Penelope - 2006

This is a silly, silly film, and yet enjoyable. A romance, related to the beauty and the beast story. An ugly-looking-witch has cast a curse on a rich, noble family, so when Jessica (Catherine O'Hara) and Franklin (Richard E. Grant) have a baby, Penelope is born with a pig nose.
Now, there's a saying here that translates 'every cockroach is beautiful to his mother', but this Jessica is a posh rich aristocrat not bothered with a true mother's heart.
They know that only 'one of her kind' can break the curse, so Jessica shuts her up inside their big house and never lets her out, never any contact with other people who might see her face, preparing her to be a wife all her life. She believes that only the marriage with another noble will break the curse, so as soon as Penelope (Cristina Ricci) turns eighteen they hire Wanda (Ronni Ancona) to find her a husband. Every time a young man sees her face, they all run away, very fast, but are always followed and forced to sign a paper of confidentiality that forbids them to talk about her. One day, though, they fail to catch Edward (Simon Woods) and the silly boy runs to the police telling of a monster with fangs ; he even goes to the papers, but nobody believes him. Only Lemon (Peter Dinklage) believes him because he once got a glimpse of the baby. Lemon and Edward are determined to get a picture of her, so they hire Max (James McAvoy) who they believe to be a noble with no money, to infiltrate the house and shoot a picture of her. Penelope is very tired of all this, so she appears in front of all of them at once and all the boys run away, all but Max who actually didn't see her, but Penelope doesn't know it. She starts talking to him from another room, so they get to know each other, and to like each other. When he finally sees her, he's surprised but doesn't run away.
It's too late for that, now he knows her and likes her. What's a nose when you really like a person?
She tells him that after the marriage the curse will be broken, so she begs him to marry her, but he says 'I can't' and goes away. Max refuses to sell the picture to Lemon and backs out of the agreement.
Penelope is heartbroken, she liked him. Tired of that life, she covers her face with a big scarf and runs away. She meets Annie (Reese Witherspoon) and they become friends.
Having no money, she sells her picture to Lemon for five thousand dollars. One of the nicest scenes in the film is when Lemon sees the picture, and keeps looking at it: it's just a picture of a normal, pretty girl with a pig nose, not a real monster like Edward had told him. Lemon wouldn't use it, but Edward firmly wants to prove to the world he's not crazy and that the pig girl is real, so her picture goes out.
One day her parents see her and follow her. Penelope runs away and eventually faints after entering the pub of her friends, so Annie and everybody there see her face. Now her secret's out.
Now everyone wants her picture, talk about her, she's a phenomenon, a curiosity, but the only thing that matters to her is that they're not running away, so she doesn't go back home. She wants to live. Edward tells the press she's a monster and that she should be locked up so his father, to save the family's image, forces him to propose to her. Penelope's mother forces her to accept. Max still thinks of her, but does nothing to stop it and we understand why when Lemon discovers he's actually Johnny: he's not noble at all, so he's not able to break the curse. The day of the marriage Penelope says No instead of I do and runs to her room. Jessica follows, remembering her that this is her chance for a new life and a new her, but Penelope yells that she doesn't want a new her, she likes herself the way she is, and thus the curse is broken! There. If only Jessica had loved her for what she was she would have broken it a long time ago. Penelope doesn't tell anyone; she goes out to live a new life, with a real job, until Halloween comes and "Penelope's pig mask" is the most popular, so she wears one and goes to find Johnny. When he realizes she's Penelope he kisses her and tells her he cannot break her curse but then she takes off the mask. He backs down as he had done the first time, at seeing her different, but "it's still me" and they kiss again and live happily ever after :-)
The witch now goes away (she had lived there disguised as their butler); before going she does the world a favor and takes away Jessica's voice :-) See, a silly but cute fairytale. Johnny and Penelope's kiss was a nice kiss, despite the pig mask on her face :-)
I liked it a lot. In the movie I recognized Russell Brand in a small role and also Burn Gorman from Torchwood.

Dreamer - 2005

"Inspired by a true story" is part of the title or just a comment? Anyway, it's a nice movie if you take it for what it is: a nice, little, simple story for children, a "follow your dreams" story, where everything is possible and it all goes well, as if we were really to believe that if you just follow your dream someone will give you 120.000 dollars so it can come true! Come on! Anyway, the film is nice because I like Kurt Russell enough and because Dakota Fanning (here eleven years old) is amazing. They are father and daughter Ben and Cale Crane, and as it often happens in these films they're broke. A racehorse breaks a leg and is about to be killed but Cale doesn't want , so Ben saves the mare and takes her instead of the money he deserves for his job at that place, whatever it was, I don't remember. Cale bonds with Sonya, short of Soñador,  and takes it badly when Ben sells the mare. So badly that Ben uses their last money to buy it back and everyone is happy because dreams and a little girl's smile are everything that matters. I should try saying that to the Revenue demanding taxes, or to the banks.
Now Cale has her horse, she wakes up early every day to go to her, to 'train' her. Cale makes up her mind to have Sonya race again, in the biggest race  of all, where they need 120.000 dollars to enter. Easily, they go to meet Prince Sadir (Oded Fehr) and ask him to sponsor Sonya, and of course he can't resist the little girl's blue eyes and accepts; Sonya is quoted 80 to 1 but wins nonetheless. Happy ending! And here it ends, just like that.
To think that people kill racehorses that break a leg or an ankle, they haven't seen this movie, huh? Well, as I said, it is to be considered for what it is, a movie for children. Otherwise it becomes a stupid, unrealistic, dangerous movie.

Gamsijadeul - 2013

In Italy I know it as "Cold eyes", one of those funny things: to transform a Korean title into an English one for the Italian public :-/
Internet tells me that the title means Surveillance, which is a reasonable title, much more than cold eyes! A good movie, I liked it enough. Well made, well acted. I read it's a remake of another movie, but I never saw that one so I can't compare them. It's the story of a group of policemen specialized in surveillance. They discover the right places to search, identify their target, follow him closely until an operative team can intervene to take them down. A girl joins the team and her code name is little-pig (well, I translate in English the Italian name I heard on tv, and she was porcellino :-p) - (Han Hyo-joo, I looked the names up on the internet).  Leader of her team is Hawk (Sol Kyung-gu); with their team they try to find a gang of robbers. Six people, plus the mastermind they call Shadow (Jung Woo-sung). On the surveillance tapes they manage to find a member of the gang. They start a search, find him, spy him and identify him and through him eventually they identify all the six members of the gang: they are taken down by an operative force team. Unfortunately the Shadow foresaw the trap and escaped. They saw him and followed him, but he escaped killing a young Detective, codename Squirrel (Lee Junho).
Little-pig was so shocked she stayed with Squirrel losing the suspect. Hawk leaves the force, while she retreats in herself, not answering his calls, until she sees Shadow again, totally by chance, and follows him, phoning Hawk and getting the team ready. At a dining place Shadow approached her, asking her why she was following him, but leaves when Hawk enters the place. He follows him now but Shadow knows him and tries to kill him, but luckily he can only injure him. This time our little-pig can't stop, they are the only two people to know Shadow's face so she must keep the surveillance. She goes on but he takes her hostage. When other policemen come to her aid, she manages to break free. He runs away but they are in pursuit. Anticipating his move, Hawk is waiting for him at the other exit of that train-tunnel. He stays there, blocking his escape. Shadow now has policemen behind him and Hawk in the front. Without Hawk he could escape again, but Hawk stands there even when he hears a train getting close. He shoots Shadow dead, and having as many lives as a cat he gets lucky again and the train changes rail right behind him. This hunt is finally over, but the team goes on with its work, and now little-pig is a more confident, prepared officer. It was a good movie, I liked it a lot. I only didn't like the falling-down-scene with the camera following them too closely, I found it only messy and distracting, not captivating at all. Beside that, I liked it. The actors were all good. Squirrel's death was sad, but I guess there had to be one to make it all more... I don't know, more realistic maybe. This Shadow was extremely dangerous and did not hesitate to kill. Before dying, however, he had the satisfaction of killing his mentor and his men. Shadow wanted out but the man forced him to take this other job costing him his life.

To Gillian on her 37th birthday - 1996

A nice, emotional movie, a psychological drama about grief partially ruined by two completely useless characters, included for no reasonable reason at all! This is the story of David (Peter Gallagher) and his denial, his stubborn way of dealing with his wife Gillian (Michelle Pfeiffer)'s death by refusing to let her go. It's been two years and he still lives in the house by the beach where they lived when she died (while playing silly on the boat); he talks to her every night and celebrate her birthday as she liked to do. This is very deleterious  for his daughter Rachel (Claire Danes). His sister-in-law Esther (Kathy Baker) is deeply worried, tries in every way to make him reason but he refuses to accept her passing away and sees nothing wrong in what he does, he can't see what effect this behavior has on Rachel.
So Esther plans to take Rachel away to live with her. Esther's husband Paul (Bruce Altman) is his best friend and of course he's worried, too, but doesn't stress it like she does. These are all the characters important, the only ones the movie needed. For some reason there were two more women: Kevin (Wendy Crewson), Paul's friend that Esther invited as a sort of blind date for David, that said very little and did even less, and Cindy (I think), a young woman that seems to live nearby and apparently is always there with David, who knows why. She's supposed to be a friend of Rachel, but doesn't seem to be. Honestly she doesn't fit at all, and her provocative way is only annoying, distracting and upsetting. I thought she hoped to seduce David, but she never tried to, fortunately. She had no use in the plot at all, her character damages the movie, in my opinion. I don't even think she serves the purpose of making Paul think his marriage over, because truth is it wasn't her flirting that did it, it was David and his endless love for Gillian. That was a good scene, Paul and Esther finally talking about their own marriage, openly. Do you ever think of someone else when we make love? No. Is it because we don't think there's anything to celebrate in our marriage that we never wanted to have children? and again Are you so crossed over David because you envy him the kind of feeling we never had? Then Paul says that every day he comes back home because after all he needs her to be there, to hold on to her, something like that, and I thought that was great. I liked that.
Things go down the night Rachel comes home drunk, after her date Joey (Freddie Prinze Jr) took her to a party at Danny's (Seth Green) , and booze starts talking, so she reveals to everybody that he actually talks to Gillian every night on the beach, than she has a terrible dream and confesses she can't take it anymore, that she wants to go living with aunt Esther. The moment to say goodbye comes and he finally realizes that if he has to let go of someone, it better be Gillian, not Rachel, and promises her to close the house and follow her. Good choice.

