Ammore e malavita (2017)

	Also Known As: Love and bullets
	Year of first release: 2017
	Director: Antonio e Marco Manetti
	Actors: Giampaolo Morelli, Serena Rossi, Claudia Gerini, Carlo Buccirosso, Raiz, Franco Ricciardi
	Country: I
	Genre: Music, Polar, Comedy
	Conditions of visioning: 24.09.2018, Schauburg, OV Sneak Preview, Italian/Neapolitan with German subtitle
Synopsis: In order to avoid the death of the husband (the criminal boss Don Vincenzo, "King of the Fish") (Buccirosso), Donna Maria (Gerini) sends her henchmen to kill a lookalike (a shoe-seller) and then she sets up a fake funeral, while the husband is hiding in a secret place. But a nurse saw Don Vincenzo alive in the hospital while he was supposed to be dead, as the TV says. To hush the witness up, Don Vincenzo orders to his best trained bodyguards, Ciro (Morelli) and Rosario (Raiz), to find the nurse and kill her. Ciro finds the nurse: surprisingly she is Fatima (Rossi), the only girl he ever loved, which he had abandoned when he began his criminal career. To save her, Ciro hides Fatima by his uncle Mimmo (Buonomo), and starts a bloody fight with all his clan, including his best friend Rosario and the right hand of the big boss Gennaro (Ricciardi).
Review: The plot is quite simple and reminds the video games classical like Moktar (aka Titus the Fox). And this plays in Napoli and not between France and Marocco. The big originality of the movie is to mix some cruel crime scenes with songs. This effect makes these scenes hilarious. Apart from some explanatory scenes with Don Vincenzo or Donna Maria and before Ciro meets Fatima, the story itself is rather a kind of video game where Ciro meets one or several bad guys or a big boss and has a fight scene.  The acting is in accordance with the style of the movie, both authentic and farcical. The soundtrack does not show the unity provided by Les parapluies de Cherbourg by Jacques Demy or La La Land by Damien Chazelle.
Rating: 6 /10

Razzia sur la Chnouf (1955)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 1955
	Director: Henri Decoin
	Actors: Jean Gabin (Le Pacha, Flic ou Voyou), Marcel Dalio, Lino Ventura (La Gifle)
	Country: F
	Genre: Polar
	Conditions of visioning: 14.12.2018, in-flight entertainment 8" screen
Synopsis: Henri (Gabin) is back to France after 10 years in the USA to organize the drug dealing trade for the boss Liski.
Review: While flying to France for the Christmas holidays, I had to watch at least one French film and I chose than one. I was mistaken by the title and thought I would be watching a comedy like Les Tontons Flingueurs or Les Barbouzes, while in fact it is a very serious movie about drug trafficking in France in the 50's. If you want, the equivalent of Blow with Johnny Depp but two decades earlier and in France! Just for that it deserves to be seen. It is very weird to see this black and white action in a typical French setting of Paris: Cafés, people eating all the time (did you ever notice how you recognize French or Asian movies with that in contrast to American movies in which eating is never a pleasure) and drinking strong liquors, ample frock coats (redingotes) like were trendy at the time for both men and women, known French actors and settings. But all the rules of the drug-dealers movie were already there, albeit on very small scales. The boss, importers, manufacturers, distributors and dealers circuit is described for various drugs that were starting to make their way in Paris at that time: cocaine, opium and marijuana. And armed bullies (one played by Lino Ventura) are here to make sure no one double-crosses the boss. There is even a romance between the busy Henri and an innocent waitress, shown in a quite open way I find for the 50's. The same goes for the depraved female character of Léa. So in the end it is a bit weird to watch but well done for the time, and extremely interesting.
Rating: 7 /10

The Meg (2018)

	Also Known As: En eaux troubles (France), Megalodon (Chile)
	Year of first release: 2018
	Director: Jon Turteltaub (Cool Runnings, The Sorcerer's Apprentice, National Treasure 1-2)
	Actors: Jason Statham (Transporter, The Expendables), Bingbing Li (A World without Thieves, Transformers: Age of Extinction), Rainn Wilson (Super)
	Country: USA, CN
	Genre: Action, Horror
	Conditions of visioning: 28.12.2018, in-flight entertainment 8" screen
Synopsis: After discovering a reserve filled with prehistoric animals, the team on-board a top-of-the-art marine research base calls Jonas (Statham) to the rescue to deal with one that escaped.
Review: To think I almost went to see it in the cinema only based on the title (Megalodon in Chile) and poster. For sure it would have allowed me to better enjoy the action and be less distracted by the ridiculous story and acting. 43 years after Jaws (waw!), movie-makers and producers don't know anymore what to do to surf on the still popular sub-genre. I like how they went full pop-culture with Piranha 3DD (but not in its sequel Piranha 3DD), but usually the attempts fail at going younger/trendier (Shark Night 3D), cheaper/weirder (the Sharnako series) or in the case of The Meg, bigger. The 1999 Deep Blue Sea was OK but still only a B-movie. The Meg goes full crazy with a basic story centered around the apparitions of the animal and the poorly depicted relationship between the main characters. The situation is not helped by the Chinese co-production which shows in the mandatory presence of mediocre actors with little interest, the location, the bad humor and morale, and some bad special effects (the beach with thousands of perfectly-spaced buoys, ridiculous). I complained about the Science in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadow but the one here is not much better, and without the excuse of being a SF movie adapted from a cartoon TV-series. Going deeper than the Mariana trench in a small sub-marine, really?? And the behavior of the mega-shark makes no sense. All the bad things in this movie are well listed on this YouTube video. Usually they exaggerate the bad traits of a movie for comic purposes, but this time they just state the obvious. I don't rate it worse because there is still some fun in watching Jason Statham kicking the ass of a prehistoric Megalodon (also watch The Rock doing it to a flying wolf in Rampage), but this no cinema, this is pop-corn entertainment.
Rating: 2 /10