Man on Fire (2004)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2004
	Director: Tony Scott (Top Gun, Crimson Tide, Enemy of the State)
	Actors: Denzel Washington (Deja Vu), Christopher Walken (The Dead Zone), Dakota Fanning (War or the Worlds), Radha Mitchell (Pitch Black, Surrogates), Giancarlo Giannini (Mimic), Mickey Rourke (Iron Man 2), Rachel Ticotin (Total Recall)
	Country: USA, GB
	Genre: Thriller
	Conditions of visioning: 15.03.2015, SD VOD, Home cinema
Synopsis: Ex-military and now with a drinking problem, Creasy (Washington) accepts a job as bodyguard in Mexico City. He has trouble socializing with the little girl (Fanning) he is taking care of.
Review: In short: I found the story great, the actors fitting and natural, and the tension build-up in the first 45 minutes well told, but after that I found that Tony Scott abuses of the flashes and fast cuts which, although typically his style, do a disservice to a movie that I could otherwise have loved. More in detail now. I loved to see under-used actors like Christopher Walken, Giancarlo Giannini (great in Mimic) and Rachel Ticotin (I knew her only from Total Recall with Arnold Schwarzenegger). And for a kid actress, Dakota Fanning is incredibly natural. Mickey Rourke is not really useful to the story, Denzel Washington in his usual self and Radha Mitchell is in her sexiest role, but sensitive as well. You know from the beginning where the story goes, and I feared that it would go there too fast without letting us know our characters but it doesn't, showing that the regretted Tony Scott knew how to tell a story. The rest of the story is also well told and satisfies our lust for revenge, but as I mentioned already it is shot in a manner that I found too "video-clip"-style and not fitting the displayed emotions. The same style can be recognized in Enemy of the State (1998), The Taking of Pelham 123 (2009) and Unstoppable (2010) but it didn't disturb me so much in those movies as they were less "serious" emotionally.
Rating: 7 /10

Love (2011)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2011
	Director: William Eubank
	Actors: Gunner Wright
	Country: USA
	Genre: SF
	Conditions of visioning: 10.03.2015, Bluray, English version
Synopsis: After losing contact with Earth, Astronaut Lee Miller (Wright) becomes stranded in orbit alone aboard the International Space Station. As time passes and life support systems dwindle, Lee battles to maintain his sanity - and simply stay alive.
Review: I wanted to watch this movie since the plot on lonely astronaut joins the recent Interstellar. The story is kept simple. The only event triggers a series of behaviour changes. The story is told very abstracly with views on the astronaut, on his dreams. The music by Angels and Airwaves and the amazing work on light (light flares, reflections) build a very dreamy atmosphere where it is not easy to recognize reality from dream and where we go deeply in the loneliness of this lost astronaut. The work on light reminds me the very good Locke. I loved it. Realism (e.g. microgravity, Space Station) is not the strength of the movie. There are also interviews of people telling stories that I could link to the main story only via the emotional level or the guessed history of the main character. On one side, I missed more story. One the other side, with more events, the atmosphere would not have been so good.  The Bluray was strangely enough for a Bluray found in a German library with subtitles available only in Dutch.
Rating: 6 /10

Moulin Rouge! (2001)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2001
	Director: Baz Luhrmann
	Actors: Nicole Kidman, Ewan McGregor, Jim Broadbent
	Country: AUS, USA
	Genre: Romance, Music
	Conditions of visioning: 07.03.2015, Bluray,
Synopsis: Christian (McGregor) is a young English poet who left his comfortable family to the Bohemian life in Paris of 1900. He falls for a beautiful courtesan, Satine (Kidmann), of the Moulin Rouge who dates a Duke so that the tenant, Harold Zidler (Broadbent), gets him as investor.
Review: The story is a basic romance that follows the tempo of well known songs of the XXth Century. At least the lyrics. Sometimes also the rythm. The challengeis more musically to switch from one song to another within the same dialogue and this is well done. The style, sound track, dialogues, scenery are very rococo and kitch but it makes a round picture of an imaginative world. You can like it or not. The actors have been casted perfectly for their face expression, even the secondary actors or the ones you see only shortly in the back-ground. That is a very good job.  Finally I did not like much the style but this profusion of creativity must be awarded.
Rating: 5 /10

