Superman 3 (1983)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 1983
	Director: Richard Lester (Superman 2)
	Actors: Christopher Reeve (Superman 1-2), Richard Pryor, Margot Kidder, Robert Vaughn (The Towering Inferno, Bullitt)
	Country: USA, GB
	Genre: Fantasy, Adventure
	Conditions of visioning: 18.09.2020, VOD, 10" tablet screen.

Synopsis: Ross Webster (Vaughn) teams up with computer genius Gus Gorman (Pryor) to mount ever bigger scams, while trying to stay under Superman's radar. Review: From the movie poster looking like one of a cheap comedy, you can already guess things are not looking too good for this sequel. And you watch it you notice it goes from bad to worse. They didn't re-hire Gene Hackman and Margot Kidder plays Lois Lane for a minute only, but the charismatic Robert Vaughn plays a new super-villain, unfortunately accompanied by two useless female side-kicks. The character played by Richard Pryor of a bum turned computer genius doesn't make sense. In fact the whole scenario making computers the movie's villain seem to have been written by people who has never seen one in this early age of I.T.. They seem to think that computers can do everything. A new weather satellite has been launched: if he can measure weather surely he can also influence it in major proportions thanks to a big laser! What?!? And the computer big as a room which includes by design Superman-defying weapons... The movie is also very attached to coincidences, making his main characters cross path with no reason, starting from the very opening scene. Why?!? There is really nothing good to say about this movie, I am amazed that they kept on going and that Superman IV is said to be one of the worst movies of all times. How worse can it get? There is only one way to find out...   Rating: 2 /10

Superman 2 (1980)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 1980
	Director: Richard Lester, Richard Donner (Lethal Weapon 1-4)
	Actors: Gene Hackman (Enemy of the State), Christopher Reeve (Superman), Margot Kidder
	Country: USA, GB, CDN
	Genre: Fantasy, Adventure
	Conditions of visioning: 17.09.2020, VOD, 10" tablet screen.

Synopsis: Superman (Reeve) decides to sacrifice his powers to start a relationship with Lois Lane (Kidder), unaware that three Kryptonian criminals he inadvertently released are conquering Earth. Review: The relationship between Lois Lane and Clark Kent/Superman in this movie is even more confusing than in the first Superman, and this confusion hurts even more that their relationship is at the heart of the story. It looks like she is engaged with Kent while both know she is in love with Superman, but you have to know comic books to guess that, or have seen several seasons of the TV-series Lois and Clark which had more time and took it to slowly develop their story before and after she discovers the secret. When I think of it, and after watching the poorly aged 80's movies, the series might have been the best Superman thing until Superman Returns (arguable) and the recent Zack Snyder reboot Man of Steel. Note that I watched the so-called "Richard Donner cut" of this movie so this review is only valid for it. It is apparently quite different from the theatrical cut so one should watch both go get a better idea of their respective qualities. This one was re-edited based on incomplete material which may explain some ellipses. But on the other hand it spends an exaggerated amount of time following discussions of a not very sexy couple, while during this time the three Kryptonians wreck havoc on Earth. This makes me think to mention that Man of Steel is in fact a remade mix of the original Superman 1 and 2, minus Lex Luthor who comes in only later. Talking about recent Superman adventures, the current big fuss about a Snyder Cut to Justice League highlights a recurring pattern in DC-adapted movies in the past 40 years. They still don't know what they are doing with their material and cinema adaptations. It is interesting that as in Sam Raimi's Spiderman 2, here also the hero doesn't want to be one anymore in the second movie already. The motivation is even similar but more far fetched. I was expecting an increase in quality with respect to the first movie but in fact the special effects are as bad, and the physics make even less sense. Lex Luthor is along for the ride but doesn't bring much. One of the worst things in the movie, apart from the bad love story, are the opening and closing scenes, apparently specific to the Donner cut, in which Superman respectively is responsible for the release of the bad guys, and uses the same cheap trick as at the end of the first movie to revert his actions. This was really unnecessary.   Rating: 3 /10

Superman Returns (2006)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2006
	Director: Bryan Singer (The Usual Suspects, X-men 1-2-5-6, Bohemian Rhapsody)
	Actors: Brandon Routh, Kevin Spacey (The Usual Suspects, House of Cards TV-series), Kate Bosworth
	Country: USA
	Genre: Fantasy
	Conditions of visioning: 11.09.2020, VOD, 10" tablet screen.

Synopsis: After five years of absence which he used to explore the remains of his home planet Krypton, Superman (Routh) is back on Earth where people hesitate between welcoming him back and continuing a life they have learnt to life without him. Review: I just wanted to watch a super-hero movie from the years 2000, easy to watch like an X-men, Fantastic 4 or Sam Raimi's Spider-Man, and one that I haven't watched recently (the first three X-men are probably next on my list). I remembered it was an OK movie with an exciting and well-done re-introduction scene for Superman (the plane accident) but I had issues with watching a character without his origin story, and also issues with Luthor's plans involving boring crystals. Watching it this time I found even less issues, but what really pays off is to watch it back-to-back with the 1978 Superman to which it is in fact an Homage Sequel. If you do that you will realize that many things have been fixed and improved with respect to the original and that many other things make more sense: Kevin Spacey acts like Gene Hackman but less extravagant, Kate Bosworth plays a better Lois Lane than Margot Kidder and we understand better her relationship with Superman, the special effects are of course better and in fact pretty good. Luthor's plan also makes more sense as it is based on one of his quote from the 1978 movie and his motivation is the same. We also get placed here and there references to past events that we have seen in that other movie. I love what Superman says abot Father and Son, a direct quote from what his father (played by Marlon Brando) tells him in the first movie. Concidences are still an issue in the franchise but this time it is less off-putting, except the one of Clark and Superman both returning at the same time ... Superman Returns will not attain the cult level which its predecessor did but honestly, it is a good sequel and more easy to watch that the original without requiring a large dose of nostalgia.   Rating: 6 /10

Superman (1978)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 1978
	Director: Richard Donner (Lethal Weapon 1-4, The Omen)
	Actors: Christopher Reeve, Margot Kidder, Gene Hackman (The Conversation, The Firm, Enemy of the State)
	Country: USA, GB, CDN, CH
	Genre: Fantasy, Adventure
	Conditions of visioning: 13.09.2020, VOD, 14" computer screen.

