Violin by Anne Rice

Ok, it got to me. I yield, I suffered and mourned and longed for Stefan. I didn't think I would, not at first. How boring were those long, endless descriptions of Triana's visions, dreams, how detailed were they, the faces (their cheeks, their noses, their chins...), the colors, the shapes, the materials (the velvet and the marbles and the wood...).  The other characters thought she was crazy and I thought, if she is I won't bear with 200 and more pages like these, full of meaningless visions: maybe this is what she thinks, sees or dreams about hearing her beloved music, and remembering all her dead loved ones, but I feel nothing of it. Then, the mysterious violinist that had played for her two nights after her husband Karl had died and she had told no one, keeping his body in the house, not ready to let go, finally became more present to the story and I felt for him in many ways. His story was sad and I felt empathy, but also doubt that he actually deserved such empathy, after what he'd done, and anger at his acting badly, driving people mad with his music, being so mean to Triana, always hating; he was half desperately sad and half fiercely angry and hateful, and I couldn't bear his hate, I longed for him to let go of it. Yes, anger is often a better emotion to feel than others like fear or sadness, but not when it hurts others, that's going too far. Anger can save you, but if you let it go too far it can destroy you.
Triana is a 54 years old woman in New Orleans. Karl died of Aids and she stayed inside the house with him two days, curling next to him the night and spending the daytime listening to Beethoven or Mozart. She wasn't rational, she seemed crazy and couldn't follow on a normal conversation. She started to think only of the tall man with the violin, that had played so beautifully. She has great pain inside for all her losses: the father she nursed to the end, the drunk mother that died away from her, her little daughter Lily that died so young of cancer and now her husband Karl, and all her regrets and guilt connected to them, but she also has great love for her sisters: Rosalind, so good like her husband, Katrinka so full of hate but who loved Lily so much, and Faye who disappeared and nobody heard of her again. She knows about pain, about love and about music. When the violinist comes, she embraces his music at first, but pulls away in time. He comes to her, as real as a mortal man and yet nothing more than the ghost of a man who lived over a century before her time. He could not drive her crazy, and yet he came back to her, playing again, making her re-live sad memories, until she remembered when her drunk mother had beaten her, kicking her in the stomach, filling him with a pain we could not yet understand. It was then, when she noticed this, that she caught him off-guard and took his violin, his long Stradivarius, and kept it away from him, refusing to give it back, so that he could use it to keep driving people mad. That prolonged holding of the violin created a connection between them. As he had been able to read her thoughts and feelings, now she's to witness his life story. She sees young Prince Stefan in Vienna with his maestro Beethoven; when his house burn down but he managed to save this very violin he held so precious; when he played for and with Paganini who accepted to 'teach' him if his father gave permission; when he asked his father but could not obtain it so he tried to take the violin and go away and then his father hit him and hit his hands and broke them both, and Stefan went into a fury and kicked down his father, in the stomach and in the head and the father died; she saw him run away from the guards who had orders from the Czar to shoot him on sight, and she saw him going back to the house to get his violin, only to get caught by the guards and be shot together with it.  Both him and the violin 'died' there, and when he ran away from that place they were both ghosts already, yet he never let go of it. Triana watches while he wanders, desperately alone, invisible to everybody, until he plays at Beethoven's grave for tribute, and a woman grieving hears him and sees him, and there he started. He wants his violin back, so precious to him, but she won't let him have it. Suddenly, instead of waking up at her house again, she finds herself in modern Vienna. She feels lost and starts playing, and people are gripped; she could never play as she dreamed of, but now she finds the music in her, in all her emotions that she lets flow in music form. She can't repeat existent music, every time is a new original improvisation. Her family comes to get her and they start touring the world, Triana makes one concert after the other, has great success. She's happy, and her family now is happy with her. When she receives a formal invitation from Stefan to go play in Brazil, she goes, she can't refuse him, she feels a strong connection. She knows Stefan wants to break her, for his violin, and he tries, giving her visions of her little girl pleading for her to stop, and all her dead, and she puts in music all her emotions, knowing it's not real. She sees Stefan and a light behind him. In her mind she screams for him to go into it, to find peace at last, but he doesn't. Later on, he sends her a message "I must see you. I promise you, I will not try to hurt you. Your Stefan" and she rushes to him. They meet and talk, and he says he always saw that light, and never went into it. He says, what if my violin goes with me, when I go away? And that he's afraid. She gives him his violin, tells him she's afraid too and they say goodbye. He goes into the warm light. She goes back to the hotel, to tell her family that she gave back the long Strad, and will now play one of the violins they bought, hoping the music inside her is still there. She arrives to find that Faye came back to her family, and Triana plays for her, and it was a beautiful happy music, and so it ends, with a happy ending for all. The music didn't come from a magic violin, but from the souls of those who played it.
I liked the connection between Triana and Stefan, I liked this ghost so full of violent emotions: the guilt for his father's murder which he never intended to do, his passion for his music, the loneliness of his condition, the anger for the injustice of the world that didn't let him have the life he wanted, the fear to go away forever. I liked Triana, who knew pain and guilt and love and music so intimately she was not overwhelmed by his visions, she did not lose herself into them, because she had always known she had all those emotions inside her, and knew them so well they could not drive her mad. She had thought of killing herself after Karl died, but never did it to not break her family, to not leave the ones she loved with the guilt and the sorrow. She learned to live with those emotions, as she had all her life.
Only one thing I didn't love: it was the story of her first husband Lev: yes, it helps understand what kind of a woman she is, but the fact that after their daughter died Triana understood that he needed comfort and graciously left him to her friend Chelsea that gave him three sons and she now loves them all makes her look like an alien to normal people. She did a good thing, and now she knows he would always help her at a single word from her, but normal people of this world would have said instead 'oh you need to sleep with other women, don't you? And what about what I need? I won't let you go be happy with another woman while I have nothing'. Triana understood his need to feel alive and have other children, that they never stopped loving each other. In a way this is more unrealistic than her young handsome ghost with a talent for music that was praised by Paganini himself. But I liked her for that.