In Italy: A Gillian per il suo compleanno

Du hastes versprochen - 2012

Not bad. With a dubious finale, but not bad after all. A thriller well made.
It's a very sad story, when you get to the bottom of it. At first they play with a sort of Japanese-ghosts-style, but then it comes back to Europe and becomes so sad an so real.
It starts very classic: two young girls playing in the woods, something happens and they run away. More than twenty years later Hanna (Mina Tander) casually meets Clarissa (Laura De Boer) again. She forgot about those holidays of so many years ago but as soon as she reads her name she's happy to have found her friend again. They talk and decide to take a few days of vacation to go to the same island where they played when they were eight. With them there's Lea (Lina Köhlert), Hanna's daughter. Clarissa spends her time playing with Lea, while Hannah slowly remembers her past, has 'visions' of a little girl, Maria, that was her best friend before she met Clarissa. Slowly she recalls whey they played together, and is troubled to learn that Maria 'disappeared' and nobody ever knew what happened of her. Both Hannah and Lea have visions of little Maria, and Hannah tries her best to remember what happened, and she recalls something. One day she challenged Maria to do something, 'if she still wanted to be her friend'. Hannah told her a scary story then she and Clarissa lowered Maria into a deep hole and stepped back, to scare her. They came back and tried to pull her out of there but the rope broke, Maria fell down and they ran away, telling nothing of what happened to anybody.
Something seemed strange all the time, but we are sure of it when Hannah wants to go home and since there is no boat available she repeatedly tries to call her husband, and when he calls back Clarissa answers her phone and tells him everything's ok, no worries, then she lied about it to Hannah. Finally the showdown. Clarissa has taken Lea. Hannah goes to that damn place where the old tragedy happened, and the truth is revealed. The girl we have known as Clarissa is actually Maria.  That time, so long ago, she had spent many horrible hours down that hole, and had been so scared she lost her mind. After that episode she had spent long years in a mental institution, where she was also raped and had a daughter. That's the little girl Hannah had seen and had believed to be Maria's spirit. Maria remembers how she worshipped Hanna as a child, and for her she would have done anything, but Hanna left her there, she destroyed her life and then forgot all about her, so now Maria want to do the same. She already killed the real Clarissa, and now she plans to have Hanna locked up as in same, while she takes care of her husband and daughter. It ends with Lea drawing a picture of two little girls and two women, then she blackens one of the women's face, probably because even if people won't believe a child over an adult she must know what the truth is, she must know Maria is insane and her mother is not!
Maybe.

In Italy it's called "Promessa rosso sangue".

Hooligans - 2005

Let me say it: what a shit finale. I mean, good for one character, in a way, but bad for the rest. I explain. Matt (Elijah Wood) is kicked out of Harvard because they found cocaine among his things, hidden there by his rich roommate Van Holden. He goes to London to visit his sister Shannon (Claire Forlani). She's married to Steve (Marc Warren) and has a little son. Steve's brother Pete (Charlie Hunnan) introduces Matt to his group of Hooligans. Matt knows nothing about football, but he likes being part of a group, having lots of 'brothers', protecting each other, feeling strong. When it comes to it, football has no part in it at all. It's the feeling of being part of a strong group that he likes. Matt starts spending all his time with them, drinking and fighting. Time ago Steve was part of the same group, he was "the major", but stopped after a kid got killed, then he met Shannon and promised her never to fight again.
A member of the group, Bover or Bower or something like that, never liked Matt because he was American and because he was new. When he learns that Matt studied journalism at Harvard he goes crazy, believing Matt to be an undercover journalist, there to spy on them.
Steve tried to warn Matt, and Pete sides with them, so Bover goes to the enemy group telling them about Matt and also that Steve is in the pub. Among them is the shit father of the poor kid that died, and he tries to kill Steve. Of course he prefers to blame him for the son's dead instead of admitting that no good father should ever bring his kid to a battle.
Pete and Matt rush to the hospital, to save him. He'll live, but Shannon wants to leave him, to go back to America.
Pete wants vengeance, and arranges a big battle between the two gangs. Matt joins his group, unwilling to let them go without him. Worried for her brother, Shannon goes looking for him. The 'enemy', I can't remember his name, breaks Pete's leg, but when Pete sees Shannon he's worried sick the bastard might kill her too, and her baby, so he provokes him to give Matt time to drive her away. Pete gets beaten to death and Matt and Shannon go back to America. It looks like Steve is left at the hospital without his wife, his son, his brother. Yes, he used to fight and that's bad, but so did Matt, until Pete died and his sister risked it too. Why Steve is the only one who deserves to be left alone, when he didn't fight, he only tried to save his wife's brother? It doesn't seem fair, specially because there is no word about him joining her to America. She left him, just like that.
The end shows a Matt more confident now, who tapes Van Holden's confession to be accepted back at Harvard. Good, he's getting his life back on track, that's good. Pity that he needed a death to get there.

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer - 2007

Nothing special, really. It’s weird to see Chris ‘Captain America’ Evans playing the idiot brother of Susan Storm (Jessica Alba). As in the first movie Reed Richards is played by Ioan Gruffudd and Ben Grimm by Michael Chiklis, that even has a couple of scenes where he’s back to normal, when Johnnie absorbs his power, and we can actually see him. Julian McMahon is back as Victor Von Doom, without a clear explanation as to how can he still be alive. Kerry Washington is Ben’s beautiful girlfriend, and don’t say she’s with him because she’s blind, it’s not like she doesn’t know, she touches and kisses him, so she knows. The best thing of the movie is the silver surfer, this sad figure of an alien forced to work for Galactus the Destroyer of Worlds to keep his planet and the woman he loves safe. I liked him. I didn’t much care for the rest: Reed is very plain, but I was never a big fan of the rubber-man; Susan is kind of boring, Johnnie is an idiot. Viktor is beautiful but predictable. The best scenes are with or about the silver surfer: when Reed creates the name after hearing Johnnie’s description of him, that was well done; when the surfer talks to Susan, when he protects her, when she dies protecting him, and of course when he saves her and then turns against Galactus to save Earth. Basically what the fab-four of America did was to get the surfboard away from the surfer at first, and then from Viktor, but they think they’re so fantastic they did it all themselves, the saving. Oh well. I’m not opposed to the idea of a new F.four movie with a new cast. Let’s hope it’ll be a better movie, because these two were yes nice toys, but of the kind you get bored of after playing with them just once. I don’t know the new cast, but I hope both them and the new screenplay will be more catching and interesting.

The sixth sense - 1999

I like it. Even more the second time around. Sure, first time there’s the surprise, the final switch, but  the second time I watched it I could pay attention to the details I didn’t know were important. It being an old film I don’t think I can spoil anything for anyone, everybody talking about this movie says the two important things out loud on tv. Anyway, the movie is well made, I liked it. I was really sorry for this poor little kid that was scared to death by his secret visions he could not talk about with anybody, and also for his poor mother who didn’t know what to do, could not understand what his son was going through and was growing desperate. I really liked the mother character, I felt for her a lot, she loved him so much and didn’t know how to make him safe, or happy. She saw wounds on him and thought other kids were responsible, she saw him tremble at the thought of sleeping alone and didn’t know what else to do for him but hug him tight. 

It starts slowly, presenting Dr Malcolm (Bruce Willis), a psychiatrist well known and appreciated who gets shot by a man he could not help. Months later he takes an interest in little Cole (Haley Joel Osment), a child that presents the same problem that man had as a child, and wants to help him, thinking that maybe in a way helping Cole will be like helping him too. He talks to Cole, trying to understand what he’s afraid of. Meanwhile, he appears to have problems at home; his wife doesn’t speak to him, and a guy looks interested in her. 

Now, the first big revelation of the movie is Cole’s secret: before he says it out loud, we didn’t really know what troubled him so much. Now he says it all to Malcolm: I see dead people. Sometimes they don’t even know they’re dead. I see them all the time. 

Of course he’s scared, poor thing, seeing that everywhere, always. He can see the people that were hanged in his school, back in the days when it was a tribunal, or a woman that committed suicide because tired of being abused, presumably by her husband. Of course, if you think of it, they weren’t all that much after all, you’d think that someone who could see dead people would see many many more than that. One could say: maybe he only sees those that don’t know they’re dead so can’t ‘go to the other side’, but what about the hanged people, they don’t know either? 

At first Malcolm thinks he’s delusional, but then he thinks back of the child he couldn’t help, and realizes he had the same exact problem, and he himself can hear the ghosts talking during their session. Malcolm then goes to Cole and asks him: what do they want from you? Cole doesn’t know, because he was always too scare to even wonder about that, but now he thinks about it and next ghost he sees in his bedroom he comes back saying ‘is there something you want to tell me?’ and yes, it turns out this young girl (Mischa Barton) wants him to do a very important thing. Cole goes to her house during the funeral-reception and gives her father a box she gave him. There’s a tape inside showing how the poor girl was poisoned, killed, by a woman that was, or wanted to be, her stepmother. At least now we’re sure that woman won’t do the same to the girl’s little sister. 

