Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles - Season 2 (2009)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2009
	Creator: Josh Friedman
	Actors: Lena Headey (300, Dredd), Thomas Dekker, Summer Glau (Firefly TV-series, Serenity), Brian Austin Green (Beverly Hills, 90210 TV-series)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Action, SF
	Conditions of visioning: August 2015, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: Sarah Connor and her son John (Headey & Dekker) continue escaping and fighting Terminators sent from the future, while trying to prevent the creation of the Skynet Artificial Intelligence.
Review: After a disappointing first season, an excellent surprise with this second one which even if not a great TV-series, at least seems to have learned from the mistake of the first and corrected them. No more spoken introduction and conclusion by Sarah, much more interesting characters and story developed at a better pace, more action when needed. The opening episode Samson & Delilah takes us back to where we left the story at the end of Season 1 and creates from the start a new level of relationship between John and Cameron. Some episodes contain stand-alone elements, like Ep#11 Self-made man and its investigation by Cameron of the possible visit of a Terminator in 1920. Ep#9 Complications and #10 Strange Things Happen at the One Two Point show us a further investigation about the birth of Skynet. Ep#8 Mr Ferguson is ill today displays a very interesting editing with the succession of the same story told from different point of views. In general the editing is more interesting in this season especially in its second half, when the viewer lands in the middle of the action at the beginning of some episodes, to then gets the explanations thanks to flashbacks. An efficient technique to get the audience addicted, and which was not used at all during the first season (flat linear editing). It is in particular efficient during Ep#12 Alpine Fields. Starting in the middle of the season (Ep#13 Earthlings Welcome Here, Ep#14 The Good Wound, Ep#15 Desert Cantos), there is more and more continuity, like a very long episode with an X-files spirit to it. It is interrupted by a rather boring Ep#16 Some Must Watch While Some Must Sleep, to then start again and ramp up with the three following episodes, the best ones of the season although not even strong in action, but rather intense in character development. Finally the last three episodes lead to an interesting revelation, but unfortunately also to a cliffhanger that will never be resolved by a third season as it was cancelled.
Rating: 5 /10

Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (2015)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2015
	Director: Christopher McQuarrie (Jack Reacher, screenplay writer of The Usual Suspects, Valkyrie and Edge of Tomorrow)
	Actors: Tom Cruise (Top Gun, Mission Impossible 1-3), Rebecca Ferguson (Hercules), Jeremy Renner (The Avengers, The Hurt Locker), Simon Pegg (Shaun of the Dead, Star Trek), Ving Rhames (Pulp Fiction)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Action, Adventure
	Conditions of visioning: 25.08.2015, CINEMA theater
Synopsis: While Ethan Hunt (Cruise) tries to prove the existence of a shadow terrorist organization called The Syndicate, his own task force is dismantled and incorporated to the CIA directed by Hunley (Baldwin).
Review: After the "rebirth" of the franchise directed in 2011 by Pixar's Brad Bird (Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol), it was not an easy job to deliver an interesting new episode and what we end up with is a movie that combines all the elements that make it a good Mission: Impossible story, but that lacks the little something to make it remarkable. It re-uses the good character development from the previous movie and the simplicity of its staging, while at the same time confronting its characters (Hunt in particular) with truly impossible missions that only he can accomplish and outlive. I liked that the big stunt shown in the trailer is not the highlight of the movie but its beginning, it leaves more room for surprise. Renner, Pegg and Rhames are OK, an the new Rebecca Ferguson brings an interesting element to the story. As I wrote: all the ingredients for a good Mission: Impossible movie.
Rating: 6 /10

They Live (1988)