Red 2 - 2013

The first one was fun, but this is.. this sucks. There are a couple of cool car-chasing scenes, and lots of nice actors, but they are not enough to save this film. Frank Moses (Bruce Willis) now goes around not only with Marvin (John Malkovich) but also with his inseparable girlfriend Sarah (Mary-Louise Parker). Sarah is now a crazy thing excited by what he does, she wants to be armed and to have an active role: she has it her own way and of course at the end she's safe and sound, despite the fact that her whole training in life had been talking on the phone.
To save the world, or at least a good part of it, they track down a bomb made by Bailey (Anthony Hopkins) who succeeds in selling it to Iran before activating it. They want to stop him and disarm the bomb, and they're helped by Victoria (Helen Mirren), Katja (Cataherine Zeta-Jones) and Han (Byung-hun Lee). Han was a heartless killer but a few words from Frank and he's ready to help him *sigh*
They go around making a mess wherever they go, killing people without problems, as if for fun, even when not really necessary. They don't kill only the bad guys, but everyone that gets in their way, even if they have all the right to be there. I mean, they break into the Kremlin, they even enter the Iranian embassy shooting around killing every poor Iranian guard who is simply doing his job. At first it seemed Marvin was the crazy one, in the other movie, but here they are all crazy, and he's right in saying that they like killing.
Even Sarah starts doing it, and enjoying her part. Not a second wasted thinking about the fact that she just killed a man, no, she's totally addicted, wasted.
Of course when Bailey reveals his betrayal he kills only Katja, leaving the others alive, because she's not needed anymore and they are the protagonists, so they must win against all reason. At the end Bailey takes Sarah prisoner and tries to run away. They follow him. Of course they run out of the Iranian embassy and had no problem in finding both a fast car and an helicopter to use, and the helicopter crashed badly without hurting either them or the bomb. Frank boards Bailey's plane and somehow manages to hide in it the bomb despite the fact that he's never alone there, and Bailey keeps him and Sarah at gunpoint the whole time, and never takes his eyes off of him.
Happy ending: Bailey will be the only one to die when the bomb with red mercury will explode in the air. How preposterous. Couldn't they invent something good, here? The car-chasing scenes were absurd but funny, enjoyable, meant to be that way, to look cool, but the rest is stupid and exaggerated. It's a pity, I liked the first film, it was fun, it was nice; yes, it had scenes of shooting-frenzy, but still it had many good scenes, but this movie here is just a loud mess with no sense or dignity.

Library of the dead by Glenn Cooper

A strange book, often boring, but with a single fascinating idea. It's not a crime-story or a mystery novel, because there is no real mystery to solve.
The story: Will Piper, Fbi, must solve the case of the Doomsday killer: some people receive a postcard with a grave drawing and the date of their death, and that exact day they all die. It's a difficult case, because every death seems so different: a robbery, a suicide, even a natural death apparently, but those postcards link them all.
At some point it turns out that Doomsday doesn't exist, there was no serial killer, and this is clear quite early in the book. Fact this that makes the Fbi case very boring.
In 1947 a group of archeologists found a big big library, with thousands, hundreds of thousands of books in it. In the books, only names and dates: those of birth and death. From that day, England first and then America have done everything to protect the secret. It all started in the year 777 when a woman gave birth. Some kind of legend spoke of the seventh son of a seventh son, and a man had already six sons and a few daughters and still he had risked it again: a boy is born, and his father kills him immediately, then to the general surprise another boy is born, twin, and the man convinces himself that he's the eighth , but he's not. After five years the man gets scared because the boy is strange, different, apathic, and leaves it at the monastery, where one day Father Josephus realizes the boy writes names and dates everywhere: he gives him proper tools to write and is soon convinced that it's a sort of miracle, like the boy is in mission from God or something, because every name and date is correct. The monks keep him in a cell, where the boy cares only about his work, and all day every day he writes names after names, with their date of birth or death, going chronologically. All the births and deaths of a certain day, then all those of the next day, and so on, and the monks put all the sheets together and make books. When the boy is old enough to feel desire, he assaults a young maid, come with his food. The poor girl has a child, a boy who looks just like his father and who, in time, shows the same attitude and starts writing names. The monks now know how to keep the work going: they send young innocent girls to the boys that write the names, year after year, century after century, these men and women supposedly voted to the Good God up there sacrifice poor girls locking them up with their rapists, in order to have more children and continue what they believe to be a sacred mission. Disgusting, isn't it? Until one day, in the 13th century, the men and boys writing in the crypts stopped all at once, killing themselves. They had arrived at the year 2027, the end of it all, so presumably their job was over. I don't know the meaning of the scene where the young man Luke takes a page while running away, it must be for sure of the year 2027; the only thing I can imagine is what happened in that film "Knowing" where the last entry was something like EE=everybody else.
Will starts working with Nancy Lipinski and obviously they end up together. By reading a screenplay of his daughter Laura he realized the postcards are written with a character used mainly for screenplays and this puts him on the tracks of his ex-roommate Mark.
Mark works in Area 51, where the library has been moved and digitalized over the years, with the Ufo cover :-)
Mark has been providing a life-insurance company with people's date of death, but he's found out. Both his girlfriend and the company's director are killed by Area 51 security, and he asks Will for protection. He tells Will everything about the library, but in a shooting he gets shot in the head. According to the library dates he's not going to die at least until 2027 when the dates stop, so Will imagines he'll be like that for a long time.
Will searches the library for the names of the people he cares about, and is reassured that neithere him or Nancy or Laura are listed, so he knows for sure that neither of them will be killed now, so he makes a copy and hides it, then writes to his lawyer the famous letter "if you don't hear from me open this letter and follow my instructions" and then he lets the security people catch him, to talk and explain. Being the only thing they can do they set him free and he goes back home, quits drinking, retires early and starts a happy life with Nancy.
The story was a bit interesting, yes, and the detail of the Ufo-cover was fun, but the book was generally rather boring, and I confess to skipping a few pieces here and there.
I would have liked a bit of mystery, but there was none.
It was obvious there was no Doomsday killer, but it would have been better if it was a surprise.
The book goes back and forth in time, so readers must be careful about the dates to be able to understand where we are, when we are and what is happening. This is slightly annoying, but the biggest problem is the absolute lacking of mystery; we start reading about the library from the start, and it doesn't take long to see fully what it is, so Mark's big revelation "there is no Doomsday killer" has no effect at all.

