well.  The movie is no more as original as the first Mad Max but the technical quality is far better.
Rating: 5 /10

Gone with the Wind (1939)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 1939
	Director: Victor Fleming (The Wizard of Oz)
	Actors: Clark Gable (Mutiny on the Bounty), Vivien Leigh (Anna Karenina, A Streetcar Named Desire), Thomas Mitchell
	Country: USA
	Genre: Romance, Drama
	Conditions of visioning: 24.05.2015, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: In a Southern State of the USA, Scarlett (Leigh) is a young woman full of energy, she likes to dance and get courted by men and doesn't worry about the future. The coming Civil War will put an end to this life and force her to grow up.
Review: I rarely find the time to empty my Blu-ray shelf of some 3- or 4-hour long movies it holds, as this one that has been sitting there for years. Gone with the Wind is a classic, near the top of many lists of best movie of all times. Indeed it shows us a slice of American History from the point of view not of some politician or military man (like Spielberg's Lincoln does) but of a young innocent girl from the South on whom the influence of the War will be very strong. Also the abolition of slavery is not a central theme to the movie, which may be why it was criticized of being pro-South. However it taught me some aspects of the American civil war that I didn't know about, like the Yankee armies pillaging the South or the the so-called carpet-baggers abusing power after the war. 75 years ago the recipe was already known of focusing on a single character to actually tell a story much bigger than him/her. I remember thinking the same about James Cameron's Titanic. The character of Scarlett is touching and her evolution and resolution in life is impressive, although sometimes far-fetched, like when she looses her husband and barely cares (well, this is not the only person that will die in the movie, times were rough). One gets to successively like and dislike her behavior as the movie goes along, but we always understand her motivation. The romance with the men surrounding her (and in particular the one played by Clark Gable, much older) is a bit overdone but nothing surprising for a 1939 movie taking place in the 1860's. The image quality of my Blu-ray edition is pretty good and I loved some scenes in which the characters are silhouettes against the setting sun, a cinematographic choice not common at that period. I cannot deny the cult status of the movie, but as I had already noticed with the other classics Citizen Kane and The Searchers, the topic is not as interesting for me as it is to an American audience, thus I cannot say that it is a masterpiece. I do not have this problem with 2001, A Space Odyssey for example, in which I found the themes more universal.
Rating: 8 /10

Mad Max (1979)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 1979
	Director: George Miller
	Actors: Mel Gibson, Steve Bisley, Joanne Samuel, Hugh Keays-Byrne
	Country: AUS
	Genre: Action, Adventure
	Conditions of visioning: 23.05.2015, DVD, Original Australian with English subtitles
Synopsis: In a near future world, the cops do their best to lay down the law and the outlaw gangs try their hardest to defy the system. Max Rockatansky (Gibson) husband, father and cop turns judge, juror and executioner after his best friend Goose (Bisley), wife Jesse (Samuel) and baby are killed by a motorider gang led by Toecutter (Keays-Byrne).
Review: To get prepared for Mad Mad Fury road, I wanted to watch the History of Mad Max and therefore came back to 1979 and the spectacular cheap budget movie. This movie created for me an archetype of the action movie. The modern lonesome cowboy on the road to protect his people and for revenge in a post-apocalyptical world.  The deaths of Goose and Jesse really lack of credibility. But the roughness of Max turned mad is like the recent (for that time) Dirty Harry with Clint Eastwood. As later for Mad Max, Dirty Harry had already several sequels.  The image is quite bad such as the acting a bit like in the relatively modern Boy Golden. But the bad guy is well embodied by Keays-Byrne. This makes the movie much better. And for that time in Australia, the quality might be acceptable.  One thing is unclear to me. Mad Max is supposed to be in a world close to collapse. But this seems to be quite daily life.
Rating: 4 /10

Woman in gold (2015)

	Also Known As: Die Frau in Gold
	Year of first release: 2015
	Director: Simon Curtis
	Actors: Helen Mirren, Ryan Reynolds, Daniel Brühl
	Country: USA, GB
	Genre: Drama
	Conditions of visioning: 18.05.2015, Schauburg, OV Sneak Preview
Synopsis: Maria Altmann (Mirren) hears about the restitution laws in Austria and sought to regain a world famous painting of her aunt Adele plundered by the Nazis during World War II. Being octogenarian she gets the help of the young attorney Randol Schoenberg (Reynolds) who had also family in Vienna before WW2.
Review: The story as such is great. And even if I did not like Helen Mirren in her role of the Queen, she is usually a good actress. And a story related to a painting could be only great. The acting of Reynolds and other side actors has no credibility. Helen Mirren and Tatiana Maslany transmit much more emotions whereas Mirren's role is more difficult to show the feelings of remembrance. Tom Shilling appreciated already in Oh Boy and The Baader Meinhof Komplex is excellent in his small role.  The sequences in which we see Adele, the woman in gold in the painting of Klimt, are directed sensefully such as the scenes in which Helen Mirren is confronted with her past. Even if the viewer gets this way under the skin of Maria Altmann, all the Austrian are shown as Nazis, as Maria Altmann says. So that although Hubertus Czernin played by Daniel Brühl helped her, for Maria and for the viewer this summary remains at the end. Because the movie is directed that way. This is for me a pity.
Rating: 4 /10

