Absolutely fabulous: the movie (2016)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2016
	Director: Mandie Fletcher
	Actors: Jennifer Saunders, Joanna Lumley, Julia Sawalha
	Country: USA, GB
	Genre: Comedy
	Conditions of visioning: 05.09.2016, Schauburg, OV Sneak Preview, English Version with German subtitles
Synopsis: Edina  (Saunders) and Patsy (Lumley) are still living the high life they are accustomed to: shopping, drinking and clubbing in all London's trendiest hot-spots. Blamed for having pushed Kate Moss in the Thames during an uber fashionable launch party, they become entangled in a media storm. Fleeing penniless to the glamorous playground of the super-rich, the French Riviera, they hatch a plan to make their escape permanent and live the high life again!
Review: I saw some episodes of the original British series with a lot of fun. I remember the contrasting kitch and decadent dialogues. Especially the hilarious pertinent dialogues by the daughter Saffy.  In the movie, nothing of that. Well, a lot of kitch behaviours of Edina and Patsy, but no more funny. Either I grew up or they changed their humour. I managed to watch until the end, but I believe more for the hype than for its quality.
Rating: 2 /10

Nerve (2016)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2016
	Director: Henry Joost, Ariel Schulman
	Actors: Emma Roberts, Dave Franco, Emily Meade, Miles Heizer
	Country: HK, USA
	Genre: Polar, Drama
	Conditions of visioning: 30.08.2016
Synopsis: Vee (Roberts) is a high school senior. Struggling with her best friend, she gets herself immersed in an online game of truth or dare as a "player", where her every move starts to become manipulated by an anonymous community of "watchers".
Review: Even if the story looks like the classical movie on a game that turns bad, this movie questions the usage of electronic user data. The question is very modern with cases as Whatsapp (see here for more) and Pokémon Go (see here for more). The story is the escalation of the game in one day as watchers do not stop to bet on the players. What players dare to do to their friends and others for money. What watchers are able to ask to the players. Humans are or accept to be vicious, mean and traitorous. I loved the story. And the rythm given that breaks a group of friends in a short time. The music enhances the rythm of the movie with a nice mix of oldies and modern songs. The actors look like the typical young adults and old teenies nowadays and this makes also the movie more modern. But their acting is quite idle. The esthetic was nice being kind of bling bling in the darkness of New-York side streets. Or the cave where the group of hackers à la Chaos Computer Club hides.
Rating: 7 /10

Una lucertola con la pelle di donna (1971)

	Also Known As: Una lagarta con piel de mujer, Lizard in a woman's skin
	Year of first release: 1971
	Director: Lucio Fulci
	Actors: Florinda Bolkan, Stanley Baker, Jean Sorel
	Country: I, E, F
	Genre: Polar, Thriller
	Conditions of visioning: 10.08.2016, DVD, strange original version
Synopsis: Carol (Bolkan) is daughter of a prominant English politician and keeps having recurring "nightmares" in which she makes love to a bisexual nympho who lives downstairs and conducts all-night LSD orgies. When the nocturnal wet dreams become murderous, the neighbor turns up dead. Did she actually commit the murder she dreamt about? Is she being framed by her philandering husband? Did she actually make nightly visits downstairs? Her husband (Sorel) and the Inspector Corvin (Baker) investigate.
Review: The last ingredient of the Giallo type (see La ragazza che sapeva troppo and Sei donne per l'assessino) is introduced in that movie, the music. Ennio Morricone composed for this one as for many other Gialli. And the movie gets a texture that is going even deeper in the skin. The music combined with the abstract images or dialogues. The story is full of surprises. Even if the Giallo concept is kept. Carol is the woman in a nervous breakdown. The calm husband and father balance the acting. The story made me have kind of affection for Carol and then more suspiscion for her. The mix of feelings with the different characters, also the father and the husband, is a great success of the movie. I found the red room very inspiring and it reminded me the experience of Twin Peaks by David Lynch.  As often in my DVD for Gialli, the original version is not that clean as Italian and Spanish get mixed. And obviously few actors are talking Italian. Maybe it is the reason why the acting focuses more on the face and body expression than on the way the dialogues are told, as they are told anyway by another person.
Rating: 5 /10

