Arme riddere (2011)

	Also Known As: Jackpot
	Year of first release: 2011
	Director: Magnus Martens
	Actors: Kyrre Hellum, Henrik Mestad, Mats Ousdal
	Country: N
	Genre: Black Comedy
	Conditions of visioning: 17.11.2013, Schauburg, German version
Synopsis: Terrified and bloody, Oscar Svendsen awakes clinched to a shotgun in a strippers joint. Around him 8 dead men, and police aiming at him. To Oscar it's clear that he is innocent. It all started when four chaps won 1,7 million on the pools...
Review: This movie was thought as a preparation before my holidays in Norway, and I heard about also as good comedy. Well done! A very black comedy :) The story is taken from a novel of Jo Nesbo. The story confuses the viewer between truth and lie and reminds for that Usual suspects. But all the story is told with such a humour, with very funny caricatures of the inspector and the colleagues of Oscar. The acting is not so demanding and all act correctly their roles. Some secondary characters are really well worked, like the quite policeman of the town and the owner of the stripper. The rest of the directing is correct with some good funny ideas.
Rating: 6 /10

Captain Phillips (2013)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2013
	Director: Paul Greengrass
	Actors: Tom Hanks, Barkhad Abdi
	Country: USA
	Genre: War, Drama
	Conditions of visioning: 11.11.2013, Schauburg, OV Sneak preview
Synopsis: The true story of Captain Richard Phillips and the 2009 hijacking by Somali pirates of the US-flagged MV Maersk Alabama.
Review: The story focuses on the duel of the American captain against the Somali captain. As a good American movie, it shows the small weaknesses of the Americans, the crazy uneducated terrorists and the US army saving the good people. Not my kind of story. Even if this highlights for the first time in a movie the issue of modern piracy, but not in a constructive way. The acting of Tom Hanks is good and similar to Cast away, the lost man that resists and keeps faith.
Rating: 3 /10

Blue Jasmine (2013)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2013
	Director: Woody Allen
	Actors: Cate Blanchett, Alec Baldwin, Sally Hawkins
	Country: USA
	Genre: Drama
	Conditions of visioning: 10.11.2013, Schauburg
Synopsis: Jasmine French used to be on the top of the heap as a New York elite, but now is returning to her estranged sister in San Francisco utterly ruined. As Jasmine struggles with her haunting memories of a privileged past bearing dark realities she ignored, she tries to recover in her present. Unfortunately, it all proves a losing battle as Jasmine's narcissistic hangups and their consequences begin to overwhelm her.
Review: The story is very moving and we go deep in the distress of Jasmine. It is nevertheless strange to feel pity to such a petty person. I guess, I am affected as a man in front of a woman in distress, but that women would have no (or less) mercy. Finally, this movie could have been a good social critic as Buñuel did, but no. The storyline is the opposite of the standard Hollywood book, having here negative climax filmed like climax. This was original. The acting of Blanchett and Hawkins are very good, in particular their last sister scene. Men are more side objects, except the boyfriends of Sally Hawkins.
Rating: 7 /10

Le silencieux (1973)

	Also Known As: The silent one
	Year of first release: 1973
	Director: Claude Pinoteau
	Actors: Lino Ventura, Lea Massari
	Country: F, I
	Genre: Polar
	Conditions of visioning: 08.11.2013, DVD
Synopsis: Un savant physicien soviétique est enlevé par les services secrets britanniques. Dès lors celui-ci est poursuivi par le KGB.
Review: The story is a very good one. It is at the same level as a good Hitchcock spy movie. As usual in a French movie, no special effects. Surprisingly in the middle of the movie, there is a bit of music very linked to Hitchcock style, so that the originality of the movie looses a bit. Even if music could have make the first part better by giving a bit of suspense. This second Lino Ventura movie from the series is better than Un témoin dans la ville, but is not yet a master of suspense.
Rating: 5 /10

Un témoin dans la ville (1959)

