Smetto quando voglio (2014)

	Also Known As: I can quit whenever I want
	Year of first release: 2014
	Director: Sydney Sibilia
	Actors: Edoardo Leo, Valeria Solarino, Valerio Aprea
	Country: I
	Genre: Comedy, Black comedy
	Conditions of visioning: 28.09.2015, Schauburg, OV Sneak Preview, Original Italian version with German subtitles
Synopsis: Pietro is a university chemical researcher and gets fired because of the cuts to university. To earn a living for him and his girlfriend Giulia (Solarino) he decides to produce smart drugs recruiting his former colleagues, who are living at the margin of society despite their degrees.
Review: After 5 minutes I thought the movie would turn to an Italian Breaking bad. And five minutes later Iwas laughing at dialogues becoming funny for their situation, and coming from Big Bang Theory. The mix makes a very funny comedy full of authenticity even if satyrical at the same time. The story is built on a cruel Italian reality that spread over a larger part of Europe and forces many brains to flee to Northern Europe or to the USA. It is both extremely true, extremely pessimistic and also extremely funny. I remember having met Italians speaking exactly the same way about the "political" things to get a job, to get anything and being more important than any competence for getting a job in Italy. The way they speak with all the faces is so authentic, I had the impression to meet some of my Italian friends. I found the acting very good.  From the cinematographic point of view, I have been also impressed by the colours. Sometimes bright colours as in the Italian Gialli of the 70s, sometimes neutral colours like in the reality movies of Nanni Moretti or Spaghetti Story. The music is very anglo-saxon but gives a lot of rythm and of fun as well.  The best movie since a long long time. Especially in the Sneak Preview!
Rating: 8 /10

Cavalo dinheiro (2014)

	Also Known As: Horse Money
	Year of first release: 2014
	Director: Pedro Costa
	Actors: Ventura, Vitalina Varela
	Country: P
	Genre: Drama
	Conditions of visioning: 07.09.2015, Schauburg, OV Sneak Preview, Original Portuguese version with German subtitles
Synopsis: Ventura (Ventura) traverses a seemingly endless night populated by the ghosts of his, and his country’s, past. Bureaucratic questioning, and wandering through remembered spaces... and suddenly it is also then, the mid '70s and the time of Portugal's Carnation Revolution, when Ventura got into a knife fight with his friend Joaquim.
Review: The movie starts with a serie of pictures coming from old ages of Portugal accompanied by spleen music by Messiaen (master of the contemporary music). Then the movie turns into a serie of almost still pictures from the hard-to-understand story of Ventura. It is not easy to catch what he is talking about. Rememberances, his friend, bureaucratic question on his daily life. This is for me rather than an experimental or poetic movie (implying movement) as often written by the press and the festivals, a very beautiful pictural exhibition. The way the light falls on the characters or on dark rooms, the way the darkness split space, the way people are visible via the light on them or via their shadow. This is full of magnificent light-contrasted pictures. This is beautiful.  I did not see  the previous film by Costa, Colossal Youth (2006), but it could be interesting from the photographic point of view. From a movie, I expect a bit of movement and a story. And both are missing terribly in that movie. It was not to sleep even if the movie was only 93 minutes, it felt like ages.
Rating: 3 /10

The Evil Dead (1981)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 1981
	Director: Sam Raimi (Spider-Man 1-3, Drag me to Hell)
	Actors: Bruce Campbell (My Name is Bruce, Alien Apocalypse), Ellen Sandweiss, Richard DeManincor
	Country: USA
	Genre: Horror
	Conditions of visioning: 21.09.2015, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: A group of friends heads to a cabin in the woods for the week-end. In the basement they find an old book and a tape recorder.
Review: Similarly to Peter Jackson's Bad Taste, The Evil Dead is the first feature film of a director that started with the Horror genre to end up delivering blockbusters for Hollywood twenty years later. And what a beginning! This movie seems to have participated to the start of a whole sub-genre of "cabin in the woods" movies, culminating with the recent homage/redefinition of the genre properly entitled The Cabin in the Woods. I watched it in the perfect conditions, alone at night and slightly tired i.e. more sensitive to jump-scares. The recent Blu-ray edition shows the movie at its best given the aged 16 mm original format it was filmed in. The sound is also well mixed and rightfully so, as it contributes to the atmosphere of the movie. I love that The Evil Dead is full of energy and shows the talent of the director for using crazy and innovative camera angles, in particular extreme close-ups and travelling in fast-forward at ground level. The limited budget is obviously apparent, but compensated by an increasing madness that leads to the creation of the anti-hero Ash played by a very young Bruce Campbell then, and that we will follow in two more movies that I will definitely watch soon: Evil Dead 2 (a hidden remake with a much larger budget) and Army of Darkness. I am also motivated by the imminent release of the sequel mini-series Ash vs. The Evil Dead.
Rating: 8 /10

