TETAPTH 04:45

	Also Known As: Wednesday 04:45
	Year of first release: 2015
	Director: Alexis Alexiou
	Actors: Stelios Mainas, Dimitris Tzoumakis, Mimi Branescu
	Country: GR, D, IL
	Genre: Drama, Thriller
	Conditions of visioning: 25.01.2016, Schauburg, OV Sneak Preview, Greek/Romanian version with German subtitles
Synopsis: Stelios (Mainas) is the owner of a Jazz Club in Athens. A few years ago, through the help of his former associate Vassos (Tzoumakis), Stelios received a business loan from the Romanian in order to renovate his club. In 2010, the recession finds Stelios on the brink of bankruptcy unable to repay the loan. The Romanian (Branescu) meets with Stelios and gives him one day to come up with a solution. In a vortex of adultery, drug abuse, violence, guilt and self-deceit, Stelios has a few hours left to save his club, salvage his crumbling marriage, battle the mafia loan-sharks, baptize his employee's kid and show up at school to receive his son's report card as a responsible parent.
Review: With the crisis as background the movie shows also the core of the Greek problem, being the by-passing of state and banks. Because there is no bank able to support the businessme in Greece, these have to find other ways. And then they have also the usual problems of family and work balance. Ok. This does not make a big suspense in the pitch. The movie is also quite basic. The acting and the directing too.  When actually the pitch sells the movie as black comedy, and you loose hours to find some humour, I found out some only in the picture of the Greek crisis. Well, this is not much to make me laugh as it is in background but there must be three connotations to it only.
Rating: 2 /10

Mala noche (1986)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 1986
	Director: Gus van Sant
	Actors: Tim Streeter, Doug Cooeyate, Ray Monge
	Country: USA
	Genre: Drama
	Conditions of visioning: 07.01.2016, DVD, English version with English subtitles
Synopsis: Walt (Streeter) is a lonely store owner in Portland who tries to get lustful encounters with male customers. Johnny (Cooeyate), a handsome, 18-year-old Mexican ducks immigration officials and hangs around playing video games. When Walt sets eyes on Johnny, he's passionately attracted.
Review: The story is a bit simple and dumb for today but at that time when homosexuality was seen as source of AIDS and where Latin American migration was illegal and taboo, this movie was revolutionary. It depicts the street daily life in Portland. Ok, its public was also quite small even if not restricted to the gay&lesbian community.  The absurd passion of the poor Walt for Johnny is impossible to understand but its course shows the unhappy love in a romantic way.  From the cinematographic point of view the movie gives already some insights in Gus van Sant approach, close-ups on faces and bodies, people hanging around, and the most important, controversial topics. It was a nice way to go at the source of one director (Good Will Hunting, Elephant, Milk, Promised land), even if the movie is just fine.
Rating: 4 /10

La Danza de la Realidad (2013)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2013
	Director: Alejandro Jodorowsky (Santa Sangre, El Topo)
	Actors: Brontis Jodorowsky, Pamela Flores, Jeremias Herskovits
	Country: RCH, F
	Genre: Drama
	Conditions of visioning: 28.01.2016, Cinema MLC, GIFFF2016
Synopsis: In the small Chilean town on Tocopilla, the 10-year old Alejandro Jodorowsky is learning life from his communist father and overly affective mother.
Review: I have loved watching the previous works of the artist Alejandro Jodorowsky: El Topo, La Montagna Sagrada and Santa Sangre, very well aware that they are not easy for one's brain to accept. His first movie Fando & Lis (in Black & White) is in particular quite ... boring to watch nowadays. La Danza de la Realidad is different from those older creations, produced 23 years after the latest of his movies (The Rainbow Thief with Omar Sharif, already sitting on my Blu-ray shelf) and being a kind of fantasized autobiography of the period when he was 10 years old in Chili. He will in fact release this year the second movie in a 5-part series about his life: Endless Poetry. About this movie, well... it is very particular as usual with Jodorowsky and we do find the common grounds with his other movies: circus, crippled, family relationships and naked bodies, sometimes I found shown to no interest. The crazy creativity of the movie is refreshing but I would have preferred it to be contained within 90 minutes instead of 130. The desert landscapes around Tocopilla have a special significance for me, reminding me of a region of the world that I am quite familiar with and about to be even more. What I found best in this movie are the scenes during which the real-life 87 years old Jodorowsky is standing behind his 10 years old self and whispering him philosophical advices like "Everything that I am is already contained in you" or "Do not regret the hard time you are going through as they will transform you into me". I found those scenes very poetic.
Rating: 5 /10

