The Following - Season 1 (2013)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2013
	Creator: Kevin Williamson
	Actors: Kevin Bacon (JFK, Death Sentence, Super, Stir of Echoes), James Purefoy (John Carter), Shawn Ashmore
	Country: USA
	Genre: Thriller
	Conditions of visioning: May 2017, VOD, 10" tablet & 40" TV screen.
Synopsis: Ten years after former FBI agent Ryan Hardy (Bacon) has put away the serial killer Joe Carroll (Purefoy), this one makes himself heard of through members of a cult to his person.
Review: This TV-series was promising some thrills and stars Kevin Bacon that I find too rare (I always liked him in Hollow Man, Stir of Echoes or Super for example), and he does a good job at playing this man with a dark and troubled past. James Purefoy is not bad either as his archenemy, although I got a bit tired of his character towards the end of the season. I quickly noticed that the series was created and produced by Kevin Williamson that I remember vividly as being the successful writer of the Scream franchise (directed by Wes Craven) as well as other movies of the Neo-slasher period that nurtured my young adult years: I know what you did last summer, Teaching Mrs. Tingles, The Faculty. After some years of absence, he is back with the Scream TV-series and The Following among others. This one bears his mark, in a format maybe more adapted nowadays than a full-length feature, and that was a good find from him! Most of all are the knifes: he does like to show a good stabbing and what best for that than a serial killer inspired by the works of Edgar Allan Poe. The romantic writer is more than quoted in the series, he is at the heart of the cult's beliefs. Stabbings then, killers as well although not masked but in pair (like in the original Scream) or more, and the sadistic pleasure of killing people in front of their friends or loved ones. After watching too many episode in a row I got in fact sick of too many such scenes, as I don't like to watch much torture in movies. The whole story of serial killer, stabbings, punishments and references (to books instead of movies this time) borrowed from the Neo-slasher period is wrapped into a new context based not on the teenagers suffering from the murders but on the FBI investigation and in particular the former agent Hardy that plays a central role and is deeply connected to the maniac: he arrested him but got almost killed in the process, now needs a pacemaker, he was very close to the wife of that one at some point, and has a back-story that makes him believe he is cursed to see all of his close ones get hurt. A very interesting character. I enjoyed the series that uses the modern trend that anything can happen at any moment and in particular any of the main cast can get killed. Unfortunately some weaknesses of the Neo-slashers transpire as well, for example the usual scenes of chase in a house where characters get separated and one ends up going outside alone without looking behind, this kind of things. I will probably take a break before starting with the fifteen more episodes of that in the second season.
Rating: 5 /10

San Andreas (2015)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2015
	Director: Brad Peyton (Journey 2: The Mysterious Island)
	Actors: Dwayne Johnson (The Mummy Returns, Pain & Gain), Carla Gugino (Watchmen, Sin City), Alexandra Daddario (Percy Jackson 1-2, Baywatch)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Action
	Conditions of visioning: 17.05.2017, VOD, 40' TV screen.
Synopsis: Helicopter Rescue Pilot Ray Gaines (Johnson) rushes to rescue his ex-wife and daughter (Gugino, Daddario) through the ruins of the American West coast devastated by several major Earthquakes.
Review: Already from its trailer this disaster movie promised devastation scenes in the scale of what was recently seen in 2012, but aiming at being more realistic as supposed to depict the long awaited Big One. The reference for me is the 1974 Earthquake with Charlton Heston, produced at the time of the height of the disaster movies (and the same year as The Towering Inferno for example). Obviously two generations have passed and San Andreas must show a different kind of spectacle. Where you had people of all ages struggling and helping each other in a limited area of a city torn down at the beginning of the movie, you now have on one side the family father and on the other his hot daughter and two other youngs, miraculously surviving not one but about three shakes and a tsunami and fire, flood... all the worst calamities you can imagine. I guess this is the minimum required nowadays to keep the teenage audience awake throughout two hours of movie. So character-wise San Andreas is typical of the worst you can find in Hollywood nowadays, in spite of decent actors just doing their job. Visually San Andreas is an eye-candy. The disaster scenes are monumental and I was in particular impressed by the amount of details in every shot (floating and flying debris, people, ...). I guess some new CGI software came out recently to allow that. It must be a good movie to watch on a large screen, although some scenes even look fake like the first car accident or the boat rides; I am wondering if any of the water scenes of the movie were actually shot on water. Not as bad as I may have expected (like the aforementioned 2012), but do not expect a great movie either.
Rating: 5 /10