That was all very intense. The things that I could watch carefully the second time around was how nobody ever talked or even looked at Malcolm. When we see him in Cole’s house, the mother doesn’t look at him, she goes straight to Cole, and we can see how she’s dressed for home, not at all like a mother having a doctor as a guest.

I liked the drawing scene, when Cole said he draws nice things like rainbows so people don’t freak out, and we see them in his room: kids learn quickly.  

After Malcolm’s help, after he showed that tape to the poor man, Cole decided to take the last step and tell everything to his mother (Toni Collette) . He tells her her secret, and if at first she doesn’t believe him, she changed her mind when Cole tells her a message from her dead mother, the answer to a question she made in front of her grave, which was Do I make you proud? Answer: every day. 

At this point Malcolm goes away, Cole doesn’t need him anymore, so he goes back home and suddenly realizes the truth, that he died that night, when he was shot. His wife is crying. Malcolm talks to her, and she smiles in her sleep, then he goes away. Cool ending. First time you watched it, back then, it was a big surprise, but even now it’s a good scene. It all comes together. 

Burn after reading - 2008

Nope, I didn’t  like it. I knew it was part of the “American idiots” movies, so I was prepared for a stupid film, meant to be of course, but honestly this was very little fun, kind of boring, and with a bad, bad ending, where the only good, normal, sweet character dies in a  horrible way. That was the one thing they shouldn’t have done.

Let’s try to explain this story: it all starts with two distinct events that bring chaos and trouble upon everyone. Osborne ‘Ozzie’ Cox (John Malkovich), CIA analyst, is fired, and Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand) single and unhappy in her own body, wants plastic surgery at all costs. Ozzie’s wife Katie (Tilda Swinton) has a relationship with Harry (George Clooney) and is determined to get a divorce. Harry doesn’t want her to, but when she comes home to find Ozzie drunk and the car damaged, she has no more desire for delay, and soon Ozzie will come home to find his stuff outside and the lock changed. She also takes all the money from their bank accounts, leaving him nothing. Linda wants Health Insurance to pay for her surgery, but of course they refuse to, so when her friend Chad (Brad Pitt), who works with her at a gym and is a complete moron, finds a disk with what appears to be secret Cia material, and has the idea to give it back for a money reward, she jumps right in. Chad says that a friend was able to connect the disk with the pc it was written on (I think) and that it belongs to Cox. Chad calls him, but Cox had no idea the disk had been lost, or even that it existed. Apparently it contained the memoirs he was writing, and it was lost by Katie’s lawyer’s secretary. Chad simply thought he could get a reward for returning an important thing, but Linda is determined to find money for her operations, so insists in the blackmail. When Chad and Ozzie meet, they have a fight. Chad insists on his good-samaritan part, and Cox threatens him first and then punches him in the face, so Linda goes to the Russian Embassy to sell ‘her’ secrets, and gives them the disk promising a lot more. Since they don’t have more, she convinces Chad to go to Cox’s house to spy and retrieve more material. Katie has already kicked her husband out, and brought Harry home instead, so when Harry comes home Chad hides in the closet. Harry takes his gun probably to put it away (he said he had never shot anyone, ever), opens the closet and is frightened to find a man inside and shoots him in the head yelling, not even realizing he has killed him on the spot. Through a website Linda meets Harry and they start seeing each other. When Chad doesn’t come back, she asks Harry to find him, and when she tells him where exactly Chad had gone to before his disappearance, Harry realizes it’s the same man he killed, and thinks everyone is spying on him, so runs away and tries to get a plane to Venezuela (no extradition) but is caught by the Cia watching him. 

The gym owner Ted (Richard Jenkins) is in love with Linda but she doesn’t even consider him, and knows nothing about it. Worried for Chad, she tells Ted everything, and tells him that they ought to get more secret material because with that they could have Chad back from whoever took him, and when Ted refuses she runs away yelling ‘I hate you’. This hurts Ted so much he changes his mind and does the stupidest thing in the world: goes to Cox’s house. It just so happen that Ozzie had broken into the house to get alcohol and jewels and who knows what else, when he hears noises, and busts Ted looking around. Osborne shoots him, Ted runs away but Cox follows him and repeatedly hits him with an hatchet. I hated this: not Ted!! 

It ends with a report done to Cia boss (J.K. Simmons): an agent witnessed the assault, did not save Ted but shooted Osborne Cox, now in a coma. The boss is glad about it, problem solved. He says to put Harry on a plane to Venezuela: another problem solved. About Linda, she’s in the building an willing to ‘play ball’ if they pay for her operations. They agree. End of movie.

She got Chad and Ted killed, and came out a winner. This is definitely not my kind of fun.

Thor the dark world - 2013

Well, it was a fun toy-movie, as all Marvel movies are, but not completely of my taste, because I spent all the second part, the big battle, thinking “when is Loki coming back?”, and “will he join the fight?”. Of course I never asked myself “if” he was alive, because Loki can’t die, it’s a Marvel character, they never die even when they do, and it was pretty clear he had gotten out of there on his own feet because we knew he was that soldier. That was the problem, that he did not show himself during the battle in any way. Didn’t he want his revenge for his mother’s death? I thought he did, she seemed to be the only one he really cared about. His death was a beautiful scene, all his scenes up to that point had been great and lots of fun. Nothing about them surprised me because I know Loki and his tricks, but they weren’t any less exciting because of this, on the contrary they were thrilling. I loved the two scenes when he protected Jane, he really put on a good show to make his death believable and touching, it was lovely, but then he disappeared and the final battle was all Thor and Jane. He should have been part of it, there should have been a bit more of the two brothers fighting side by side. Then of course he would have gone his own way, I know, but he should have been part of the fight against his mother’s killers, or did he only care about the guy who “personally” did it? I understand this way he’s now on Asgard’s throne, but where is Odin (Anthony Hopkins)? 

Well, that long absence of Loki from the scene was what I didn’t like about it. I know, I know, the movie is called ‘Thor’, not ‘Loki’, and yet he’s such a great character, and I love how Hiddleston plays it, and he should have been there more. 

In a few words the story is: while looking for Thor, Jane finds an ancient power source who enters in her. The Dark Elves come back to take it and use it to send all the worlds into darkness, or something like that. To cure Jane Thor brings her to Asgard. A dark Elf infiltrates his world to find this ‘Aether’ but Thor’s mom Frigga (Rene Russo) protects Jane and is killed. Loki (Tom Hiddleston) is imprisoned, in Asgard, and Thor (Chris Hemsworth) needs him to travel through the worlds because apparently he’s the only one who can do it… by doing so he and his friends disobey Odin’s orders. It’s not clear to me here Heimdall’s role. He doesn’t teleport anyone, so… ?

Loki and Thor together try to defeat the Dark Elves by destroying the Aether in their dark world, but fail. Loki saves Thor and then dies (yeah, right, tsk). Thor keeps fighting. The dark elves come to Earth, and here he tries to fulfill his goal using the convergence of all the nine worlds. Thor and Jane (Natalie Portman), with a bit of help from Eric ( Stellan Skarsgård), save the day. Thor then goes to Asgard to tell his father he doesn’t want to be king, and leaves to reunite with Jane. After he’s gone, we see that he actually talked to Loki. He’s sitting on the throne and his ‘Odin’ appearance was just an illusion. He says ‘thanks to you’ presumably because now the throne is all his; whatever he did with Odin is not yet revealed. 

I did not recognize Christopher Eccleston under Malekith’s makeup. Jaimie Alexander as Lady Sif was good. Fandral changed actor (Zachary Levi). Darcy (Kat Dennings) was the comic part of the movie ( I don’t consider seeing Eric without his pants on as a comic scene). As always Stan Lee was present, he asked Eric his shoe back, I think he was one of the patients in a mental institution, it did look like it.

During the credits we see Lady Sif (with someone) taking the Aether to the collector, calling it an infinity gem, or something like that. This scene refers to the ‘Guardians of the galaxy’ movie where they all fight for it. The scenes when: first Thor tells Loki “if you betray me I’ll kill you”, then Sif and Volstaff third tell him the same thing made me think of the three musketeers, when each of the three of them challenges D’Artagnan to a fight :-)

Again I’m fascinated by how perfect the main roles are here. Hemsworth is a perfect Thor and Hiddleston is the only possible Loki, and every line he says is an emotion. I must confess that he’s the main attraction in these Thor movies, they would lose at least a 50% without him, probably more. 

Loki’s death scene was lovely, touching, difficult probably, and his “I didn’t do it for him” got me emotional, reached to my soul. What a voice he has *sigh*. “Satisfaction is not in my nature” is a great line for Loki too, because it really describes him. I can’t imagine him really enjoying being the King, if not for the fact that he’s getting it by tricking everyone. I also liked his “trust my rage” and that’s why I was so disappointed in him missing the whole battle. He had a little part on the dark world and that’s it. The monster was destroyed, yes, but was it enough for him, really? Come on! 

He should have been a part of it personally. He didn’t have to reveal he was alive, if that was the problem. Illusion is his thing, he could have disguised himself, but he should have been a part of it, to be sure that his mother’s murderers were destroyed. 

“Give or take five thousand years” was another line I liked. Sigh, I already miss Loki, there should be more of him!

