The Expanse - Season 4 (2019)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2019
	Creators: Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby
	Actors: Steven Strait, Cas Anvar, Dominique Tipper, Wes Chatham, Shohreh Aghdashloo (X-men: The Last Stand, Star Trek Beyond, 24 TV-series)
	Country: USA
	Genre: SF
	Conditions of visioning: August 2020, VOD, 32" TV screen
Synopsis: An apparent peace is reached in the Solar System, while it is now time to colonize new worlds. Belters are on the forefront and the UN sends a ship to check what they found.
Review: When Syfy cancelled the series after its third season, fans pressure was so high that Amazon decided to buy the rights and continue the series, and I was glad to hear that because I love the first seasons. The result is unfortunately disappointing, although it managed to keep most of the same characters (and actors) and develop a story following the events of the previous season. The small annoyances from the previous season are still present, in particular how ships travel in vacuum: they are continuously in full burn and apparently stop moving when the motor stops. This doesn't make any sense and is in contraction with the understanding the authors have in other scenes of having to turn 180 degrees and use the reactor to decelerate. Also some easy shortcuts are taken by the same authors; physics fails when it pleases them, and the planet Mars is conveniently on the path between Earth and Uranus. For a series praised for its realism, this is a let-down. Anyway, those are details but what disappointed me most is the story. After a Solar System-wide conflict, a threat against the whole of Humanity and an opening to hundreds of new possibilities, we now settle for the exploration of a single world. And as the story didn't manage to put all the characters in contact, we follow three storylines that almost never connect, in particular the one of Bobby on Mars is totally disconnected and the one around Mao's daughter is too obviously trying to keep a connection to him. I would hate for the series to continue this way (one season, one world), so I rather take it as a steering towards future events, a transition season which introduced new characters and a larger Universe, necessary after the neat conclusion of the previous season which wrapped-up pretty well the three first ones. Indeed in this season we get a glimpse of future possible turmoil in the political landscape, as well as an opening to a larger Universe. Let's see how the season 5 goes. Its postponed release date is not yet announced.
Rating: 4 /10

The Expanse - Season 3 (2018)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2018
	Creators: Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby
	Actors: Steven Strait, Cas Anvar, Dominique Tipper, Wes Chatham, Shohreh Aghdashloo (X-men: The Last Stand, Star Trek Beyond, 24 TV-series)
	Country: USA
	Genre: SF
	Conditions of visioning: August 2020, VOD, 32" TV screen
Synopsis: As the war between Earth and Mars ignites across the solar system, the terrifying next phase in the evolution of the protomolecule threatens the very existence of humanity. Caught in the middle, the Rocinante crew struggles to deal with tensions amongst themselves.
Review: Read my review of the first season of this series to learn why I liked it. In a nutshell it is for the realistic Solar System Exploration Science Fiction, in addition to some relatable characters and a suspenseful investigation. The quality went down in the second season, but it was still addictive. I was very tempted to watch them both again before continuing to be fully immersed, but I preferred using my time watching the new episodes. The complains I had were about handling of time periods and the effects of gravity, and they keep increasingly annoying me in the third season, taking me out of the action sometimes. An addition is how they handle ships motion in vacuum. Another annoying detail is how they make the UN Undersecretary Chrisjen Avasarala swear with the F word for no reason. It doesn't fit her character to do it so often and I don't remember it from the previous seasons. The series still looks very good but I noticed a trend of having more and more one-on-one discussions in an alleyway or in a reduced set, showing a tendency to reduce the cost of using large sets or the full cast at the same time. That's OK, it is what series do, it just looks slightly more like a soap opera sometimes. Apart from those criticisms, I liked the third season. It keeps on expanding (ahah) the Universe we learned about, while focusing on the adventures of the characters we like. Like in the previous seasons, it is a bit hard to swallow that they keep on being at the center of everything that happens, but it is less disturbing in this season because they are integral part of what happens and they have their own objectives. What kept me addicted to the series in this season are the lovable characters and how naturally they are played (I miss Miller though). I can't help but comparing Dominique Tipper playing Naomi Nagata with Sonequa Martin-Green in Star Trek: Discovery and the latter is no match. I also love the Science Fiction story in this season which, as I wrote, expands the Universe and ramp up the stakes to come to a nice conclusion I find. This story reminded me of the excellent novel Forever War by Joe Haldeman and the graphic novel Universal War by Denis Bajram, which I both highly recommend. Now that I think of it, the space crew, now more like a family, reminds me of that other TV-series Firefly by Joss Whedon. Another element they have in common is that they were cancelled early in spite of having a strong fan base. Those fans fought hard (via petitions etc...) to get the show brought back, which led to the movie Serenity in one case and to the transfer of the series from Syfy to Amazon for The Expanse, which was indeed cancelled after this third season. We will see in the fourth season how this turned out.
Rating: 6 /10