	Also Known As: Der Mörder kam um Mitternacht
	Year of first release: 1959
	Director: Édouard Molinaro
	Actors: Lino Ventura, Franco Fabrizi, Sandra Milo
	Country: F, I
	Genre: Polar
	Conditions of visioning: 07.11.2013, DVD
Synopsis: Une lutte sans merci oppose un criminel et le réseau des radio-taxis dans Paris.
Review:  I just bought a pack of 4 movies with Lino Ventura and this is the first and oldest one. The story is relatively basic but both Lino Ventura and Franco Fabrizi are leading it well. The book is by Boileau-Narcejac, famous French crime novelist. The oppressive story tried to be enhanced by the lights, but this does not fit. The transition of lights are often on a wrong timing with regard to the story or the movement of the characters on the picture, but the will was there. The position of lights and camera, the cut tend to know what they want but the realisation is not very successful. Maybe low budget or wrong materials compared to Murnau movies. At least this paves the way to other French crime movies of the 50s and 60s that are also quite silent and dark.
Rating: 4 /10

Monsters University (2013)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2013
	Director: Dan Scanlon
	Actors (Voices): Billy Crystal (This is Spinal Tap), John Goodman (The Big Lebowski), Steve Buscemi (Armageddon)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Animation, Comedy
	Conditions of visioning: 14.11.2013, HD VOD, Home cinema
Synopsis: Mike (Crystal) has always wanted to become a scarer. He enters Monsters University and meets his future best friend Sullivan (Goodman).
Review: It is nice to meet again the characters we loved in Monsters Inc: Mike, Sullivan and Randy, plus a large number of new monsters all more colorful and perculiar one than the other. The big question was: would Pixal manage to come up with an interesting story for this prequel of a huge hit amongs kids? First the idea to do a prequel is great in this context, and we get to see how Mike met Sullivan. Then they waited twelve years to produce this second movie, so they had plenty of time to mature ideas and maybe try to follow their audience which has also aged. So in general I found the story pretty good. The Computer Generated Images are at the level of what is done nowadays but don't intend to be photorealist because they describe a fantasy world (unlike for example in Rango that I have seen recently). We are getting used to good CGIs nowadays and the ones in Monsters University look good. I love in particular the animation of the five-eyed character Squishy that conveys a lot of emotions. It is interestng to notice that the faces of the monsters were designed to partially ressemble the ones of the actors giving them voices (look at a picture of Peter Sohn against Squishy to understand what I mean). Another success for Pixel.
Rating: 7 /10

Game of Thrones - Season 2 (2012)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2012
	Creators: David Benioff, D.B. Weiss
	Actors: Peter Dinklage (Xmen: Days of a Future Past), Lena Headey (300, Dredd)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Fantasy
	Conditions of visioning: October-November 2013, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: The war between four pretendents to the Iron throne is slowly progressing.
Review: I will assume that the reader of this review has seen the first season of Game of Thrones so I will not alert for spoilers about that one. My general feeling about the second season is that it looks much more like a TV-series than the first one. It seemed to me that a lot of time is spent showing characters talking to each other, in a tent or a room or a castle or outside. The surroundings change but we always see two guys talking, while the first season was more taking the time to set the atmosphere of this foreign world. A direct consequence is that when you look back at the whole season actually not much happens. It gives me the feeling that now that the audience is addicted, the producers will spread the story over many years! This feeling doesn't motivate me for buying the third season which costs around 40 euros. On the positive side, the characters we liked and hated in the first season are still around, the music is still good and the visual effects of high quality in the rare scenes in which they are needed (a few apparitions of the dragons and one battle). One bonus in the blu-ray set tells the story of the different families in the shape of animated drawings, which is nice.
Rating: 5/10