A few scenes had a certain Lotr ring to them :-p :-)

Sleepers - 1996

It was sad, it was hard, because it was all about four kids being tortured by guards. For me this is one of (if not ‘the’) Brad Pitt’s best performances. I often don’t like him, but here I did, he played well the tormented soul of Michael. In this movie there are a lot of good, famous actors, and there is also Vittorio Gassman, a great Italian actor. I saw him once, he was a hard man but an amazing presence on stage. The story is about four boys being sent to a detention center after a sort of accident, a prank meant just for fun but that ruined their lives forever. For one year the four boys were tortured by the guards, they were regularly beaten, they were raped, they were threatened and scared in any way, they were put in isolation cells without having done anything wrong. They lived in terror, and even after they got out they could never go past it. Tommy (Billy Crudup) and John (Ron Eldard) grew up to become criminals and murderers. Shakes (Jason Patrick) is a journalist and Michael (Brad Pitt) works for the D.A. One day John and Tommy meet, totally by chance, Sean Nokes (Kevin Bacon) their main torturer. They are surprised, it all comes back to them. They go talk to him then shoot him several times in his leg, arm, shoulder, until the final shot to the head, then they calmly walk outside after paying for their drinks. No doubt they are arrested, and Michael asks for the case to be assigned to him. At first Shakes can’t believe Michael wants to put his old friends in jail for this, but then Michael explains his plan. He took the case to lose, not to win. His real, hidden intention is to expose what was really going on inside that center. They asked King Benny (Vittorio Gassman), sort of local godfather, to help them: he convinced some of the witnesses to back off and he found them a lawyer, Danny Snyder (Dustin Hoffman), a drunk who would follow their instructions and read in court the questions that Michael would secretly write for him. They also ask a big favour to Father Bobby (Robert De Niro). The priest will testify that John and Tommy were with him at a game! It was all planned, and it was a good one, they had their revenge. Shakes delivered a guard, now dirty cop, to the Internal Affairs, and the guard was arrested. King Benny went to boss Little Caesar (Wendell Pierce) and handed him the name of the guard that killed Rizzo (Eugene Byrd), his little brother, in that center. Little Caesar had him beaten and then shot. This whole part was ok to me, and every doubt could be easily answered with a bit of good will, like ‘where did shakes find enough evidence to convict that guard?’, well, he’s a journalist with lots of time on his hands, and an endless hate for the man, plus the help of King Benny: in his position he could come to know everything he wanted. What seems now unbelievable is how they got the guard during the trial. I say now because I watched it when I was much much younger, and had paid no attention to details, but now that I’ve seen more of the people of the world, I find it very hard to believe that Ferguson (Terry Kinney) would reply honestly to Snyder’s questions about what went on back in the days. Yes, they justify it saying that he was a drunk but now he’s not anymore, and he’s got a cross, so I’m supposed to believe that he found God, stopped drinking and now feels guilty and because of this he confesses everything? Come on, just like that? A lot of people drink but they don’t go around torturing children, only a sick coward bastard would do that again and again for a year ( but probably much longer if we think of the children that were there before and after the four kids we know). As absurd as it looks, that’s how it goes. Snyder asked him those hard questions and Ferguson admitted it all, even his own involvement, and cried. Of course he was arrested. 

Their friend Carol (Minnie Driver) had a role of no importance, once you think about it, she only filled the female-presence-slot in a movie full of men. Honestly we could have done without Carol. What purpose did she serve? To let us know that Shakes was a good friend because he never asked her out since she first dated Michael and then John, so he chose to not go against his friends? We can sense their bond from everything else, we didn’t need that. By the way, I so did not like that, Carol asking Shakes why he never asked her out. Did she want him too? Michael, John, and Shakes? Tommy should feel really offended! No, I didn’t like that Carol character. 

The actors that played young Michael (Brad Renfro) and young Shakes (Joe Perrino) looked familiar to me but I’ve got no idea of where I saw them. The problem with this movie was that the big revelation in court had the simple result of having Ferguson arrested. It did not bring down the institution, it did not help John and Tommy. They were released because the esteemed priest swore to God that he was with them somewhere else while he obviously wasn’t, and even had the three tickets to prove it. I mean, if you think about it, the whole secret operation was to bring down a guy that started crying after a couple of questions. 

Anyway, it ends with a double assolution, of course, and the friends meeting and laughing together for the last time. They went their separate ways and we are told that John and Tommy died young in a bad was and Michael left the law. They all live alone, Carol with a child and Shakes with a better job in journalism. I don’t know, the movie built up such a suspense, such big expectations from the trial, that it did not seem to deliver what it promised.

Ajeossi - 2010

In Italy it’s called “The man from nowhere". Why had I never seen Korean movies before? Lately I’ve seen a few and they’re awesome! Sure they are all starting at 11pm which is not the easiest hour when someone goes to school or has to wake up too early for work, so I can’t say if they were ever transmitted before or not. I can say that each one of those I’ve seen lately was really good. This one in particular was very tough, with criminals using children to work, make and smuggle drugs, and then they took their organs. It’s so awful I was looking at the screen thinking “kill him, kill the shit kill them all”, I would have screamed it out loud had it not been past midnight. The movie has lots of action, enjoyable, well made action, and lots of feelings around the figure of the protagonist. This Cha Tae-sik (Bin Won or Won Bin, depending on where I read it, with the result I don’t know which one is the name or the surname) has a sad past, is lonely and develops a strong affection for a neighbour, a sweet child called So-mi. Her mother is a drug addict and hides stolen drugs in his pawn shop without him knowing. This way he gets involved in this big mess. The child’s mother is tortured until she reveals where she has hidden it, then they kill her for her organs. They also abduct So-mi, and our hero wants to save her; he has had a special training, he knows how to find what he’s looking for, he has no fear or concern for his own safety, the only thing he cares about is to find So-mi. He was special forces once, but when his beloved pregnant wife was killed he lost everything.  He follows every track, doesn’t stop even after he’s shot. He finds someone that will help get the bullet out of him, but as soon as he can he goes back looking for the only person in the world he cares about. He finds out the whole horrid truth, saves a group of children, kills every criminal on his way, and goes on unstoppable. At the last battle, he’s shown a pair of human eyes, he’s told they are So-mi’s, he’s led to believe she’s already dead, and this breaks his heart, but for no reason he’ll let So-mi’s murderer escape. He fights all his men, then kills him. A big action scene, quick and well-done, engaging and yet bitter because he goes on as if it was his last battle; after he kills the last one he’s like completely out of energy, like he has no more reason to go on. This actor was good, I really liked him, he looked so sad, you could read it on his face even before he lift the gun to his own head, but I knew, well, I strongly believed So-mi could not be really dead, that would have been a terrible ending. Right there and then, when he has the gun to his head, he hears So-mi’s voice near him, he hides his gun, tells her something like “I’m dirty, stay away”, but she runs to him saying “you came to save me!” and hugs him and he cries and it’s so touching, and he wants to hug her back but doesn’t, like he can’t; the police arrest him, of course, but let’s him stay with her for a bit while, and the last scene is him asking his little friend if he can just hug her, just this one time, and the little thing lifts her arms in that irresistible way children do, he goes down to her height and hugs her tight, crying. I liked it. Well, I liked it because it was well done and I liked the actor protagonist very much. The story was so painful.

Edit a few days after: I’ve seen it again. Yes, it was painful, from beginning to end. The beginning, all the scenes between the little girl and him were touching; when he saw his painted nail and smiled it was touching, so meaningful, such a precious smile. When she said to the police that he was her father, was touching. When he walked away and the police understood it was a lie, it was touching. But when he heard the little girl’s voice, prisoner of those shit men and his eyes opened wide in fear, and then he ran behind the car that was taking her away, shouting for him to save her, even more now that I know what they did, his fear for her was totally heartbreaking. This actor is really good in this movie. Every scene with him is so heartbreaking it’s painful, and yet I kept watching because I couldn’t leave him alone..

This actor really makes me wish I could understand his language to watch this movie in original. Obviously I watched it dubbed in Italian, because if I had read all the subtitles I would have missed the expressions, his eyes, and that would have been a crime.

Mystic Pizza - 1988

A nice little film. I like it now as I liked it when I was as little girl, with the little difference that now I appreciate better how sexy Vincent D'Onofrio looked here. I mean, he was less than thirty and had not yet exploded. He's always handsome, but here he was sexy :-) The story is simple and predictable, very easily from the beginning. Only a few minutes of the movie are gone and we know everything already. First-We've seen Jojo (Lili Taylor) fainting and therefore not marrying her boyfriend Bill or Billy (Vincent D'Onofrio) and yet confessing to her best friends to be crazy about him: "I get really turned on just looking at his wrists"; Second-We've seen Kat (Annabeth Gish) the serious girl, future Yale student accepting lots of jobs to make money, and among them a babysitting job. As soon as I saw Tim (William R. Moses), so cute and even sweet with his little daughter, it was all there; she looked at him with the if-I-weren't-a-serious-girl-who-has-never-done-these-things-I'd-jump-on-you-right-now look, and since we learn immediately that he's married, there can be no surprise, right? She falls for him, has a little affair, then his wife comes back and Kat's heart is hurting. Obviously. Third-We've seen Daisy (Julia Roberts) feeling hopelessly trapped in her waitress job, glancing or better staring invitingly at the blonde rich stranger that enters the pub. Again, no doubts are possible: Charles (Adam Storke) falls for her irresistible smile, of course. A bit of rich-spoiled-guy versus poor-working-girl conflict, and the inevitable happy ending. It is indeed very predictable, but it doesn't really matter because the charm of this film stays, it's in the girls' friendship, in their deciding what their adult lives are going to be, in the characters of the three girls, so very different, it's in the nice happy ending. I liked the village of Mystic where poor people are either fishermen or waitresses. A funny scene is when Daisy is dining with Charles' family, and being them rich they all get served lobsters, but Daisy's mom brings lobsters home all the time from work and she's kinda sick of them :lol:
There's a scene when Daisy wrongly things Charles is cheating on her and fills his red porsche with wet fish, completely covering it, and she's right saying "you're weird" to him. She ruined his porsche and he seemed even more charmed than before by her :-/ The pizza place was owned by Leona (Conchata Ferrell) a very nice woman, and her special "Mystic pizza" gets a fantastic review on tv, so happy ending even for her. She was sweet at the end telling Kat that them three girls are like daughters to her.
Jojo and Bill's relationship was nice too, so crazy about each other, and yet Bill left her because she refused to marry him, scared to death by marriage, and he thought she did not love him like he loved her, but of course she does, so the movie ends at her wedding party :-) The only thing I didn't like is how angry Daisy was at Kat the one time that Kat left her working alone to go with Tim, and Daisy missed a meeting with Charles' parents. It's a thing I didn't like about the character, not about the movie. Daisy always make Kat do what she wanted, and the only time they exchange roles she gets mad. Not nice at all, but sisters often fight for things like this. All was forgiven when Daisy was there for her to console her broken heart.
My favourite story is Jojo's: both so much in love, their almost-sex scene is both sexy and funny, Bill leaving her after yelling at her face and in front of other fishermen "I'm telling you that I love you and all you love is my dick, do you know how that makes me feel? Do ya?", Jojo in tears after that, coming to terms with how much she really loves him, and the two of the dancing at their wedding party. Yep, he looked sexy dancing :-) and I also love how easily Bill lifts her :-D
I cared little for Charles, but that's okay, I liked the fact that there were three stories, more or less equally important.
It's a sort of coming-of-age movie; there are dozens of movies like this with male lead characters (usually more vulgar and silly though) but Mystic Pizza was all about the girls :-)
I went on the internet and found a brief interview with the cast reunited maybe in 2013 or so, and I can say this: they still look damn cute, all of them; when they got asked who was the most intense actor of the group and the three girls said Vince at the same time I laughed too :lol: maybe just because of the way they said it together made it funny I guess. Is it makeup or what, but the girls look so much the same, specially Lily. Annabeth even looks better now. William is the same and Vincent has exploded a bit so his face had doubled, but he was  still charming and I like his smile a lot :-)