Suicide squad (2016)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2016
	Director: David Ayer (Street Kings, Fury)
	Actors: Will Smith (After Earth, Independence Day), Margot Robbie (The Legend of Tarzan), Jared Leto (Requiem for a Dream), Viola Davis
	Country: USA
	Genre: Action, SF
	Conditions of visioning: 15.08.2016, Schauburg, OV Sneak Preview, English version
Synopsis: U.S. intelligence officer Amanda Waller (Davis) has determined only a secretly convened group of disparate, despicable individuals with next to nothing to build an alternative to superheroes that she cannot trust fully. By casualty they have to fight against an enemy that was part of the team. Before any common training they have then to team up and beat the big villain in town.
Review: I wanted to watch this movie because I like the plot and because I like Will Smith. I have not been disappointed by Will Smith. The acting of Jared Leto for the very secondary role of Joker is really good as well. As in Tarzan, Margot Robbie must look good and hot. Her role is actually very funny as well. The story has not much to offer. And it becomes even more previsible and uninteresting when the danger is something as supernatural as a goddess. Thus the characters had to be very worked to maintain any suspense and not all of them reach that. By luck these three actors (Smith, Leto and Robbie) build a nice and rich trio.
Rating: 3 /10

X-Men: Apocalypse (2016)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2016
	Director: Bryan Singer (Valkyrie, X-men 1, 2, Days of Future Past)
	Actors: James McAvoy (Wanted), Michael Fassbender (Inglorious Basterds, Prometheus), Jennifer Lawrence (The Hunger Games 1-3)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Action, SF
	Conditions of visioning: 20.06.2016, Cineplanet, Costanera Center
Synopsis: Entombed since the Pharaohs time, the oldest and strongest mutant awakens to find a world dominated by humans. He quickly gathers other mutants to start a war, or more an extinction.
Review: After the quality and originality of First Class by Matthew Vaughn and the return of the franchise originator Bryan Singer directing the solid Days of Future Past, the question was obviously to know whether the same man could conclude the hexalogy with panache. I can tell you that he doesn't although Apocalypse is very watchable. The stakes are there (the oldest and strongest mutant on Earth) and the characters we love as well, but in fact Days of Future Past did a better job at wrapping up the franchise than Apocalypse does. This one looks more like a new beginning (although no sequel is foreseen), including new actors like Sophie "Sansa Stark" Turner that I really don't like, as a Jean Grey far less sexy that when Famke Jannsen did it. The bad guy is well depicted, as is the influence he has on his disciples, including a young Strom. But the eternal love/hate story between Magneto and Xavier is getting old, as is the insistence on the key role of Mystique (Lawrence) that is forced onto us for the third time. It may finally be time for the franchise to end... at least until the spin-off Gambit with Channing Tatum planned for 2018.
Rating: 5 /10

Kick-Ass 2 (2013)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2013
	Director: Jeff Wadlow (Cry_Wolf)
	Actors: Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Godzilla), Chloë Grace Moretz (Hugo), Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Jim Carrey (The Truman Show, The Mask, Dumb & Dumber)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Action, Comedy
	Conditions of visioning: 12.09.2016, VOD, 32" TV
Synopsis: When becoming publicly the first real-life vigilante Kick-Ass, Dave (Taylor-Johnson) has started a trend that saw the birth of many other heroes, but then also of a super-villain.
Review: The first Kick-Ass by the excellent Matthew Vaughn (Layer Cake, X-men: First Class, Kingsman: The Secret Service) was timely asking the question of what would real-life vigilantes look like, after a decade of super-hero movies. Incidentally it was released at the same time as another movie on a similar topic: Super, which I totally loved in a very different style. It was also funny to read in the news around the same time reports of vigilantes helping the police in the USA.  Kick-Ass was portraying very realistic characters and including bright ideas like the metallic skeleton the hero gets after a car accident, making him more resistant to hits but still suffering very much from them. I remember reading mixed reviews about the sequel, explaining why it took me a while to watch it. The original concept is of course pushed further but I found the beginning of the movie too hesitant, and the following sometimes too obvious in its theme: can the side-kick Hit Girl (Grace Moretz) give up a violent life for a normal one? It is funny that the three main actors have double family name, indicating I think former child stars whose both parents want to have their name on movie posters. And the acting of Grace Moretz reminded me of the one of Macaulay Culkin (Home Alone) which is weird. The idea of a gang of exaggeratedly down-to-earth heroes is funny, and the supervision of Colonel Stars and Stripes (Carrey) promising, only to be (spoiler, highlight to read) destroyed when the man dies after two thirds of the movie. That was really a let-down. The ending is also relatively anti-climactic, leaving me with a feeling of emptiness towards the movie.
Rating: 4 /10

