Red Dawn (2012)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2012
	Director: Dan Bradley (first-time director but stunt coordinator on three Bourne movies two Spider-mans, Donnie Darko...)
	Actors: Chris Hemsworth (Thor 1-2, The Avengers), Isabel Lucas, Josh Hutcherson (Detention, Voyage to the Center of the Earth), Jeffrey Dean Morgan (Watchmen)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Action, War, Drama
	Conditions of visioning: 17.03.2014, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: When their town and the whole country is invaded by communists, a bunch of high-school students finds refuge in the mountains.
Review: This is a remake of the 1984 classic Red Dawn by John Milius (Conan the Barbarian) that I had recently discovered. I had heard that it was a poor copy apart from the special effects, so I was actually pleasantly surprised. The special effects actually consist of little CGIs but many explosions and gunfights that are indeed very powerful (maybe thanks to the career of stunt coordinator of the director). At the beginning the movie seems to only copy the marking scenes of the original with some changes. I didn't like the fact that the elder brother (Hemsworth) is a soldier, it decreases the feeling that it is just a group of kids fighting this war. I also preferred the original introduction of the parachutists next to the school (and killing a teacher) instead of above the town. Cubans have been replaced by North Koreans, a more actual threat. But after some time Red Dawn manages to find its own character and deliver something different from the original. It also does not compromises on violence like I could have expected, or in killing its heroes. The meeting with "real" soldiers is different from the original movie but as good (Jeffrey Dean Morgan replaces efficiently Powers Boothe). Not so bad after all.
Rating: 6 /10

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2010
	Director: Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz)
	Actors: Michael Cera, Mary Elizabeth Winstead (The Thing, Deathproof), Kieran Culkin, Chris Evans (Captain America 1-2), Brandon Routh (Superman Returns), Johnny Simmons (Jennifer's Body)
	Country: USA, GB, CDN, J
	Genre: Fantasy, Action, Comedy
	Conditions of visioning: 16.03.2014, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: Like in a video game, Scott Pilgrim (Cera) has to fight through levels of enemies and bosses to reach the goals of his young adult life.
Review: I was wrong in believing that Scott Pilgrim vs. the World was another real-life super-hero movie like Kick-Ass or Super. It is indeed a geek movie but its influences are more in the video games of the 80's than in comic books, reminding me a little of the movie Wreck-it Ralph, and the Xbox Kinect video game Kung-Fu High Impact. The flashy colors, expressions and fast pace remind me of Kaboom! or Detention and target this movie to a younger audience. You can feel this influence from the opening Universal credit re-sampled in 8 bits (including the music) to the BAM! and WIZ! and DDDDDD! exclamations written on screen, until the final fight. It is funny that ten years ago it seems very original that Quentin Tarantino placed an animated segment in Kill Bill, while nowadays it is pretty common, like it is in Scott Pilgrim. I did not recognize Mary Elizabeth Winstead with her hair color changing every week and a half. The short apparitions by Evans (a skater that became actor) or Rough (possessing super Vegan powers) are quite funny. In general the movie is OK to watch, once you accept that it looks more and more like a video game in its second half.
Rating: 6 /10