I had not recognized a young Matt Damon as Charles' brother.

One nite in Mongkok - 2004

Oh God, one of the toughest movies I’ve ever watched. Such a sad finale, too. Very well done, well acted, well scripted, good enough, a good movie, but so so hard, bitter, though. It’s a good versus evil story, but in a police-action with the cops looking for a paid assassin the only evil appears to be in the little pathetic bullies, ready to gang up in numbers against a single man or against girls. The cops are Milo (Alex Fong), the leader, a good man who knows how big a thing it is to shoot someone. He did once, and can’t forget it, but at the end is able to shoot Laifu (Daniel Wu) to protect one of his men. Brandon (Kar Lok Chin) is his second, a man who understands him very well. Among the others there’s a young cop, new to the group, who thinks that it’s not a bad thing to shoot the bad guys, on the contrary he’s all for it, and during a raid when they enter a room, he shoots a man in the head as soon as he sees him. The man was not armed, but Milo and Brandon work immediately to make it look like the action was justified, and Milo tells him “we are not protecting you, but your family and the team”. 

I could almost say that fate is the big bastard in the movie, playing with their lives. In this specific case, Fate helps the cops, because that big trouble turns out to be a big success when they uncover a huge amount of drugs. It’s a big scene when Milo is alone with the young cop and puts his hand in front of a car’s red light so that his hand appears all red, and he tells him ‘we are alike’.

On the other side there is the assassin, who is actually a young man who has never before killed anyone, and who came from China to Mongkok to find a girl he loved. He helps Dandan (Cecilia Cheung) against a bully, then he runs away with her to avoid the consequences of his act.

They help each other: she shows him the way, he buys her a gold necklace and runs after a thief who had taken her bag. Left alone with his bag, she looks inside, can’t resist the temptation to take a bit of money, but is afraid when she sees the gun. She goes back to him anyway, and they try to find his girl. She makes him abandon the”assassin” thing, stopping him when she sees he’s strangling a man who had double-crossed him. That scene was intense. The man at first begged him not to kill him, but after he stopped, listening to Dandan, Laifu told him he would talk, put word around of what he did, so that his family would be in danger, and he has a big family, and now the man is all “kill me , don’t say anything please” but Laifu went away and the man walked on the road crying, and crying for him not to say anything, afraid for his family, to the only people who could hear him: the cops that were there for Laifu but could not get him. 

Laifu and Dandan go back to her room to get her things and rest, then he goes out to get a medicine for her (poor girl is on her period, apparently) and as she asked he threw his gun into a bin. He comes back with a newspaper with his girl’s picture on it: it says she’s had a bad accident, and he’s so desperate he doesn’t notice when the bully silently enters with some bully friends: they badly beat him then the bully number one rapes Dandan, and then the shits go away. Dandan had cried while they were beating him, and now she’s all worried for him because he’s all covered in blood, his face is all red. He stands up and in the bad shape that he is, he still goes out, finds back his gun and wants to kill those guys. He can only hurt one because the cops are near and the young cop runs towards him. He can barely see through all the blood in his face and eyes, and shoots this guy that is running towards him. The young cop dies, and Milo and another one runs after him, and this is when Milo has to kill him. Another great moment: the young cop has his hand taken by a cop friend, and he’ll die in the hospital. Laifu held out his hand too, and Milo made the attempt of taking it! He had just seen him shoot a cop and almost shooting another, and yet his soul was leading him to take this dying man’s hand, only he didn’t make it in time and Laifu died there, alone. I don’t know what happened to the bully-gang, but I hoped they were thrown in a cell to rot. Honestly I doubt it, because the cops know nothing of what they did, Laifu can’t tell them and Dandan is not there at the moment. You see? The only ones that deserved to be skinned alive have no consequences, are all safe and sound. How unfair, isn’t it?

The movie ends with Dandan leaving Mongkok never to return again. She looks in her bag and she sees Laifu had given her the rest of his money.  He had seen that she had taken some, but instead of getting angry he had understood and had given her more. She cries and asks why is it that it is called Hong Kong, something like the Door of the Fragrance, or something like that, I don’t remember exactly, but she says it while crying, meaning that it has a beautiful name but then horribly, desperate things happen. The movie ends there, with written on screen that the name was given to it because it was the place that produced incense, so Hong Kong means incense door. Interesting. 

It was a good film, but personally I don’t want to see it again, it was too cruel for me. Still, it’s not so often I have so many good things to say and nothing against it. The final scene with Dandan’s question was a great finale, and a touching one. Milo had all the great moments I said above, and more. The little smile Laifu made when Dandan asked him to lose the gun passed almost unnoticed at the moment, but the memory of it will break my heart in a bunch of minutes, when all hopes are shattered. Laifu was not one of the good guys like Milo, but was not at all evil, like the bullies. He had had a difficult life, and now he had a difficult death. I guess fate was grinning, at the end.

Siu lam juk kau - 2001

In Italy Shaolin Soccer. It's such a stupid film :lol: meant to be that way, I mean. Sort of funny, though, but not something I’d like to watch again. It pictures a bunch of losers who get together to form a soccer team. There’s a championship and they want to win it, to win the prize in money. They know kung-fu, and use it to play. They know absolutely nothing about the game, but become champions. The final game shows people making such moves and such strong kicks like you haven’t seen even in Capitan Tsubasa, and that should say it all, but likely the games are much shorter :-p they win all the games, but the last team has taken some strong drugs that made them super-strong. 

Half of the shaolin team is out, injured, but at the right moment the girl friend of the protagonist comes to help. She doesn’t just know kung-fu, she masters it, she can do the impossible and they win. They get married ( I guess watching her win the game was too much, enough to win him over) and thanks to the kung-fu couple now the population is crazy about kung-fu, and they all practice it, not to fight each other, but in every day life. 

One of those idiot movies that are somehow funny, the first time you watch it, but definitely not enough to watch it again and again. Absolutely not, once is enough. Not one wit line, it’s all about demential scenes and looks.

Bù èr Shéntàn - 2013

In Italy “Badges of fury”. I didn’t like it. I found it stupid and boring. There was something good, but not enough. Sometimes a movie is meant to be stupid, in order to be funny, but I didn’t have fun here. About the fight scenes, I usually love them: they can be funny, like in the Jackie Chan’s movies, or cool like in the other Jet Li’s movies, or poetic/symbolic as in “crouching tiger hidden dragon”, but here they were boring. They were absurd like in a comic manga, and long and somehow pointless, since they get nowhere. The story is this: Angela (Michelle Chen), Wang Bu’er (Zhang Wen) and older cop Huang Feihong (Jet Li) must solve the case of four men that died with a smile, but murdered. They all had had a relationship with beautiful actress Liu Jinshui (Shi Shi Liu), so she’s the first suspect at first. She has a sister, beautiful and showy Dai Yiyi (Yan Liu) that is very sexy and jealous of her sister, having fun in taking her boyfriends away from her. She’s the second suspect, but at the end it was her uncle to avoid her getting married and inherit all the money of her father. That’s all. I usually love a scene with Jet Li, but there were very few of them here, and not all that special. Wang Bu’er was too stupid for my taste. The things I liked most were the two sisters, very beautiful and funnily different, but there was always Wang Bu’er, it was all him, everywhere. Boring.