Priest - 2011

Sigh, it's so rare to find a good measure in these things, movies are often too long and boring or, like this one, so short they appear an incomplete work, it felt like a summary of the real story. Now, I read somewhere this is taken from a comic book, but I've never seen it, so I talk merely about the movie, without comparisons. It had good moments, and they were the action-scenes.
The plot: vampire and humans were at war for so long, the Church took the power and trained priests and priestesses to fight them like supersoldiers. After the war ended they were not needed anymore.
Our priest (Paul Bettany) was taken and trained to become the best warrior: he left a daughter, Lucy (Lily Collins), and her mother Shannon to his own brother Owen (Stephen Moyer) who took care of Lucy as a father. Now their home has been attacked, Owen is wounded, Shannon is dead and Lucy kidnapped. The Church denies the involvement of vampires, banning our priest from going to her rescue, but he goes anyway, betraying the Church, so they send other priests after him. A priestess (Maggie Q) goes to help him, instead. It was all a plan of an ex-priest that fell and became a new vampire, so much stronger than them now. This ex-priest with the black hat is played by Karl Urban, hello handsome. He did it on purpose to lure them out of the city. I don't know why, since he's so strong and has so many vampires with him there was no need for that. Had him left our priest's family alone, and had he gone straight for the city he would have caught them by surprise and he would have won easily. Anyway.
Lucy's boyfriend Hicks joins in the rescue, but honestly there was no need for that, the character is boring and useless. I liked the dark scenography, I liked Bettany and Urban, the priestess was ok too, everything was designed to look cool, but the scenes without fights felt incomplete, too quick. It's not that it lacks story, movies like this need good action and cool characters more than they need a long story, but the scenes themselves were too quick. After the ex-priest-with-the-black-hat has been defeated, our priest enters a church with a vampire head saying the war is not over, it has just begun:end of scene. Next scene: the priestess says: we'll meet at the rendez-vous point, he says ok and rides away: end of scene, end of movie. I don't know if they cut too much or if they planned it this way, but every scene really needed a few more seconds, no dialogs, just time to feel the atmosphere and look at the characters and feel them. Time to breath.

Cheri - 2009

I wasn't very interested in the story but I watched it because there's Michelle Pfeiffer in it. As I thought it's not very interesting, and the ending left me very... I don't know, unsatisfied, maybe. It wasn't bad, but it was very bitter. It's about love and age, a sort of psychological story.
Chéri (Rupert Friend) is a young man, son of ex-courtesan Charlotte (Kathy Bates) who starts a relationship with Lea (Michelle Pfeiffer), old friend/enemy of his mother. In a way his mother asked Lea to 'take care' of him, she wanted it, I don't know if it was to keep him away from bad companies or if she simply wanted him to live a little.
I don't like this Chéri: he's a spoiled brat, arrogant and selfish, but Lea likes him, and they stay together for six years. At this point Chéri is 25 years old and his mother plans a wedding for him with the daughter of another rich courtesan like Lea and herself. Lea reacts with wonderful dignity, making no scenes and going on with her life , but it hurts so much only her maid Rose has any idea of how much. Lea has fallen in love with him.
Chéri marries a young and pretty girl who means nothing for him, and while he's on his honeymoon Lea leaves and nobody knows where she's gone. She tries to forget him, but in vain. Knowing that she's gone Chéri feels lost, leaves his home and stays at a hotel for a few months. A friend sends Lea a postcard telling her that Chéri left his wife, and Lea smiles her beautiful smile and thinks he'll divorce her, and immediately comes back home. Chéri knows of her return the same night, being outside her house. Knowing that she's back, Chéri goes back to his wife, thinking he's ready for his new life, but he's not. He goes back because, well, he kinda felt lost not knowing where she was, but now that she's home again, near him, he's not lost anymore, something like that.
Lea learns from his mother of his return home: his mother takes pleasure in hurting her, for sure. One night Chéri runs to her and enter the house deaf to the maid's protests and appears crazy jealous thinking she might have a new lover. She understands that he loves her, he says so himself, so they stay the night together and when morning comes Lea thinks of the two of them leaving together. In reply to something she says Chéri gets angry, saying he'll always be a boy with her, or something like that, and she understands that it can not work between them because there's too much age difference. It's very painful for her, she had just told him how much she loved him, how he was her great love, the love that comes only once in a lifetime, but now she tells him to go home, that he'll always want the youth his wife can offer him, and they say their last goodbye. The narrator voice says that he'll go to war, that he'll come back unharmed and one day he'll realize that Lea was his only love and that he let it go, and he will kill himself, and while it says so we see Lea looking at herself in the mirror, clearly feeling old, too old, as if Michelle Pfeiffer could ever look old, when all she has to do is smile and the sun shines from her face. Anyway, this is the end, right there. Bitter, as I said. Maybe if I had felt any sympathy for Chéri I would have liked the movie more, but I could not see anything in him, no reason at all why two women should be so madly in love with him.
Still, Michelle Pfeiffer was beautiful and fabulous as always.

