2012 (2009)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2009
	Director: Roland Emmerich (Independence Day, Stargate)
	Actors: John Cusack (Being John Malkovich), Thandie Newton (Mission: Impossible II), Chiwetel Ejiofor, Woody Harrelson (Ed-TV), Danny Glover (Leathal Weapon), Oliver Plat (A Time to Kill, Fargo TV-series)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Action
	Conditions of visioning: 07.04.2015, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: Scientists discover solar anomalies that will announce a major cataclysm. When things go wrong, divorced unsuccessful writer Jackson Curtis (Cusack) does everything he can to save his family.
Review: A disaster movie of epic proportion that fits well in the filmography of the most American of German directors, surfing on the trendy story of the Mayan calendar that predicted the end of the world for the year 2012. One should watch this movie only for the impressive destruction scenes, because otherwise you can be disappointed. Indeed I appreciate the talent of the director for showing the destruction of cities, a talent largely improved since the famous mock-up of the White House in Independence Day. In 2012 we get to see gigantic volcanoes, entire cities sinking in the ocean or in the ground, kilometer-high tsunamis, all thanks to the magic of digital effects. Around those scenes the scientific credibility is very low (the Earth crust shifting by 2000 kilometers in a matter of hours), the characters development ultra-simplistic (the ex-husband still in love with his wife, the president sacrificing himself, the father not talking to his son, the forgetful scientist, Chinese monks...), like in World War Z the main character is always at the wrong place when a unique event occurs and survives it all, and towards the end the hurdles this guy has to cross are just too much, and the image quality even gets poor during the last half hour in the ships. A half hour too long.
Rating: 3 /10

Layer Cake (2004)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2004
	Director: Matthew Vaughn (Kingsman: The Secret Service, Kick-Ass, X-men: First Class)
	Actors: Daniel Craig (Casino Royale), Sienna Miller, Michael Gambon, Tom Hardy (The Dark Knight Returns), Ben Whishaw (Skyfall), Burn Gorman (Pacific Rim)
	Country: GB
	Genre: Thriller, Action
	Conditions of visioning: 06.04.2015, DVD, 11" computer screen
Synopsis: A clever drug dealer (Craig) is about to retire when his supplier assigns him two new jobs that will disturb his plans.
Review: From the same director I liked Kick-Ass, was impressed by the good start of a new trilogy with X-men: First Class, and very curious to see Kingsman: Secret Services after Vaughn refused to direct Star Wars VII to do it. I already bought the Blu-ray of Stardust, the only movie directed by Vaughn that I haven't seen yet. In Layer Cake one can already recognize a style that Vaughn will show again in full in Kingsman but from which you only get hints in his two American movies: credible characters with realistic reaction, original structure, unpredictable events and some level of offbeat humor. It is also interesting to see many actors that will be seen again in the following years in big productions, including a pre-Bond Daniel Craig. I was mistaken in thinking Layer Cake was in the line of Guy Ritchie movies (Snatch incidentally produced by Vaughn, Smoking Aces, Rocknrolla), while in fact it is more anchored in reality and contains less humour. It is more the kind of movie in which you feel bad for the main character, in spite of him being a criminal, and that from the very start of the story. In the end an original European gangster movie.
Rating: 7 /10

A Time to Kill (1996)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 1996
	Director: Joel Schumacher (Flatliners, Phone Booth)
	Actors: Matthew McConaughey (Killer Joe), Sandra Bullock (Speed, Gravity), Samuel L. Jackson (Pulp Fiction), Kevin Spacey (American Beauty), Donald Sutherland (Space Cowboys), Kiefer Sutherland (Flatliners)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Thriller
	Conditions of visioning: 04.04.2015, SD VOD,11" computer screen
Synopsis: After his daughter is raped and left for dead by two White Trash young adults, Carl Lee Haley (Jackson) seeks advice to Brigance (McConaughey) in the case he would commit self justice.
Review: I learned only recently (thanks to Netflix again) that the novel by John Grisham that I had read and liked had been adapted to a movie twenty years ago, and the cast looked promising. What I liked in the novel, although it is a bit easy, was the depiction of the usually taboo conflicts between White and Black people in the southern USA. I also liked the whole trial story, and the relationship between the young inexperienced white lawyer defending against all odds a black father guilty of (spoiler, highlight to read) a double homicide in front of witnesses. In his movie Joel Schumacher managed to distillate exactly the same atmosphere as I remembered from the book, for a large part thanks to its two main actors: a great Matthew McConaughey in one of his early roles and Samuel L. Jackson that was showing real acting talent long before becoming Nick Fury in the Marvel movies franchise. And also thanks to a solid bunch of secondary roles: Sutherland father and son (one as mentor, the other as hate-driven delinquent), Ashley Judd as the loving wife, Sandra Bullock as a prodigy lawyer, Kevin Spacey (pre-American Beauty, wonderful) and Patrick McGoohan as District Attorney and Judge respectively. The sets in a southern American town also look good, and the general visual aspect of the movie is pleasant even if not particularly original. So the movie is a quite literal adaptation, but a good one.
Rating: 7 /10