300: Rise of an Empire (2014)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2014
	Director: Noam Murro
	Actors: Sullivan Stapleton, Eva Green (Casino Royale), Lena Headey (300, Game of Thrones TV-series, Dredd)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Epic
	Conditions of visioning: 15.03.2014, CINEMA theater, 3D
Synopsis: Greek general Themistokles (Stapleton) leads the charge against invading Persian forces led by mortal-turned-god Xerxes and Artemisia (Green), vengeful commander of the Persian navy.
Review: I was not planning to rush to the cinemas to see the prequel to the hit 300 that had Gerald Butler as Leonidas and was directed by Zack Snyder (Watchmen, Dawn of the Dead), but I read that it was equal to the first movie. I liked 300 but found that all the good ideas came from the original graphic novel by Frank Miller, and the movie was showing a succession of nice scenes but lacked some work of adaptation. Rise of an Empire is based on the as-yet-unreleased Frank Miller graphic novel Xerxes. It is not a prequel like I was lead to believe, but rather tells the whole story around what happens in 300, including the re-birth of Xerxes, the events that lead the god-kind to march his army towards Greece, parallel story to the tale of Leonidas and continuation of it. For this I liked the movie. I liked the first half-hour (introduction of strong characters like Xerxes, Themistokles and Artemisia) in spite of the abuse of extra-slow motions. The naval scenes in which the boats ride the waves like if they were mountainsides are impressive. And the close-to-the-ground sword fight scenes are improved compared to 300: they have more depth, maybe thanks to the 3D. Then my interest faded a little but was kept high enough by sporadic apparition of characters from 300. And I found the ending satisfying, so it left me with a good opinion. However, I would prefer a good old peplum to such a mix of fantasy and comic book characters. The movie is good-looking but the ultra-iconic images create a distance with the viewer.
Rating: 5 /10

Hisss (2010)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2010
	Director: Jennifer Chambers Lynch (Boxing Helena, Chained)
	Actors: Mallika Sherawat, Irrfan Khan (Slumdog Millionaire), Jeff Doucette
	Country: IND, USA
	Genre: Horror, Thriller
	Conditions of visioning: 16.02.2014, Blu-ray, Home cinema, French dubbing.
Synopsis: In the hope of curing his brain cancer, George States (Doucette) awakes a snake Goddess that takes human form (Sherawat) and leaves dead bodies in her trail.
Review: For her third movie as director the daughter of David Lynch (Dune, Mulholland Drive, Twin Peaks) accepted to shot a movie in India about a local legendary snake-woman. I learned about it when watching the making-of documentary Despite the Gods (reviewed here) at the Motelx 2013 festival in Lisbon. As Lost in La Mancha did for Terry Gilliam, Despite the Gods show you the amount of trouble she went through to try and get the movie done, and eventually gave up (it was finished without her). And like Terry Gilliam, you learn that the trouble is partly due to her special strong character. So what remains in the movie is a strange mix: some beautiful images in terms of color and framing (presented in a nice Blu-ray copy that I luckily found for cheap in France, but with only the awful french dubbing), next to cheap dialogs and special effects (for some reason all the snakes in the movie are made of rubber for the worst effect), poor editing and an especially bad soundtrack. Also remains a very sexy Mallika Sherawat who is often artistically naked and making love with a snake in a disturbingly crude manner for an Indian film. It took me several attempts to watch the movie in its whole, which says a lot about the boredom it creates.
Rating: 1 /10

Fantasy Filmfest Nights 2014

So as not to wait a full year for another edition of the Fantasy Filmfest in Germany, the organizers have planned those so-called Fantasy Filmfest Nights which take place half a year after the main festival, actually last for two days and introduce 10 movies.
This year's edition in Munich will take place on March 22-23, and here are my recommendations on what to watch, more based on what I know from the directors and read about the movies than on the trailers.

