Dick Tracy (1990)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 1990
	Director: Warren Beatty
	Actors: Warren Beatty (Bugsy), Madonna (Evita, Die Another Day), Al Pacino (Scarface, Heat), Dustin Hoffman (Rain Man)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Action, Polar
	Conditions of visioning: 10.11.2013, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: Detective Dick Tracy (Beatty) is trying to put the mob head Big Boy Caprice (Pacino) behind bars.
Review: This movie was adapted from a comic book at a time when it was not the trend yet, a bit like Sam Raimi's Darkman. I had seen Dick Tracy ten years ago and just remembered how colorful it was. Watching it now in the best possible quality still gives the same feeling of watching comic strips evolve on the big screen, fifteen years before Sin City. Some shots are clearly copied from the comics, like when Tracy is standing in front of a back-lit door opening. You can almost hear the "BAM!" and "BANG!" when they is a fighting or shooting. All the actors playing bad guys are wearing prosthetic make-up to give them very cartoonesque faces. The matte painting backgrounds are numerous and very colorful and detailed. I found that Al Pacino and Madonna are playing very well. The story is quite classic and not always well directed, which makes this movie far from perfect but quite enjoyeable, in its own unique style.
Rating: 7 /10

The Heat (2013)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2013
	Director: Paul Feig (Bad Teacher)
	Actors: Sandra Bullock (Speed, Gravity), Michael McDonald, Melissa McCarthy (The Hangover part 3)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Comedy
	Conditions of visioning: 10.11.2013, HD VOD, Home cinema
Synopsis: Special FBI agent Ashburn (Bullock) is the best. But to prove that she can also work in a team (and get promoted), she will be forced to team up with the Boston local police officer Mullins (McCarthy) to arrest a drug lord.
Review: As often with this kind of movie you see most of the best jokes in the trailer. The comedy revolves around the odd couples formed by the uptight Ashburn and the vulgar Mullins. I found it funny sometimes, but often over the top. It is however interesting to see Sandra Bullock in this kind of comedy (like many she has done in the past years) just after watching Gravity in which she plays a character totally different, and in which you see she is a good actress. You don't have much opportunity to see that in The Heat.
Rating: 5 /10

Die Hard 2 (1990)

	Also Known As: 58 Minutes pour Vivre (French)
	Year of first release: 1990
	Director: Renny Harlin (Cliffhanger, Deep Blue See, The Dyatlov Pass Incident)
	Actors: Bruce Willis (Die Hard 1-5, Looper), William Sadler, William Atherton, Bonnie Bedelia
	Country: USA
	Genre: Action
	Conditions of visioning: 08.11.2013, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: While awaiting his wife's landing at the Washington airport, John McClane (Willis) notices the strange behavior of some men, and will have once again to unveil a terrorist plot.
Review: This movie is known to be the weakest of the original Die Hard trilogy. After enjoying the first one (reviewed here), I was once again pleased by the second. It was shot very soon after the first to benefit from its success, and had a solid budget to show an airport, gunfights, huge explosions... everything you can expect in the adventures of John McClane. At some point he says "How can the same thing happen to the same guy twice?", and once you accept that, the movie is a lot of fun. McClane always finds ways to challenge the terrorists all by himself, while the official authorities fail because of their slowness. He also has an answer to that. When asked why he is nervous he replies that he hates to fly. When asked then why he is about to jump from a helicopter onto the wing of a moving plane, he says: "Because I also hate to loose". That defines him all: the most stubborn cop that terrorist could dread fighting against. The video and sound quality of this Blu-ray edition are as good as the first movie, and once again I could notice many details that I completely overlooked when watching VHS or DVD. I am now looking forward to watching Die Hard 3.
Rating: 7 /10

Rango (2011)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2011
	Director: Gore Verbinski (Pirates of the Carribean 1-3, The Lone Ranger)
	Actors (voices):  Johnny Depp (Pirates of the Carribean 1-4), Isla Fisher (Now You See Me), Ned Beatty (Deliverance, Superman)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Animation, Western, Comedy
	Conditions of visioning: 10.11.2013, SD VOD, Home cinema
Synopsis: A chamaeleon is ejected from his lonely little world into the Mojave desert where he will enter a typical far west village. He will have the opportunity to create for himself a new character: Rango, terror of the West.
Review: I thought I read some good about this movie but didn't really know what to expect. At the beginning it looks like it could be a more adult animation film, but it turns out to recycle the usual story you can expect from a movie made for kids: the "different" guy that will fight the bad guys, win against all odds and meet the "different" girl. On the way he will have found the meaning for his life. Not really original. Anything good in Rango? the answer is yes! I found the animation brillant at times, especially the faces and eyes of the characters that I found had a lot of life in them. Also nice are the attempted references to traditionnal or spaghetti Westen movies, via some key sentences here and there, or shots like the extreme close-up on the faces Leone-style. Good movie for a Sunday rainy hangover afternon... if you don't fall asleep.
Rating: 5 /10