Print the Legend (2014)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2014
	Director: Luis Lopez, J. Clay Tweel
	Actors: Chris Anderson, Bruce Bradshaw, Craig Broady
	Country: USA
	Genre: Documentary
	Conditions of visioning: 03.04.2015, SD VOD, 11" computer screen
Synopsis: A brief History of 3D printing at home, from early concepts to the current status of the market.
Review: When reviewing a documentary it is always difficult to differentiate between the interest of the topic (which should not enter into account in the rating, or not much) and  the way it is told (i.e. the talent and originality of the documentary crew which should be rated). I think in the past I have overrated documentaries like Side by Side  and Visions of Light because I found the topic fascinating. I have now realised that and rated for example Life Itself more fairly, because the topic interested me a  lot (well, this is why I chose to watch documentaries in the first place) but the telling of this story has nothing exceptional. For once, I can say that the message in Print the Legend is more interesting than the story used to carry it: Indeed we follow mainly two start-up companies in the field of 3D printing (i.e. manufacturing in your home any small object based on its computer design). Since recently (about two years) it is said that this technology bears an enormous potential and that in no time everybody will have such printer at home. The documentary shows the evolution of this field in the past five years since prototypes were built, the companies funded (one of them with more than 2 Million $ against 100 000 expected on Kickstarter), their industrial giant concurrent companies responded, conflicts divided the companies' founders, and different applications are debated: robot-arm for children vs. 3D printed guns. It is interesting that the documentary relates this story while we don't know yet what will the future bring to this technology, but where it is very strong is in using this example to draw a sad image of the American Dream, i.e. developing a project (usually a company) to reach the highest success after starting from nothing. The documentary shows examples of the untold consequences of reaching this dream: being unable to deliver what you promised, entering in conflict with your co-founders to the point of  becoming the only CEO after loosing them even as friends (didn't I see that also in The Social Network?), selling out your dreams and beliefs, becoming a tyrant at work, abusing of your employees. Someone tells in the documentary that everybody has read the biography from Steve Jobs, and they think it gives them the right to become assholes at work. I find in general very extreme the way young entrepreneurs not only want to succeed but want to succeed a lot and become extremely rich instead of simply succeeding in life (nowadays the dream career is to become very rich very quickly by inventing a killer app), and that they want to do it as quickly as possible (the start-up concept) and don't take a lifetime to build their company. Finally at the end of the documentary, it seems to me that not so many 3D printers are sold, but that simply the concept generates a lot of virtual money and attracts investors, i.e. makes money with money and not yet with a valuable product.
Rating: 7 /10

Life Itself (2014)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2014
	Director: Steve James
	Actors: Roger Ebert, Chaz Ebert, Gene Siskel
	Country: USA
	Genre: Documentary
	Conditions of visioning: 03.04.2015, SD VOD, 11" computer screen
Synopsis: A documentary about the famous cinema critic Roger Ebert who received the Pulitzer price in 1975 and died in 2013, based on his autobiography with the same title.
Review: The man was not so well known in Europe, and the most I knew about him was from his interview on the Blu-ray of Casablanca. I have learned many more things thanks to this documentary, for example that he was a born newspaper writer, already strongly gifted when he was chief editor of his high school journal. In his first years of professional journalism in Chicago he became a party animal and an alcoholic ; he gave up alcohol altogether one day in the  80's. After getting the Pulitzer for his written critics, he started to host a TV-show in which he was simply talking about movies with his kind of adversary from another newspaper: Gene Siskel. This show was extremely popular and lasted for years, in spite of the conflicting characters of the two men. Finally he lost the capacity to speak some years before his death, and at that point became very prolix on his blog. The documentary was started soon before his sickness was diagnosed, so the images of Ebert we see are already after the operation that removed his lower jaw (watching him like this can be hard for some viewers), and the director was cut short in his long series of questions by the last hospital trip. It is by the way very moving to see the transcript of their last email exchanges. Besides that, the way the documentary is done is not specially original.
Rating: 5 /10

