La Classe Américaine - Le Grand Détournement (1993)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 1993
	Director: Michel Hazanavicius, Dominique Mézerette
	Actors (voices): Lionel Abelanski, Jean-Eric Bielle, Marc Cassot
	Country: F
	Genre: Comedy
	Conditions of visioning: 25.04.2019, VOD, 42" TV screen.
Synopsis: The most classy man on Earth George Abitebol dies uttering the words "Monde de merde" (Shitty World). The journalists Dave, Peter and Steven investigate on the meaning of those last words.
Review: THAT is an unusual movie. Before you wonder about the synopsis, you have to know that the whole movie is an authorized montage (thus "détournement") of many Warner Bros classic movies featuring famous actors like John Wayne, Dustin Hoffman, John Fonda, Robert Redford, Paul Newman and many others. Moreover, the montage is dubbed in French by the official voice artists for those actors, and movie makers have written dialogs that stick well to the lips of the American actors when they speak, for a most disturbing and efficient effect. Finally the story, loosely copied from the one of Citizen Kane as remarks Orson Welles in an apparition, is deliciously twisted and non-sensique. So it really is a French thing (even the name of most characters are very French and the locations like Tegzas pronounced a-la-French) but I know that hardcore foreign fans have developed at least English sub-titles, and wondered on forums how to translate "Ce flim n'est pas un flim sur le cyclimse". Good luck with that. For everything you want to know about the movie like which extracts were used, check out this website: http://cyclim.se. I have seen several of the movies from which the scenes are extracted: All the President's Men, Around the World in Eighty Days, Bullitt, Cleopatra Jones, Deliverance, Mad Max, Rio Bravo, The Searchers, The Towering Inferno and even the improbable The Valley of Gwangi with its cowboys against dinosaurs. And I would love to see others like Harper (1966) with Paul Newman and Lauren Bacall. The succession of all those sequences is fantastic and very well-thought for the most comedic effect while keeping a semblance of continuity. I hadn't seen La Classe Américaine is years and I enjoyed a lot watching it again with friends. I remembered that the pace and density of funny ideas was slowing down towards the end but it is not the case at all, except for maybe a 10-min break of lesser quality around the 2/3. Beyond the obvious laughs at jokes like Peter (Hoffman) running to go to the bathroom and the such, I find that coming up with even just the concept for this artwork shows from its makers a profound respect for Cinema and reflection on its place in pop culture, in particular the French one. You can also watch the other movies in the Grand Détournement trilogy: Ça détourne and Derrick contre Superman.
Rating: 8 /10

World War II in Colour (2009)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2009
	Director: -
	Actors: -
	Country: GB
	Genre: Documentary, War
	Conditions of visioning: April 2019, VOD, 10" tablet screen.
Synopsis: From the events leading up to WWII to its grim ending, a series spanning the events of that time period, supported by colorized footage.
Review: The Documentary Bombing War gave me enough motivation to watch this 13-part, 9-hour long mini-series. I have always wanted to get an overview of WWII's unfolding, in order to refresh my memory and fill in the gaps of my education, characteristically too limited to the French side of things. I recently watched the 2-part Youtube video called WWII oversimplified, but that's pretty short and has a humoristic tone which is not bad in itself. I am pretty sure I could have read an excellent book on the topic but well, watching it on a screen is easier and I am lazy. Also, a book could have told the facts as well as the series, but footage from the time of the conflict is something that would give an extra-depth to simple facts. At least this is what I thought. The American full title of the series is World War II in HD Colour. HD is totally useless as 99.9 % of the footage shown doesn't have the quality necessary to benefit from such a format. I have discussed the merits of added color and sound effects in my review of Bombing War. I had the same feeling when watching this series, but unfortunately the length of it makes that I started to notice how repetitive were the sounds (most of all), images and colors. Doing a little research on the colorization process shows that this is still a partly manual process and the variety and veracity of colors is only as good as the time the artist spend working on it. Indeed often the tanks for example were of a boring green for the armor, brown for the wheels... And towards the end one can immediately tell when some footage is in original color. I would say that color does bring something in certain shots, like I remember the ones of Hitler's face where you can look in his eyes and try to decipher what went on in there, but it is not breathtaking. What is shocking however is how much of that War was documented and how many cameramen were present on the front lines! This realization led me to discover the story of the Hollywood filmmakers that enlisted in the armed forces to document WWII, narrated in the Documentary miniseries Five Came Back that I may soon watch. So the gimmick of color attracted me to the series but I stayed for something else: simply the efficient delivery of an overview on WWII like I was expecting to get. More than a chronological story-telling, the series cleverly cuts its 13 episodes in more themes, as can be told from their titles repeated here below: S1E1: The Gathering Storm S1E2: Lightning War S1E3: Britain at Bay S1E4: Hitler Strikes East S1E5: Red Sun Rampant S1E6: The Mediterranean and North Africa S1E7: Turning the Tide S1E8: The Soviet Steamroller S1E9: Overlord S1E10: Closing the Ring S1E11: The Island War S1E12: Victory in Europe S1E13: Victory in the Pacific Thanks to the length and details of the series I could start to get really familiar with the places and look forward to a resolution to the conflict, although I knew how it would end. So that the last two episodes do feel like a good movie ending and reminded me, geek that I am, of the last scene in Return of the Jedi when the Empire is defeated. Except that it took place for real. The aftermath, division of Europe and the prospect of the Cold War however keeps one humble at the end. Finally I would say that what fails in the series is a more human and emotional approach, taking more time but not permitted by the vastness of the topic to cover. Then I realized that to get this aspect, one should rather turn to cinematographic dramatization of that time period with for example Saving Private Ryan, Schindler's List, The Pianist to quote only a few American productions, or heroisation (I know that's not a word) with movies like The Longest Day, Flags of our Fathers / Letters from Iwo Jima, A Bridge too Far (that I am now very tempted to watch after they say its title in the Documentary), Das Boot, Dunkirk...
Rating: 6 /10