Southbound (2015)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2015
	Director: Roxanne Benjamin, David Bruckner, Patrick Horvath, Radio Silence
	Actors: Kate Beahan, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Susan Burke
	Country: USA
	Genre: Horror
	Conditions of visioning: 29.01.2016, Cinema du CASINO, GIFFF2016, Official Selection
Synopsis: In Texas, along an unnamed road going south, several groups of people make strange encounters.
Review: I like the concept of anthologies like V/H/S 1 and 2, The ABCs of Death or The Theater Bizarre and I find that it fits well the Horror genre. The five stories in Southbound have the road in common, and the character of a story fleetingly cross the one of the following as transitions. I would classify the stories in the "Weird" sub-genre off Horror, because of the spooky things that happen to the characters, and the very limited amount of explanations given. Most of those stories take place at night in a Fantasy Texas populated by some evil angels, monsters, sects and people tricking you into performing a surgery operation. That is an interesting universe. None of the segments is exceptional but none is bad either, making this anthology the most self-consistent I have ever seen. I appreciated that a few scenes are accompanied by a John Carpenter-style music, undoubtedly voluntarily. Southbound rightfully won the price attributed by the Young Jury at the Gérardmer International Fantastic Film Festival .
Rating: 6 /10

The Devil's Candy (2015)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2015
	Director: Sean Byrne (The Loved Ones)
	Actors: Ethan Embry, Shiri Appleby, Kiara Glasco, Pruitt Taylor Vince (Jacob's Ladder, Identity, Constantine)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Horror
	Conditions of visioning: 30.01.2016, Cinema du Casino, GIFFF2016, Official Selection
Synopsis: Jesse (Embry) and his wife and daughter buy a new house and move into it in spite of the tragic events that happened there. After a while the house starts to affect him while the son of the former owners lurks around.
Review: Nothing less than the best movie I have seen at the Gérardmer Fantastic Film Festival. First thanks to the original topic of possession which seems to become trendy again, and welcome, hopefully surpassing zombies and dead spirits in the house. Then because of the Metal spirit and soundtrack. Last but not least thanks to strong original (yet natural) characters: who came up with the idea of this family in which the father is a Metal fan painting artist entertaining a special relationship with his daughter through music?? Ethan Embry brings a lot of authenticity to this man, reminding of Charlie Hunnam playing Jax in the Sons of Anarchy TV-series but in better. In the cast is also present Pruitt Taylor Vince, a man with a disturbing look that he uses here as he did in Identity, but beyond his trademark look he also has an incredible presence and capacity to portray psychopaths. I cannot tell too much about the story but I found that it was greatly put into a perfect mix of images and sounds/music to produce the desired effect: at the end of the projection I was in a kind of trance induced by its strong content. Don't worry, nothing serious and I quickly snapped out of it, but it has been a long time since I was affected like that by a movie. Long live Genre! The movie does contain some few things to complain about, that I attribute to the relative inexperience of the director Sean Byrne, but they are eclipsed by many qualities like for example the absolutely realistic reactions of the characters, something I complained about after watching February for example. I am starting to think that Texas is a good place to look for original independent no-concession genre movies, like Cold in July or Red, White & Blue. I definitely got to see Sean Byrne's previous The Loved Ones. The Devil's Candy won the public price at the Gérardmer Fantastic Film Festival, not a surprise to me.
Rating: 9 /10

The People under the Stairs (1991)

