The Snowman (2017)

	Also Known As: Schneeman
	Year of first release: 2017
	Director: Tomas Alfredson
	Actors: Michael Fassbender, Rebecca Ferguson, Jonas Karlsson, Chloë Sevigny, Val Kilmer, Charlotte Gainsbourg, J.K. Simmons
	Country: USA, GB, S
	Genre: Thriller
	Conditions of visioning: 16.10.2017, Schauburg, Sneak Preview, English version with German subtitle
Synopsis: Harry Hole (Fassbender) leads an crime investigation team on the disappearance of women on snowy days during the Norvegian winter in Oslo. He fears an elusive serial killer may be active again. With the help of a brilliant recruit Katrine Bratt (Ferguson), he connects decades-old cold cases to the brutal new one.
Review: After the first scene it is clear that the murderer is the kid who built snowmen in the countryside. The game of the movie is to recognise him from all the orphans we see in the story. I like the characters a lot. Harry Hole as sleepless policeman sleeping in any place outside over night, Katrine as lonely investigator with resolute look and sneaking everywhere.  The atmosphere that seems to be created by the story, the suspiscion of all men who have something to hide, the magnat Arve Stop, the doctor Idar Vetlesen, the husband of the disappeared woman. At some point, it looks like a scene à la The girl with a dragon tattoo will come to enhance the melodramatic Scandinavian society. The colours very grey bring a bit as well. But not all the time. Several scenes are different, with colours and it is not clear to me for which reason on the story. Some scenes do not bring actually anything to the main story nor to the atmosphere and could have been saved. The last scene is very stupid. SPOILER A meticulous murderer fall into the water of an iced lake while having a gun and being close to the wounded Harry Hole. Who believes that! It is so unrealistic. And some more time could have been given for the development of the characters. The actors could not develops much their play and are quite reduced. Some pictures of the Oslo and of the Norvegian snowy landscapes are wonderful and beautifully taken, especially the trains going through the snow from Oslo to Bergen. It has nothing to do with the spectacular CGI of Snowpiercer and instead of spectacle shows natural and quiet beauty.
Rating: 3 /10

Night of the living dead (1968)

	Also Known As: Die Nacht der lebenden Toten
	Year of first release: 1968
	Director: George A. Romero
	Actors: Judith O'Dea, Duane Jones, Marylin Eastman, Karl Hartman, Judith Ridley, Keith Wayne
	Country: USA
	Genre: Thriller
	Conditions of visioning: 09.09.2017, DVD, English version
Synopsis: Barbra (O'Dea) and her brother are in the cemetery of his father when they are attacked by a slow man. She runs away and finds a house where Ben (Jones) arrives soon. It seems like walking dead people are everywhere. Several people were also hidden in the cellar.
Review: I was fascinated by some dialogues of the movie that I am listening since years in some songs by Microfilm. This French band has taken also some pieces of La ragazza che sapeva troppo for their album. And this might be why I have been very sensitive to the voices and sound track of Night of the living dead. And actually the first scene with the long shot of the road and then the car passing by is already bringing some atmosphere. I believe I have seen this shot in many movies but this one has again a very special sound track with a silence that is not really silent. The story itself is quite basic and settles indeed the classical plot of the zombie movie. Few people are healthy and surrounded by a world disease and flesh eating people. The announcement on TV are quite impressive as well, the warnings, the "a shot in the head" as solution to get rid of the zombies, the examples of good men hunting and killing the zombies. The acting is hectic and looks exaggerated compared to the very mild acting nowadays. But I like it because it is to me more natural to express panic and fears like they do in Night of the living dead. The dialogues and reaction of the hunters is also very naturally expressed. It does not look like fake or acted but almost like a documentary or like news. And this is for me the major positive point of the movie, the observation of natural human reaction to fear without any exaggeration to gore nor to comedy.  The sound track is great whereas it does not use much music but rather tones. These manage to create an atmosphere of fear, of suspiscion, of paranoia that is really thrilling and fits to the story.  This movie is a must see not only because it is the first zombie movie or because it made George Romero so famous, but also because it was a revolution at that time for the directing and the sound track. As Sergio Leone did for the Western, George Romero set new rules for the Horror genre by giving to the sound track and to the atmosphere a rank that it did not have yet.
Rating: 9 /10