Meet Dave - 2008

A funny comedy, silly but funny enough :-) A crew of very little aliens comes to Earth in a spaceship shaped like a human body, resembling their captain: Eddie Murphy. They're here to retrieve an object that will help them get the salt their planet needs to survive by taking it away from our oceans. They're just arrived when a car bumps into it and Gina (Elizabeth Banks) is worried she might have killed him, and then that he might sue her, so she invites him home. When asked his name, Number 3 (Gabrielle Union) of the crew researched the most popular names on Earth and came out with Ming Chan, which surprises Gina who had thought perhaps Dave might have suited him best so he says he's Dave Ming Chan...
Her son Josh had found the orb Dave was looking for so "they" stick to him until they can find it back. There are all sorts of scenes about Dave not knowing what love is, or what a handshake is, or how to put new clothes on (which is resolved by not telling us: he went to the counter with a sweater he could not put on, after a big scene that clearly proved it to everyone, but the next scene he had normal trousers with a normal shirt and jacket on, who knows how he managed that... probably he made those clothes appear on the ship in some way, since afterwards he'll be able to bring back his original white suit... then why did he try to put on the sweater in the first place? Well, it was a funny scene, although maybe a bit too long)
Finally found the orb, the captain still wants to spend time with Gina and Josh to thank them for their help, but he gets arrested by a cop convinced he's an alien (!). His strange behavior brings Number 2 to mutiny and take command, and he starts firing around at the police station, then goes to throw the orb in the water. Number 3 at first agreed to the mutiny because she was furiously jealous of her beloved captain and Gina, then she helps him regain control of the ship , when they manage to get back on board after being thrown out by Number 2.
They retrieve the orb and save Earth, but are out of energy for the second time. The first time the ship was "revived" by a doctor, and now it was Josh using an electric gun on him, or however it's called, so they have energy again to fly home. Humans come with helicopters and ropes, but the whole crew gets inside one shoe of the big ship and they head to safety.
Gabrielle Union is incredibly pretty and has great hair.
Many scenes are full of silly nonsense, but the right kind for the right movie, funny enough.
There's the obvious "Earth-is-not-so-bad" discovery because apparently these aliens know nothing about music, kisses, dance, love, drinks and generally fun, and become quite fond of New York.
The scene where he wins the competition for who eats more hot-dogs is gross and not my favourite. It was fun when he "cleaned the table" by throwing it all on the floor, or when he retrieved his orb from the little bully by holding him upside down :lol:
There was a scene when Number 3 told him that there is something humans must watch once a year, and it was "it's a wonderful life" :-D and after watching it they were both so touched, which is understandable :-) I love that movie too, and towards the end of the film, when the commander and number 3 are stranded in big New York, trying to catch the spaceship again, he tells her he should have lazooed the moon for her a long time ago :-) that was actually the only nice thing about their love story, otherwise quite boring and predictable. I mean, she was funny with her unreasonable jealousy, but all his speeches about feelings were too long and boring, they were the thing I liked less.

Cruel intentions - 1999

Not bad, I liked it enough. It stars Sarah Michelle Gellar with a brunette look as Kathryn, a cruel manipulative girl, during the same years she played good heroine Buffy :-)
She enjoys to manipulate and hurt people, but cares very much about her reputation, she likes other people's adoration: it appears she's very esteemed at the school and in the community. She has a stepbrother, Sebastian Valmont (Ryan Philippe) who is as bad as she is but has no care for his reputation at all: he likes to have his way with any girl, he likes to do what he likes when he likes it, and to hurt them as he wants is just so easy he's even getting bored, and in want of a challenge. After reading an article on a magazine, he finds it: Annette (Reese Witherspoon) wrote that she's still a virgin because people should wait for love to have sex. Sebastian bets with Kathryn he'll win Annette. If he succeeds Kathryn will sleep with him, if he fails Kathryn wants his jaguar, which doesn't seem a fair thing for her to propose, I mean, they are both so wealthy she could buy one if she wanted it. Sebastian suspected nothing, though, it seemed ok to him.
Sebastian spends time with Annette, lying and doing charity to appear good to her, and he slowly starts to like her, she can make him laugh, she awakened new feelings in him, and Sebastian actually fell in love. Annette too fell for him, so they had sex, but then Kathryn teased him, telling him people don't change, that his reputation would always haunt him, and cause trouble to him and probably pain to Annette. Sebastian believes it and tells Annette horrible things to break up with her. He expected things to go back the way they were, but Kathryn clearly says to his face that she beat him, that he was a losers because he sent away the only girl he ever loved, that she made him do it, and she doesn't sleep with losers. He realizes now how stupid he has been and tries to reach Annette, who doesn't want to talk to him, so he sends her his diary to explain her who he really is, hoping she'll forgive him. In the meantime Kathryn keeps herself busy trying to ruin young innocent Cecile (Selma Blair) because her ex-boyfriend dared leave her for Cecile, apparently, although they're not a couple because Cecile likes her music teacher Roland, or Ronald (Sean Patrick Thomas). She has help from Sebastian who accepted to seduce her. Kathryn pretends to be her friend and to want to help her with Roland, but she herself seduces him. At this point, she calls Roland telling him that Sebastian beat her, and while he goes to her he meets Sebastian on the street and attacks him. Annette sees their fight and tries to stop it, but she gets accidentally thrown on the road where she almost gets run over by a car, but Sebastian notices it and saves her, being hit in her place. He dies, so that this is the definite, ultimate proof that he was sincere and really loved her, and this way he made amends for his retched life. At his funeral, Kathryn is prepared to give a touching speech, to play her part of virtuous sister, when something attracts everybody's attention. Many copies of Sebastian's diary are being handed over and everyone is reading it. The fact that her cross-shaped pendant really hides drugs is proof that it tells the truth, so now her reputation is forever ruined, and she can't do anything about it. She's utterly defeated, and the movie ends with Annette going away on what to me seems like Sebastian's car but maybe it's not, with his diary on the seat next to her, smiling of satisfaction, remembering the nice moments they spent together.
In the movie there is also Joshua Jackson in a blonde look, playing a gay friend of Sebastian who sometimes helps him in his nasty plans. A little role, anyway. A pity, I like him, a bigger role would have been good.
The worst part of the film was Annette's look of satisfaction at the end: yes, she avenged Sebastian, in a way, she made the big baddie of the day pay for what she did, yes, and still the guy she loved has just died... I'm not sure that clear smile of satisfaction is the right feeling on a character like her. It kinds ruins her image a bit, making her look like Kathryn.