Re-directed (2014)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2014
	Director: Emilis Velyvis
	Actors: Scot Williams, Andrius Ziurauskas
	Country: GB, L
	Genre: Black comedy
	Conditions of visioning: 02.03.2015, Schauburg, OV sneak preview
Synopsis: Three friends try to make money and force subtly another friend (Williams) on a plot. As they flee in front of the gangster Golden Pole (Jones) the eruption of an Icelandic vulcan let them land in Lithuania. To find their way back home, they'll have to overcome hit men, whores, corrupt cops, smugglers and more.
Review: The story is relatively flat. There is a huge amount of gags happening in Lithuania and this makes the movie entertaining. The movie lives only from the many strange and funny characters of Lithuania.  The acting of the Lithuanians is very burlesque while the Brits keep the British humour. The rest is conventional. Thus an average movie.
Rating: 4 /10

Gone Girl (2014)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2014
	Director: David Fincher (Se7en, Fight Club)
	Actors: Ben Affleck (Argo), Rosamund Pike (Die Another Day), Neil Patrick Harris (Starship Troopers)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Thriller, Polar, Drama
	Conditions of visioning: 08.03.2015, In-flight entertainment 10" screen
Synopsis: When his wife (Pike) goes missing, the behavior of Nick Dunne (Affleck) doesn't make him the man that everybody should pity. On the contrary, he is more and more a suspect.
Review: I missed the movie in the theaters last year and I was surprised I could already watch it on board an Oman Air plane. One drawback is that the image quality was far from a Blu-ray one (although not that bad) and that some scenes were censored. The movie is a big long (2h20) but one never gets bored. I particularly liked the build-up of tension until the mid-movie revelation. It is fascinating to see how an ordinary man reacts in an extraordinary situation, and the way Fincher managed to convey those feelings is the best thing in Gone Girl. Indeed amid the whole circus of media and police and movie characters like the parents, all of it told in a standard way, you have this man (great performance by Affleck) who probably reacts like a real-life person would. For example he hides bits of the truth, like the fact that they were not a happy couple, because this is not something you bring up when someone disappears. For that I would rate the first half of the movie 9/10, a the second half 7/10 leading to an average 8/10. Not that the second half is bad, but in comparison it is more classical and less original. Still, I got constantly surprised by the turns of events (like in other recent movies, bad things also occur to bad people) at the end of the movie you are left with a strange feeling. A very good thriller that shows that Fincher is still a great director. From him my favorite is Fight Club with Se7en not far behind, and I liked a lot Alien 3, The Social Network, The Game (I should watch it again), The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, less so Zodiac and The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo. The only one I haven't seen from him may be Panic Room, to be rectified soon.
Rating: 8 /10

Happy Feet (2006)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2006
	Director: George Miller (Mad Max 1-3, Mad Max: Fury Road, Babe)
	Actors (voices): Elijah Wood (Maniac), Brittany Murphy, Hugh Jackman (X-men), Robin Williams (Bicentennial man), Nicole Kidman (The Others), Hugo Weaving (Cloud Atlas)
	Country: USA, AUS
	Genre: Animation, Music, Adventure
	Conditions of visioning: 11.03.2015, SD VOD, 11" computer screen
Synopsis: In a community of singing Emperor Penguins, Mumble (Wood) is born with a different gift: dancing, which is setting him aside from his pairs.
Review: Hard to believe that the man who created the Mad Max legend now directed an animated feature about the joy of singing and dancing among penguins! Well it is also hard to believe he directed Babe, and I loved that one! I had read an article in which it was stated that Miller had a specific style and message throughout all his movies so I has curious to see about that. The story of Happy Feet is slightly original with respect to other animated movies for kids, although it follows the same guidelines: a singled-out hero to which you can identify, a romance story, some songs, challenges, meeting new friends... And the way it is told is also different, especially the fact that the penguins don't sing original songs written for the movie, but rather classics from the 60's to 80's. So there are some good ideas and characters in the movie, and in the end message you get a hint of Miller's common framework, but overall I didn't particularly like it.
Rating: 4 /10