	Also Known As: Le sous-sol de la peur (French)
	Year of first release: 1991
	Director: Wes Craven (Scream, A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Last House on the Left)
	Actors:  Brandon Quintin Adams, Everett McGill, Wendy Robie, Ving Rhames (Pulp Fiction)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Thriller, Horror
	Conditions of visioning: 28.01.2016, Cinema Paradiso, GIFFF2016
Synopsis: The kid nicknamed Fool (Adams) follows Leroy (Rhames) into robbing their landlord in order to get money to avoid eviction and treat his mother's disease. The house they rob is full of surprises.
Review: It was the only one of the Wes Craven movies presented during the tribute at the Gérardmer Film Festival that I had never seen, the other two being his masterpieces of the genre Scream and a Nightmare on Elm Street. And it was nice to watch amongst recent productions this classic of the Horror from the 80-90's, which follows codes that wouldn't work anymore today. It also shows scenes that I wonder how they passed censorship, like when the kid witnesses the terrible fate of Leroy (played by a funny young Ving Rhames). It is not an extremely scary movie because the latex make-up effects are dated, and the humour is over-the-top, but there is a quality to this movie difficult to describe, also probably mixed with a dose of nostalgia for the cinema of that period. There is in this movie an incredible creative energy that would be used to fill a full Horror trilogy nowadays (or even more in the case of Paranormal Activity). People are non-stop running around, chasing each other, escaping, getting caught or crawling behind walls in a house which is a character in itself. I now see how much the recent Kiwi Housebound was inspired from it. The landlords family is also depicted in a totally exaggerated way (yet delicious to watch): the father obsessed with money and dressing SM when shooting shotgun through the walls (!), the maniac mother and the way she educated the daughter with adages like "Children should be seen, not heard" posted in her bedroom, or a statue reading "Speak/See/Hear no evil". Well done Wes Craven.
Rating: 7 /10

Évolution (2015)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2015
	Director: Lucile Hadzihalilovic
	Actors: Max Brebant, Roxane Duran, Julie-Marie Parmentier
	Country: F, B, E
	Genre: Drama, Fantasy
	Conditions of visioning: 30.01.2016, Cinema du CASINO, GIFFF2016, Official Selection
Synopsis: Children and mothers live a simple life along the coast, with the boys sometimes needing medicine or a visit to the nearby hospital. Nicolas would like to understand more the world around him and why the mothers are so secretive.
Review: Lucile Hadzihalilovic is known for having co-written the screenplay of Gaspard Noé's Enter the Void, which I haven't seen but knowing the man's style (from Irreversible or Seul Contre Tous), I was expecting something out of the ordinary with Évolution and on that aspect I was not disappointed. It is easy to find the movie too slow, boring, or that it fails to deliver the keys to understand its plot and resolve it. I usually don't like those movies in which I don't understand much (like February seen the day before at the same festival), but for some reason hard to explain I pleasantly spent the viewing of Évolution trying to resolve its mystery. One thing that may have helped me liking it is that its atmosphere reminds me of Michel Houellebecq's La Possibilité d'une Ile, more the novel that the bad adaptation actually, and in fact I found Évolution to be a better adaptation of that story (or the idea behind it) than the movie directed by Houellebecq himself based on his own book! The volcanic island is the first link that easily comes to mind. The story also reminds me of old futuristic novels like H.G. Wells The Time Machine. Another element that pleased me are the images of the coast, the mysterious mothers strangely looking all alike, the decrepit locals and the underwater shots like the long one that opens the movie by literally submerging you in its spirit. A bizarre movie hard to defend and to recommend, but that I liked for its different approach to the genre.
Rating: 6 /10