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. - Season 7 (2020)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2020
	Creators: Maurissa Tancharoen, Jed Whedon, Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly)
	Actors: Clark Gregg (Iron Man 1-3, The Avengers), Ming-Na Wen, Chloe Bennet, Elizabeth Henstridge, Henry Simmons
	Country: USA
	Genre: Action, SF
	Conditions of visioning: May-July 2020, VOD, 10" tablet screen.
Synopsis: The Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. have traveled back in time to follow the Cronicoms and stop their plan to conquer Earth.
Review: This final season follows closely in time the sixth one, and I advice you to read my review of that one for a status overview of the series. As I predicted, they use this scheduled last season to call back previous seasons and have old characters return, but in a much better way than I could have anticipated. We get very few returning actors, but many many references to past events and younger versions of characters we know. Indeed if the Agents already tackled Time Travel in the fifth season, they now run another season fully revolving around it. You may think this contradicts the idea that they explore a new movie sub-genre in every season, but in fact in this one they explore one every episode!! And this includes matching style for the title card, story and visual identity (like an episode in Black&White): they go through 40's Noir, 60's Polar, Roswell-time alien invasion, early 80's computer-geek a-la-WarGames, or later 80's disco SF like in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. Pretty awesome. This showed me that the cast and crew really enjoyed working on that season and gave all their love to complete it. This team spirit also shows on the interviews you can watch online. Even if this season is not amazing or at the level of some of the others (like season 1 and season 3), it is still very pleasant to watch because of its generosity. As in all the other seasons, the crazy pace (in that case time jumps) slows down mid-season to focus on the principal story and bring it to a close. By the way those time jumps between every episode remind of series like Quantum Leap or Sliders. As I wrote in the review of the previous season, it is appreciable that the end of the series was scheduled so that it could be done properly and even though the ending could have been better, it still had a great feeling of saying goodbye, at least until a rumored series Agents of S.W.O.R.D.? Watch this breakdown on YouTube for more details. A few more lines about why I liked this final season: it is not so much about the crazy story (tending to the eccentricities of a comics book) and the not-so-charismatic enemies, but about the fan service (references to past seasons and to MCU characters and events even though the series is not canon to the MCU) and the related characters like Koenig, Gordon, the Malick family, Jiaying, Enoch, and the fantastic idea to cast James Paxton, son of the regretted Bill Paxton, to play a young version of the character his dad played. So long Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Rating: 6 /10

The Firm (1993)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 1993
	Director: Sydney Pollack (Tootsie)
	Actors: Tom Cruise (Mission: Impossible 1-5, Collateral Dammage), Jeanne Tripplehorn, Gene Hackman (Enemy of the State), Ed Harris (The Truman Show)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Thriller
	Conditions of visioning: 08.08.2020, VOD, 10" tablet screen.
Synopsis: A young lawyer (Cruise) joins a prestigious law firm only to discover that it has a sinister dark side.
Review: After recently watching The Pelican Brief, I wanted to complete watching the best four 90's cinema adaptations of John Grisham novels. No national conspiracy in this one, but another lawyer story originally taking place outside of the court. In 1993 Tom Cruise was at the top of his career, if you consider it ever went down. He just starred in Top Gun, Cocktail, Rain Man, Days of Thunder and A Few Good Men, and was about to be in Mission: Impossible, a choice which will dominate his career to this day. Just to say that the movie features a young Tom Cruise playing a young ambitious character, different from the more mature Action Hero roles we now see him in. Oh there is some action in this movie and you get to see the actor run like he does so well, but it is definitely more focused on story and characters. This plays very well with a cast that includes Gene Hackman, Ed Harris, Jake Busey, Hal Holbrook and many others. The 90's natural acting is for me the strongest point of the movie. You really root for those characters and suffer to see what they go through. The plot is somehow predictable but the intrigue keeps you glued to the movie nonetheless, thanks to many twists and turns rendering the story less linear than you would expect. A movie which confirms that 90's Cinema was good at something.
Rating: 7 /10