Game of Thrones - Season 4 (2014)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2014
	Creators: David Benioff, D.B. Weiss, George R. R. Martin
	Actors: Peter Dinklage (Xmen: Days of a Future Past), Lena Headey (300, Dredd), Emilia Clarke (Terminator: Genesis)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Fantasy
	Conditions of visioning: September 2014, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: With the war for the Iron Throne seemingly to a halt, new alliances develop to take control of the fallen territories.
Review: ...and the damned Winter is still not here. As in my previous reviews I will assume that the reader of this post has seen the previous seasons, so I don't need to warn about spoilers. I have watched the ten 52-minute episodes of the season in just three days, so that I got less the usual feeling that nothing happens in a season spent telling bits of 10 stories taking place at the four corners of the Kingdom and never converging. In this season at last I was glad to see some convergence. Also characters are growing up and changing, the viewers' feeling can evolve towards some of them, but personally I still want to slap Sansa in the face. I liked the character of Oberyn Martell and was pained to see his fate. As good special effects get cheaper as time goes by, we get to see more and more vast city landscapes and battles in this fourth season, for my greatest enjoyment.  The story keeps on getting interesting, partially due to the usual massacre of important members of the cast. In particular the first four episodes (ending with Oathkeeper) constitude a mini-series in themselves and end with a climax, as if they could have been attached to the previous season. A similar thing hapens with the four following one (ending with The Mountain and the Viper), paving the way for a majestic Episode #9 The Watchers of the Wall directed by Neil Marshall (The Descent, Doomsday, Centurion) like if it was a medium-budget movie in itself. Very impressive. The last episode The Children seems weak in comparison but in fact brings the season to a satisfying end. All of that making this season my favorite to date with the first one, and only because that one had the advantage of surprise. The Blu-ray boxset of the fifth season should be available in March 2016.
Rating: 7 /10

Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2009
	Director: Michael Bay
	Actors: Shia LaBeouf (Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull), Megan Fox (Jennifer's Body), Josh Duhamel, John Turturro (O'Brother Where Art Thou?)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Action, SF
	Conditions of visioning: 13.09.2015, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: After discovering that his car transforms into a giant robot and saving the world, Sam (LaBoeuf) tries to have a normal life when entering college. But he finds a piece of an enemy weapon and they will try to retrieve it.
Review: After a long-awaited but slightly disappointing Transformers movie, and before the increasing lack of ideas in Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon and Transformers 4: Age of Extinction, this second movie in the franchise might well be the best. It contains plenty of Transformers action with improved special effects, in particular the opening destruction sequence in Shanghai, and perpetuates the mix of action and "dumb" humour dear to Michael Bay (see also Bad Boys 2). I write "dumb" because obviously one cannot consider fart/ass/dick jokes as true comedy, and there are at least twenty throughout the movie. But it does contain some stupid quotes that made me laugh out loud: Frat guy: Is that your car in our bushes? Sam Witwicky: No... uh, this is a friend of mine's, he just... went to go get you a tighter shirt... Frat guy: There isn't a tighter shirt! We checked! Frat guy: How about I park my foot up your ass? Sam Witwicky: What size shoe do you wear? Or also: Agent Simmons: What you are about to see is top secret. Do NOT tell my mother! Shia LaBeouf seems to have found the perfect role for his way of acting (at least until the 4th movie in which he is not), Megan Fox seems to have plastified since the first movie, John Turturro is very funny if you like his style, and the rest of the cast is just OK. In this second movie we start to see massive scenes of destruction with no consequence and no visible deaths in order not to shock the most sensitive viewers, which always annoys me. As a fan of robot action I couldn't miss this movie (and the whole franchise), but it definitely could have been done better.
Rating: 6 /10