Topical series of films on JoRafCinema - Actors - Part 1

More than two years after releasing an Article about Directors followed on JoRafCinema (which we recently updated with all the new movies from those directors that we reviewed), we finally got to do something similar about Actors. We followed a slightly different approach as we quickly noticed that the Actors we follow are seen in many more movies that the Directors do. Indeed an actor can be in 2-3 movies per year while a director may take 2-3 years to complete a movie. Also Actors seem to be able to remain popular for longer periods of time while directors are at their top for 5-10 movies maximum.
So here below you will find a list of the Actors followed by JoRafCinema classified in decreasing order from the most present to the ones seen nine times on our blog. Note that although we tried to be thorough (and took our sweet time to do so), we may have forgotten some participants on that list especially in the bottom part. You will also note that the title of this Article includes "Part 1" because we have the beginning of a list of Actors with less that nine films on JoRafCinema, or for which we have to do the research, so a Part 2 may be completed some day. Similarly as for the Director's one, we will keep those lists updated with new reviews as they get published.
In the list below for each actor you will find a picture (most extracted from IMDb), his name followed by a small story (not in the short style like we did for the Directors), the list of JoRafCinema posts for movies or series in which he/she played and a list of the most known movies we haven't reviewed yet.

Here are some observations we can make:

• All actors on the list (at least this first Part) are American or from English-speaking countries, because we still watch more than 50% or American movies, and this country does have a cult of Actors more than the others (it is said that in France we have more a cult of Directors).
• Out of 41 Actors listed here 5 are Actresses which shows that women can get to the level of popularity of men, but it is still much less common.
• Our list is pretty biased towards Hollywood big movies so that our general conclusions are to be taken with a grain of salt.
• The most popular Actor on JoRafCinema is by far Samuel L. Jackson. He seems to be everywhere in the movies we like to watch!
• He is followed by Action / Thriller stars which come from our preference for this kind of movies: Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Harrison Ford with respectively 24, 23, and 19 posts. More diversified Actors follow with 18 to 12 posts, then a bulk at 11, 10 and 9.
• The most popular Actress on JoRafCinema is Scarlett Johansson (#6 with 17 movies) partly helped by her presence in the MCU, as for Sam Jackson.
• We have tried not to list Actors that we know almost ONLY for big franchises like the MCU, The Lord of the Rings / The Hobbit, Star Wars, X-men ... but this boosts the presence of Actors we know for other movies as well.
• Some Actors may seem to be missing from that list and some underrepresented simply because we may have seen many of their movies but before the start of this blog in 2012.
• Another way to classify those actors is by the percentage of their movies we have seen, i.e. the ratio between their posts on JoRafCinema and what is announced on IMDb as their acting jobs, although this is not exact because we often review one TV-series season as one post for example. With that classification Arnold Schwarzenegger comes largely first with 35% of his movies reviewed. He is followed by Scarlett Johansson (28%), Tom Cruise (27%), Hugh Jackman (26%), Harrison Ford (24%) and Ryan Goslin (23%). This is usually because those Actors haven't played in stoo many movies, while Sam Jackson comes next (22%) because of a whopping 174 Acting jobs to date in his bucket. This is still far from Sir Christopher Lee's 280 but he is #11 on IMDb's list close to Michael Caine. For the rest we have seen only between 10 and 20% of their movies.