Ui-hyeong-je - 2010

Ui-hyeong-je is the original title according to imdb, but I know it as Secret Reunion. I liked it, it was well done and well acted. It's a South Korean movie, apparently, and I just saw it on tv. Obviously I saw it in Italian, I don't understand Korean, and I liked it a lot. It was very nice, funny and moving, a spy-action movie... a little bit of everything, in a way. 
It starts as an intelligence service case: South Korean agents are trying to catch a famous and extremely dangerous killer they call Shadow. He's on a mission to kill traitors of his Country North Korea. He's helped by two North Korean spies, two young men, not knowing that one of them is passing information to the police and will then stay there, in South Korea. He will be found again by Ji-won years later, and will 'justify' himself saying that he wanted to live, and for this it will hurt Ji-won to see him dead, killed by Shadow, forever on his mission. 
Ji-won is the other young man, but he's not like Shadow, a cold-blooded assassin enjoying too much his work, killing every South Korean he meets on his way without the slightest remorse. Ji-won does not like it, thinks it's not right to kill when not necessary, and saves a child that Shadow had not yet seen before escaping. Shadow clears his own way shooting and killing. Han-gyoo has been hunting him down for some time, but can't get him even now. He gets thrown out of the police, blamed for the bad failure, while Ji-won stays in South-Korea, going on with his spy-work. He doesn't want to betray his Country, ever, and also his wife and just born daughter are still there, and if he was declared a traitor they would be killed. 
Six or seven years pass, Han-gyoo is working as a sort of private detective, finding and bringing back foreign wives, usually vietnamese, when they run away from their new home or maybe are brought away to be sold again. One night he gets in a fight and he's doing badly, when one of the workers there surprisingly helps him.
As soon as they lay eyes on each other, they immediately recognize the face they saw six years before. Ji-won saw him giving orders that day, and Han-gyoo saw him get away that same day, but they don't know they've been recognized. Each of them thinks he has the advantage. Han-gyoo wants to keep him close to get to Shadow, thinking they still work together, while Ji-won thinks the private-detective-thing is just an undercover, that he's still one of the intelligence. Ji-won starts working with him, saying he needs money, and he does. What is not yet known, is that he needs money to try to have his family be brought here by a South Korean organization. First of all he thinks of saving them.
They start working together, Han-gyoo jumps for anything, he's worried of what the others might do, thinking him nothing more than an assassin. Ji-won starts spying on him, and learns of his life, of his character, and is not as much inclined to spy on him anymore. They get to know each other a little, enough to realize the other is not the enemy, the monster they had imagined. When Han-gyoo's colleagues know of Ji-won, they want to follow him and get him, and they can do it thanks to the chip in his watch. 
Now things are changed, though. Han-gyoo doesn't want him caught, and tries to call him to warn him, then runs to get to him before the others. Ji-won has received a new message from Shadow, supposedly with a new mission from their Country, but only after Shadow kills his man he learns the truth, that Shadow received no new mission, he works for himself, obsessed to kill everybody he believes a traitor. Han-gyoo comes to stop him, not seeing Shadow. Knowing he's there, and knowing Shadow will kill him himself if he doesn't do anything, Ji-won uses his knife on him, in a very intense scene that however did not fool me. I didn't know why, but I knew he would not have killed him. Come on, of course not, what kind of an ending would have that been, huh?!?
So, now that Han-gyoo is on the floor all blood-dirty, Ji-won confronts Shadow, has him admit he did not receive official orders, and at some insinuation of the other asks what happened of his family and Shadow says something like What do you think? and Ji-won fears they're dead and fights with him and they both fall down from the roof, before Han-gyoo back on his feet could prevent it. We see now that Ji-won had kept the knife from the blade hurting his own hand. 
All the cops go downstairs and see only Ji-won on the floor, not knowing if he's dead or alive, because Shadow is still alive, hidden, with every intent of killing both Ji-won and whoever comes near before dying. Han-gyoo won't be stopped, however, and runs to Ji-won, and finally succeeds in killing Shadow. 
At this point they try to trick us for a moment, to make us believe that Ji-won died and went to meet his dead family, but that end would suck, so I just waited. Han-gyoo is back to his work with public commendation, and he receives a letter from Ji-won telling him to go visit his daughter, now living in England with her mother and stepfather. He goes, and on the plane he sees Ji-won and his family, a cute little smiling girl :-)
Happy ending for all ! Yayyyy :-)


Kang-ho Song as  Han-gyoo
Dong-won Kang as Ji-won 

The secret garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

A nice story. A book for children, indeed, but I'd never read it before, so I read it now uncaring of my not-being-a-child-anymore. It's a good story of how children should be brought up. It was sometimes difficult to read because of all the Yorkshire-talking, but I got used to it, and it became very slow at points, with all those long descriptions of flowers and nature growing and animals alike. Still, the children story was good. It also has two protagonists, because for the first half it's Mary Lennox, and the second half is all Colin Craven.
Mary was the daughter of an English couple living in India: none of her parents ever took any care of her. She was all the time with the Indian servants who spoiled her badly because she was their master, until one day cholera broke out in the house. Her stupid mother had stayed in India to attend a party instead of running away weeks before, and they both died along with many servants. Those that lived ran away, and she was forgotten and left alone. When she was found, she was sent to England to her uncle Mr Craven. When she arrived she was an ugly, yellow looking, disagreeable child of ten years old who could not even dress herself and ate almost nothing and was rude to everybody because she disliked everybody, and they disliked her. At the house, though, she met a poor, low servant: cheerful Martha, who talked a lot, as if they were equals, and loved the moor and her family and often talked about her mother and her twelve years old brother Dickon with a special way with animals. To pass the time she started going out in the gardens and met Ben Weatherstaff the gardener and a special robin who would come near him and now near her. Slowly she started to see there was beauty in the world, and the fresh air agreed to her and she started to eat more and gain weight and a better color and interest in things. She even started to like some people: Martha, Dickon, Ben...
Mr Craven's wife had been dead ten years, and since then he had ordered that her personal garden would be locked up, and the key buried and nobody was to go into it ever but Mary was a lonely child with nothing to do, so she set her mind to find it. She succeeded one day that she was out playing with a skipping-rope Martha's mother had bought for her, and she had never before seen one and had to be shown what it was for :-p
Mary found an old key in the ground and a door on a wall covered with ivy. She found her secret garden, and she shared her secret with Dickon. One night she heard heavy crying in the big house and set out to discover what it was. She found a room she'd never been before and a boy nobody ever talked about: Colin, Mr Craven's son whose mother died when he was born, so he's ten years old like her, and her cousin. At first the relationship is difficult because when the next day he called for her to go visit him she didn't have time because Dickon was waiting for her in the secret garden to work at it together, and Colin was used to be obeyed and got angry at her, and then in the night he broke into hysterics shouting and crying. All his life he had been alone, lying down, always indoor, with everybody saying he was not to live long, so much that he was convinced of it himself, and some nights he would think like everyone else did that he was becoming a hunchback like his father and scream and cry and think he was about to die: I don't know why exactly, how possibly the two things were related, but it was that important to him, his back. The servants and the nurse did not know what to do and called Mary because as Martha's mother says: children needs children.  Mary made a scene herself yelling for him to stop, that he had a normal, straight back and he was not going to die, and in some way this did him good, and he started to want her company, and then he wanted to go out in the gardens, and she made him part of the secret and took him to the secret garden and seeing the spring beauty he started feeling like he was going to live and get well, and believing it is half work done, and day by day he changed like Mary had, eating more and standing on his own feet and growing stronger every day. Mary, Colin and Dickon would go into the garden every day and play and laugh (the best medicine of all, said again Martha's mother) and excercise to make them stronger and better, and they also attended at the flowers in the garden. When finally Mr Craven got home again, after such a long time, he found them in the secret garden, laughing out loud and running about, and was astonished to see his sick child as a healthy, lively boy, straight and tall, stronger and very much alive, who did not need either medicines or to be carried around in a chair anymore. The end of the book is all for Colin, walking towards home at his father's side under the incredulous looks of all the servants in the house.