Unacknowledged (2017)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2017
	Director: Michael Mazzola
	Actors: Giancarlo Esposito (Breaking Bad, The Mandalorian), Steven M. Greer, Carl Sagan
	Country: USA
	Genre: Documentary
	Conditions of visioning: 10.08.2020, VOD, 14" computer screen.
Synopsis: This Documentary focuses on the historic files of the Disclosure Project and how UFO secrecy has been ruthlessly enforced – and why.
Review: After watching too many videos about the Flat Earth phenomenon (like the documentary Behind the Curve), and the movie Capricorn One linked to the conspiracy theory around the Moon landings, I wanted to get updated on the status of UFO and Aliens sightings. My latest information was that there were much less sightings now that everybody has a camera in their pocket than 30 years ago when such sightings were recorded on blurry grainy films. This was to me a strong argument that all those proofs were fake. Unacknowledged is revolving around a man called Steven M. Greer, founder of the Disclosure Project, a project which seeks the disclosure of allegedly classified secret UFO information, from the American government and Military. His project has gathered an incredible amount of evidence (films and testimonies) that not only Earth was visited by an Alien spaceship which crashed in Roswell in the 50's, but that there are many many more of such visits, that they are kept a secret (even from governments) or discredited by the industrial-military complexes of the World, in order to keep on making profit from oil, staged wars, and ultimately faking an Alien invasion which will result in the maximum benefit for them. Waw, this seems far-fetched but Greer (who they keep on insisting is a Doctor) looks like a sane guy and has organized proofs, not like the deniers who believe the Earth is flat. The problem a little bit is that I don't know how much one can trust the poor-quality leaked scans presented as proofs, and even less the testimonies of humans. It is known that many people would tell tons of lies if it gave them some celebrity. Also, how are some of those people allowed to talk about such secrets, as they were or still are employed by governments (like high-ranking military or CIA former officials)? Technically the Documentary is well-done and conveys its message (and the voice of Giancarlo Esposito is a plus), although it clearly takes the side of the conspirationists. Steven M. Greer is co-producing it after all. Sure, it would be great to know of Aliens visits if they were true but I am still not convinced. Maybe I would need to see a study of video proofs, showing possible Earth-based explanations for many of them, but also a list of the ones which cannot yet be explained.
Rating: 5 /10

The Berlin Bride (2020)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2020
	Director: Michael Bartlett
	Actors: Taylor Baldschun, Michael Bartlett, Brynmor Jones
	Country: USA, D
	Genre: Drama, Thriller, Fantasy
	Conditions of visioning: 02.07.2020, FANTASPOA2020, 14" computer screen.
Synopsis: Two oddball Berliners discover the abandoned appendages of a mannequin. Separately, and with grotesque consequence, they come to terms with their disjointed mate.
Review: From the synopsis and the poster of the movie, I was expecting more of a Giallo (or something like Anguish) and didn't get much of it apart from the strange mannequin fetishism and the setting in the 80's. Those are also the two best things in this movie. I am in particular amazed at how the director could recreate the Berlin of 1986 in its exterior scenes, in spite of a probable low budget. It is also remarkable to see this kind of production in Europe and I can only encourage it. Finally another characteristic of the movie is that it is almost without dialogs, apart from a few lines in German or English, which makes it easy to watch for anybody even without sub-titles. The rest of the movie feels sometimes like a psychedelic trip, as we see the mannequin taking a more and more important part in the life of our two protagonists, both weird in their own way. A movie unfortunately not as rich and memorable as I thought it would be.
Rating: 5 /10

Fried Barry (2020)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2020
	Director: Ryan Kruger
	Actors: Gary Green, Brett Williams, Joey Cramer
	Country: ZA
	Genre: Horror, SF
	Conditions of visioning: 29.07.2020, FANTASPOA2020, 14" computer screen
Synopsis: Barry (Green) is a low-life heroin-addicted father of one. After a party evening he is abducted by aliens and then takes a backseat as an alien visitor assumes control of his body and takes it for a joyride through Cape Town.
Review: Again, after Precarious, I am thankful for a Film Festival (the Brazilian FANTASPOA) to show me this kind of movie which I would otherwise see nowhere else. South African productions are also pretty rare, but we all remember the great District 9. Fried Barry looks cheap in comparison, but they are not made to be compared. It is thrilling and hilarious to see Barry go from one incredible adventure to the next, all of them filled with drugs, sex and violence in the suburbs of Cape Town. It keeps on getting crazier until a relative pause and then the final chapter. The actor playing Barry is great at transmitting the feeling of a guy already lost in the first place but in addition controlled by an alien. The whole movie reminds me of the craziness in The Greasy Strangler but less disgusting. I also love the cinematography, mostly at night and in streets or clubs illuminated by bright colorful neon lights. This sets a nice atmosphere. Extravagant until the end. Recommended if you need some craziness in you life, at least for one hour and forty minutes.
Rating: 6 /10