Cannibal Holocaust (1980)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 1980
	Director: Ruggero Deodato (The Barbarians)
	Actors: Robert Kerman, Francesca Ciardi, Perry Pirkanen
	Country: I
	Genre: Horror
	Conditions of visioning: 05.03.2014, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: An anthropologist (Kerman) travels to the Amazonian forest (known as The Green Inferno) looking for a missing documentary TV crew.
Review: I have selected as cover for this post one of the least graphical posters of this movie I could find. I have hidden the re-vamped exchangeable cover from the pristine Blu-ray edition by Shameless Entertainment Video at the end of the article. Cannibal Holocaust is a very special movie and if you are not into this genre, its only merit may be to make you wonder how far can cinema go? It is one of the most brutal movies ever made, and was banned from UK for decades. It is extremely violent and filled with what seems to be only provocative scenes: Sex, murder, cannibalism and maybe the most disturbing: animal cruelty. It is ironical that a British video company releases the best edition of the movie to date. I had only ever seen the movie on cheap VHS tapes, and the most recently (about ten years ago) on a cheap DiVx censored from all the violent scenes (what a disappointment it was). The image and sound quality on the Blu-ray are brilliant, except that I noticed some jitter between image and sound that varied throughout the movie so that I had to correct it a few times with my A/V amplifier. Slightly annoying. Besides the picture quality, the most interesting feature in this edition is a new edit of the movie supervised by the director himself, and in which he modified most of the animal cruelty scenes, editing them in a more creative and less provocative way, while keep the message he wanted to convey. This is the version I watched (The Blu-ray contains both). The director introduces this version for five minutes, justifying his choices. The movie is still very brutal, but a bit less disturbing. One interesting element to keep from the movie is the way the story is told: the first half of the movie is about the looking for the TV-crew, the second half about what to do with the video tapes found in the forest. This second part is like a reflection about what to do with the movie Cannibal Holocaust itself. The movie also contains a sub-text about the integrity of a TV-crew violating an otherwise virgin natural environment. I CANNOT recommend the movie to anybody as it is too extreme, but I am glad to have seen it in the best conditions possible before watching at the Munich Fantasy Filmfest Nights 2014 the homage Eli Roth produced and entitled The Green Inferno.
Rating: 4 /10

Torn curtain (1966)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 1966
	Director: Alfred Hitchcock (Psycho, The Birds)
	Actors: Paul Newman (The Towering Inferno), Julie Andrews (The Sound of Music), Lila Kedrova
	Country: USA
	Genre: Thriller
	Conditions of visioning: 03.03.2014, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: During the cold war, Professor Michael Armstrong (Newman) travels behind the Iron Curtain, followed by his fiancee (Andrews). This will not help him accomplish his task in the already very little time he has.
Review: Torn Curtain displays the best of what Alfred Hitchcock could do in suspense and you can recognize all the key elements like the romantic story, the McGuffin (a formula that need to be found) and the enemies right on the heels of the hero. After watching Torn Curtain I can really understand the quote from the Master of suspense printed on the cover of the Blu-ray box-set: "Always make the audience suffer as much as possible". I didn't really know where the movie was going (as usual I watched it without even knowing the synopsis to have an open mind and no expectations) but once I got it I had no time to relax anymore, as the task of the hero that you thought would take some weeks has to be done in a matter of hours! Quite unrealistic, but very efficient to keep the viewer glued to his seat. The images are beautiful, the music sparse and efficient and the actors quite excellent. I was impressed in particular by the small role of the Countess Kuchinska that appears towards the end of the movie, played wonderfully by Lila Kedrova. The character has a troubled past and present and it is not easy to convey this in a few minutes of apparition, but Lila Kedrova did something magic. I believed to be in the presence of a real person and not an actress, which does not happen very often. It seems Hitchcock was impressed as well because it looks like he gave her more screen time than he originally planned. Last remark: Torn Curtain contain an excellent scene of hide-and-seek in a museum, without a word but only the sounds of footsteps. It is the scene that inspired Brian de Palma (big Hitchcock disciple) for a similar scene that I also liked in Dressed to Kill.
Rating: 9 /10

Week-ends (2014)