Die Hard (1988)

	Also Known As: Piège de cristal (French)
	Year of first release: 1988
	Director: John McTiernan (Predator, Last Action Hero, The Hunt for Red October, The 13th Warrior)
	Actors: Bruce Willis (Die Hard 1-5, Looper), Alan Rickman (Galaxy Quest, Harry Potter 1-8), Bonnie Bedelia
	Country: USA
	Genre: Action
	Conditions of visioning: 06.11.2013, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: John McClaine (Willis), a New York cop, finds himself in the middle of a terrorist attack while visiting his wife (Bedelia) in Los Angeles.
Review: Die Hard is probably the best of what was done as Action films in the 80's. I have seen it countless times when I was young but not in the past 5-10 years, and maybe never in Original version. I feared a bit that it would have aged badly and that I wouldn't appreciate it so much, that the jokes would be dated (like it is the case for Commando with Schwarzenegger). It turned out to be as good as I remembered, plus this time the pretty good Blu-ray edition allowed me to spot many new details I had never seen before, and enjoy the perfect framing and timing of the shots, the whole thing accompanied by a tense music and powerful sound effects. Bruce Willis really became an Action Hero then, and I had forgotten that before being Professor Severus Snape, Alan Rickman was Hans Gruber, refined but cold-blooded terrorist. As already said, what impressed me most was the perfect framing and timing of the shots, a lesson of cinema (it seems redundant with what I wrote yesterday about Dressed to Kill!). Perfect image composition, location of such and such detail in the frame, travelling backwards, some lens flare here and there, and magic scenes like the fall of Hans Gruber, or the slow focusing along the policeman gun cannon at the end. A pleasure for the eyes. I will probably continue with the three sequels soon (I have already seen the fourth).
Rating: 9 /10

Twixt (2011)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2011
	Director: Francis Ford Coppola (Apocalypse Now, The Godfather 1-3)
	Actors: Val Kilmer (Red Planet, The Saint), Bruce Dern (The Hole, Django), Elle Fanning (Super 8)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Drama, Thriller
	Conditions of visioning: 04.11.2013, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: A witchcraft novel author on the decline (Kilmer) stays in a strange little town during his book signing tour. He will be befriended by the local sheriff (Dern) and in his dream will meet a girl (Fanning) at the center of a murder story.
Review: I remember that the movie got a mixed reception when it was released. It is indeed not the regular thriller, and maybe not what people expected from Copolla. But I liked the unreal atmosphere in this little town (a bell tower with seven clocks that never give the same time!), the visual design of the dream sequences, and the sheriff that looks like John Carpenter. And of course a fat Val Kilmer who is excellent in his role. The movie could have been boring because of the odd story and the dreams, but I found it all to be well wrapped up and interesting.
Rating: 7 /10

Dressed to Kill (1980)

	Also Known As: Pulsions (French)
	Year of first release: 1980
	Director: Brian de Palma (Scarface, Carrie)
	Actors: Michael Caine (Zulu, Harry Brown), Angie Dickinson, Nancy Allen (Blow Out, Robocop), Keith Gordon (Christine)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Drama, Thriller
	Conditions of visioning: 03.11.2013, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: A mysterious, tall blonde woman, wearing dark sunglasses murders one of a psychiatrist (Caine)'s patients (Dickinson), and now she goes after the high-priced call girl (Allen) who witnessed the murder.
Review: I wanted to discover Brian de Palma's golden age, that is his movies from the 70's - 80's, so I started by watching Blow Out (reviewed here) which I liked but no more than that. Dressed to Kill is the movie he made just before and was already featuring Nancy Allen. There are so many kinds of perversion and fetichism in this movie that I lost count: unfaithful middle aged woman, a one-afternoon-stand met at a museum, leather gloves and clothes, a razor, a hooker and a teenager, mirrors, transvestites... This may be the best of De Palma's. All the characters have their own background story that makes them interesting. All the actors are excellent. I had never seen the movie and didn't know where it was going so I had excellent surprises all along, discovering the events and the character's reactions. And the direction is a lesson of cinema, for example the museum scene at the beginning, a wordless hide-and-seek game between the character of Angie Dickinson and her future lover. The elevator scene is also beautifully done and plays with your nerves. Those two scenes are said to be largely inspired (copied) from Hitchcock. It is true that the master of suspense had a large influence on De Palma, but when watching the interview of Keith Gordon you learn that De Palma did much more than a copy: he followed Hitchcock rules but included his own sensitivity and created a contemporary story that was edging the limits of what could be shown at that time, especially in terms of sexual behaviors. The French Blu-ray edition is of excellent quality (image and sound) and proposes several interesting interviews (Angie Dickinson, Keith Gordon...).I am now very tempted to watch some other of his movies like Obsession or Body Double (this one unfortunately not yet available in Blu-ray).
Rating: 10 /10