Exit Marrakech (2013)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2013
	Director: Carolin Link
	Actors: Ulrich Tukur, Samuel Schneider, Hafsia Herzi
	Country: D
	Genre: Drama
	Conditions of visioning: 29.10.2013, Schauburg
Synopsis: Troubled teenager Ben (16) unintentionally confronts his father Heinrich, a successful German theatre director staging a play in Marrakesh, with his past and his neglected responsibilities. After a falling out with his estranged father, Ben loses himself in the shadowy Medina and sleazy nightclubs of Marrakesh, where he meets a feisty Berber girl Karima and follows her to her hometown, far beyond the city and across unfamiliar and barren land. She helps him gain the courage to stand up to his father.
Review: The story is a classical coming-to-age movie combined this time with a road movie in order to show nice views, as Carolin Link likes to. The acting and the directing have nothing special and are quite flat, but the background of the image is nice. The souk in Marrakech, the desert, the gardens. The movie is entertaining, but does not move me at all.
Rating: 4 /10

Dr Strangelove or How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb (1964)

	Also Known As: Dr Folamour (French), Dr Seltsam (German)
	Year of first release: 1964
	Director: Stanley Kubrick
	Actors: Peter Sellers
	Country: USA, GB
	Genre: SF, War
	Conditions of visioning: 26.10.2013, DVD
Synopsis: An insane general starts a process to nuclear holocaust that a war room of politicians and generals frantically try to stop.
Review: The story is not about Dr Strangelove directly but about the crazyness arising in people having power on nuclear weapons. This topic touches at every era, because weapons and massive destruction weapons exist since chemical weapons of the First world war and will not stop so soon. The rythm of the story is not so good and maybe a bit of music or sounds would have helped. The acting is typical 60s by exagerating a bit the characters so that it does not look authentic any more and all people look crazy. But on that time, it was normal and the people who were supposed to be crazy have a crazy look, and this is Dr Strangelove. The other crazy people are actually normal military officers. For the time, after the Cuba crisis, it is impressive to make such a critic movie in the USA without being put in jail as communist.
Rating: 6 /10

Die Hard 4.0: Live Free or Die Hard (2007)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2007
	Director: Len Wiseman (Underworld 1-2, Total Recall)
	Actors: Bruce Willis (Looper, R.E.D.), Justin Long (Dodgeball, Jeepers Creepers), Timothy Olyphant (Hitman, Rango), Maggie Q (Naked Weapon, Mission Impossible III), Kevin Smith (Clerks 1-2, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back), Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Deathproof, The Thing)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Action
	Conditions of visioning: 12.11.2013, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: Now detective in New York and separated from his wife, John McClane (Willis) is supposed to escort a young computer hacker (Long) to Washington, and doing so finds himself in the middle of a cyber-attack against the US government.
Review: With this episode I complete my review of the five Die Hard films. It is interesting to point out that even if it is the most recent I had seen (about two years ago), I remembered from it much less than from the original trilogy. As mitigation, it is true that I have seen it only once. I found it to be the weakest of the five, but not as bad as I remembered. Obviously the new generation of directors like Len Wiseman are not as talented as John McTiernan or Renny Harlin. Also the 90's are over so a Die Hard movie set after the 9/11 events is something different. Produced twelve years after the previous episode, Die Hard 4.0 looks more like an action movie not attached to the franchise; the character of John McClane just appears there because the cinema goers like him. The idea of throwing McClane in the middle of an electronic war is good, as we know he not friend of technology. As in many Action movie attempts of the years 2000, the action is exagerated in this one as well (McClane riding an F-15 jet plane!?!), but there are some quite good stunts, from people and from vehicles (McClane taking down a helicopter by throwing a car at it because he was out of bullets!). The sidekick Justin Long might be present only to attract a younger audience but that's OK, I like him. Mary Elisabeth Winstead is also alright as McClane's daughter. I had forgotten there were so many known faces in this movie. Most funny is Kevin Smith (director of Dogma, Clerks 1-2...) portraying the ultimate geek. Not cult as its predecessors, but quite OK to watch after all.
Rating: 6 /10