Pitch Black (2000)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2000
	Director: David Twohy (The Arrival, The Chronicles of Riddick)
	Actors:  Radha Mitchell (Surrogates), Cole Hauser (Good Will Hunting), Vin Diesel (XxX, Fast & Furious)
	Country: USA
	Genre: SF
	Conditions of visioning: 19.02.2015, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: A group of travellers crash-land on a desert planet in perpetual daylight. Among them is the killer Riddick (Diesel). Could there be something hiding in the dark on this planet?
Review: I discovered Pitch Black in VHS in the good old early 2000's, then had it in DVD but haven't watched it yet in High Definition. Since the first time I saw it I found it to be a solid SF B-movie like we rarely see any, and I haven't changed my mind after watching it again. Vin Diesel in one of his first roles adds something for sure, but I think it is also the simplicity of the plot and the rather extreme choices (visual and in the story) that make a difference. OK the movie doesn't look as good as a 10-times-more-expensive Hollywood blockbuster (I could notice that especially in Blu-ray) and some dialogs and characters are weak, but those things have to be put in perspective, so one should keep in mind the limited ambitions of the movie when watching it. How many B-series SF movies have left a trace in the past fifteen years? Not many I can tell you. Pitch Black reminds of movies like Screamers, Robocop, or to a lesser extend Alien or Star Wars. David Twohy was a renouned screenplay writer (Waterworld, The Fugitive...) when he moved on to directing The Arrival and Pitch Black, and it is not surprise that he was then offered a huge budget to deliver The Chronicles of Riddick, and that he concluded the trilogy with the simply entitled Riddick in 2013. I have reviewed all the movies (in the reverse order) including the animated Dark Fury, and Pitch Black is still my favorite.
Rating: 8 /10

Frozen (2013)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2013
	Director: Chris Buck (Tarzan), Jennifer Lee (Wreck-It Ralph)
	Actors (voices): Kristen Bell (Astro Boy), Idina Menzel, Jonathan Groff
	Country: USA
	Genre: Animation, Fantasy, Adventure, Music
	Conditions of visioning: 09.03.2015, In-flight entertainment 10" screen
Synopsis: After an accident, princess Anna is separated from her sister Elsa. Years later when the coronation of Elsa comes, things are going to change and her secret will be revealed.
Review: After watching Wreck-it Ralph and Big Hero 6 I was starting to believe that Disney was surpassing its branch Pixar (the recent relative disappointment of Brave) in quality of animated movies. But with Frozen, Disney comes back heavily to the classical recipe that has pleased kids for decades: a story inspired by an old European tale, a princess, a charming prince, a tragic start, magic, and cute characters that will make fantastic merchandising. And the worst: songs! I am sure kids and especially little girls loved it, and in fact the movie looks good and contains some interesting moments even for adults, but overall it is a step back from what was done before, i.e. movies with several layers of meaning for several generations of viewers. Too bad.
Rating: 4 /10

Fantasy Filmfest Nights 2015

So as not to wait a full year for another edition of the Fantasy Filmfest in Germany (in September), the organizers have planned those so-called Fantasy Filmfest Nights which take place half a year after the main festival, actually last for two days and introduce 10 movies.
This year's edition in Munich will take place on March 28-29, and here are my recommendations on what to watch, more based on what I know from the directors and read about the movies than on the trailers.

Big Hero 6 (2014)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2014
	Director: Don Hall, Chris Williams
	Actors (voices): Ryan Potter, Scott Adsit, Jamie Chung, Genesis Rodriguez (Man on a Ledge), James Cromwell (Babe, I Robot), Alan Tudyk (Dodgeballs)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Animation, Action
	Conditions of visioning: 21.02.2015, In flight entertainment system 10" screen
Synopsis: Wiz kid Hiro (Adsit) doesn't want to follow his brother's footsteps into a school for robot design, although/because he already excels at it. Tragic events will make him change his mind, befriend a rubber health care robot and eventually team-up with other geniuses to unmask an evil foe.
Review: Yet another animated super-hero movie, but unexpectedly one that I found interesting. Its main interest for me resides in the setting: San Fransokyo. "According to Scott Watanabe, the movie is set in an alternate future where after the 1906 earthquake, San Francisco was rebuilt by Japanese immigrants using techniques that allow movement and flexibility in a seismic event. After the city was finished being rebuilt, it was renamed San Fransokyo due to it being a city with Japanese and American architecture combined" (source: IMDb). And this makes the movie different. On the downside I found that parts of the story are not credible: the kid not going to school, the reaction of people after the tragic event, the behavior of the secondary characters like the classmates. But the movie is fun to watch, and the building relationship between the kid and the robot is well done and touching. This relationship is the second great thing about this movie. The animation and character of the robot are excellent, and on top of that, the landscapes are beautiful as is the look of the movie in general.
Rating: 7 /10