Howl (2015)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2015
	Director: Paul Hyett (make-up effects on The Descent 1-2, Doomsday, the Red Riding trilogy, The Woman in Black...)
	Actors: Ed Speleers, Holly Weston, Shauna Macdonald
	Country: GB
	Genre: Horror
	Conditions of visioning: 29.01.2016, Cinema Espace du Lac, GIFFF2016, Official Selection
Synopsis: A group of commuters gets stranded when their trains stops in the middle of a forest past midnight. The driver goes outside to explore the damage but doesn't come back.
Review: A nice werewolves B-movie (not a spoiler given the title) like the British know how to do, but by far not as remarkable as Neil Marshall's Dog Soldiers for example although it visibly has a bigger budget. The director introduced his film at the Gérardmer Film Festival by saying that the idea came up when the screenplay writers were stuck on a train at night and were wondering how could things go any worse. I could criticize about Howl that the characters are too easily categorized, fitting in the usual boxes of the old couple, brave guy that turns out to be an asshole, young adult taken for a bandit but ending up saving the day, and the pseudo-romance. This makes that the movie is not bad but it didn't really surprise me. One good thing I could say is about the design and make-up of the were-wolves (especially the first one we see) which were very well done even if not really original. At least they looked very ferocious like they are supposed to.
Rating: 5 /10

The Witch (2015)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2015
	Director: Robert Eggers (Nosferatu)
	Actors: Anya Taylor-Joy, Ralph Ineson (Kingsman: The Secret Service), Kate Dickie (Prometheus)
	Country: USA, CDN
	Genre: Horror
	Conditions of visioning: 28.01.2016, Cinema Casino, GIFFF2016, Official Selection
Synopsis: New Engand, 1630's. A family of six colons is cast out from their village and start a new life by building a farm at the edge of the forest. The newborn son is abducted while under the care of the oldest daughter.
Review: If I found Bone Tomahawk to be first a realistic depiction of the life in the Wild West (before a fantastic story), I could say the same about The Witch two centuries earlier during the early conquest of the same West. This very harsh environment is well depicted by following this family casted out from their village and having to live for themselves at the edge of the forest. I found the movie quite slow and sometimes even boring, but on the other hand the religious dialogs are good (all extracted from texts of the period as we learn during the credits), a few scenes made my hair stand on end and in fact it might be the best and scariest Witch movie I have ever seen. And the actors are remarkable, from the hard-working father (excellent Ineson that I mistook for Clive Owen) to the pious mother (Kate Dickie, also a perfect cast), the cute but disturbing daughter and her brother played by the unknown Lucas Dawson that at some point delivers a totally mesmerizing (and mesmerized) performance for such a young age. The twin kids are also good and actually spooked me because we almost never see them in close-up or facing the camera, like if they were ghosts. And the ending is totally satisfying.
Rating: 7 /10

JeruZalem (2015)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2015
	Director: Doron Paz, Yoav Paz
	Actors: Yael Grobglas, Yon Tumarkin, Danielle Jadelyn
	Country: IL
	Genre: Horror
	Conditions of visioning: 30.01.2016, Cinema du CASINO, GIFFF2016, Official Selection
Synopsis: Two friends take on a trip from the USA to Jerusalem, when strange events start to occur throughout the city.
Review: This movie was hastily compared to World War Z because of the location and the capital Z in the title, but in fact it reminds me much more of Cloverfield (missing a review on this blog, to be corrected soon). Indeed it belongs to the found-footage category, i.e. all the images we see are shot like if they were by the protagonists in the story. In other such movies the director always have to find justifications for why people keep on filming, but in JeruZalem they had the clever idea to equip the heroin with Smart Glasses so that everything we will see is filmed from that single point of view. This simplifies the story and is actually not as redundant as one could thing (because of the single camera angle), but the drawback is that you can get annoyed by this character after spending so much time very close to it! Sometimes the movie feels like a showcase for the capabilities offered by such technological wonder: facial recognition, connection to Facebook, texting with Whatsapp, browsing Wikipedia, Skype video chats, navigation... you name it. It almost feels like too much advertisement. This might be the biggest production ever for Israel and this shows in the visual quality: it does look like a big American production (including the visual effects), with the nice added value of the beautiful setting in the city of Jerusalem. Like in Cloverfield I liked the slow start and introduction of those young characters, until when things start to go banana. Unfortunately I found that towards the end, this interesting big production with a local touch turns into a zombie movie like we have seen too many, as if there had been a lack of ideas towards the end and a will to uselessly prolong the cave scene. That's too bad because the opening of the gates of hell (not really a spoiler) was a good topic, reminding me in a totally different genre of Scott Stewart's Legion.
Rating: 6 /10