Short Circuit (1986)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 1986
	Director: John Badham (Saturday Night Fever, WarGames)
	Actors: Ally Sheedy (WarGames), Steve Guttenberg (Police Academy 1-4, Cocoon 1-2), Fisher Stevens (The Grand Budapest Hotel)
	Country: USA
	Genre: SF, Comedy
	Conditions of visioning: 25.05.2015, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: A military robot goes berserk after getting hit by a lightning. He will escape and start to learn in contact with Stephanie (Sheedy) while his creator Newton (Guttenberg) is after it.
Review: I liked this movie as a kid but couldn't remember much of it now. I only feared that it would follow the easy path behind E.T. and confront the loose robot with kids, which it fortunately doesn't. Instead it meets the slightly eccentric Stephanie, owner of hordes of pets, and is tracked down by its geek creator and a trigger-happy colonel. The movie is rather targeted at a young audience, with all the gags coming from the robot trying to learn about human habits and all the friendly characters (even the bad guy is shown in a ridiculous manner), so what I actually appreciated as an adult is the very realistic design of the robot that seems fully functional and whose movements are nicely executed on screen, much better than its role model from nice years before: R2D2 to which it steals some gimmicks and sounds. Kudos to the creators of that robot. However, I didn't like at all the character of Newton's assistant played by the otherwise good actor Fisher Stevens, but who was forced this time to play a man of Indian origins while he is not at all himself, so his accent looks completely fake and exaggerated, sounding like a bad copy of Raj in The Big Bang Theory and reminding of the time when Hollywood was using American actors to play the Asian characters (see Breakfast at Tiffany's).
Rating: 4 /10

Big game (2014)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2014
	Director: Jalmari Helander
	Actors: Samuel L. Jackson, Onni Tommila
	Country: FIN, GB, D
	Genre: Adventure, Thriller
	Conditions of visioning: 11.05.2015, Schauburg, OV Sneak Preview
Synopsis: Oskari (Tommila) is just 13 and has to pass the traditional test of Nature. One night and one day of hunting. Alone. As the President (Jackson) is trapped and forced to leave Air Force One, Oskari finds a way to prove his courage.
Review: The plot is quite good and the way the Finnish boy behave with the President is a very good humour. In general the President is ridiculous such as the terrorists. And this made the movie nice. Everybody might be turned ridiculous for fun! Onni and Jorma Tommila are not impressed by this rather Hollywood production with Samuel Jackson and play their role with self confidence. They played already with the same director in Rare exports.  Many scenes are really in the style of adventure movies for kids. The lights, the movements of the characters, the coming of age of Oskari. In this sense, the movie looks a bit like The boy with the golden pants. For the same reasons, it is entertaining and might be good for children (this I cannot tell anymore). But the story is not as interesting as that Swedish production.
Rating: 4 /10

Tomorrowland (2015)

	Also Known As: A World Beyond
	Year of first release: 2015
	Director: Brad Bird (The Iron Giant, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol)
	Actors: George Clooney (Burn after Reading, O'Brother Where Art Thou?), Britt Robertson, Hugh Laurie (House M.D. TV-series)
	Country: USA
	Genre: SF
	Conditions of visioning: 21.05.2015, Mathaeser Kino.
Synopsis: Casey (Robertson) is a clever teenage girl taking after her father, engineer at NASA. She will be selected by a little girl Athena who will show her an imaginary world and push her to meet Frank (Clooney).
Review: I was expecting a lot from the director of The Incredibles and Ratatouille after his successful first live-action movie Mission Impossible 4, maybe too much. The story in Tomorrowland is rather original and the special effects very good-looking and blending with the live action. The relationship between the character of Georges Clooney and the two girls is interesting and well-written, and the actors good (quality brought forward by the use of many close-ups). The first part of the movie is about the Future how it was imagined in the 60's while the second half is more about how we imagine it now, and this leads to a reflection on a topic which is quite actual. But I found that there was too much of a Disney influence on the movie: children or teenagers for the audience to identify with, cast-out characters that will turn out to be special (like every kids dreams to be), family, happy ending of course (no spoiler in saying that). There was just missing a cute talking animal. And as a friend pointed out, there is not a single scene in which the characters eat (only once they drink Coca Cola), which is quite disturbing when coming back from the Far East Film Festival and having seen fourteen movies out of which thirteen include lengthy meal-time scenes. This ascertainment illustrates the gap between popular (Asian) cinema and blockbuster (American) one.
Rating: 6 /10