xXx (2002)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2002
	Director: Rob Cohen (Daylight, Stealth)
	Actors: Vin Diesel (Pitch Black, Riddick), Asia Argento (The Stendhal Syndrom, Land of the Dead), Marton Csokas (The Fellowship of the Rings, Noah), Samuel L. Jackson (Pulp Fiction)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Action
	Conditions of visioning: 10.09.2015, HD VOD, Home cinema
Synopsis: Skateboarder / stuntman / video artist / extremely cool guy, Xander Cage (Diesel) is kidnapped then hired by a goverment agency looking for a potential undercover agent that does not look like a secret agent.
Review: Back in 2002 Vin Diesel had just been discovered in Pitch Black and was starting to become a big action hero with Fast & Furious. So the studios were looking for movies to produce that would fit him, and xXx is obviously built to that purpose, and to please the audience that liked him in Fast & Furious. The movie indeed contains cool stunts with on-board cameras (pre-Go Pro), a heavy metal soundtrack, gun and fistfights, cool cars, tattooed gangsters, gadgets and a load of punchlines. Which makes it funny to watch with a bunch of friends with pizza and beer, but make you realize how empty it is if you look a bit more carefully: the humour is dumb, the special effects borderline and the actors unconvincing. The idea of a James Bond movie (including its typical villain and doomsday weapon) lead by a anti-hero is the single concept around which the movie is build, but unfortunately that is spoiled by a film-making trying to be cooler than cool. Welcome to the Xander Zone!
Rating: 4 /10

Coraline (2009)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2009
	Director: Henry Selick (The Nightmare before Christmas)
	Actors (voices): Dakota Fanning, Teri Hatcher, John Hodgman
	Country: USA
	Genre: Animation, Fantasy
	Conditions of visioning: 06.09.2015, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: Coraline (Fanning) moves into a countryside apartment with her parents. After meeting the neighbours, she will acquire a doll that looks suspiciously like herself, an discover a tunnel leading to a dream world.
Review: Coraline belongs to the short list of western animated films partly intended for adults (in Asia they are much more common), or at least that contains elements that are not all beautiful and perfect. Some scenes are even slightly disturbing or spooky (the ghost children, the people with button sewn on their eyes...). Not very surprising when you have seen the previous movie by the same director The Nightmare before Christmas. What is most impressive about this movie is that it was produced using the traditional techniques of stop-motion, i.e. image by image animation of puppets. Only a few elements in the movie were enhanced or created using digital technology. This is very impressive, and Coraline may be the movie in which this century-old art is best looking. There are many scenes that are pleasantly colorful and fantastic. But all in all, I could not really immerse into the atmosphere of the movie, maybe because I am too detached from the preoccupations of the main character.
Rating: 5 /10

Broadway therapy (2014)

	Also Known As: Broadway therapy
	Year of first release: 2014
	Director: Peter Bogdanovich
	Actors: Imogen Potts, Owen Wilson, Kathryn Hahn, Will Forte, Jennifer Aniston, Rhys Ifans
	Country: USA, D
	Genre: Comedy
	Conditions of visioning: 03.09.2015, Schauburg, German version
Synopsis: Before the start of the new play directed by Arnold (Winston), played by Seth (Ifans) and written by Josh (Forte). Arnold and Delta Simmons (Hahn) are a couple. Josh and Jane Clairemont (Aniston) are a couple. Isabella Patterson (Potts) is a call girl. Both Arnold and Seth are in the same hotel with their own call girl. Arnold pays his call girl Isabella 30000 dollars to stop that job and work as actress, that is what she always wanted to do. When she has an audition in his play, the ménage à six starts.
Review: I wa not very motivated by that movie because the trailer told me that it was not my style. But well I had seen so many bad movies in the last two months, that I wanted to try something new. And I had also a good advice. The movie was in German and is not released in English in my town. But I watched it and this was a very nice evening. This vaudeville à la Feydeau is funny and very light. The stories and dialogues are often crazy but it is exactly this humour that makes the movie actually authentic and funny. Every one heard this kind of dialogues in his private life. Or imagined that somebody would say that in some situation. But there are so many things happening that the dialogues are short and there is nothing much more original than daily life. It is almost like a good Woody Allen without the charm of Woody's original dialogues. The acting is very good. Aniston is hardly recognisable but amazing. Imogen Potts is excellent after her remarkable Filth and Long way down. This woman has a brilliant future in front of her!
Rating: 7 /10

Queen of the Desert (2015)