Ai zuozhan - 2004

In Italy is “Love Battlefield”. An Hong Kong movie I think, but not sure. Sad, well made yeah, but violent and sad. Didn’t like it too much. It starts like a romance movie with Ching meeting her future husband K ( I didn’t get the exact name, something like Kayoi). They hit it off immediately, but life together is complicated; they love each other a great deal, but those thousands of annoying little things come between them: she wants him to cook but then doesn’t like the results; he doesn’t want to vacation in Europe because he doesn’t like the cold; a lot of stupid everyday things. One morning they’re about to leave for the airport when surprise! their car has been stolen and she goes out of her mind: she doesn’t want him to report the fact because they’d lose time and maybe miss the flight, and since she paid for it she doesn’t wanna miss it. They fight, all the things left unsaid come out and they break up. He’s about to go to the police in a taxi when he sees his car. He approaches, it’s really his car, and he does the stupidest thing: he stops in the car to make a phone call, to put things in order, then goes to check if his bags are still in the back. How silly was that, I was yelling. Someone must have driven the car there, it didn’t move by itself, so don’t just hang around quietly, with no worry in the world! It turns out his bags are gone: instead there’s a wounded man with a gun, and then his friends arrive and take K prisoner, making him help them, since he’s a nurse. They kill people and policemen very easily with no remorse, so K does what he’s told. Ching sees him in the car and he’s sure he’s been abducted (well, the blood, the yelling, now him in a car with strangers…) but her cop friend suspects K to be an accomplice and wants to hold her for questioning. What a good friend, huh? Ching knows her husband is a good, caring person, so she won’t believe he might have a part in all those killings, and runs away to find him. Thanks to a watch-walkie-talkie-gadget they know when they are near each other. The injured man died, K tried to escape but once they killed a guard and brought him back, and another time he was tricked by a pregnant woman asking for help that turned out to be the criminal gang’s leader’s wife. Frustrated, K threw out of the car the bag full of drugs they had stolen. One of them 

got out of the car to retrieve it and was killed by other cars in the road. Now without money, the gang assaults a police-armored-car forcing his help. Ching sees it and tries to free him, but the boss’ wife hits her and they escape. The remaining two men of the gang are badly injured in the fight with the police, so they need blood. The boss uses K’s phone to call Ching and have her collect some blood bags and bring them to the wife. Ching reacts, takes her gun and tries to force them to release K, but it’s not so easy. They won’t ever give up, they’re desperate now. Ching then wants to be taken to him. Hearing that Ching has been involved, fearing for her life, K loses it and fights the two men, and eventually kills them right when Ching and the wife arrive. At this point the wife hits Ching and leaves her trapped in the car sinking in the water. The wife shoots K, goes close to her now-dead husband and kills herself. K is afraid for Ching, and even if he can’t swim and is badly injured now, and very tired, he throws himself in the water, swims until he finds the car at the bottom, fights to open the door so to free her. Wow, really, amazing, how long did he swim under water? Very resistant, huh? Anyway, he’s at his limit now. She goes up for breath then comes down again and again trying to save him too, but she can’t , he’s suffered too many things.  The movie ends with her and her friends watching the baby that was saved from the dead body of the wife. I guess that’s supposed to be a happy ending, a new hope for the future, that sort of thing…

Blade - 1998

Designed to be cool, nothing special but cool enough. The boring part was the usual "forget what you've seen in the movies, the cross doesn't work, to kill vampires use silver, and of course sun-light",  like they do in all vampires-movies. Everytime they say the same speech about how in reality it's different from what you've seen in the movies. Boring. Only thing is that this time out bad guy Frost (Stephen Dorff) was not born a vampire, he was a human, he was turned into a vampire, so he can simply put on a lot of sunlotion and he can watch the sun rise, and walk during the day, as he does when he takes that little girl hostage to talk to Blade (Wesley Snipes) . There's also a lot of splatter scenes: when the old vampire burns in the sun, and every time evil vampires feed on humans, covering their faces with blood. It must be because they like to make a mess, being bad, because when Blade was so weak that Karen offered him his neck (like Buffy did for Angel), he fed for many long seconds, and not a drop of blood was wasted/visible on his face or on her neck, and when he stopped she was still strong enough to walk and take action. Every time a bad guy feeds it lasts a second and the victim is dead or transformed. Well, it's not an error per se, because they're evil so they like to kill and they like a bloodbath (they're quite disgusting, yes) but he has his soul in the right place so he doesn't kill her. It makes sense, it's not necessarily a mistake.
The story is simple: Blade hunts vampires down everywhere, killing as many as he can. Blade is a half-vampire because his mother was bitten while she was pregnant. He was found by Whistler (Kris Kristofferson) when he was thirteen, about to feel in him the bad sides of his vampire blood. Whistler helped him. Whistler also gives Blade a vaccine to keep his bloodthirst under control, and since then Blade has kept taking it every tot hours. During an attack he saves Dr Karen (N'Bushe Wright) and now she sticks to him and helps him, which is the second boring thing of the movie. Not her, I like her, but the fact that a common person, a doctor even, can take a gun and become a fighter without a second of training. This is more than boring, this is annoying. Moving on, Blade wants to kill them all to avenge his mother, while Frost wants to rule the Earth, to stop hiding like the old vampires did; he wants to bring out the power he read of in a prophecy (yep, a prophecy, it's so simple to invent a plot with a good prophecy at hand) for which he needs Blade's blood. They kill Whistler, kidnap Karen and imprison Blade, cutting his wrists to have his blood. Frost also kills the old vampires in the rite. It was a cool scene when a sort of skull-ghosts came out of them, funny. Karen escapes, frees Blade and gives him her blood to gain strength. He finds his mother turned into a vampire by Frost. He kills her and fights all the vampires on his way, although it's not clear why they don't keep fighting after he punches them. A few are killed, but many others are just punched, that could not be enough to kill them! The final battle is with Frost of course, but he has in him the power the prophecy told about, so even after Blade cuts him in half Frost gets whole again without a flinch and keeps fighting. Very conveniently Blade finds there is his vaccine, so he threw five or six syringes to Frost and he exploded. It happens in movies, sometimes, that to be stung by a syringe is enough, but it's usually not, and it wasn't for Blade, he needed Whistler to push it in, the vaccine. The movie ends with Blade refusing to try Karen's cure for his condition, because he still needs his abilities to go on with his fight. It's a mystery how can he know exactly when and where he will find vampires, but it doesn't matter. I was surprised, there was no word on him drinking Karen's blood. She had been infected before and she had survived without transformation, cured, so I had a thought on her blood helping him as a natural vaccine or something like that, but there was no word about that. I liked Dorff, he portrayed well this psycho, that had not only the powers and blood thirst of vampires, but also the greed, ambition, arrogance of humans. I also liked our two protagonists, very cool, and I'm glad there was no love story between them, this was not the movie for that. I kind of liked the old vampire too, pity he died and won't be present in the sequels. It's not a bad movie, although nothing special. It's designed to look cool, but it should have looked a bit more gothic/dark, and the action-scenes lacked something, they were not perfectly constructed, they looked to rehearsed. Of course they were, obviously, but a movie scene should not 'look' rehearsed, should not 'feel' rehearsed.

The high window by Raymond Chandler

Well, not too bad, Marlowe is nicer than usual, I'd say. As always the story is a bit complicated, and Marlowe bumps in a corpse after the other, but at the end he reveals the whole truth. Just like that. Part of it he can deduce from the clues he finds, part of it he simply says he's thought about it a lot and knows how it is... he gets it right, of course, but it left me with the feeling that he just guessed it, that he couldn't 'know'...
The story: Mrs Murdock hires him because her very valuable coin has been stolen: 'the Brasher Doubloon', and she's sure her daughter-in-law Linda took it. His first lead is a coin expert: Morningstar, who called the house asking about the coin. Marlowe notices he's being followed and talks to the man who says he's Phillips, a private detective like him. A simple, not very bright one, but their jobs are connected so they plan to meet later. Mrs Murdock's son Leslie owes money to little boss Morny, and his wife Lois is often in the company of vicious Vannier. When Marlowe finds Phillips dead he calls the police, but he has trouble because he refuses to tell them all about his job and his client. When he finds Morningstar dead, he goes away, so not to be connected to it. Mrs Murdock tells him to stop because the coin has been given back to her, which surprises him since he has a doubloon in his pocket that Phillips sent to him before being killed. Of Phillips' murder is blamed Hench, a drunk who had the murder weapon in the house, only it's not his own weapon, his gun has disappeared. When Merle, Mrs Murdock's secretary, goes to Marlowe still in shock, she tells him a strange story: that she's killed Vannier, that she was going there to pay him because he had been blackmailing her for eight years, and Mrs Murdock was paying the money. Vannier knew her secret, that eight years ago Merle had murdered Mrs Murdock's first husband, who had behaved badly with her. Marlowe goes to Vannier himself. He's been dead a long time, a whole day, so she did not kill him. Morny thinks Lois did it, Lois thinks Morny did it, Marlowe finds Hench's gun and the pictures Vannier kept secret to blackmail Mrs Murdock, and is sure Leslie did it! He could deduce it all in a moment. Leslie took the doubloon and gave it to Vannier for money, to use it to make copies of it, copies to be sold for lots of money. To test the idea Vannier and Lois had used Phillips to try to sell it to Morningstar, who had thought it was the real one, stolen. After Marlowe was hired Vannier had been afraid, and Leslie too, so Leslie demanded the original back and gave it back to his mother. Vannier killed Phillips to get back the one he did not know was now in Marlowe's hands, and also assaulted Morningstar for the same reason. That night Leslie went to him to stop the blackmail, threatened him with the gun he found there and (he says) a shot was accidentally fired. Marlowe cleaned the gun and make it look like suicide. After the police could connect Vannier to the two deaths, they accepted the suicide happily. Marlowe did not involve the Murdock family, although he had Vannier's proof that the old woman had killed her first husband, letting little crazy Merle think she did it all that time. Marlowe took Merle back to her family. Marlowe deeply disliked the Murdock family, but he liked Merle and wanted to protect her . He could not convince that crazy head of hers of the truth, that she was innocent and Mrs Murdock used her as a scapegoat, but she let him take her back to her family. Marlowe cared about her, and was angry for what the Murdocks had done to her.
There were a lot of descriptions, I didn't need so many, but Marlowe was sweet to Merle, nice.