Angel Esquire by Edgar Wallace

This was good, I liked it a lot, one of the nicest books of Edgar Wallace.
Reale, a man who made a lot of money in the gambling business, rigging the game of course, has a big safe built, to be open only with a secret word. He puts all his money in there, then leaves a will stating that it will al go to the person that will solve the riddle, among his ex-"partners": Massey, that kills him and then gets himself killed falling in one of the old man's traps; Connor, a bad criminal, part of a terrible gang of thieves and murderers; Jimmy, a wealthy man, a charismatic figure, who liked to steal for the fun of it, but only to bad people; and Kathleen Kent, the daughter of a man that was ruined by Reale. The remaining three of them are given a puzzle to solve, but Connor won't play fair, and lawyer Spedding will reveal to be even worse than him. Jimmy says from the start he'll leave it all to Kathleen, but at first she hates him because she's been led to think that he took part in ruining his father, but actually he had tried to warn him, and the two of them slowly fall in love. Jimmy saves her when Connor abducted her, then again when Spedding threatened her life. To help Jimmy there is Christopher Angle of Scotland Yard, known as Angel Esquire: they work together to solve the mystery, protect the girl and stop the criminals. I liked both Angel and Jimmy, they were both interesting. Kathleen knew Jimmy loved her when they were trying to escape Spedding's mortal trap, after Angel and he had "saved" her from him. While Angel wasn't looking, Jimmy kissed her, then they succeeded in escaping unharmed. Both Jimmy and Angel, as well as Spedding, arrived at the right solution, but Angel and Jimmy came first to take away the money. It was all Kathleen's now, and Jimmy refused her offer to split it in two. Jimmy now loved her deeply, and thought of leaving the Country to forget her, not believing his love to be requited. Angel came  to tell Kathleen of this project, so that she can talk to Jimmy, to make him understand that she loves him too. Jimmy kissed her again, than Kathleen told Angel that she persuaded him to stay :-)
It was very nice. The mystery in itself was not very interesting at all, but the adventure was nice and the characters interesting and lovable. Jimmy most of all the others, was very lovable :-)
A nice touch, since Edgar is always so nice towards good characters and his readers, is that Connor is killed by Spedding! Jimmy had threatened, no, promised  to kill him at the end, after the matter was resolved, but this way he didn't have to :-)
A funny thing is that at one point they're almost beaten in time by Spedding because Angel and Jimmy went to interrogate a man in person, while Spedding thought of phoning him, thus saving time! Such a new thing as a telephone in the house had not occurred to Angel! :-p
In a way it's absurd that after that time lost, and the fact that they went to secure the money first, they still arrived in time to save Kathleen, although how did they find her is not at all clear :-) No matter, though, of course Jimmy had to save her! :-)

Coraline by Neil Gaiman

A nice fairy tale, very pretty, simply written and a bit macabre. I've watched the movie before knowing this book existed, so I knew the story; book and movie are very much alike, with little differences. There are Miss Spink and Miss Forcible living with their dogs, there is the 'crazy' old man living in the upstairs apartment with his rats that know more than him (they know she's called Coraline and not Caroline, and also know that she should Not open that door...); as in the movie little Coraline gets bored all alone in the new house and her parents have no time to play with her. In the book there was no strange kid living nearby, though. She likes to go exploring, but when outside it rains so much she's forced to stay inside, she's left with only the house to explore. There is a door that leads nowhere: her mother shows it to her. She opened it with a key only to reveal a brick wall. One day she's alone in the house, she's bored, so she takes the old black key and opens the strange door again, to find.. no more the brick wall, but a corridor. She follows it and comes out in what at first seems just like her home, only it is her other-home, and she meets her other-mother and her other-father, who are nice, want to play with her and cook for her delicious meals. They look just like her parents, only they have big black buttons instead of eyes. In other-Miss Spink and other-Miss Forcible's house there is now a theatre all the time, with the dogs as audience, and the rats of the other-strange man play with her, the cat talks with her (he's not the other-cat, he's the same cat, he can go back and forth), everything is colorful and interesting, yet Coraline doesn't like when her other-mother strokes her hair, and is not at all sure she'd like to stay here, so when they propose that she'd sew buttons on her eyes to be able to stay there forever, she doesn't have the slightest hesitation and refuses immediately. Back home she finds her real parents are gone, disappeared. She asks the cat and he takes her in front of a mirror, where she sees them on the other side, trapped. She goes again to her other-mother to demand their release; her other-mother tells her that her parents have left her because they wanted to be free without her but Coraline doesn't believe it (not really): you're lying, you stole them, she says to her.
Her other-mother has created that house and little else outside copying her real home, so the only way to get away from her is the strange door, but now she locks it and keeps the key. She eats cockroaches and gets angry when Coraline doesn't accept her "you're not my mother", and locks her up, opening the mirror with a key and leaving her there inside the wardrobe in the dark. Coraline hears the voice of three ghosts, sad children whose parents were stolen like Coraline's, then the other-mother left them there, she stole their heart, their soul, their life, and forgot them there. They ask her to find their souls so to free them. When the other-mother comes, Coraline proposes a game, as the cat suggested: she must find her parents and the three souls, if she succeeds she'll be free with them, if she fails she'll  stay and let her sew buttons on her eyes. She looks everywhere, using the little stone with a hole inside that Miss Spink had given her against bad things, and looks through it: everything is grey except the souls, she finds one among the toys, one in the theatre (in the hand of a horrible creature that had been the other-Miss Spink and other-Miss Forcile together) and one in the "hands" of one of the rats, and here the cat helps her with it :-) They all try to convince her to stay, saying she'll have everything she desires, but she sighs and says you don't understand, I don't want everything I desire, nobody really wants it, what fun could it be if I could have everything no problem? It'd had no value, and then what?
Now, she knows the other-mother won't honor her promise,  so she tricks her. "they are behind the door, I'm sure of it" and the other-mother opens it to show her her mistake. Coraline throws the cat in her face, grabs the snowball with her parents and runs for the door. The cat follows her and they escape, but one hand of the other-mother follows her too. Now her parents are back, but she's still in danger because the hand keeps looking for the key, scaring Mr Bobo's rats and hurting the Misses' dog. She prepares a trap, she pretends to be playing with dolls and puts a paper towel over a deep well, so when the hand jumps to take it both fall down, hand and key. She hastily covers it well and leaves it there! She gives back the little stone she doesn't need anymore, and hugs them both. Now she can sleep well, without fear: the next day she'll have to start school, but this time she's not afraid, she knows nothing in there can scare her anymore :-)