	Also Known As: Invasion Los Angeles (France)
	Year of first release: 1988
	Director: John Carpenter (The Fog, Halloween, Ghosts of Mars)
	Actors: Roddy Piper, Keith David (The Thing), Meg Foster, Peter Jason (Alien Nation, Arachnophobia)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Action, Thriller
	Conditions of visioning: 26.08.2015, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: Unemployed and homeless, John Nada (Piper) finds out that the people are being ruled by an alien race and influenced by subliminal messages in advertisement and television.
Review: This movie came to my mind twice recently, once because it was released in a new Blu-ray edition and once because of the passing of its main actor (and Wrestling star) Roddy Piper some weeks ago. I am a big fan of John Carpenter and own all of his movies in DVD. Very slowly I upgrade some to Blu-ray (I started with The Thing of course). In the case of They Live it was worth it: the image and sound quality on this edition are excellent. Note that a new cover was prepared for the occasion, see at the end of this post for the American and British versions (note the differences). The satirical aspect of the movie was not lost to me, I enjoyed a lot Carpenter criticizing the consumer society of the 80's, what would he have to say nowadays?! I also appreciated the reach of subliminal messages like "Obey", "Watch T.V.", "Spend Money" or "Consume and reproduce", and of course the cult sentence by the hero: "I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass... and I'm all out of bubblegum" they precedes the famous 5-minute fist fight over a pair of sunglasses. This fight happens because the character of Franck (David) refuses to simply put the glasses on, symbolizing people who strongly refuse to see the truth. It was true about consumerism in the 80's, today we could say it is also true about the climate change for example. This is why this movie is considered to be left-winged. I found the pace very slow, actually not much happens to fill the 93 short minutes of the movie, but the simple synthesizer music composed by Carpenter and its mastership of the image framing make it pleasant enough to watch. Moreover, more than once the viewer is taken surprised by the events, until the very end.
Rating: 7 /10

La ragazza che sapeva troppo (1963)

	Also Known As: La muchacha que sabía demasiado, La fille qui en savait trop
	Year of first release: 1963
	Director: Mario Bava
	Actors: Letícia Román, John Saxon, Valentina Cortese
	Country: I
	Genre: Polar
	Conditions of visioning: 23.08.2015, DVD, Italian version with Spanish subtitles
Synopsis: Nora (Román) is a young tourist visiting her dying aunt in Rome which takes a sudden turn when she witnesses a murder by a serial killer that the police have sought for years for the so-called Alphabet Killings, and Nora soon finds herself in way-over-her-head trouble when the police want her cooperation to catch the killer while the mystery killer soon targets her for his next victim. In her quest she will be helped by a young doctor friend of her aunt, Marcello Bassi (Saxon).
Review: After a series of very bad movies in the movie theater, I wanted to select a movie by myself. As Amer impressed me, I wanted to watch some Giallo and I read that this one is supposed to be the first one. I spend a long time to find the original version with subtitles in a language I can understand. The story is what we know from an Italian Giallo or a German Krimi: a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown, an almost invisible criminal, a few mysterious characters looking suspicious. The recipe is created and it works. A few scenes are exagerated because the woman has to look like at the edge. And suddenly I recognized some dialogues and a part of the music. The music band MicroFilm used it to produce a great LP I have in my collection for years! The dialogues are really good. Sometimes strange but this enhances the mysterious atmosphere.  The actors follow very good their role as in the scheme settled for the Giallo. And this works. This style might not be authentic but it is captivating.  The directing is really good for that. The creation of a recipe as Alfred Hitchcock created his recipe. The style might look misogyn but it depicts both genders as at the edge of the nervous breakdown, so that no one is inferior. The long close-up on the Nora who cannot move in the hospital and has to listen to what the people say around her, the doctors, the policemen. This enhances the oppression on her. I was even happier of having discovered the origin of a new style that I like and determined to dig further in the Giallo world.  One big deception was the DVD itself. I tried first the Italian version with Spanish subtitles. The half of the dialogues had no subtitle. Then I tried the Spanish version with Spanish subtitles. The half of the dialogues are not dubbed and are still in Italian, but at least the subtitles covered the remainings. On top of it, I have the impression that the movie is not in Italian, because the mouths of the actors did not match the text. Well, it does not matter much, but it means, the effect of the movie is independent from the version. Maybe a French version, the one used by MicroFilm, could be a good catch...
Rating: 8 /10