Stranger Things - Season 1 (2016)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2016
	Creators: Matt Duffer, Ross Duffer
	Actors: Winona Ryder (Alien Resurecction, Star Trek), David Harbour, Finn Wolfhard
	Country: USA
	Genre: Thriller, SF
	Conditions of visioning: April 2017, VOD, 10" tablet screen.
Synopsis: Returning on his bike from an evening of Role-Playing Game with his best friends, Will Byers disappears. His mother Joyce (Ryder) seeks the help of local Sheriff Hooper (Harbour) while the young friends lead their own investigation.
Review: It is a blessing of the few past years that so many TV-series of good quality can be produced, and that they are not dragging their stories forever in order to just squeeze more advertisement breaks in them. For less than ten euros a month you can now have access to all episodes of series like Stranger Things at once, at any time you want and without commercial breaks. This series do not hide its ambition to replicate the recipe that made the success of Fantastic movies with kids in the 80's like Steve Spielberg's E.T. or Richard Donner's The Goonies. The same was said in 2011 of J.J. Abrams (Star Trek, Star Wars: The Force Awakens) when he released the movie Super 8 with which this series have the key ingredients in common: a group of inseparable young friends that behave and speak more like adults than their parents, nostalgic 80's tech (phones, bikes, cars...) ans design (aah, those orange lamps...) and a Fantastic element that will bring the group even closer and against the adult world. Thanks to those memories from my youth the series spoke to me but not as much as it did to friends I spoke to. Beyond that I could appreciate the fine characters, in particular the ones of the Sheriff Jim Hopper and the big brother Jonathan Byers, and the fine actors behind them: Winona Ryder is just amazing (compare her performance to the one she gave in Star Trek for a shock) and the young Millie Bobby Brown quite something in the role of the mysterious little girl. Even though I didn't live in the USA during that period I also found that the 80's style was well rendered in everything: colors, clothes, furniture, cars and most importantly and difficult: people's habits. This sense of details is something I already appreciated in the scariest movie I have seen in years: the 2013 Conjuring. The biggest question that remains is: how does the modern audience react to such a series so obviously targeted to people nostalgic of the 80's? Do you relate to the characters if you were not born in the middle of those phones and those bikes and those wallpapers? Either it works on all audiences and the series is a broader success, or it is limited to a more restricted population but one that may constitute the core of the Netflix subscribers, and anyway the format of a series produced and distributed by a single network make it easy to cope with even a limited success. A second season is under way.
Rating: 7 /10

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2017
	Director: James Gunn (Slither, Super)
	Actors: Chris Pratt (Wanted, Jennifer's Body, Her, Jurassic World), Vin Diesel (XxX, Pitch Black), Bradley Cooper (The Hangover 1-3, The A-team), Zoe Saldana (Avatar, Star Trek), Michael Rooker (Super), Kurt Russell (Bone Tomahawk, The Hateful Eight, The Thing)
	Country: USA
	Genre: SF, Comedy
	Conditions of visioning: 03.04.2017, Costanera Cineprime
Synopsis: Starlord (Pratt) and his team now fully take on their responsability of Guardians of the Galaxy. But the odd characters of which the team is composed still lead them to trouble.
Review: Sequel to the sucessful 2014 Guardians of the Galaxy, this second Volume uses the same ingredients: flashy, offbeat humour, colorful characters, an odd bunch of partners (with Groot now small, cute and dumb instead of big, strong and dumb). It is no spoiler to reveal that this time the story is strongly focused on the meeting between Starlord / Peter Quinn and his father, and one pleasant thing in this movie is the final conclusion in which Quinn learns the true value of fatherhood. Things I liked in the movie: the cute Groot dancing on the 80's soundtrack, the brute Drax always speaking his heart, the complex and touching character of Yondu played by Michael Rooker (well, complex for a Marvel character) beautiful in blue with a red Mohawk, and of course Kurt Russell in a leading role again after Bone Tomahawk and The Hateful Eight. He is even entitled to a rejuvenation sequence like Michael Douglas in Ant Man, Robert Downey Jr. in Captain America: Civil War or Brad Pitt in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.  What I didn't like: the useless people of the Sovereign, some lengths and useless scenes and the loss of Quinn's ship which design I loved. All in all not a bad experience, in line with the first movie and dedicated to tell its story revolving around Quinn before he gets a bit sidelined next to the other Marvel monsters. Indeed the movie is still inscribed in the Marvel Universe Cinematic timeline and its characters will appear next to Tony Stark, Doctor Strange, The Hulk and the others in the 2018 Avengers: Infinity War.
Rating: 5 /10

