Rien à déclarer (2010)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2010
	Director: Dany Boon (Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis)
	Actors: Benoît Poelvoorde (C'est arrivé près de chez vous), Dany Boon, Julie Bernard, Francois Damiens (La Délicatesse)
	Country: F
	Genre: Comedy
	Conditions of visioning: 19.08.2013, DVD, 32" TV
Synopsis: The last month of 1993 at the French-Belgian border before it dissappears. The customs officers on both sides live ithe transition each their own way.
Review: Soon after the huge success of Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis, Danny Boon tried to repeat the performance. He wrote and directed this movie in which he plays with the Belgian comedian Benoît Poelvoorde. The story could be funny but is not often and the characters are too caricaturals. Still, Poelvoorde is funny in the excess as usual, playing a Belgian customs officers who hates the French people. His character is the key to the best moments in the movie. I was dissapointed by the movie, I had expected it to be more funny, while it just fills 1h30 of your time.
Rating: 5 /10

Les 7 jours du Talion (2010)

	Also Known As: 7 Days
	Year of first release: 2010
	Director: Daniel Grou
	Actors: Claude Legault, Rémy Girard, Martin Dubreuil
	Country: CDN
	Genre: Drama, Thriller
	Conditions of visioning: 18.08.2013, DVD, 32" TV
Synopsis: Bruno (Legault) manages to kidnap the rapist and killer of his daughter.
Review: The movie was recommended to me by a friend who has two young daughters. The Talion is the ancien law that is ususally simply expressed by "An eye for an eye", meaning that you punish a wrong with a wrong of the same amplitude. It is a revenge movie shot in a realistic and believable way. The torture scenes quite early in the movie make it look like any random American torture-porn movie (Saw, Hostel, ...) but many details differenciate it: the slow rythm and rarity of dialogs, the framing (many travellings from left to right, and framing of people to the right side of the screen and looking to the left, for a bizarre effect), the stopping of torture scenes after a while, the absence of twists in the screenplay, and the deeper reflexion on the vertue of punishment. This simple movie is indeed very efficient and though-provoking. The conclusion of the movie are well summarized in the last sentences (spoiler, highlight to read): Journalist: "Do you still believe Vengeance is the answer?" Bruno: "No". Journalist: "So you regret having done what you did?" Bruno: "No".
Rating: 7 /10

Bipolar (2011)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2011
	Director: Daniel Ruczko
	Actors: Daniel Ruczko
	Country: D
	Genre: Drama
	Conditions of visioning: 11.08.2013, Schauburg, during the European premiere of the second movie of the director
Synopsis: An experimental short movie, entirely in split screen. It follows a manic-depressive author called Andrew Gony. The movie shows Andrew in both mental stages, to visualize that the split screen is used.
Review: The story shows a very smooth manic depression. Nothing to do with the cases in Silver linings playbook. But the contact to this case may be closer, as there is only one actor and in both sides of the screen, this actor tells his story from different points of view. The scenery is very good. With a lot of silences where the light electronic music sets the matching atmosphere. I think that the big effort of splitting the screen is actually a great idea, but might be difficult to comprehend for the viewer. The cinematography is interesting with a good picture as from a photo camera.
Rating: 6 /10

Wake up! (2013)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2013
	Director: Daniel Ruczko
	Actors: Luis Bordonada, Jesus Mayorga
	Country: USA
	Genre: Drama
	Conditions of visioning: 11.08.2013, Schauburg, European Premiere
Synopsis: Wake Up! tells the story of Leon, a 29 year old male working a mediocre office job, who lost his focus in life. That's about to change when he finds himself waking up in a train being confronted with his way of "living" by a man sitting across of him. Leon struggles with what this man has to say and has to fight his thoughts of what he thinks is real and what's not. While living his life on autopilot for quiet some time, Leon now has to find a way to "wake up".
Review: The author is living in Bremen. Therefore the European premiere is settled in Bremen. I saw the trailer in the last weeks and was curious. My impression is confirmed. The story is good, because it says what many people think and sometimes say as well but do not dare to accept.  There are not many dialogues, but these are direct and effective, I think. With no much dialogues, the sound is even more important. The music is enhancing the oppressing atmosphere. The picture is almost too clean, because it continuously plays with the focus. This is esthetically nice and looks really good, but maintains also a distance to the viewer, while the message seems to look for the contact.
Rating: 7 /10

This is the end (2013)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2013
	Director: Evan Goldberg, Seth Rogen
	Actors: Seth Rogen, Jay Baruchel, James Franco, Jonah Hill, Danny McBride, Craig Robinson
	Country: USA
	Genre: Comedy
	Conditions of visioning: 05.08.2013, Schauburg, OV Sneak preview
Synopsis: While attending a party at James Franco's house, Seth Rogen, Jay Baruchel and many other celebrities are faced with the apocalypse.
Review: This movie is entertaining, because it is a bit like a group of friends chatting at the end of a party. All the new scene of American comedian is there. Some scenes are ironic because they had to, but I had no much interest in the coming minutes of the movie. In general, the acting was ok, the story was ok, but nothing retaining my attention.
Rating: 3 /10