But enough chit-chat, here goes the list.

Cell (2016)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2016
	Director: Tod Williams (Paranormal Activity 2)
	Actors: John Cusack (2012), Samuel L. Jackson (Pulp Fiction), Isabelle Fuhrman
	Country: USA
	Genre: Horror, Drama
	Conditions of visioning: 23.04.2019, VOD, 42" TV screen.
Synopsis: When a cell phone signal turns people into blood-thirsty killers, Clay (Cusack) goes looking for his wife and son, accompanied by train conductor Tom (Jackson).
Review: There has been many cinema adaptation of novels from the prolific writer Stephen King, some for TV and some for cinema, some as movies some as series, some good and some bad, some with screenplay written by the master and some not. Among the great ones across all categories are Carrie, Salem's Lot, The Shining, The Dead Zone, Christine, Misery, The Green Mile, The Mist... Cell is a movie made for cinema, with King as producer and.... among the worst next to The Dark Tower although for different reasons. Note that I can't comment on the quality of the adaptation from the novel itself as I have not read it, but I have read online that it is quite far from the original material. The movie looks cheap from the get-go (those black title cards and the cheap generic music!) and although it does get better (or we get used to the cheapness), it is still of a very low level. A surprise apparition by Lloyd Kaufman, president of the Troma independent film company, shows a bit towards which style the movie leans (although he is also seen in James Gunn's Guardians of the Galaxy). It is a bit paradoxical because the sets are generally large, the effects ambitious (there is a plane crash) and the movie could afford John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson (I have no idea how he ended up there). Those two are quite natural, but the acting of the rest of the cast is not good, especially the "phoners" which are kind of "infected" or "fast zombies". Because yes, from the start it is another undead movie and it doesn't have anything to differentiate itself from the others even though the virus is electronic and not biologic. The main characters have to hide, understand the rules of the the infection, meet other survivors, doubt them, see some die etc... All along I was hoping for the Stephen King proprietary twist that would made the movie worth it, but it only comes in small dose where you can recognize his touch. But by then the damage is done, I was too detached from the story to care about the vague ending and the fact that nothing is explained.
Rating: 3 /10

U.S. Marshals (1998)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 1998
	Director: Stuart Baird (Star Trek: Nemesis)
	Actors: Tommy Lee Jones (Men in Black 1-3, The Fugitive), Wesley Snipes (Demolition Man, Blade 1-3), Robert Downey Jr. (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Iron Man 1-3)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Thriller, Polar
	Conditions of visioning: 14.04.2019, VOD, 10" tablet screen.
Synopsis: U.S. Marshal Samuel Gerard (Jones) and his team of Marshals are assigned to track down Sheridan (Snipes), who has been accused of a double-murder.
Review: After enjoying The Fugitive, I waited just a few weeks before watching this sequel which I guessed was not as good. In order to give the audience more of what it liked in the first movie, in this one another innocent prisoner escapes in incredible circumstances and is tracked by U. S. Marshall Samuel Gerard and his team. Exit Harrison Ford replaced by Wesley Snipes who was quite popular at that time, just before leading in the Blade Trilogy which were his last big roles. In fact, although I find him usually overplaying, in U. S. Marshals I find him rather reserved which is a good thing and may be because he is not the lead in this movie (Jones is). In the end it is a well-thought sequel: we get more of what we liked in The Fugitive but of course scaled up: plane crash instead of train, Gerard shows off more than ever, a race across the country with many unpredictable encounters with the fugitive to keep the tension high, an extra-complexity in the story (via the character play by Robert Downey Jr.), a less omnipotent Marshal, and that fugitive being more than meets the eyes. However, I didn't like that last addition which detached the fugitive from the audience, where in the first movie we were really feeling for this innocent victim (the surgeon) that could have been any of us. I find that this build-up of more action was not always justified nor necessary. I think they nailed it in The Fugitive and it was hard to do anything different enough and better at the same time. A pleasant attempt anyway.
Rating: 6 /10