The nine bears by Edgar Wallace

Boring, very boring. The beginning was not too bad: Silinski, a Polish criminal, met Meyers and Baggin thanks to his sister Catherine, and had the idea for a big criminal organization: Silinski put together nine men and a big communication system, and together these men gained lots and lots of money, playing the market, manipulating it with criminal, sometimes terrorist attacks: the destruction of a recent construction in Egypt was avoided by Scotland Yard Inspector T.B.Smith, it would have caused the failure of the second biggest bank of England. Two men had discovered some of these NHC (neuf hommes Cadice) messages and gained money using them, but now they are murdered in London. Smith knows Silinski is involved, but can't find him, at first, or the nine men.
Once, he comes close to get them all, but he didn't have enough men ready and they got away. They stole a Brazilian warship to hide at sea. They blackmailed the world: amnesty for us all or we'll sink every ship we meet. Many Countries of the world join forces and at the end they are defeated. Well: Silinski was first betrayed by his sister, then all the nine men were killed by each other, until Silinski stabbed the last one, Baggin, and then it was all over. American warships destroyed his ship and he was arrested by Smith. This time Edgar put together too pompous a story, and it got very boring. I didn't like it. Also the characters were not intriguing. Silinski was a bit interesting, but his plan was absurd at the end. Come on, Amnesty or I'll destroy you? No Country could ever replay Okay, We surrender to You! Please! That was stupid.
Smith was very plain, and inspector Elk had a very small role, as he had in another book. Catherine was intriguing too, but her role was not so interesting or important.
Conclusion: boooring.

The time machine - 2002

It was worse than I thought. Much worse. The ending was absurd, stupid, unreasonably happy. First of all they destroyed the whole moral that can be found in the book, and secondly the story was weak,  the characters were very plain and the ending made no sense, or better, it had the usual sense of creating the happy ending these movies can't be without, with no regard of how right that ending is, or how really happy, for that matter.
The beginning was not bad: Alexander (Guy Pearce) is a 19th century professor who loves inventions and anything about progress and new machines. He's in love with Emma (Sienna Guillory) who had a small role but was actually the nicest thing of the movie.
He proposes to her, she accepts but they are robbed: he is ready to hand his wallet and clock and gloves, but when the robber asks the ring he put on Emma's finger, they fight and a shot is fired: Emma dies. For four years he can only think of one thing: change the past, save Emma. He builds a working time machine and goes back in time: he meets Emma on that same evening, before the 'accident', and takes her away from the robber, but she has a 'different' accident and dies anyway. Alexander understands he cannot save her, and now his new obsession is to understand why he can't change the past. He goes in the future: 2030 people are building on the moon to offer people trips, or houses there, I don't remember. He goes further and the moon is breaking up, due to human actions, and Earth is in chaos, although not the kind of chaos I imagined.
He goes much much further, more than the year 800.000, or something like that, where he finds a different world, where very little remains of the Earth that once was: a few 'rocks' with letters on it, signs that once were in the front of buildings or something like that. Since he was hurt the people called Eloi cured him, then he made friends with Mara (Samantha Mumba) the only one that can understand his language because she studied it on those 'rocks'... sigh. suuure, why not, after all it's not like the rest of the movie makes more sense...
He spends one day with her and the next they are all attacked by strange, ugly monsters that capture some of them, including Mara. Alexander wants to save her, but finds no help in the others who have no intention of fighting. He goes alone, finds out that the Morlock hunt the Eloi like sheep, to eat them. He speaks to their leader (Jeremy Irons) who explains that he has mind powers, to keep the 'hunters' under control, and also tells him that he could not change the past because he built the time machine because Emma died. Without that accident, there would be no time machine at all... then Alexander kills him to free Mara, but now the hunters would have nobody to keep them under control, they would kill them all, so Alexander starts his machine, preparing it to explode, and runs away with Mara. No surprise: they both escape safe and sound, but every single Morlock is killed, disintegrated: very convenient, isn't it?
He stays there, to live with them and with Mara. I don't like this ending, there is no reason why the explosion should destroy all the Morlocks everywhere (at least in this area, there is no indication of the world being inhabited in other places, or by whom. ), and only them! Basically it empties every gallery or mine underneath, but touches nothing on the surface, how kind.
That at the end he should look at a piece of land, with only grass on it, and say: this is where my house was, the kitchen was near those flowers, seems preposterous to me.
The idea that the Eloi would never, years after years, try to defend themselves made sense in the book but not here, if they are people who can tend to themselves, although rather primitive. In the book they could not, they needed the Morlocks as much as the Morlocks needed them, but here the Morlocks are depicted as monsters to kill with no remorse, and the Eloi are supposedly self-sufficient.
At least they appear to make their own houses, their own ships, and to be able to cure themselves...so yeah, a self-sufficient people.
Guy Pearce was not very treat either, this performance is light years away from Memento, or L.A.Confidential, he sort of had one expression always, only the make up changed: so neat when he proposed, so messy when he was grieving-creating the time machine, so wild when he was with the Eloi, fighting for their freedom.
I liked Phyllida Law as Mrs Watchit, but it was a very small role and unimportant character.
The concept that he could not change the past should have also prevented him from meeting her when he went back in time, because he DID change the past, in a way; what memories does he have now, of the robbery or of not having found her that night only to find out later that she had been killed away from the place of your date? It's impossible to change the past, full stop. It is because if something happened in the past, it already happened, it can not be 'yet to happen'. Okay, in a movie called the time machine, I must accept from the start that time travel is possible, and not complain about it, but I didn't at first, I did only when they started to reason about it in a stupid way. They should take a side and stick to it: to travel back in time must be either possible or not, just make a decision!