Point Break (1991)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 1991
	Director: Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty)
	Actors: Patrick Swayze (Ghost), Keanu Reeves (The Matrix 1-3, Man of Tai Chi), Gary Busey (Lethal Weapon, Predator 2)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Action, Polar
	Conditions of visioning: 29.04.2017, VOD, 10" tablet screen.
Synopsis: Young, ambitious and arrogant FBI agent Johnny Utah (Reeves) decides to tackle the unsolved case of serial bank robbers in Los Angeles. His new partner Pappas (Busey) has a theory that the gang are surfers.
Review: A classic of my teenage years, and again something that only the 90's could have brought to light. In my memory it was the story of this FBI agent that learns to love surf while solving a bank robbery case. Seen with my more adult eyes I could find more layers to this apparently simple story. The surf and rebellion scenes are still fun to watch, but this time I was more interested by the conflict in Johnny Utah played by Keanu Reeves a bit inexpressive as usual but quite fit in this role in fact. And this conflict leads to decisions that are ambiguous: good, bad, friendship, loyalty... are values that come into play in the second act. The audience gets sad when one dies, cop or robber, or when lies are revealed because they were told under external constrains. The movie may have aged a little, it is longer than I remembered and the action scenes are not really top-notch (the surf scenes are more poetry and feeling than action) but that all helps giving its special cachet to the movie. From what I read, this is something that the 2015 remake totally failed to achieve but I had easily predicted that.
Rating: 6 /10

Vanishing time: a boy who returned (2016)

	Also Known As:
	Year of first release: 2016
	Director: Um Tae-hwa
	Actors: Lee Hyo-je, Shin Eun-soo, Gang Dong-won, Kim Dan-yul, Jung Woo-jin
	Country: ROK
	Genre: Drama, SF, Melodrama
	Conditions of visioning: 23.04.2017, Teatro Nuovo, FEFF2017
Synopsis: Four young kids, including Tae-sik (Kim), Jae-wook (Jung), Sung-min (Lee) and Soo-rin (Shin), take a trip to the mountain together. They plan to sneak into a restricted area to watch a planned explosion. The next day, Soo-Rin is the only one found. A few days later, Sung-Min (Gang) appears again, but he is not the same 13-year-old boy. Sung-Min is now adult.
Review: The storyboard is very subtle, in order to avoid too large involvment of adults. And this is achieved without being just a bubble of children's story. Some parents want to hunt the parents of Soo-rin. They talk a lot and nobody knows about the lost cabin of the kids. The life of the children in the world when the time stopped is evoking the idea of loneliness after the first funny games. It is even very dramatic and these dramatic scenes are very touching because I feel the inner confusion of the children. And these emotions are not stopping and when we imagine the deep melancholy of Sung-min who has been living almost alone! This is extremely emotional and sad. When the time stops, I find the special effects amazing then. But it might be actually now something easy in the video games culture.
Rating: 6 /10

At the terrace (2016)

	Also Known As: Sulla terrazza
	Year of first release: 2016
	Director: Kenji Yamaushi
	Actors: Ishibashi Kei, Hiraiwa Kami, Furuya Ryuta, Iwatani Kenji, Morooka Hiroako, Okabe Takashi, Hashimoto Atsushi
	Country: J
	Genre: Drama
	Conditions of visioning: 22.04.2017, Teatro Nuovo, FEFF2017
Synopsis: With the party winding down in a rich mansion, designer Saito (Furuya) and his wife Haruko (Hiraiwa) try to go home, but the home owners (Ishibashi) and (Iwatani) try to keep them there longer. The only guests remaining are a thin middle-aged man (Okabe) and a Toyota employee (Morooka). The home owners' son (Hashimoto) arrives back home. While having idle talk, someone praises Haruko's white arm. The talk takes an unexpected course.
Review: The plot reminds me somehow the theater play Le dieu du carnage by Yasmina Reza, that has been set into a movie by Roman Polanski in Carnage. The classical theatre format with unicity of action, location (the terrace) and time (one evening) is given. The action evolves slowly and firmly from a small talk, deviates to woman rivalry and insanity, even if all characters are always polite and never aggressive. Violent events (Haruko leaving the terrace, sexual harassment) are pushed by deviant dialogues. Sequence of dialogues is rythmed by several events (Okabe falling sick) and non-events (blanks leading to continue the small talk in the often unpleasant place where it stopped). As a viewer, one feels invited in this party and disturbed as the characters are disturbed. If you like dialogues in a movie, this movie is for you! The acting is amazing. The emotions look very authentic with the tense politeness, the contained aggressivity and all expressed sexualities. Great actors and especially the women Ishibashi and Hiraiwa during their duel on the beauty of the arm. Or diplomatic talk between Furuya and Iwatani on the sexual harassment. Directing thinks about the background. On the static shot (French: plan fixe) several things are happening within this sometimes large group of people. But the viewer doesn't get much about it, in particular behind the curtain or in the shower room.  These extended areas introduce some mystery or hide apparently side events. The directing is therefore very clever and even if it is very theatrical, the directing is great!
Rating: 8 /10

Survival family (2017)