Aftershock (2012)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2012
	Director: Nicolás López (Sin Filtro)
	Actors: Eli Roth (Inglorious Basterds, Death Proof), Ariel Levy, Nicolás Martínez
	Country: USA, RCH
	Genre: Drama, Horror
	Conditions of visioning: 15.04.2019, VOD, 10" tablet screen.
Synopsis: An American tourist (Roth) and two Chilean friends end up at a big party in the coastal town of Valparaiso, together with other tourists. When a big Earthquake hits, all hell breaks loose.
Review: I have been wanting to watch this movie for a long time as it takes place in my residence country of Chile and should have dealt with the adventures of a group of friends in the aftermath of a natural disaster that is always looming over our heads. I was expecting something like the classic 1974 Earthquake (not mentioning the recent San Andreas) or the little known Sinking of Japan, but on a much smaller scale of course. Well in the end it doesn't even belong to the same genre or category! Another incentive for me to watch the movie was the presence as producer and lead actor of Eli Roth, friend of Quentin Tarantino, seen in Inglorious Basterds and DeathProof, producer/director of the gore Cabin Fever and The Green Inferno, and attached to the entertaining Piranha 3D. And I liked him in the movie's first (long) act showing parties and chit-chat between friends and new acquaintances (although the sound of Reggaeton is not heard one which is unrealistic for parties in Chile). But then when the Earthquake hits, the movie shows its true nature: it is in fact a cheap Horror Drama with a fun beginning. I know this sounds weird, and it does feel it too. The movie is obviously cheap when you see how the action is limited to a club, a few streets and night-time. Also as another movie with too few ideas, it adds improbable coincidences to the story, like sharks in tornadoes during an alien invasion, or in that case sadistic prisoners that escaped during the disaster and stalk our protagonists till death. Then it tries to be dramatic (when people loose their friends) but the long fun beginning makes that it doesn't work. Finally what's left in my memory is the gore horror and torture scenes (as in Cabin Fever or The Green Inferno) that I was not expecting. OK I see now the movie tagline: "The only thing more terrifying than mother nature is human nature". Aaaaah OK that was the point... Still, not a good movie.
Rating: 2 /10

Jeepers Creepers III (2017)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2017
	Director: Victor Salva (Rosewood Lane, Jeepers Creepers 1-2)
	Actors: Stan Shaw, Gabrielle Haugh, Brandon Smith
	Country: USA
	Genre: Horror
	Conditions of visioning: 12.04.2019, VOD, 10" tablet screen.
Synopsis: Sheriff Dan Tashtego (Shaw) and a team of creeper hunters enlist the help of officer Davis Tubbs (Smith) to help stop the monster's eating spree.
Review: When I saw the first two Jeepers Creepers they went to my top-list of best B-series Horror movies. I found they were an original take on the boogeyman / slasher genre, had good actors like Justin Long, scary moments which were not in-your-face jump-scares, and were even better appreciated when knowing the background of the director (he did and still does love showing things getting in and out of stinking dark holes...). And I found the second movie cleverly different from the first while taking place right after it (reminding of John Carpenter's Halloween II). Unfortunately I have the feeling Jeepers Creepers III came too late, some 15 years after the two others and at a time when such movies were not appreciated anymore (torture porn happened in between). And definitely too late for me as I am nowadays less fan the the Genre, and I didn't remember enough of the other movies to get many references in this one. I still can't figure out if the reveal that the movie is an Interquel left to the end is intentional or if I just realized only at the end. If the former it is quite brilliant. Oh yes Interquel is a term I learned while researching this movie. It is neither a Sequel nor a Prequel but is defined as a movie (or video-game in fact, or novel) taking place between two other already released ones. I realized that known examples include the game Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel (that's how they called it), The Animatrix and nothing less than Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Another flavor is the Midquel that takes place during a not-shown pause in the action of another movie, like for example L: change the WorLd (mentionned in our FEFF2008 article). Back to our movie: it still shows some brutal murders executed by our boogeyman, now in daytime, and is going some places you don't expect, but it seems to suffer from a lack of budget that shows in the more amateurish acting, filming and special effects. I would still praise the effort made to bring this movie to the world and a handful of good ideas, but as a whole it is not so great.
Rating: 5 /10