	Also Known As: Königin der Wüste
	Year of first release: 2015
	Director: Werner Herzog
	Actors: Nicole Kidman, James Franco, Jay Abdo, Holly Earl
	Country: USA, MA
	Genre: Romance
	Conditions of visioning: 24.08.2015, Schauburg, OV Sneak Preview
Synopsis: Gertrude Bell (Kidman) is the daughter of a Lord and rejects the traditional image of the woman in the Victorian Great Britain. She becomes an experienced explorer and works with the British Empire not for it when the first world war. In her travel she meets Henry Cadogan (Franco), an embassy employee, Fattuh (Abdo), her beduin guide.
Review: It makes several weeks that the OV Sneak Preview does not bring good movie. One again! The potentially interesting story of Gertrude Bell and her role in the building of Baghdad archeaological museum are not really told. The interest of Bell for the Middle East cultures is not shown at all. The only talks with natives are about her beauty and her stubbornness. The story is focused on the love story with the British Casanova Cadogan. At the end, it looks like Churchill considers the opinion of a beautiful traveler only because she speaks the native languages. Is this an innuendo of the USA to the bad European and specially British policy in the Middle East at that time? Any viewer would make the connection with the current situation in Syria and Iraq. The is no actor playing well or seriously his role. Kidman looks hung-up and not only because her new surgeries. Franco looks ridiculous of false romantism. Even Abdo and other side roles are killing their roles when they look at the camera by distraction, clearly not on purpose. In that sense the direction is awful as well as many scenes look either unrealistic or far-fetched only to enhance the romance.  Only one thing could be remembered: Nicole Kidman in a wet T-shirt show in the desert. Ridiculous.
Rating: 1 /10

The Big Lebowski (1998)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 1998
	Director: Joel & Ethan Coen (Fargo, A serious Man)
	Actors: Jeff Bridges (Tron, Iron Man), John Goodman (Speed Racer), Julianne Moore (Jurassik Park: The Lost World), Steve Buscemi (Armageddon)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Comedy
	Conditions of visioning: 01.09.2015, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: The Dude (Bridges), Jeffrey Lebowski of his real name, is mistaken by thugs for a millionaire whose wife owes money to their boss. Trying to get compensation for his ruined carpet will throw him in the middle of a family business that involves kidnapping, nihilists and a million dollars.
Review: "Sometimes there's a man... I won't say a hero, 'cause, what's a hero? But sometimes, there's a man. And I'm talkin' about the Dude here. Sometimes, there's a man, well, he's the man for his time and place. He fits right in there". I could probably say about this movie the same thing as this quote says about its main character. For me the best of the what the Coen brothers produced when they were at their top shape, it is hard to describe what happens in this movie (like in others of theirs). Is it a movie about bowling? Or a movie about ordinary folks (almost caricatures) facing events that take them far out of their comfort zone. The story is deliciously twisted (who came up with that one?!?) and I love the soundtrack, but what really makes this movie a masterpiece is its characters and of course the actors that embody them. The Dude, Walter and Donny are fantastic, and surrounded by colorful figures like the big Lebowski, Brandt, Maude, the Nihilists and of course Jesus the bowling god (Turturro). There is not much more to say about it. I love this movie that always puts me in a joyful mood after watching it. This was the first time in Blu-ray and the quality is actually not very good but that didn't spoil my viewing. If you have never seen it I strongly recommend that you watch it, and if you have already... well I guess sooner or later you will want to see it again!
Rating: 10 /10

The Visit (2015)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2015
	Director: M. Night Shyamalan (The 6th Sense, Signs, Unbreakable, After Earth)
	Actors: Olivia DeJonge, Ed Oxenbould, Deanna Dunagan, Peter McRobbie
	Country: USA
	Genre: Thriller
	Conditions of visioning: 03.09.2015, Cinemaxxx, MFFF2015
Synopsis: A single mom left her parents after a fight when she was nineteen. Now her two kids (DeJonge, Oxenbould) wish to visit their grand-parents (Dunagan, McRobbie) and shoot a documentary about the encounter.
Review: The talented M. Night Shyamalan pretty much stuck to the same style of movie-making between The 6th Sense (I haven't seen anything older from him) and The Happening, including Lady in the Water. He then tried some new things with The Last Airbender and After Earth with little success. I saw The Visit at the Munich Fantasy Filmfest and the director was present to introduce his movie, explaining that it was independently produced outside of the big studios system, because he wanted to find again this freedom of creativity, but consequently he was not sure that he would manage to get it distributed. The movie is shot in a hand-held documentary style which is trendy those days. The effect works well. The most interesting thing in the movie is (the director elaborated about this in his introduction) the conjunction of humour and creepiness that he wanted close to what David Lynch did. Indeed I remember some funny feelings when watching The Twin Peaks TV-series, not knowing if I should laugh or be spooked. I think that he was not fully successful but manages to produce a semi-original combination of the sub-genres Found Footage and (spoiler, highlight to read) Home Invasion. A couple of scenes are to be remembered but the movie exhibits several defects (the kids have no phone signal in the farm but high-speed Internet!?) and the ending is too quickly expedited for my taste. A nice little movie anyway, but in a similar style I prefer the work of Ti West (The Innkeepers, The Testament).
Rating: 5 /10