The Truman Show (1998)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 1998
	Director: Peter Weir (Dead Poets Society)
	Actors: Jim Carrey (The Mask, Dumb & Dumber), Ed Harris (Knightriders, A History of Violence), Laura Linney (Mystic River, Mr Holmes)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Comedy, Drama
	Conditions of visioning: 11.09.2016, VOD, 32" TV
Synopsis: Truman Bubank (Carrey) is the unknowing star of a bigger-then-life reality-TV show that started with his birth.
Review: I hadn't watched this movie in ages and wanted to see how it had aged. Remember that back in 1998 it was the first movie dealing with reality-TV which was a pretty new phenomenon at the time, while now movies and TV-series are not only mentioning the topic but are even shot in its style. Also remember that it was shortly followed by Ed-TV with Matthew McConaughey which I also like but in a different style more purely comedic. The Truman Show is much more serious than that but not because of a larger scale, and featuring Jim Carrey in his first more serious role. Oh he does make faces and take exaggerated poses but in a serious frame, and he is even very convincing in some emotionally intense dramatic scenes. An excellent actor choice to support the story written by Andrew Niccol (Gattaca, Lord of War, In Time) and to be directed by Peter Weir (Dead Poets Society). The settings look just fake enough to make you doubt their reality, and I would say that almost all of the topics recurrent when talking about reality-TV are tackled here: intimacy, how far to go, how much of the story is driven by the TV-channel, who watches, how and why, and the underlying issue of trying to play God with mortal subjects (beautiful ending scene with Ed Harris' voice). In fact like other great movies, The Truman Show is a perfect combination of actor, story, director, and maybe most important of all timing of release. Watching it with great pleasure 18 years later also shows that it was not just taking benefit from current events only to be quickly forgotten, but that it is part of Cinema History.
Rating: 9 /10

Star Trek Beyond (2016)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2016
	Director: Justin Lin (Fast & Furious 1, 5, 6)
	Actors: Chris Pine (Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit), Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana (Avatar), Karl Urban (Dredd, The Chronicles of Riddick), Simon Pegg (Shaun of the Dead)
	Country: USA
	Genre: SF
	Conditions of visioning: 12.09.2016, Cineplanet Costanera Center
Synopsis: After three years of exploring deep space, the crew of the USS Enterprise led by Capt. Kirk (Pine) and Spock (Quinto) encounter a woman asking for help in rescuing her own team on a mysterious planet.
Review: Beyond what exactly? I appreciated the franchise reboot by J. J. Abrams with Star Trek and Star Trek Into Darkness so I couldn't miss this third episode, although not directed by the new Hollywood favorite too busy with Star Wars. I thought that the same spirit and format would be present, but was utterly disappointed by the director of several Fast & Furious movies. While I was expecting an escalation in threats and stakes (and a war with the Klingons), I found instead a story limited to one planet and narrating the sake of a small people and a Federation base. Very minimalistic. What is not minimalistic are the special effects and impossible shots that just show that the movie had a comfortable budget, but no inspiration really. It was embarrassing to see those credible actors playing characters very well introduced in the first two movies, but this time trying to convince us of the stakes in what looks more like a TV-series episode, and I am not talking about one of the recent series that I love, but more of flat old series like... well maybe the original Star Trek. So I wouldn't be surprise if some people praise a return to the source, but I for one found that it was a shame to show that on a big screen: scene after scene of flat dialogs, main characters stranded on a planet and slowly converging to the same place, and not-really-scary villains with a look seen many times before. And the movie cannot be excuse because of its age like Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989) for example. It was even more embarrassing to remember that Simon Pegg (Shaun of the Dead) has co-written that story. I have already forgotten most of the movie only four days after visioning. Not a good memory to honor the deeply regretted Leonard Nimoy and Anton Yelchin.
Rating: 3 /10