Point Break (2015)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2015
	Director: Ericson Core
	Actors: Edgar Ramírez, Luke Bracey, Ray Winstone (The Departed, Beowulf)
	Country: CN, D, USA, CDN, I, A
	Genre: Action
	Conditions of visioning: 22.04.2019, in-flight entertainment system, 10" tablet screen.
Synopsis: Former Extreme Athlete now fresh FBI recruit, Johnny Utah (Bracey) has ideas on how to stop a gang of thieves that escape every heist in a spectacular manner.
Review: This is a remake of the 1991 classic Point Break with Keanu Reeves against Patrick Swayze, and what a useless remake. It is mostly centered on Action that has been upgraded to fit the modern audience who has seen it all on YouTube: instead of the movie climax, surfing giant waves is now just an "ordeal" the team of thieves go through to pursue their goal. To top that, we get to see extreme surfboarding, 1000-meter mountain free climbing, wing-suit, ... And our hero who was played by Keanu Reeves as a promising football player recognized by one guy in the movie (This is Johnny Utah!), is now known to everybody and can do all the stunts as well as the other guys. Even his love affair has been upgraded to modern standards. When I see all that I sometimes miss the simplicity of the 90's movies. I found the escalation in Action compared to the original not to bring anything. Same for the scale that goes from the L.A. area to all across the globe. It is by the way incredible how the world seems small to those guys who always manage to bump into each other. The view of the world is also very America-centric, like this entrance to the Paris train station that looks like an extremely dangerous no-go zone. The main actor may act a little like Keanu Reeves and some of the key scenes of the original are present as a wink to the fans of the classic (the quickly abandoned masks, the shooting in the air while going Ahhhhh! parodied in La Cité de la peur and Hot Fuzz, the ending), the story is so badly told and shown that none of the events on screen made any impression on me. So much that when the ending comes and was in the original movie the completion of the two character's arc, in this one it falls completely flat in spite of a tentatively extraordinary setting, a bit like "Hey OK do what you want I don't care". A mirror of what the movie makers thought of their audience and of the original movie?
Rating: 1 /10

Central Intelligence (2016)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2016
	Director: Rawson Marshall Thurber (Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, We're the Millers)
	Actors: Dwayne Johnson (The Scorpion King, San Andreas), Kevin Hart (Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle), Danielle Nicolet
	Country: USA, CN
	Genre: Action, Comedy
	Conditions of visioning: 03.04.2019, VOD, 10" tablet screen.
Synopsis: After he reconnects with an awkward pal from high school through Facebook, a mild-mannered accountant is lured into the world of international espionage.
Review: One year before Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, Johnson and Hart were already united in this Action Comedy. Most of the humor plays on the contrast between the pair of actors (tall muscular with a deep voice vs. its opposite), the characters they play and how those characters have evolved since High School (ambitious most-likely-to-succeed vs. overweight shy). That's pretty obvious from the tagline on the poster already: "Saving the World takes a little Hart and a big Johnson". I was attentive for a good half hour, finding that the characters' contrast could bring something but the big laugh I was expecting never came, just little smiles at the performance of two actors who did the best they could. As often in such movies the Comedy overwhelms the Action which then cannot be taken seriously at any point. At least I didn't get bored watching it, but two weeks later I have already forgotten most of it.
Rating: 4 /10

Bombing War: From Guernica to Hiroshima (2016)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2016
	Director: Emmanuel Blanchard, Fabrice Salinié
	Actors: -
	Country: F
	Genre: Documentary, War
	Conditions of visioning: 29-30.03.2019, VOD, 10" tablet screen
Synopsis: The evolution of military strategies that tried to avoid but inevitably led to bombing civilians during WWII, on both sides.
Review: Bombing War is the first thing I watched after subscribing to the Curiosity Stream VOD channel. In general I am disappointed that this channel, supposed to offer tons of award-winning documentaries, offers in fact almost exclusively TV documentaries, and none of the BBC Nature ones for example. Some look good, interesting and well-done but I find it to be a little false advertising. Recently I am watching quite a few things related to War in general and WWII in particular, be it movies (Darkest Hour, Fury, Pearl Harbor), Documentaries (Hitler, a Career, Hitler's Steel Beast) or YouTube videos about the atom bomb or aircraft carriers. Bombing War is a nice overview of the evolution of the strategy of bombing civilians through time, but mostly during WWII, thus the sub-title. I found it quite informative and seemingly well-researched, providing the strategic point of view of all sides, while keeping delivering the re-assuring but vain message that bombing civilians isn't the solution to and can't be allowed in any war. But the most impressive I found was the use of colorized footage to illustrate the narration. I found the footage to be always appropriate and as well-researched as the story, but for a reason I can't explain the addition of color gives an extra depth to footage we may have already seen. What helps in a more subtle manner are the sounds that were added to I guess mostly silent footage, like some undiscernable background voices when you see people talking at a meeting. I am sure this helps a lot in making the Documentary easier to watch for a modern audience. Browsing the web I found the website of the company who did the job, well done. For a while now I have been seeing that Netflix has a Documentary entitled World War II in color. I have a renewed interest in watching it.
Rating: 6 /10