	Also Known As: La famiglia dei sopravvissuti
	Year of first release: 2017
	Director: Yaguchi Shinobu
	Actors: Fumiyo Kohinata, Wakana Aoi, Eri Fukatsu, Yuki Izumisawa, Akira Emoto
	Country: J
	Genre: Drama, Comedy
	Conditions of visioning: 21.04.2017, Teatro Nuovo, FEFF2017
Synopsis: A power black out in Tokyo brings the whole city in standstill. But all electrical devices stopped working as well. Suzuki family first do not know how to react and follow what everyone does, buying everything in the supermarkets, then going on the road looking for the grandma. The father Yoshiyuki (Kohinata), the mother Yui (Aoi), the girl Mitsue (Fukatsu) and the boy Kenji (Izumisawa) will have to stick together.
Review: The family is a caricature of a Japanese family with strong traditional roles. The father works all day and the mother prepares the bento in the morning and cooks for the family all day. The children are teenies but not very clever. During the trip, they meet other groups and learn from them. And there are twists and turns. The idea of the movie came from 2003, so the director. It may have encountered difficulties for funding until 2011. From 2011 and the accident in Fukushima, there have been series of black out in Japan. And the government immediately stopped all nuclear plants in Japan and started putting back the nuclear plants to reduce their coal dependency. The movie gives a picture of a population which is dependant and can barely adapt and also a part of the population who can adapt to many situations supported by nature or by culture (old man in the farm, cycling family).  The family might have been built rather dumb in order to give some moments of comedy in this tragic situation. And this works. The running gag with the wig of the father, the hilarious scene of catching pigs. Yaguchi manages to build a story with a social dramatic background and moments of comedy in a pleasant rhythm.
Rating: 6 /10

Canola (2016)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2016
	Director: Chang aka Yoon Hong-seung
	Actors: Youn Yuh-jung, Kim Ko-eun
	Country: ROK
	Genre: Drama
	Conditions of visioning: 25.04.2017, Teatro Nuovo, FEFF2017
Synopsis: Gye Choon (Youn) lives in the quiet island of Jeju diving for shellfish. Her only relative is her niece Hye-ji (Kim). But one day the little girl disappears in the market and the drama starts for the grandmother. She is looking for her desperately during years. And twelve years later Hye-ji returns, teenager small criminal. The unconditional grandmother love will restore hope and kindness in the niece. All the village is supporting the grandmother and then also the niece.
Review: The story of the reunion of the grandmother with her niece is strongly based on their mysteries: Is Hye-ji the real Hye-ji? Does Gye Choon really believes that it is Hye-ji? And the story gives clues for yes and no answers alternating. And the acting of both actresses turns around these questions without going into confrontation nor giving a clear view to the viewer (at least to me). The character of Kim is always on the edge between trying her new life and staying in her old life and she expresses it very subtly and with credibility. Youn plays the desperation of a grandmother in front of a cruel fate and the unconditional love to her niece beautifully. It is full of authenticity. Really two excellent actresses. This makes the story even more emotional and this is beautiful. The scenery of Jeju island give a cosy village atmosphere and very idyllic and maybe naive. But this serves the purpose of the story and therefore I let it go by watching. It is even quite amazing to see how the complete village participates to the shellfish fishing. And this enhances again the mutual support of the villagers.
Rating: 7 /10

The Simpsons Movie (2007)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2007
	Director: David Silverman (Monsters, Inc)
	Actors (voices): Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner, Nancy Cartwright
	Country: USA
	Genre: Animation, Comedy
	Conditions of visioning: 07.05.2017, VOD, 10" tablet screen
Synopsis: Homer's latest folly has for consequence the isolation of Springfield by a glass dome. How will he save the situation and regain the trust of his family?
Review: I am part of the Simpsons generation. I was watching the first seasons on TV in the 90's, in DVD in the 2000's and a few episodes in streaming in the 2010's. It is undeniable that the quality of the series has decreased over the years, or more precisely its originality. What was great in the 90's (critic of the typical American family) doesn't work anymore at the time of South Park or Family Guy, especially since the series hasn't evolved in 30 years: same age for all the characters, same job, same relationships... which makes it a bit tasteless to watch, but not enough to justify its cancellation thanks to a solid core audience. Similarly, the production of a movie after so many years can be questioned, especially since it is no more than a long episode. OK it may be pleasant to watch a longer adventure of our beloved characters and some people may have appreciated the novelty of watching that on a large screen, but the movie could have done something better to use its 1h30, or show something new (nothing like that apart from Lisa falling in love) or pushed to the extreme (like done in South Park the Movie). Nothing like that in this movie which makes it quickly forgotten. For something new better watch the Family Guy / The Simpsons cross-over even though it is not a masterpiece itself.
Rating: 4 /10