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2007
	Director: Gore Verbinski (The Ring, The Lone Ranger)
	Actors: Johnny Depp (The Ninth Gate, Transcendence), Geoffrey Rush (The King's Speech), Orlando Bloom (The Lord of the Rings 1-3), Keira Knighley (Love Actually), Jonathan Pryce (G.I. Joe 1&2)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Action, Fantasy
	Conditions of visioning: 01.04.2015, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: While the East India Trading Company affirms its increasing power on the seas, Will (Bloom) and Elizabeth (Knighley) search for Jack (Depp), helped by a former enemy.
Review: Filmed at the same time as Dead Man's Chest, this conclusion to the swashbuckle trilogy starts in the same style, fortunately with a different setting this time: Singapore instead of the now-too-much-seen Caribbean seas. Fights and treason are now common and we welcome the addition of new characters like Tia Dalma (Naomie Harris) and Sao Feng (ChowYun-Fat). But then after one hour everything start to lose sense and the motivation of the characters become fuzzy, and there are not even nice fight scenes to help with the poorer story.  I have had this feeling up to and during the final battle however spectacular (between the Black Pearl and the Flying Dutchman riding a Maelstrom), but that doesn't alter the feeling that we don't know who is fighting for what. This feeling of confusion will be reinforced by the senseless decisions taken by the characters during the climax. The franchise continues exploring/exploiting the vast repertory of sea legends which this time include the Sea Goddess Callipso and a Maelstrom. One funny moment is when we get to see Jack's father, but the comedy part starts to become too repetitive, including Johnny Depp's act or recurring jokes like "Why is the rum always gone?". Actually I learned that as the movie franchise is inspired by the Disneyworld attraction, some of its characteristic sentences pronounced by animatronics have been reused in the movie, and that might be one (I have never ridden this attraction). This decrease in quality will unfortunately find its continuation with the fourth movie: On Stranger Tides released in 2011.
Rating: 4 /10

Stargate (1994)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 1994
	Director: Roland Emmerich (Independence Day, 2012)
	Actors: Kurt Russell (Big Trouble in Little China), James Spader (Crash), Jaye Davidson
	Country: USA
	Genre: SF
	Conditions of visioning: 27.03.2015, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: An expert in Egyptian language (Spader) is called to help deciphering markings on an ancien piece of technology, the Stargate. Once open, a team led by Jack O'Neill (Russell) is sent to the other side.
Review: I loved this movie back in 1994 for its mix of Egyptians Legend and Science Fiction. And I was probably not the only one as Stargate (the movie) generated an increasing number of TV-series, actually four now: Stargate SG-1, Atlantis, Infinity and Universe. I only know the Star Trek franchise to have to many spin-offs. I enjoyed prolonging the experience of the movie with the SG1 series (with Richard Dean Mc Gyver Anderson replacing Kurt Russel) of which I watched the first three seasons on TV, and I have been thinking for a while about starting over again with all the series. But back to the movie, the story becomes more and more exciting as we slowly understand the workings of the far-world, culminating with the arrival of Ra. The morphing effect of its helmet being retracted (a first at the time) contributed to my admiration of the movie, although when watched today in HD it looks full of defects. The story is told simply and efficiently and the character of O'Neill has an interesting background. Stargate contains a nice mix of adventure, discovery, action, romance (between Daniel and the slave woman), history, and a solid core of Science Fiction. For me Roland Emmerich was at his best and he continued with Independence Day before loosing his talent for producing the mix mentioned above, and becoming too repetitive in his movies. I hadn't watched the movie in years and this time I found the rhythm to be too slow with respect to what I remembered, and the "jokes" not really funny as I knew they were coming ten minutes ahead. Stargate remains a milestone in the Science Fiction cinema History nonetheless.
Rating: 7 /10

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2006
	Director: Gore Verbinski (The Ring, The Lone Ranger)
	Actors: Johnny Depp (The Ninth Gate, Transcendence), Orlando Bloom (The Lord of the Rings 1-3), Keira Knighley (Love Actually), Bill Nighy (Shaun of the Dead), Stellan Skarsgård (The Avengers)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Action, Fantasy
	Conditions of visioning: 31.03.2015, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: Because of help Captain Jack Sparrow (Depp) to escape, Will Turner (Bloom) must now cheat his friend in order to regain his freedom and the one of his beloved Elizabeth (Kneighley). Meanwhile, Jack must find a way to repay his debt to the terrifying Davy Jones (Nighy).
Review: Same characters, new adventures. After the huge success of The Curse of the Black Pearl, they are all back for another round of sword fights, boat rides, treason and power plays. Surprisingly, I found this episode at least as good as the first. The more and more annoying lengthy fight scenes accompanied by a disturbing music are compensated by a new set of villains being the crew of the Flying Dutchman and its captain Davy Jones. Indeed the fights don't even bother with realisticity anymore, the highlight being the three-way sword fight between Jack (Depp), Will (Bloom) and Norrington (played by Jack Davenport): there is no choreography, the fight is shot from far and is only an excuse to display stunts like the ride on the watermill's wheel. On the other hand, I like the combined legend of Davy Jones (its locker is a metaphor for the bottom of the ocean where dead sailors rest) and of the Flying Dutchman (a legendary ghost ship), and the idea that the crew becomes in time part of the ocean (they turn into half-molluscs) or of the boat. Their design, in particular the one of Davy Jones and its tentacular beard, is more impressive I found than the zombies of the first movie. One must notice again the good performance by Johnny Depp (equal to the first movie) and the one of Bill Nighy as well. So in the end, I enjoyed this second episode and actually felt it less long than the first, while they are about equal in duration.
Rating: 6 /10