Synopsis: Kal-El, born on the dying planet Krypton, is sent to Earth by his father where he will grow up to be known as Superman (Reeves), a super-hero with god-like powers. Review: I am very sorry to give such a bad rating to such a classic movie but it didn't age well. I have to immediately mention that I watched the 3-hour so-called TV Extended Version, 40 minutes longer than the theatrical cut. You can read all about the different cuts on this Wikipedia page. This probably influences the rating as the added material is not essential and just slows down the pace and highlight even more the movie's weaknesses for the simple sake of seeing more of it. Superman is known as the first major big-budget superhero feature film, released now more than 40 years ago, at a time when little was known about how to make a successful comic book adaptation. They were just the first and had to kind of create a Genre. I had a found memory of the movie but hadn't watched it in at least a decade, and it looks much more kitsch than I remembered. It does contain some iconic moment like Marlon Brando's performance, but the one thing I give it credit for is the performance by Christopher Reeve who can make you believe it is possible to not recognize that Clark Kent is Superman: he is so clumsy and bent over and shy that he is easily ignored or overlooked. If the movie was released today I am sure his acting would be the source of many memes. But at the time it was original and pleased the audience. The heroic scenes did as well, most of them involving flying. Watched today, those scenes look really bad and artificial for a movie which was released the same year as Star Wars. Another iconic element of the movie is the score by John Williams. Unfortunately, past the main theme, it often drifts towards a Star Wars feeling, like if the composer had some musical pieces that he swapped between the two. The love story with Lois Lane also comes out of nowhere, and the character of Jimmy Olsen is annoying. Another annoying thing is the inconsistency of Superman's reactions: saving a cat here and lifting the San Andreas fault there, flying at the speed of light but wasting minutes to smile at people instead of rescuing Lois Lane. I hope that's a default proper to the Extended version and that the original one fixed it. I had a bit forgotten that Gene Hackman was known at the time for his incarnation of a goofy Lex Luthor surrounded by a team of idiots. This is part of the comic book elements the cinema crew had to play with. And as usual with Superman, he is over-powered and his interaction with the environment doesn't make any physical sense, until the very ending. At least they tried to make that look less awkward in the recent remake Man of Steel and the rest of the DCEU. I can still try to remember the few good elements with nostalgia, but in all objectivity this movie, or at least this Extended cut of it, is not very good.   Rating: 4 /10

Tenet (2020)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2020
	Director: Christopher Nolan (Memento, Inception, Interstellar, Dunkirk)
	Actors: John David Washington (BlacKkKlansman), Robert Pattinson (Twilight), Elizabeth Debicki
	Country: USA
	Genre: SF, Thriller
	Conditions of visioning: 02.09.2020, CINEMA theater

Synopsis: The Protagonist of this story (Washington) is recruited to be part of a secret group protecting Society against attacks from the Future.   Review: Christopher Nolan likes to play with our senses and to keep us disoriented. Between more linear movies although in different genres (Super-hero movie with his Dark Knight trilogy, Mystery with The Prestige, SF with Interstellar, War Drama with Dunkirk), he inserts more original ones like Memento, Inception or this Tenet which reminds of those two others. In the middle of this strange year that is 2020, I took my chance by going to slowly re-opening Cinemas and felt safe: rows in front of me and behind left empty as well as two seats on each side. The added advantage was to keep the pop-corn eaters at a distance, and they are numerous in that cinema venue which I don't like, but I had little choice. My main feeling when leaving the theater was frustration. Frustration at missing so many things because of dialogs too hard for me to follow. The fact that I am not native speaker isn't helping but I very rarely have the problem, showing that Tenet was particularly tough on me. Indeed I noticed that dialogs are elliptic (not all elements are given), half-spoken under the main actor's beard (as we say in French) and sometimes in a noisy environment. Beyond my understanding of English, those problems I had with the dialogs are director's intentional choices, either when writing them, recording the footage or editing the sound. In the worst of it I felt like in the recent bad James Bond movies (Quantum of Solace I am talking about you), showing scenes switching from country to country with barely understandable justification in between of why travel there (apart that it looks good on film). And a missed dialog can make you misunderstand part of the movie. For example I thought the Protagonist and Niel knew each other before we see them first meet. OK I hate when movies repeat the same information many times or use flashbacks to deal with an inattentive audience, but in Tenet there seems to be to redundancy at all. There is still a lot that I loved about this movie, starting with the convoluted but original story (again, reminding of Memento and Inception). The visual effects are efficient and seem simple but I bet it was in the end not so easy to blend together footage going forward and backwards. Even less simple was probably for the director and the team to keep track of who is doing what and in which order. This is an extra dimension film crews don't have to deal with in other movies. Kudos to them for that. As usual with Nolan, the soundtrack is well-fitting and many shots look very good (like the Opera opening scene). John David Washington plays decently enough, but I was more impressed by the transformation of Robert Pattinson since his Twilight days (he hadn't impressed me in Cosmopolis yet). Watching the movie a second time and/or with sub-titles would probably improve my rating but for now, so it is.   Rating: 6 /10

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