	Also Known As: Week-ends
	Year of first release: 2014
	Director: Anne Villacèque
	Actors: Karin Viard, Jacques Gamblin, Noémie Lvovsky, Ulrich Tukur
	Country: F
	Genre: Drama
	Conditions of visioning: 28.02.2014, Les Arcades (Cannes)
Synopsis: You do not need much to kill your weekend. A misunderstanding on the supermarket park lot, a husband who decides to leave. So is it for Christine. Jean is leaving. Their weekends "friends", Sylvette and Ulrich, do not know how to react with both.
Review: The plot is typical French and you can already foresee the boredom. The story seems boring because what happens is a bit like in real life. This may remind (500) days of Summer. Without any clear reason, your couple breaks. You have weekends friends that do not know you really, but nevertheless like you and are affected by your pain. Same with your kids. The strength of the movie might be the sparseness of the dialogues. Because most of the life and of the feelings and of the communication is not going through words. Even if talking is one good possibility for communication. Good point are the acting of Karin Viard and Ulrich Tukur who really fit to their roles and react to the events and their environment. Jacques Gamblin is a somewhere else, as his role, so that he does not have much to act. Noémie Lvovsky does not have much to act neither. The end is terrible (SPOILER) as the broken couple comes together again without notice. There is also nothing special nor original in the directing nor in the cut. Therefore the concept may be intersting but the movie itself is actually indeed quite boring.
Rating: 2 /10

Saboteur (1942)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 1942
	Director: Alfred Hitchcock (The Birds, Vertigo)
	Actors: Priscilla Lane, Robert Cummings (Dial M for Murder), Otto Kruger
	Country: USA
	Genre: Thriller, Adventure
	Conditions of visioning: 03.03.2014, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: After a fire erupted in the factory where he works, Barry (Cummings) is accused of sabotage and will run through the country to clear his name.
Review: The oldest Hitchcock movie in the excellent Blu-ray box-set I have bought, Saboteur is in black & white and doesn't hide its age. I do not refer to the image quality which is quite good, or to the story which is an excellent suspense once (like always with the Master), but more to the overdone acting (with long pauses), the framing of the actors that had to make them look at their best, the habit of filming any possible shot in a studio (it always looks fake to me, even in black & white), and the high-pitched orchestral soundtrack. Hopefully, Hitchcock managed to make me forget those downsides thanks to a truely intriguing road-movie story perfectly fitting to its time (sabotage in a plane factory was a big deal in this time of war). Typically with the Master, the enemies are always on the heels of the hero (I noticed it even more on Torn Curtain). He also dircted some well-written role like the one of the blind uncle of the heroin ('blindly' trusting the hero to be innocent) or the one of Tobin the villain, extremely clever man always a step ahead of the hero. Hitchcock also manipulates the music to his need, for example muting it completely during the high tense scenes like the final one in the Statue of Liberty.
Rating: 6 /10

Bad Taste (1987)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 1987
	Director: Peter Jackson (Braindead, The Lord of the Rings 1-3, King Kong)
	Actors: Terry Potter, Pete O'Herne, Craig Smith
	Country: NZ
	Genre: Horror
	Conditions of visioning: 01.03.2014, DVD, Home cinema
Synopsis: A bunch of government agents fight against a colony of aliens that have invaded a small Kiwi town.
Review: I have discovered this movie in VHS (French version of course) at the same time as I discovered the classic Horror films like Friday 13th or Halloween. It looks so cheap but is at the same time so funny and nuts that it made a strong impression on me and I have watched it many times, usually late at night and with friends. This was 15 years ago. Since then I have found this odd German edition (see picture below) gathering Bad Taste, Braindead and The Feebles, the three first (horror) movies by Peter Jackson. Not unlike Sam Raimi with Evil Dead, Jackson spent three years of his spare time shooting this UFO together with his friends. You can also see him playing several roles in it. Bad Taste is a bit long at times and the dialogs not the best, but it is still extremely impressive, ambitious and rich in ideas for a first film. It does look very professional already. But what strikes me the most is that you can recognize some shots (usually aerial or with a crane, now called Peter Jackson shots) that will will later on see in The Lord of the Rings for example, like when Gandalf arrives at Orthanc to meet Saruman (the camera starts at ground level and rises above the trees the reveal a large structure beyond). The movie is not recommendable to anybody (you have to like bloody horror in the first place), but I rate it high nonetheless.
Rating: 7 /10