Transcendence (2014)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2014
	Director: Wally Pfister (Cinematographer on Inception, the Dark Knight trilogy...)
	Actors: Johnny Depp (The Ninth Gate), Rebecca Hall (Iron Man 3), Morgan Freeman (Oblivion), Cillian Murphy (28 Days Later), Kate Mara (Iron Man 2)
	Country: USA, GB, CN
	Genre: SF
	Conditions of visioning: 30.03.2015, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: Dr. Will Caster (Depp) is working on computer Artificial Intelligence, at a time when a terrorist group actively preaches that an activated A.I. would mean the end of mankind.
Review: Well, I thought I had read that this was a good movie but now checking on the web after watching it I realize I remembered wrong. It is not really that bad, and at some point I imagined it could be the scariest A.I. movie since Terminator (and its Skynet), but this expectation unfortunately didn't live up the whole length of the movie. The interesting thing is the evolution that undergoes the character of Johnny Depp, and what he eventually becomes. I guess this is what brought this screenplay to the Hollywood Top-Ten list (the so-called "Black List"). But then the slow pace of the story and lack of motivation by the actors renders the movie less and less attractive, until the anti-climactic ending with contradictory meanings. And also, why oh why does the movie have to start by showing the ending?!? I understand this can be a nice effect in some movie, to immerse you quickly in the story, but in that case I think it completely disserves it, and removes an element of suspense that could have benefited the otherwise flat story. That alone makes me decrease my final rating.
Rating: 4 /10

Heavy Metal (1981)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 1981
	Director: Gerald Potterton
	Actors (voices): Richard Romanus, John Candy, Joe Flaherty
	Country: CDN
	Genre: Animation, SF, Fantasy
	Conditions of visioning: 27.03.2015, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: An evil green Orb coming from Space tells of several stories in which people were corrupted by its influence.
Review: This is a cult animated anthology film based on the comics book magazine of the same same, itself a spin off of the French Métal Hurlant published in the 70's. The concept of the film/magazines is accurately described as "a blend of dark fantasy/science fiction and erotica" (Wikipedia). I would add Heroic Fantasy to this description. Only for adults needless to say. It is indeed a dream come true for a geek in the 80's, with its mix of colorful universes, perverted characters, ultra-violence and lightly-dressed large-breasted women easily giving away their body, the whole thing enveloped in a nice Rock soundtrack. The character's design reminds me a lot of the French comic books of the 70's that I have discovered thanks to some friends like La Quête de l'oiseau du temps, especially in the last segment Taarna. No wonder that this all originates from European independent writers and cartoonists. In the same spirit one can recognize the French adult animated films by René Laloux like Gandahar (1988) or La Planète Sauvage (1973). Besides, the visual aspect of the segment Harry Canyon (drawings saturated with detailed small lines) reminded me a lot of Frank Miller's Hard Boiled (1990) drawn by Geof Darrow, while the story brings to mind some parts of The Fifth Element (1997) by Luc Besson. After watching the 40-minute documentary on the Blu-ray I understand even better the motivation to produce this movie at that period of time. Indeed Disney was dominating the industry and nobody was using animation to produce movies for adults, except Ralph Bakshi with Fritz the Cat (1972), Coonskin (1975) and later on the Heroic Fantasy Fire and Ice (1983) and his adaptation of The Lord of the Rings (1978). The producers of the movie easily attracted cartoonists that confess they have always wanted to draw Fantasy and naked women since they were kids. So Heavy Metal was liberating for them and they worked like hell to accomplish this dream. The look of the movie may seem strange at first, but I was quickly absorbed by the creative energy that transpires from the short stories. It seems to me that it was the only moment in time when this piece of Art could be created, and it will never be possible anymore. From what I read the attempt to reproduce it 20 years later with Heavy Metal 2000 is a failure. I may try to watch it one day.
Rating: 7 /10