2010 (1984)

	Also Known As: 2010, The Year we Make Contact
	Year of first release: 1984
	Director: Peter Hyams (Timecop, End of Days)
	Actors: Roy Scheider (Jaws), John Lithgow (Obsession, Blow Out), Helen Mirren (R.E.D.)
	Country: USA
	Genre: SF, Adventure
	Conditions of visioning: 20.05.2015, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: Dr Floyd (Scheider), who was head of the administration that send the Discovery ship to Jupiter in 2001, is contacted nine years later by a Russian colleague about anomalies in the orbit of the abandoned ship, and about a mission to go explore it.
Review: From that movie I remembered only the last images, maybe because I caught the end one day on TV. After watching 2001, A Space Odyssey and reading the novel afterwards, I decided to proceed the same way with this sequel directed 16 years later. As I had read, 2010 is very different from 2001 and fortunately doesn't try to copy it predecessor. For example it uses classical music only in the opening and closing scenes to mark the belonging to the same series, but the rest of the movie is scored by a discreet electronic (synthesizer) theme. Also I could appreciate the slow pace and the mystery but in smaller proportions than in the Kubrick thought-provoking Masterpiece. In fact 2010 is more like a regular movie, i.e. there are many more dialogs than in 2001 and the story is easier to follow, not so much is left for interpretation by the audience. I guess it is thus closer to the novel, but paradoxically could contain major differences as the movie was shot long after the novel was released, while for 2001 both were cross-fertilizing in parallel. The story in 2010 is a nice continuation of the one of 2001 (more the novel actually) including the reflections on Artificial Intelligence, war, aliens and the place of Man in the Universe. Peter Hyams with the multiple hat of screenplay writer, director, cinematographer and producer didn't pay the same meticulous attention to the scientific accuracy as Kubrick did. You notice that when most of the scenes in space have gravity or a poorly simulated absence thereof. The only improved special effects I have noticed compared to the 16-years older original are the views of Jupiter, the rest is just good-looking but not exceptional for the time (about six years after Star Wars and Alien). A honest movie in the end, more of a Adventure than pure realistic Science-Fiction. Simpler but not disappointing with respect to its predecessor. And I always like to see Roy Scheider since his role in the traumatizing Jaws.
Rating: 7 /10

Daredevil (2003)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2003
	Director: Mark Steven Johnson (Ghost Rider)
	Actors: Ben Affleck (Paycheck), Jennifer Garner (Dude Where is my Car, Pearl Harbor, Elektra), Colin Farrell (Kill the Boss), Michael Clarke Duncan (The Green Mile), Jon Favreau (Iron Man 1-3), Joe Pantoliano (The Matrix)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Action
	Conditions of visioning: 19.05.2015, HD VOD, Home cinema
Synopsis: After getting blind when he was kid but compensating with special powers, Matt Murdock (Affleck) fights crimes at night and practices law during the day.
Review: This adaptation of the Marvel comics is widely considered as bad, but I remembered little of it and wanted to see what was done ten year ago now that I have seen the first season of the Netflix TV-series Daredevil. There are indeed only a few good things in this movie, like some aerial views of the city and other scenes that actually look like Sin City, and the dynamic choreography of some fight scenes that resembles a bit the ones in the series. I could recognize some thematics that were also tackled in the TV-series, which allows me to better pin-point the spirit of the original comic book without even reading it: the religious side thanks to the priest character, the side-kick aspect of Foggy, Daredevil getting often beaten down like his father was, Matt Murdock's obsession of defending only innocents, and his internal struggle to remain a "good guy". Apart from that, it was interesting to see another vision of the characters I have learned to know in the TV-series but none of them is nearly as good as good as their counterpart from the TV-series. The love relationship with Elektra is out of place and the character of Wesley is weak and useless. I also didn't like the unrealistic stunts (Daredevil jumping incredible lengths, or from the top of a building SpiderMan-style) that strays away from the identification between the audience and the character. Another annoying aspect: Daredevil is killing people while a strong argument in the series is that he doesn't do that. Finally, the worst may be the music that is most of the time inappropriate. On the positive side I laughed at the cameos by Daredevil creator Stan Lee and super-geek Kevin Smith, and loved the inspired acting of Colin Farrell (the only valuable in this movie) reminding me of his crazy role in Horrible Bosses.
Rating: 3 /10