Tiempos menos moedernos (2011)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2011
	Director: Simón Franco
	Actors: Nicolás Saavedra, Oscar Payaguala
	Country: RA, RCH
	Genre: Drama
	Conditions of visioning: 18.08.2015, DVD, Original Spanish version
Synopsis: As Felipe (Saavedra) visits his friend Ramiro Payaguala (Oscar Payaguala), he sees a box containing telephone, television, the whole modernity for this isolated ranch in Patagonia. After installing all this, Ramiro meets the modernity and handles this.
Review: As often in Latin American movies, the starting scene is slow and long. But afterwards it is really good. With the distance and looking at the context we have in Europe everyday of people getting lazy and stupid by watching too much TV, the movie becomes even very funny.  The actors are good and Oscar Payaguala who is a quite famous singer from Argentina plays perfectly the role of rough Patagonian. There is some folk songs as well in the movie. Saavedra is very authentic and took his role very well. I would look for his other movies, because he has potential. Unfortunately the movie is very slow and some parts could have been shortened. On the other side, this shows the real rythm of life in the Patagonian countryside.
Rating: 5 /10

Boychoir (2014)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2014
	Director: François Girard
	Actors: Garrett Wareing, Dustin Hoffman
	Country: USA
	Genre: Music, Drama
	Conditions of visioning: 17.08.2015, Schauburg, OV Sneak preview
Synopsis: Stet (Wareing), a troubled and angry 11-year-old orphan from a small Texas town, ends up at a Boy Choir school back East after the death of his single mom. Completely out of his element, he finds himself in a battle of wills with a demanding Choir Master Carvelle (Hoffman) who recognizes a unique talent in this young boy as he pushes him to discover his creative heart and soul in music.
Review: The plot sounds interesting. A kind of Good Will Hunting in another type of society. Actually the introduction of the kid is melodramatic but building the main character. It takes a while to introduce the other characters. The acting of the young Warreing is quite good, that of Dustin Hoffman quite bad and I do not know whether the director looked for these effects or the actors did it by themselves, but many sequences lack so much of own personality and depict characters so seriously while the sequence is so kitch. Many sequences are funny, but I do not believe this was planned by the director. I had the impression, that the team had a script and they played what was written without thinking about it, just to finish the shoot.  Although I liked Dustin Hoffman a lot since Little Big Man (1970) until Mad City (1997) but indeed I have not seen any good from him since then.
Rating: 1 /10

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2003
	Director: Jonathan Mostow (Surrogates)
	Actors: Arnold Schwarzenegger (Conan the Barbarian, Predator), Nick Stahl (Sin City), Kristanna Loken, Claire Daines (Stardust)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Action, SF
	Conditions of visioning: 24.08.2015, HD VOD, Home cinema
Synopsis: Even though he prevented Judgment Day to happen, John Connor (Stahl) has been living off the grid for ten years. After an accident he meets Kate Brewster (Daines) shortly before she is attacked by a new breed of Terminator (Loken) fom the future.
Review: More than ten years after Terminator 2: Judgement Day and right before Arnold Schwarzenegger starts an 8-year governorship, it seemed like the now-or-never time for a sequel featuring the ex-Body Builder still in great shape, as he himself describes in his autobiography Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story (2012). The movie looks like it wants to benefit from the popularity of its predecessors although Mostow doesn't have the talent or vision of James Cameron, and it will definitely never gain the cult status of the others, but it is in the end not bad at all. The villain is a small extrapolation of the knwon T1000, just enough to bring some interest, and I found the actors not badly chosen. Nick Stahl, even though not extremely charismatic, plays very well a John Connor tormented not by his past but by his unfulfilled future. He actually looks well like an older version of the Connor played by Thomas Dekker in the TV-series Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. I also liked the action scenes and in particular the one of massive destruction with the Terminatrix at the wheel of a huge Champion crane on wheels. It is not the only time when the movie makes fun of the straight-forward and extreme actions the Terminators take to reach their goal (the TV-series does it as well). And what I liked the most in Terminator 3 is the story, in spite of an Arnold Schwarzenegger sometimes useless especially in its comedy moments (the sunglasses outside of the strip bar!). This story tackles the topic of the inevitability of Judgment Day, and sticks to it until the very end. I could see the same trend in the following movie, in the TV-series and in the excellent trilogy of novels T2: Infiltrator, T2: Rising Storm and T2: The Future War. It is probably a necessary step after a couple of movies in this franchise: you cannot show Judgment Day being postponed indefinitely.
Rating: 6 /10

Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 1991
	Director: James Cameron (The Terminator, Aliens, Titanic, Avatar)
	Actors: Arnold Schwarzenegger (Predator, Conan the Barbarian), Linda Hamilton (Dante's Peak), Edward Furlong, Robert Patrick (Sons of Anarchy TV-series, Spy Kids)
	Country: USA
	Genre: SF, Action
	Conditions of visioning: 18.08.2015, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: A decade after she escaped the attack by a Terminator sent from the future to eliminate her unborn son John, Sarah Connor (Hamilton) has now trained him (Furlong) well but she is locked in a psychiatric hospital. That is until the same Terminator (Schwarzenegger) appears again.
Review: This is one of the very few movies (with Jurassic Park) that I saw when it went out in a cinema before the age of 17, because then the closest theater was 30 kilometers away. And it did a very strong impression on me, probably influencing my taste in movies for years to come. Such special effects had never been seen before (I had forgotten T2 in my review of Jurassic Park) and the movie was more than satisfying the fans of the original The Terminator, making T2 rise to the top 3 of the greatest movie sequels. I love The Terminator for the originality of its story and the dead-seriousness with which it is told, but the sequel brought Action movie-making to another level, especially during those early 90's which turned out to mark the end of the era of pure Action movies. Having seen the movie many times, I am not anymore surprised by the turn of events (not really a spoiler: Schwarzenegger is the good guy in this one) but at the time it was an awesome surprise. The movie is filled with other brilliant ideas by Cameron: transforming the waitress Sarah Connor into a one-woman commando, changing the future with Miles Dyson, Robert Patrick as the T000, the addition of a touch of humour and the rigid character of the Terminator... And of course all of this is perfectly filmed and edited. Terminator 2 is definitely a Masterpiece in its genre. I have watched the Collector Edition approved by Cameron, which adds a few interesting scenes that slow down the rhythm a bit and change the movie with respect to the memory I had from its theatrical release. Some humorous scenes around the rigidity of the Terminator are also new and a bit out of tone. I found the sound mixing not so well done on this Blu-ray edition, I constantly had to play with the volume in order not to be deafened by the action scenes while being able to hear the dialogs in the others.
Rating: 9 /10

Sliding Doors (1998)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 1998
	Director: Peter Howitt (Johnny English)
	Actors: Gwyneth Paltrow (Iron Man 1-3, Contagion), John Hannah (The Mummy 1-2, Four Weddings and a Funeral), John Lynch (Black Death)
	Country: USA, GB
	Genre: Romance
	Conditions of visioning: 19.08.2015, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: After Helen (Paltrow) looses her job, we follow two possible life tracks for her: one in which she catches her train and gets home in time to find her boyfriend (Lynch) cheating on her, another in which she misses that and stays with him.
Review: I found the synopsis of this movie intriguing when I heard about it... already 17 years ago! But I watch it now for the first time. I don't think I ever saw Gwyneth Paltrow in a movie before the Iron Man series. In 1998 she was young and cute and perfectly fitting in this role. I liked in Sliding Doors the British Romance touch reminding of Four Wedding and A Funeral, Notting Hill or Love Actually. It is hard for me to rate as I am not watching many Romances, but I liked this one, especially because of its original concept. Otherwise the story is a bit predictable and the characters are OK. The ending increases the interest of this movie a notch as it is more risky than what I would have expected from this kind of feel-good Romance.
Rating: 7 /10

Self/less (2015)

	Also Known As: Selfless Der Fremde in mir, Renaissances, Inmortal
	Year of first release: 2015
	Director: Tarsem Singh
	Actors: Ryan Reynolds, Natalie Martinez, Matthew Goode, Ben Kingsley
	Country: USA
	Genre: Action, SF
	Conditions of visioning: 10.08.2015, Schauburg, OV Sneak preview
Synopsis: Damian (Kingsley) is a rich but dying real estate mogul. He decides to transfer his consciousness into a healthy young body (Reynolds), thanks to a secret company and his chief Albright (Goode). But soon finds that neither the procedure nor the company that performed it are quite what they seem.
Review: The movie started very good with the introduction of the characters and the very SF idea. Once Reynolds becomes the main characters an interesting quest in himself seems to start. But no. It fell (after 30 minutes of movie) fast down into a shoot-them-up where nobody knows what is the quest, nobody knows why is there anger against the doctors. We just see that there is an uncontrolled violence against all what is around.
Rating: 2 /10