Good luck (2017)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2017
	Director: Ben Russell
	Actors: -
	Country: USA
	Genre: Documentary
	Conditions of visioning: 16.09.2017, Fridericianum, documenta14, digital video
Synopsis: It is a comparative film study about the communities of workers in an illegal, small-scale gold mine in Suriname and in a state-owned copper mine in Serbia. In addition, he has organized a four-day film and performance festival in Athens, titled HALLUCINATION(S), inviting independent filmmakers, musicians, visual artists, and film researchers to collectively unravel cinema’s hallucinatory potential.
Review: The idea is not only original but the visual and sensorial concept is very interesting. By entering in the exhibition room, I had to go in the cellar of the Fridericianum. There it was dark to very dark until we see some light. This is the light of one of the projections. The four-channel digital video installation presented different parts of the movie Good luck so that in one room, I felt like being in the mine with the Serbian miners, in the other I had the impression to follow the miners in Suriname on their way to the gold mine.  There is no story really. We just follow the daily life and real dialogues of the Serbian and Suriname miners. The discussions and the way the pause is taken in Serbia reminded me experienced scenes in the silver mines of Potosi, Bolivia. The digital videos have been transferred from 16 mm, color for Suriname and black-and-white for Serbia. In total it is 71 min. It is actually far too long for the content. But the important is to feel like sharing a piece of daily life. And the exhibition room and the installation allows this.This shows good mastering of the filming and projection techniques fitting to the overall artistic concept. Really good! The movie has been presented at the modern art exhibition documenta14 in Kassel, Germany.  The artist Ben Russell has a sublime website including several of his movies. Probably I will review other of his former works.
Rating: 8 /10

The Dust Channel (2016)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2016
	Director: Roee Rosen
	Actors: -
	Country: IL
	Genre: Documentary
	Conditions of visioning: 17.09.2017, Palais Bellevue, documenta14, video
Synopsis: It is an operetta with a Russian libretto set in the domestic environment of a bourgeois Israeli family, whose fear of dirt, dust, or any alien presence in their home takes the shape of a perverted devotion to home-cleaning appliances. Rosen associates dust figuratively with sand. The desert obliquely points to specific and current forms of xenophobia. The detention center where political refugees are held long-term and unrecognized by the state is in the Israeli desert and named Holot—the Hebrew word for sand.
Review: The first half of the 23-minutes movie is a long advertisement for Dyson robotic vacuum cleaner in the house of an Israeli family. Sometimes funny and common like many other video ads. The second half makes a lot of parallels between the sand from the desert, the migrants arriving in Israel, and the dust from which the family wants to get rid of. The visual forms of this second part is propaganda as what we all know from CNN/Fox news during the Irak and Afghanistan wars, and that have been broadcast everywhere in the world as world truth. Roee Rosen plays with the same style as a kind of propaganda by and with Benjamin Netanyahu. The movie has been presented at the modern art exhibition in Kassel, Germany, documenta14. The parallel is expected to shock. It did not shock me, but maybe it is because I did not like the styles that have been used.
Rating: 5 /10

Latitude 40° (2017)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2017
	Director: Olaf Holzapfel
	Actors: -
	Country: D
	Genre: Documentary
	Conditions of visioning: 17.09.2017, Palais Bellevue, documenta14, Digital video
Synopsis: Patagonia is dominated by the Andes. This range of mountains splits the whole American continent, it is a massive natural border in many ways. In Patagonia the Andes are not only a climatic giant separating the Pacific from the Atlantic Ocean and producing very different vegetations and other forms of life on each side, they also play a crucial role in forming the cultural identities along the distinction between East and West. Borders always become symbolic, even though they are natural.
Review: After 40 minutes of images of clouds over the magnificent mountains of the Andes, the movie feels like hypnotic or better said meditative. Peaceful contemplation is meditation. This movie has been shot in Northern Patagonia, where the landscapes are not touristic but already show the force, the peace and the beauty of nature. The cut is done so that you watch another mountain every now and then. This avoids to fall asleep (at least for me). The movement of the clouds over the rocks of the mountain is fascinating. This experimental movie is on one hand interesting for this meditative aspect and on the other hand soporific. Unfortunately, I did not manage to see the end of the movie as I had to take my train back home from Kassel. But this is the kind of movie, that every yoga fan and meditation freak would need at home to enhance the force of the meditation. If you cannot go in the middle of Nature, Olaf Holzapfel brings the Nature to you! Other short documentaries on the meditation that I have seen recently are available here on arte.tv.  The movie was part of a work called Zaun (Fence) presented at the modern art exhibition in Kassel, documenta14. There was another movie, Zaun (Fence) based on interviews with people from Aysén about the borders of their land, two-channel digital video installation.
Rating: 5 /10

The Incredible Hulk (2008)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2008
	Director: Louis Leterrier (The Transporter 1-2, Clash of the Titans, Now you see me)
	Actors: Edward Norton (Fight Club, the 25th Hour), Liv Tyler (Armageddon), Tim Roth (Reservoir Dogs), William Hurt (A History of Violence)
	Country: USA
	Genre: SF, Action
	Conditions of visioning: 30.09.2017, VOD, 32" TV screen
Synopsis: After having been exposed to gamma radiation and becoming the Hulk, Bruce Banner (Norton) is hiding in Brazil while trying to find a cure for his condition. An incident will put the US military back on his track.
Review: I realized that I was missing the review of that movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It is easy to overlook because a) there was already an attempt made at a Hulk movie in 2003 with Eric Bana (officially not part of the Universe), b) it was released on the same year as Iron Man which overshadowed it and c) unlike the change of actor for the secondary actor of Colonel Rhoades (from Terrence Howard to Don Cheadle) from Iron Man to Iron Man 2, here it is the main actor that changed, from Edward Norton to Mark Ruffalo in The Avengers. It was an interesting choice not to revolve the story around the accident that created the Hulk (it is quickly shown in the opening credits) to save that screen time for developing more the story between Banner, his ex-girlfriend Betty (Tyler), her father General Ross (Hurt) and the supersoldier-wannabe Blonsky (Roth). And that story is well-told and self-consistent within the movie, which make it easy to watch. The actors are good, there is enough action and the special effects are impressive enough. Note that special apparitions by Lou Ferrigno (Hulk in the original TV-series), Stan Lee (creator of the comics, now used to have a cameo in all Marvel movies) and Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark (the Iron Man) in the middle of the end credits. It is surprising that The Incredible Hulk didn't continue as a series like for the other Avengers, but he is present in all Avengers movies and in the upcoming Thor: Ragnarok.
Rating: 5 /10