Farewell, my lovely by Raymond Chandler

I liked this book more than the other one. My book says that this story too was written merging into it some of his short stories, but I haven't read them so can't comment on that.
It's a complicated story. I'll try to explain. It all starts by chance, with Marlowe meeting Moose Malloy, a giant so strong he could carry Marlowe like a doll. Malloy has been eight years in prison. Now that he's out he goes looking for his old girlfriend Velma. The club where she used to sing is now a club for black people who know nothing about her. They make him angry and he kills one of them without even turning green. He's like Hulk without Banner.
At this point nothing much has happened, apparently. The case is given to Nulty who cares very little of "shines killings", which surprised me because I only knew 'shine' as in 'the sun shines' so I searched it and I found this "derogatory meaning: black person, is from 1908 perhaps from glossiness of skin or from frequent employment as shoeshines" and I can only say I'm glad I've never heard it said before, I don't like it. Anyway, back to the story, Marlowe feels involved and starts looking for Velma too. He goes to see the widow of the old owner of the club: Mrs Florian. Later on Malloy goes to her and he kills her, probably unintentionally, he's just too strong... says Marlowe . Anyway, he gets called by a man, Marriott, saying he needs his help. Marriott tells him this story: a lady friend has been robbed, and as it often happens she's been contacted to buy it back. She's asked Marriott to buy back her precious jade necklace, and he wants Marlowe with him to feel safer. Marlowe goes, but gets hit on the head and Marriott gets killed. The daughter of a dead policeman (Anne Riordan) finds him apparently by chance and starts helping him a little, for some reason she fancies him, but she has no great role, only as far as finding for him the name of the lady-friend. Mrs Grayle is the femme fatale, she's beautiful and married to a very rich man. She hires Marlowe and flirts with him. Marlowe goes to meet Amthor, a sort of psychologist, because who knows why Marriott has his cards inside some marijuana cigarettes, or something like that. Amthor probably thinks Marlowe wants to blackmail him so he calls two corrupt cops to handle the matter. Marlowe gets beaten and taken away. He wakes up two days later in a house where a man calling himself Dr Sonderborg kept him drugged, probably to find out what he really knew, but it's sort of speculation because he'll never be found again after Marlowe escapes. Marlowe says it all to the policeman Randall, in charge of the Florian murder. Marlowe goes back to the town where he was imprisoned, to try to talk to the big local boss on one of his ships for gambling. He's helped by an ex-cop (ex because honest, apparently) and simply leaves a message for Malloy, and somehow Malloy receives it and goes to Marlowe's house the same night he invited Mrs Grayle there. He tells him to hide while he sends her away, but he doesn't. Instead, he reveals the truth while he's hidden, listening. Mrs Grayle is Velma, she told on him to the cops eight years before to get rid of him and then married a rich man. Knowing that he was looking for her, she asked (paid) Marriott to kill him, and she herself killed Marriott. Now, it's absurd that Marlowe was not killed, but it's not a writer-mistake, because Chandler has Marlowe say the same thing, so the mistake was Velma's. She either didn't want him dead, thinking maybe it was too dangerous to kill a private cop, or maybe she left him for dead, miscalculating how badly he had been hit on the head (again, not clear if she hit him or if Marriott did it. What is clear is why she wanted Marriott dead. He was a danger because he knew of her past and real identity. When Malloy comes out and sees her and recognizes her, he shoots him five times, then runs away when she's left with no bullets to use against Marlowe. He calls Randall. Eventually she'll be found: she'll kill a policeman and then, when other people will burst in, she'll shoot herself twice. Marlowe says this might be the only good thing she ever did, tired of running away, to save her husband everything that  might have come out of a trial, since he was the only person who was always good to her and loved her deeply. Marlowe is left with Anne who has a big crush on him, thinking him so brave and extraordinary, asking to be kissed. Who knows why.
A piece I liked was this: "I thought of dead eyes looking at a moonless sky, with black blood at the corners of the mouths beneath them. I thought of nasty old women beaten to death against the posts of their dirty beds. I thought of a man with bright blond hair who was afraid and didn't quite know what he was afraid of, who was sensitive enough to know that something was wrong, and too vain or too dull to guess what it was that was wrong. I thought of beautiful rich women who could he had. I thought of nice slim curious girls who lived alone and could be had too, in a different way. I thought of cops, tough cops that could be greased and yet were not by any means all bad, like Hemingway. Fat prosperous cops with chamber of commerce voices, like chief Wax. Slim, smart and deadly cops like Randall, who for all their smartness and deadliness were not free to do a clean job in a clean way. I thought of sour old goats like Nulty who had given up trying. I thought of indians and psychics and dope doctors. I thought of lots of things. It got darker."
Marriott was the vain man, Hemingway is how he called cop Galbraith, the cop that followed Captain Blade's orders when they took him away from Amthor's house. Indian was the man working for Amthor, so strong that he almost strangled Marlowe. Amthor will be caught, internationally wanted. One last thing: curiously, Marlowe says his friend Ohls works in the vice squad, but in 'the big sleep' he worked homocide. Didn't he?

The big sleep by Raymond Chandler

A different story than I imagined, much more complicated. I've read in this book that this is his first novel and he put in it some of his previous stort stories. I know only one, and i found it easily. The whole scene with Vivian playing roulette is taken from Finger man almost word for word. I liked it enough, I was even curious to know how it would end, and the descriptions here and there were not too much as to become boring. Maybe it's because it's an old book (1939), I don't know, or maybe it's just the way it works because it's narrated by Marlowe in the first person, so we only get to know what he knows; fact is , it's not clear to me what is really Carmen't problem: she has some kind of addiction, but not alcohol I'd say because she's way beyond what alcohol can do to you. Maybe. Maybe it is alcohol, and it's just a matter of 'how much'. I don't know. Anyway, Marlowe found her, totally naked, with crazy eyes, oblivious to the world and to the just-murdered-man on the floor. They say she has epileptic crisis, but can that make you do things and than forget you've done it? So she has epilepsy and she has a bad addiction to something.. too much money is not good for your health, I've always thought that. Let's try to explain what happens. Old general Guy Sternwood hires Marlowe. Geiger tried to blackmail him and he wants him to deal with the matter. He finds out that Geiger lends pornographic books for money, and is there when he's killed under the crazy spirited eyes of naked Carmen. Her driver had killed him because in love with her. Little criminal Joe Brody has her naked picture and tries to get money out of her sister Vivian. Carmen goes to Joe's house with a gun to get it back, tries to kill him but fails. Marlowe gets the picture back before Joe is killed by another guy, Geiger's boyfriend or something like that. Big criminal Eddie Mars is involved somehow, he has something to blackmail Vivian with and through Geiger had tried to blackmail the old man too, only to find out he could get no money out of him and he had to wait for Vivian to inherit (not very long, anyway, the general's health is not good); Marlowe doesn't yet know the secret Eddie knows and can use against Vivian. The old man also asks him to find his son-in-law Rusty Regan, who disappeared a few months back. The old man was fond of the guy. For all this time Eddie kept him own wife hidden to make the world think that Regan went away with her voluntarily, but Marlowe finds her thanks to information that Joe's old girlfriend gives him for money. Still, no traces of Regan. Young Carmen had got into Marlowe's apartment, so he found her naked on his bed. He refused her strongly, he did not like the corrupted girl at all.
Towards the end, Marlowe gives Carmen back her little gun, and she asks him to teach her to shoot, They drive to an isolated spot, and he puts a target for her to aim at, but instead the crazy girl turns on him and shoots him instead, four or five times, but Marlowe had put blanks in the gun. After that scene she had a crisis, an epileptic fit: he put her in the car and drove her home. He went to talk to Vivian, now knowing everything. She admitted that this was what Eddie had on her, because she asked his help to hide Regan's body after Carmen had killed him. Marlowe suggested that Vivian should have Carmen institutionalized, then he goes away. The final words are nice, I want to copy them here: "what did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell. Me, I was part of the nastiness now. Far more a part of it than Rusty Regan was. But the old man didn't have to be. He could lie quiet in his canopied bed, with his bloodless hands folded on the sheet, waiting. His heart was a brief, uncertain murmur. His thoughts were as gray as ashes. And in a little while he too, like Rusty Regan, would be sleeping the big sleep. On the way downtown I stopped at a bar and had a couple of double scotches. They didn't do me any good. All they did was make me think of Silver-wig, and I never saw her again"
I like how it ends. Silver-wig is how he called Eddie's wife, who had freed him and helped him, allowing him to shoot a murderer. That was the only time he really used a gun. Throughout the book he had always threatened to use it, but never did. This man here though, he was a dirty murderer, and he killed him. It's not clear if he'll do anything to stop Eddie from blackmailing Vivian or not, and I can't see how he could manage that without killing him, and therefore have a lot of explanations to give to the police. He seems to have no intention of telling the police about Carmen, these last words seem clear about this. Vivian will take her away , end of his role in the matter.

Finger man by Raymond Chandler

I don't know if I should call it a short story or a short book... it has 55 pages in my edition. Nice anyway. Lots of action, told in the first person by Marlowe, few descriptions now and then just to create the atmosphere or to give a good sense of where they are. I mean, writers sometimes add so many descriptions, useless to the story, of every angle of the street and of every person met on the street, and a 55-pages-long story would have become a 150-pages-long book. It's a nice reading, so easy to imagine it in your mind like a noir film. Strangely I did not give Marlowe any actor's face, and I'm glad of it, but I couldn't help picture the scenes as if I was seeing a noir film.
The story: Lou, a little criminal, asks Marlowe a favor, to be a sort of bodyguard for him while he wins at the roulette. He's sure of it, he once owned it and says he knows how it works. Unable to change his mind, Marlowe goes, but he's knocked off and Lou is killed. Not for the money, though, but victim of a plot to stop both him and Marlowe from testifying against something like a man working for a corrupt politician, or whatever. When Marlowe was hit on the head, his gun was stolen and used to kill Lou, but there is who believes him: the chief of police (I think he was). They manage to save his alibi: a taxi-driver he had spoken to that night. The bad guys had gotten to him first, but they arrive on time to help him. He had been very scared but they had made the mistake of threatening to take away his little girl, so he got his rifle against them, and was fighting when Marlowe and his ally arrived to help. The ending is less thrilling than I expected, but well described and captivating enough. He goes to talk to the boss. Unable now to have Marlowe charged with Lou's murder, the boss wants to throw it upon Canales, the man the money were 'stolen' from, but he comes for revenge. He can only wound one of the boss Frank Dorr's men before being killed, but at that point it all ends with Marlowe hastily calling the police to the place while the redhead girl who had been forced to help them runs away undisturbed. It was well-written, I liked it enough. Sure, none of these old books are something I'd like to read again and again, but this one time was enjoyable enough. There's only one thing: the title. Why finger-man? What does it mean?