MARS - Season 2 (2018)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2018
	Creators: André Bormanis, Mickey Fisher, Karen Janszen
	Actors: Jihae, Alberto Ammann, Clémentine Poidatz
	Country: USA
	Genre: Documentary, SF
	Conditions of visioning: July-August 2020, VOD, 10" tablet screen.
Synopsis: 2018: Experts discuss the challenges which await a permanent Human base on Mars, in particular the collaboration with private companies. 2042: terraforming progresses on the Red Planet, but living there is not easy and gets more complicated when the company Lukrum lands and start exploiting the planet's resources.
Review: I loved the first season of this series for its original mix of up-to-date Documentary, mostly interviews of people having something to say about the conquest of the solar system, and Science Fiction, not blockbuster-level but realistic and anchored in a probable Future. The second season is basically more of the same, except that this time the focus is not anymore on the motivation and means to reach the Red Planet, but the effects (on people) of staying there and even more present: the relationship between government-led agencies and private corporations. This is the heavy topic of the season, and quite timely I would say in those years when NASA has successfully sens astronauts to the International Space Station using the private company SpaceX's rockets. Of course its CEO Elon Musk is still part of the interviewees in the series. The Documentary/interviews parts are informative, but nothing you couldn't find on YouTube. The Fiction parts project the audience in the Future and make the predictions more palpable. We get to see the characters we learned to love in the first season and meet new ones. By the way I advice watching a recap like this one on YouTube if you have forgotten about the details of the first season. The Fiction is of course dramatized with coincidences and extra tension build-up, but it is still very facts-based and you can watch it like a Documentary of the future, not like pure SF using technology which doesn't make sense. I hope they keep on with a third season, maybe taking place when the population has really started to grow, and parallels made with the settling of the USA in the 1800's and at some point the will for independence. Well that comes later in the future and is already the topic of The Expanse.
Rating: 6 /10

Beuys (2017)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2017
	Director: Andres Veiel
	Actors: -
	Country: D
	Genre: Documentary
	Conditions of visioning: 07.10.2018, arte.tv, German/English version
Synopsis: Who is Joseph Beuys, seen via his art?
Review: Since yesterday and the viewing of the great Werk ohne Autor, I am longing to know more about this German artist who I pigeonholed in the early 2000s. I may have been too narrow-minded at that time. Therefore I want to give Beuys a second chance. The documentary reveals from Beuys unstructured information. First some of his experiences during WWII, then some of his major artistic pieces such as "I like America and America likes me" and his tendency for performance, and finally his political engagement. What I got from this is more curiosity for the artist as this documentary only gives few hints here and there about the artist and person without giving a clear picture of him. The movie is a mix of sources. From the cut and story-telling it seems rather a summary of the media life of Beuys than really a documentary on him. Some interview of key persons of his life would have been great. Therefore to be continued...
Rating: 6 /10

Precarious (2020)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2020
	Director: Wes Terray
	Actors: Juliana Frick, Dashiell Hillman, Andrey Pfening
	Country: USA
	Genre: Fantasy, Thriller
	Conditions of visioning: 29.07.2020, FANTASPOA2020, 14"computer screen.
Synopsis: After being shot with arrows by a mysterious woman, Henry (Pfening) is held by the Police at the Doctor's office from where he then escapes.
Review: I had a good feeling when deciding to watch this movie and was not disappointed. The opening credits put you right in the mood for it: slowly moving camera over pieces of props with the crew's names on it, and the title made out of folded pages of a book, as shown on the photo below this post. Who nowadays makes the effort to design such a sequence? In Precarious, it was the director Wes Terry and his Art director Louise Franco who both did a fantastic job at giving the movie this special 60's atmosphere, sometimes reminding of an episode of The Twilight Zone. I found an interview on Filmink where the director tells you what you need to know about the genesis of the project, and how he could make it happen with just a fixed idea and a reduced crew, albeit it took him seven years to do so. Other members of the crew making the movie what it is are the motivated actors and the composer Ben Eshbach who wrote the melodies which carry the audience along the adventure. You have to love the attention to details in the movie and the perfect framing. Hard to believe the sets were all built in the director's apartment! There are a few moments throughout the movie that give it away however, and hint that it was produced with limited means: the acting at some moments, the cheapness of some set pieces, the lighting and the sound recording. But this is easily forgiven for a first full-length feature, and in comparison with the richness of other aspects. I love that the movie takes its time to reveal the characters and what this is all about, this practice has become far too rare in modern cinema where you are usually thrown into the action by fear that you wold zap to another channel, because who watches full movies in a (home-)cinema nowadays? The way the mystery slowly unravels reminded me of movies by David Lynch, also maybe partly because of the resemblance between the main actor Andrey Pfening and Lynch's favorite Kyle MacLachlan (in Blue Velvet for example). A nice discovery which makes me ever more happy to follow movie Festivals.
Rating: 7 /10