Sabotage (2014)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2014
	Director: David Ayer (Street Kings, Fury, Suicide Squad)
	Actors: Arnold Schwarzenegger (Predator, The Terminator), Sam Worthington (Avatar, Rogue), Terrence Howard (Iron Man), Kevin Vance (Fury), Josh Holloway (Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol), Max Martini (Pacific Rim), Harrold Perrineau (The Matrix Reloaded)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Action
	Conditions of visioning: 02.10.2017, VOD, 32" TV.
Synopsis: "Breacher" (Schwarzenegger) leads a team expert in the infiltration of drug cartels. After a bust the money they had taken disappears, which will make them have trouble with both their superiors and an unknown killer.
Review: There is no way around it: this movie is bad. I watched it to see some action and what is Arnie up to those days, and it turned out to be a waste of time. Apart from the salary of the many known faces in the DEA strike team (reminding of The Expendables), it seems like there was no money left for writing a good story, shooting or editing it (the abrupt cuts and ellipses are really hard to watch), recording a suitable music or telling the actors what to do. Surprising knowing the director's next movie Fury, but not when knowing the following Suicide Squad. Only the barely recognizable Sam Worthington (Avatar) makes a good impression every time he is on screen. I don't know how he landed there... There are a few nice brutal action scenes but the violence is neither justified nor well-integrated in the story. Hell, I still don't understand why they took money in the first place and how everybody came to know about it!
Rating: 1 /10

Empire of Dreams: The Story of the 'Star Wars' Trilogy (2004)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2004
	Director: Edith Becker, Kevin Burns
	Actors: -
	Country: USA
	Genre: Documentary
	Conditions of visioning: 30.09.2017, VOD, 10" tablet screen
Synopsis: The birth of the most successful saga in the History of Cinema.
Review: An informative Documentary about the genesis of the first Star Wars movie (about two thirds of the duration) and its two sequels, starting with a reminder of the historical context and moving on to emphasizing the journey of visionary writer/director Georges Lucas. Cast and crew of the original trilogy share some impressions but the Documentary isn't original in its coverage of the story, more like stating facts. So good for a quick background History of the saga but nothing more. Around the same Universe I am your Father was bringing something different. When watching it I couldn't help thinking about the hilarious short movie George Lucas in Love that you must watch.
Rating: 4 /10

Half a decade later...

Half a decade has passed and JoRafCinema is still not only present but very active in producing reviews of Movies and TV-series seen at the Cinema, in Festivals, at home or on the go. We also write some articles - mostly Festival reports - and once a year analyze some statistics and summarize some thoughts in the anniversary Article that you are now reading. The one of this year is a little late, but let's see in more detail what happened in the first five years (with emphasis on the last one) until July 20th 2017.

Number of posts

The Bomb (2016)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2016
	Director: Kevin Ford, Smriti Keshari, Eric Schlosser
	Actors: -
	Country: USA
	Genre: Documentary, Music, War
	Conditions of visioning: 30.09.2017, VOD, 10" tablet screen
Synopsis: A montage about the history of the atomic bomb with an emphasis on its destructive power.
Review: The Bomb stands half-way between the Documentary and a full-album video clip. Indeed it is a gathering of historic footage with some artistic overlays (like drawings) and sometimes a few dates and marking events, the whole accompanied by the soundtrack by the Eletronic Music band The Acid that I didn't know before. And the different "chapters" of the movie are cut to different songs, perfectly fitting even in their title, which is what makes me think of a long video-clip (like Daft Punk did with Interstella 5555). I found the editing cleverly done, first telling the story of the arms race from infantry (waw those shots or endless rows of soldiers...) to regular bombs and the Atomic one, going through a black screen of 10 seconds and then reverting back in time from Hiroshima to Einstein. Meanwhile I got to see new images and learn a few new fact, about animal testing and the propaganda showing how to protect yourself in case of nuclear explosion: Duck and cover! The superimposition of images with drawings reminded me of the graphic novels series Alpha/Directions, Beta/Civilization by Jens Harder. The Bomb, lasting an hour, is an experience to live rather than to watch thanks to a hypnotic editing punctuated by the perfect electronic music. And if that's not enough for you to get the message, it is distilled at the end of the movie in the two panel reproduced at the end of this post.
Rating: 7 /10