Beullaindeu - 2011

I'm still crying; gosh, that guy was one of the worst bastards I've seen. The movie is good, the story and the actors are too; I'd say the actress that Played Soo-ah was good, I mean one of the best performances of a blind person I've ever seen (well, talking as one who knows nothing of the condition personally). The interesting story: police cadet Soo-ah has a car accident, her orphanage-brother dies and she becomes blind. In the city there's someone who abducts, tortures and then kills women. A rainy night she's alone waiting for a taxi when a car stops. While driving, the man at the wheel runs someone over but tells her it was a dog. She doubts it, so he leaves her there and drives away because another car is approaching. She tells the police she's sure it was a girl, not a dog. A messy cop listens to her story. A kid comes forward saying it was not a taxi, but a foreign car, but he also adds details he clearly made up so they don't believe him. The cop searches all the taxi-drivers to find the right one, until he and Soo-ah realize it was not a taxi after all (from the noise when you open the windows..). The kid was right, so they go to him, only to find an ambulance there. The killer got to him first, and hit him on the head, but the doctor will say that he has a hard skull and in relatively good health.
Soo-ah now feels the others were right all along, she's no help being blind. At home the killer phones her, scaring her, and she rushes to the hospital, to tell the kid to stay there because the murderer's watching them. He doesn't care about her and leaves, but when he sees her on a train, followed by the man he saw that night in the foreign car, he's scared for her.  Luckily he had an excellent memory for the faces and everything, I did not recognize him first time I saw him without glasses, they changed a lot his appearance, actually they looked good on him, better with than without.
He calls her (she had called him from the car, so he had the number. The cop had given her his) telling her he'll make a video call, so she moved the phone around and the kid saw the killer in front of her. She got out as soon as she could but he followed her. The kid told her where to go, seeing through the camera where she was, but the killer got to her. She managed to spray him and run ahead, following the kid's instructions, to the lift that will take her out, to the surface; she's in, she presses the button but he gets there in time. He's about to kill her when her guide dog, and adorable labrador , saves her by hanging on to his clothes and drawing him out of the lift, away from her. It was the hardest scene of all, because we see him actually stabbing the poor dog repeatedly, but the dog left him only when he was out, and then died. That was painful.
When the doors were closed, the lift went up and people saw her and she was brought to the hospital; when she woke up she asked about her dog, and cried desperately after learning about its death. The kid is sorry for her; the police have now all the details both him and her remembers, and slowly they find the right name, but only too late to save the cop who, despite the silly appearance, was a good cop and stayed at it until he found him, but the bad guy killed him. It was a strange scene, maybe the cop hesitated in disturbing him because he was a doctor? Even when he was convinced he had found the murderer, he was so hesitant and kind, why wasn't he more... anyway, he wasn't, and he was caught off guard, and they fought but the doctor had a scalpel with him, so it was not a fair fight. The cop would have won, but the bad guy slid his throat with it.
Soo-ah and the kid are together at the orphanage, now alone, when the killer comes, kills the cop guarding (more or less) the place and goes after them. He was most of all determined to get her, more than him, which was not logic because it was him who had seen his face, but the reason is probably that she was a girl, and the scum liked, took pleasure in hurting women. The three of them fight a lot, it was a captivating fight, the kid took a lot of beating, but still made it out alive in the end. She used all she could, switching off the lights in the place, and using her special device to know when he was near her, so she could hit him with a brick; it was very well done, you know, really tough story but very well done movie. It ends with a smile, showing that a year later she's back at the police academy and the kid is about to do the same. He convinced her that there are things she can do, that she can help even without sight, that she could do it from an office, as a sort of profiler maybe, or something like that. The cop had told her the same thing, poor guy.

In Italy: Blind

Beetlejuice - 1988

Yes, it's a stupid film, and you can see from the make-up how old it is, but it's an 80s cult, and has its charm in that 80s aura and in a funny Michael Keaton. Alec Baldwin (as Adam) and Geena Davis (as Barbara) are ok too playing these two peaceful and nice ghosts who are trying to scare away the new owners of their house but fail, miserably, becoming an attraction instead. To be ghosts they are quite 'physical', meaning that they open doors, and pain, and generally act like living people, only when Lydia (Winona Ryder) photographs them they appear as floating figures, but that's because they don't appear in pictures at all, being ghosts, and only the sheets they borrowed from them to scare them are visible.
Adam and Barbara are so nice that can't think of anything actually scary, so out of desperation they call Beetlejuice (that in the plastic model where he lives now is written Betergeuse or something like that, but pronounced Beetlejuice) by saying his name three times. He turns out to be too dangerous and way too scary, so they put him back by calling his name again, and keep trying their own way, but the new family's friend Otto stole the book of the deceased and now makes a rite to call back the ghosts of the house. Poor Adam and Barbara are back in their wedding dresses in flesh and bone, only, being dead, their flesh is rapidly decaying and Lydia feels pity for them but Otto doesn't know what to do now, he simply read one thing in the book, he has no idea how to stop it now, so Lydia runs to Beetlejuice for help, and he promises to help them if she lets him out by calling his name. Trouble is, he has now learned his lesson and wants to stay out and free without the possibility of being put back in the plastic again, and apparently to accomplish this all he has to do is get married, and Lydia accepts, to save her ghost-friends. Once free, he's dangerous and apparently unstoppable. At the wedding moment, both Adam and Barbara try to call his name three time, but are stopped every time. Adam is sent inside the plastic and Barbara in some kind of 'Dune' world, where she finds one giant worm and rides it to get back home and the worm eats Beetlejuice, freeing them all. Now the ghosts give up scaring them, instead they all line in the same house, happily. They help Lydia with her studying, and everybody's happy. What I liked less of all is the last scene, when as a reward for her good school test results they make her sing and dance floating in the air. Now, the music is good, but Lydia's dancing was awful, she was kept in the air with cords or however you call it, and her moving was so unnatural, her legs going left and right in an awkward way. I understand why that is, but I don't like the scene at all.
Beetlejuice is funny, I like Michael Keaton. It's not an award-winning role, but it's funny how he speaks, the voice he makes :-) He has big makeup on, so it's basically all body-language and voice, mostly voice. Ok, it's not a great film, but it's still enjoyable and it has its own charm. It's a cult, in its own way.

Chloe - 2009

What a stupid ending. It annoys me when they do this things: make things difficult without really knowing how to resolve the situation, so they just end it abruptly and without a reasonable mean. The story: Catherine (Julianne Moore) is a doctor married to David (Liam Neeson) , a professor. For his birthday she's planning a surprise party, but he hates the idea and misses his flight and the party. Catherine goes out of her mind, she thinks he's unfaithful, and when she meets young beautiful Chloe (Amanda Seyfried) she hires her to flirt with her husband, to tempt him to see his reaction. Chloe tells Catherine every detail: at first he flirted, then met her in an isolated garden and kissed her, then another time she met him in a hotel room to have sex. Catherine hears it all, it's absurd to watch her standing there, hearing these things, but we had seen nothing of what Chloe was telling her about, and was not difficult to suspect that she was making it up, and then Chloe kissed her. Clearly Chloe wanted her, but Catherine never suspected the truth of her words, and for some reason she met her again and spent the night with her. She has become the only cheater in the family now, and of course David suspects her to have an affair. Catherine would like now to stop any relation with Chloe, but Chloe doesn't accept to be discarded with a cheque, and keeps calling her. Catherine is tired of lies and sets a date with Chloe, also calling David. She tells David she wants to get clear, wants a new honesty between them; when Chloe arrives and sees them both, she goes away, but Catherine is shocked to see absolute indifference in David's face when he asks her who that girl is. Catherine tells him everything, of how she felt old and insignificant while he was every day more handsome, and they made up. She had believed all Chloe's lies, but now she wants a new chance with him. Chloe however won't just go away like that: she goes to their house where their son Michael is alone, and has sex with him in his parents' bed. Catherine arrives to see them asleep in bed and Chloe starts telling her she can't just discard her like that, order her to disappear when she wants. They argue, Chloe tells her she loves her, and demands a kiss, threatening her with her pointed hair pin. While she's kissing her, Catherine notices her son watching and startles, causing Chloe to fall back and break the window. We clearly see that Chloe had been able to get hold of the wall, but she intentionally let go and fell back to her death, and you know what this is? The happy solution! The happy ending! Isn't it absurd? Chloe's body is taken away, the troublemaker won't bother Catherine and David ever again and the family is happily reunited  and Catherine wears Chloe's hair pin, for whatever reason! It's absurd this ending. The police make no questions about Chloe's death, Chloe simply chose to kill herself for no particular reason, thus doing exactly what she said she didn't want: she left Catherine. The only thing she obtained is that Catherine will never forget her now. Honestly, Catherine would have never forgotten that whole story anyway, Chloe killing herself makes no sense at all. On the contrary, it is so unlike-her. A stupid, simplistic ending.