The Man Who Knew Too Little (1997)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 1997
	Director: Jon Amiel (Entrapment, The Core, Copycat)
	Actors: Bill Murray (Ghostbusters), Joanne Whalley (Willow), Peter Gallagher (American Beauty)
	Country: USA, D
	Genre: Comedy
	Conditions of visioning: 18.05.2015, SD VOD, Home cinema
Synopsis: While visiting his brother (Gallagher) in London, Wallace Ritchie (Murray) is mistaken for a secret agent.
Review: I actually don't know many movies with Bill Murray apart from the classics Ghostbusters and Groundhog Day, and his more recent apparitions in Moonrise Kingdom, Osmosis Jones, Lost in Translation or Zombieland. And I had never heard about The Man Who Knew Too Little whose title is an obvious reference to Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934 and 1956). A well-chosen title for a movie in which Bill Murray's character is completely oblivious to the espionage activities revolving around him, and masterfully escaping them like Mr. Bean would (fitting comparison for a movie set in London). The movie is a succession of misunderstandings (quiproquos) but it doesn't reaches outrageous levels of ridiculous like often in comedies that have to give more and more to keep the audience smiling. I found this movie to be well written (maybe because adapted from a novel)  and of course very well played by the innocent-looking Bill Murray. What I liked in particular is that the story never deviates from its objective and keeps Wallace Ritchie as an unknowing secret agent until the last second.
Rating: 7 /10

En chance til (2014)

	Also Known As: Second chance, Zweite Chance
	Year of first release: 2014
	Director: Susanne Bier
	Actors: Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Ulrich Thomsen, Maria Bonnevie
	Country: DK
	Genre: Melodrama
	Conditions of visioning: 04.05.2015, Schauburg, OV Sneak Preview
Synopsis: Andreas (Coster-Waldau) and Simon (Thomsen) are cops and confronted to a couple of drug addicts having a baby left in his dirt. As his wife Anna (Bonnevie) finds their own baby dead, both turn crazy.
Review: Again Susanne Bier. Good so! As she is to me one of the best modern directors. In the tradition of other Danish directors, it is a melodrama. Because it touches here the life of babies, the viewer can get more emotionnally involved than in the last Susanne Bier (After the wedding). If you have babies, think about twice before watching this movie. For any reason the story is focused on Coster-Waldau while Bonnevie as mother could have given more depth in the story. SPOILER The ending is surprising for the characters as for me.I liked the starters of side stories with an hysterical Anna with her family and with the good cop but alcoholic Simon. Unfortunately these are not developped. Thomsen is excellent as often (e.g. Festen). The main character played by Coster-Waldau has not much authenticity. The directing is also less authentic than usual by Susanne Bier. The lights and the camera do not give her usual authenticity, warmth and emotional closeness but more an impression of action movie.
Rating: 5 /10

Resistance (2015)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2015
	Director: Michael Graziano
	Actors: -
	Country: USA, DK, CDN
	Genre: Documentary
	Conditions of visioning: 07&18.05.2015, SD VOD, 11" computer screen
Synopsis: How have we squandered the miracle of the 20th century - antibiotics - by overusing them thus creating resistant bacterias.
Review: I didn't find this documentary to be groundbreaking in its form but it tackles an important topic, and does so by alternating exposition of facts and heart-breaking testimonies by victims of resistant bacterias, or their family. It is rather informative, but then I wonder why do we need Documentaries to teach us this kind of facts: regular news should do this job, as well as our government. I am not too much of a news-reader but I remember the catch-phrase used by the French advertisement on the topic (Les Antibiotiques c'est pas automatique), meaning that they reached their goal with me. On the opposite, Resistance comes to the sad but obvious conclusion that in the USA, the governmental organizations in care of health (namely the Food and Drug Administration - FDA) are completely powerless to do anything about the problem, and even worse they rely on data they buy from private companies that work for the Pharmaceutical Industry. No surprises there. And the feeble director of the FDA tries to explain in front of camera the difficulties he is facing and the steps to move forward, while in Europe the use of antibiotics for increase growth of cattle was banned ten years ago (twenty years in Denmark!). I am still glad to live in our Old Continent, as I concluded after watching that other Documentary Food Inc.
Rating: 5 /10

Far East Film Festival 2015

Once again, JoRafCinema was glad to be able to attend the Far East Film Festival in Udine (Italy), the largest European showcase for Asian popular cinema, even if for only four days (April 29th - May 2nd).
By now the festival routine is well known to us: registration for a Press accreditation in April, reservation of a room at the off-center bucolic Agroturismo residence Nit des Sicilis own by the very welcoming family Gon (Luciano and Regina), organisation of the not-so-straight-forward train trip to the capital of the Friulu region (the connection has become so difficult that a co-blogger and a friend of JoRafCinema could not attend the festival), and the daily rush for watching many movies, drinking as many Espressi and keeping free time to enjoy the local Cuisine.