La famille Bélier (2014)

	Also Known As: Verstehen Sie die Béliers?
	Year of first release: 2014
	Director: Eric Lartigau
	Actors: Louane Emera, Karin Viard, Francois Damiens
	Country: F
	Genre: Comedy, Drama, Music
	Conditions of visioning: 10.08.2016, DVD on TV, German version
Synopsis: Paula Bélier lives in a farm with her parents Gigi (Viard) and Rodolphe (Damiens) and her little brother Quentin. As she is the only one not deaf, she has many tasks in the family. When her choir teacher asks her to pass the exam to the elite choir of Maison de Radio France she is confronted to the dilemma. Farm life with her parents or singing career.
Review: I wanted to watch the movie because it was a great success in France. I find it original that most of the characters do not speak. Even so, the story is interesting and nicely told until the end. The story is actually simple and the challenge remains in the conditions. Songs and few dialogues. It is good to see the contrast of farm life and city life without giving any bad prejudice on the one or the other. The story focuses on the development of Paula via the singing. There are many songs, by luck all in French. The characters manage to communicate even without words. The dialogues are kept simple. The face and body expressions are more on focus and it is impressive. And the emotions are well transmitted by these. Paul's emotions are transmitted by the songs and the great voice of Louane. Actually almost nice emotions and thoughts are given. Without being disturbing it feels like the story is a bit flat. This is a nice comedy with challenging conditions and lots of simple and good emotions.
Rating: 5 /10

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. - Season 3 (2015)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2015
	Creators: Maurissa Tancharoen, Jed Whedon, Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly)
	Actors: Clark Gregg (Iron Man 1-3, The Avengers), Ming-Na Wen, Brett Dalton
	Country: USA
	Genre: Action, SF
	Conditions of visioning: September 2016, VOD, 10" tablet screen
Synopsis: Phil Coulson (Gregg) is leading a team of soldiers now accompanied with gifted humans, in his fight against the Hydra organization.
Review: Here we go for a third season of this TV-series taking place in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (see reviews of the seasons one and two). After the events that occurred in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Avengers: Age of Ultron and at the end of the second season, the setting for the events in this third season has definitely changed. In fact, I found that this universe starts to look more and more like the X-men one, and it is no secret that a successful evolution of a comics-book story would be copied by others, even within the same publisher (in that case Marvel). Indeed we get to meet more and more people with powers (Inhumans) that are not limited to billionaires in metal suits, Asgardians or humans enhanced after military experiments. An explanation is given for the emergence of those powers, to the point of teaching us how blue E.T.s played with our D.N.A. (Episode 19: Failed Experiments), in a similar fashion as what is revealed in Ridley Scott's Prometheus. I can't say much more about the story in the third season without spoiling. Just that it is focused on a new objective that nicely wraps up the season together, and that as in season two I appreciated the mini-climax at the end of Episode 9: Closure. The spirit of the series remains the same: lots of action, but also a lot of talking. Two jokes by Agent Coulson made me laugh a lot, both referencing to SF pop-culture with Star Wars (in the concluding Episode 23 Ascension) and The Terminator in the excellent Episode 15 Spacetime. Throughout the season mention is also made of the events in Ant-Man belonging to the same universe, and Episode 20: Emancipation takes place right after Captain America: Civil War. I have also recently found out (in this timeline) about a web-series of TV-news revolving around the same universe, called WHiH Newsfront and that you can find on YouTube. Finally I would like to mention the nice apparitions of the actors Mark Dacascos (Crying Freeman), John Hannah (Four Weddings and a Funeral, The Mummy), Powers Boothe (Sin City), William Sadler (Die Hard 2) and Constance Zimmer (House of Cards) in the series.
Rating: 6 /10