Agnosia (2010)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2010
	Director: Eugenio Mira
	Actors: Eduardo Noriega (The Devil's backbone, The Last Stand), Félix Gómez, Bárbara Goenaga
	Country: E
	Genre: Drama, Thriller
	Conditions of visioning: 01.11.2013, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: Joana (Goenaga) suffers suffers from a disease since she is a child: she can hardly recognize shapes or sounds. Her father and her future husband Carlos (Noriega) protect her from the world, while a scheme is plotted against her.
Review: According to Wikipedia, agnosia "is a loss of ability to recognize objects, persons, sounds, shapes, or smells while the specific sense is not defective nor is there any significant memory loss". Not the whole movie is based on this theme, but it is still central. I read about the movie in the Mad Movie magazine and decided to watch it. I was starting to get tired of the "spanish horror" after watching The Orphanage, Julia's Eyes or Insensibles. Agnosia is not a horror film and is quite different from the other, alhough it is also put in parallel with Spanish History. The most interesting in the movie are the complex relationship between all the characters that are well played. However I didn't really managed to get absorbed by the movie, maybe because the stakes are not clear and the movie hesitates between different genres (Romance, Historic drama, Horror, Thriler...). Anyway refreshing when compared to American productions.
Rating: 6 /10

Ender's Game (2013)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2013
	Director: Gavin Hood (X-men Origins: Wolverine)
	Actors: Harrison Ford (Indiana Jones 1-4), Asa Butterfield (The Wolfman, Hugo), Hailee Steinfeld (True Grit)
	Country: USA
	Genre: SF
	Conditions of visioning: 01.11.2013, Museum Lichtspiele Cinema
Synopsis: Fifty years after Mankind was almost annihilated by the alien race known as the Formics, Earth military leaders are looking amoungs children for bright minds.
Review: I first heard about this movie when learning that it was adapted from a book that inspired Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers. This is evidently wrong as the latter precedes Ender's Game (the novel) by 26 years. But this was enough information to attract me to the movie. The novel won both the Hugo and Nebula prices (highest awards for SF), and its sequel as well! I will most probably read them soon. I was not three minutes into the movie that I loved the pitch: an alien attack, survival of Mankind... The whole concept of having children as military commanders relies on the fact that their mind is much more open than the one of adults. This may look weird to have those kids behave like adults (well maybe this is what happens in a world that nearly got destroyed), but once you bought this, the rest of the movie will follow. But I could understand that some people don't buy it and find the movie ridiculous. I found that the young actors play very well, almost having fun when playing war games (I especially liked the almost-unknown Aramis Knight and hope to see him again) and Harrison Ford too, in a role that suits him (not pretending to be an adventurer). The visual effects are very well done, although the screen on which I saw the movie was poor (I will correct that when watching the movie on my Home Cinema one day). Ender's Game is one of the best SF movie I have watched recently.
Rating: 8 /10

Eat Pray Love (2010)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2010
	Director: Ryan Murphy
	Actors: Julia Roberts, Javier Bardem
	Country: USA
	Genre: Drama, Romance
	Conditions of visioning: 17.10.2013, DVD
Synopsis: Liz Gilbert had everything a modern woman is supposed to dream of having - a husband, a house, a successful career - yet like so many others, she found herself lost, confused, and searching for what she really wanted in life. Newly divorced and at a crossroads, Gilbert steps out of her comfort zone, risking everything to change her life, embarking on a journey around the world that becomes a quest for self-discovery. In her travels, she discovers the true pleasure of nourishment by eating in Italy; the power of prayer in India, and, finally and unexpectedly, the inner peace and balance of true love in Bali.
Review: I did not go to the theater for this movie, because I had the prejudice of a Julia Roberts love comedy. But I heard so much different about the movie, that I finally watched it. And it was indeed a good surprise.  Well, the love story of Julia Roberts with Javier Bardem is ok. The best parts are the farniente in Italy (for the images) with the plenty of food and people, even if you do not know what these people do nor are. And the scenes with the old man in Bali as this man is like a Yoda and all the viewers are kind of Padawans. It is finally not a girlie movie, but it is not a philosophical movie about life neither. Something in between. The directing gives the impression to make a video to increase tourism in these countries. In total, many impressions, but a lot of these are not quite flat and a few ones are enjoyable or intellectually interesting.
Rating: 5 /10