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 1991
	Director: Nicholas Meyer (Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan)
	Actors: William Shatner (Loaded Weapon 1, Airplane 2), Leonard Nimoy (Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Transformers 3 Dark of the Moon), DeForest Kelley, Kim Cattrall (Big Trouble in Little China), Christopher Plummer (The Sound of Music)
	Country: USA
	Genre: SF, Adventure
	Conditions of visioning: 14.08.2013, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: The planet of the Klingons is dying, so the Federation send Kirk (Shatner) and the Enterprise to escort a Klingon Embassador coming to Earth for negociating Universal peace. But it is not what everybody wants, starting from Kirk.
Review: This movie was the last featuring the original Star Trek cast, and you can feel it. The actors are getting old, and it is also their last mission in the movie. The seemingly end of the Klingons as enemies is a nice starting point, especially when put in parallel with Kirk's hatred for this people. The movie turns out to be more an investigation on an incident that could cause Kirk's death, but in background we keep on learning on the relationship between the main characters. The main topic is also interesting and can be transposed to Earth politics: how do you make peace with a people that you have spent decades fighting? I found that the movie was better than the two previous ones and concludes well the series of movie with the original cast. Next, I have to watch the four movies with Picard (Patrick Stewart) as new Captain of the Enterprise.
Rating: 6 /10

Elysium (2013)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2013
	Director: Neill Blomkamp (District 9)
	Actors: Matt Damon (The Bourne 1-3, Dogma), Jodie Foster (The Silence of the Lambs, Contact), Sharlto Copley (The A-team, Europa Report)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Action, SF
	Conditions of visioning: 14.08.2013, CINEMA theater
Synopsis: In the near-future, Earth is poor and overpopulated. The richest live in an orbital station. Max (Damon) will try to break this barrier.
Review: District 9 was such a nice surprise, one could only eagerly look forward to the next movie by Neill Blomkamp. The concept of Elysium is interesting and still follows the theme of clash between the classes dear to the director. Matt Damon and his exoskeleton are quite efficient, Sharlto Copley is barely recognizeable except for his thick and funny accent and extravagency, and Jodie Foster seems a bit lost there but it's OK. Special effects are impeccable, and we can appreciate a couple of action scenes like the ones we liked in Distrct 9, including droids and futuristic weapons that will make people blow in a thousand bloody pieces. The actions of the hero follow a quest we can easily identify with, but the third act of the movie leaves us with a taste of something missing, and is not fully though through. A pity.
Rating: 6 /10

The Dinosaur Project (2012)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2012
	Director: Sid Bennett (2 episodes of the TV-series Prehistoric Park)
	Actors: Richard Dillane (The Dark Knight, Argo), Peter Brooke, Matt Kane
	Country: GB
	Genre: Adventure
	Conditions of visioning: 12.08.2013, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: A team of the Crypozoological society led by adventurer Jonathan Marchant (Dillane) travels to Congo after reported sightings of giant marine reptiles.
Review: I missed this movie at the MFFF2012 but immediately bought the Blu-ray which was already released in the UK. The movie is just what you would expect from a found footage about hunting dinosaurs in African forests. The budget is obviously not the one of a Hollywood movie, so the found footage format was a wise choice. We get to see dinosaurs only a few times and the images are a little shaky, but it helps in making the whole thing beliievable, and the CGI are not bad at all. Much better than in the TV-series Prehistoric Park, the latest spin-off of the magnificent Walking with Dinosaurs, and probably at the level of Spielberg's  Jurassik Park, although twenty years later. The story is quite classic and reminds of The Lost World (1925) or The Valley of Gwangi (1969). There are not many surprises in the characters development (the father-son relationship, the jalous right-hand man of the famous adventurer...), but the movie is short enough (83 minutes) that it is easy to watch, and might indeed be the best extinct dinosaurs movie since Jurassik Park, as the Blu-ray cover advertises.
Rating: 6 /10

JoRafCinema is one year old!

Exactly one year ago today, we launched JoRafCinema.blogspot.de to communicate to our friends our passion for the Art that is Cinema. We launched the Facebook link on September 18th 2012.
The idea had been in our heads for a while and it took some time to make it real. We published our first post on July 20th 2012, and today we wish to summarize what we have accomplished in the first year.

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 1989
	Director: William Shatner
	Actors: William Shatner (Loaded Weapon 1, Airplane 2), Leonard Nimoy (Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon), DeForest Kelley, Laurence Luckinbill (Cocktail)
	Country: USA
	Genre: SF
	Conditions of visioning: 10.08.2013, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: Onboard the newly built and not fully functionning Enterprise-B, Kirk (Shatner), Spock (Nimoy) and their crew have to investigate the kidnapping of diplomats. But this may be only a trick that will lead them to explore the final frontier of our galaxy.
Review: The movie starts slowly and well, taking the time to show our favorite characters on shore leave (maybe the influence of Shatner as director and screenplay writer). The following is more classic and leaves only half an hour for the really interesting part of the movie (spoiler, highlight to read): the trip to the center of the galaxy and the meeting with an entity they believe to be God. The philosphical questions raised by this last part are important and remind of Star Trek I: The Motion Picture. I actually learned in the making-of that those questions were intentionally left aside from the first movie, maybe too in advance for its time, and re-used in this fifth episode. Otherwise, the apparition of a Klingon enemy is even more useless than in Star Trek III, but all in all the movie fits well in the series, leaning undeniably towards the standards of a good TV-series rather than the ones of expensive cinema.
Rating: 5 /10