The big Lebowski - 1998

I watched it for the first time.. honestly I'm not sure why it's such a cult. It's about the Dude (Jeff Bridges) having the same name of millionaire Jeffrey Lebowski (David Huddleston) : the big Lebowski. Because of this, he's assaulted in his home by people mistaking them and demanding back the money Lebowski's young wife Bunny (Tara Reid) owns Treehorn (Ben Gazzara). They ruin his carpet, so he goes to Mr Lebowski to get a new one, but fails. He lies and has Brandt (Philip Seymour Hoffman) give him a new rug. Lebowski's daughter Maude (Julianne Moore) breaks into his house with two thugs to get it back, since it's hers. When Bunny disappears, the Dude is hired to make the exchange, to deliver the ransom money, but his friend Walter (John Goodman) gives them a fake case instead because he wants to steal the ransom money, then his car is stolen with the money inside. Eventually it's found, but no case inside.
Maude tells the dude that those people did not abduct Bunny, they are her friends, and also reveals that her father has no money, really. Her mother had it all, and left it to their family fundation, and Maude gives him money every month! So the Dude understands it all: Lebowski gave him no money, he took advantage of the situation to keep it all. Bunny comes back, she had simply gone on a trip, and knowing about it three men had tried to gain some money. When they attack the Dude and his friends, Walter defeats them (biting a ear off one, throwing a bowling ball on another..) but Donny (Steve Buscemi) has a heart attack and dies.
The Dude doesn't have a job, he drinks and smokes and plays bowling and that's it: it's not clear to me where he takes the money to live.
Walter is a war veteran who is crazy, he goes mad for any little thing. He draws a gun on the face of a man that was marking points Walter thought he didn't deserve at bowling game, for example.
He's out of his mind, always talking about the war, making trouble. I think he gives a really bad image to war veterans, in a way, because Walter is really crazy, okay, his actions are not justified. Now, that man I saw once on youtube stopping a police-people fight at some demonstration, that man was a good example. Walter is simply out of his mind.
Strangely enough, he causes no trouble, no fight every time that Jesus (John Turturro) makes a scene, saying he'll win the bowling championship. Maybe in this case he simply wants to deal with it beating him at the game. Walter takes bowling very seriously. He also fancies himself a serious Jewish, although he only became one when he got married to his now ex-wife. Even when they spread Donny's ashes, Walter talked only of the war.
It's a strange movie, where all the characters are kind of crazy. All of them. I don't see what is so precious about this Dude, he seems to be nothing special; he was, yes, a bit shaken for a moment when he thought Bunny could be in real danger because of what they did, and when he thought he himself was in serious danger, but it didn't last long. Not even Donny's death touched him much. His philosophy must be something like "oh well life goes on". We know for sure Walter's philosophy: "fuck it, let's go bowling". That appears to be the only thing that matters, at least to Walter. The Dude doesn't seem too involved in anything, actually. Still, I liked Bridges a lot, great, really great. The others too, it was a well done movie, all the actors were good. Buscemi had a very little role, he only said a few words from time to time, only to be silenced by Walter or the Dude's "shut up".
The dream sequences, honestly, were not my thing, I didn't like them, and it wasn't clear to me their meaning: he had passed out, it's not like he was on drugs hallucinating. This is not the movie I expected, given its big fame, but maybe it's mostly a cultural thing I can't understand, who knows.

Main street - 2010

I didn't like it much, I admit. It wasn't too bad for a while, but at the end it was very disappointing. It is the story of a little town that is slowly dying an all its young people want to go away, to the big cities. One day a stranger comes to town, Mr Leroy (Colin Firth) and he rents a warehouse from Willa's (Patricia Clarkson) aunt (Ellen Burstyn) and uses it to store dangerous wastes. The women are concerned about it, but he makes a good propaganda, saying the barrels are perfectly safe, that his company will help the town with money and work for its people, that it is such a good thing... right up to the point when the trucks carrying the barrels on a rainy night have an accident. Nothing bad happens, no deaths and the wastes are still safe, but all of a sudden he's all "if only one of them had been broken, it would have been a disaster. I'll resign from my work and tell the truth" ... seriously? Why, he didn't know it?? He seemed so sure before, actually making a good point when he said that the wastes exist and someone has to deal with it and so it's better if a serious company like his does it, then he changes his mind so abruptly, it didn't seem normal. He knew it was dangerous (they're called dangerous wastes for a reason) and yet he said it was best that a caring and responsible firm like his took care of it... what changed? He wants to turn his back on it, leaving uncaring and unresponsible people handle the matter??
In the movie there's also a girl that wanted to escape from that town, and after the accident apparently changes her mind, who knows why. Good for Harris (Orlando Bloom), the local policeman in love with her, sure, but why did she stay? For him or what? Maybe she liked to watch him doing his work.
Harris was the only good, normal character in this film.
As we witness Leroy's change of heart, the movie ends, just like that.  So, what's the moral? Nobody should work with dangerous wastes? Well, someone has to, until the world stops making so much of it! While I agree that the world should learn to live better, it was also true what he said about it before. Right now there are dangerous wastes, and someone has to deal with it, possibly someone who cares about safety measures and won't simply bury them underground or under the sea to save money.

One hour photo

One of the serious roles of Robin Williams, and I dare say I prefer him this way. He was really good here, it is a pity he had the same role over and over again because that role, for the world, was his identity, who he was. Maybe he was, in part, sure, but not 'just' that. I've often felt such sadness behind his eyes, but I've never heard anyone else saying this so maybe I was wrong.
Anyway, this is a peculiar story. The movie starts with him already in the interrogation room, and he starts talking to explain his actions. Sy Parrish (Williams) is a lonely man who develops photos for a living, and they have really become his life, he's proud of their quality. He has been working there for eleven years, and at least for nine years, maybe even the whole eleven, the Yorkin family has been his customers. He has seen this couple through all the important events, he has seen their son from birth to his recent ninth birthday. He has kept a copy of their photos for himself, he loves to look at them as if they were his family, he loves them as a 'perfect family'. He tries to talk to them any time he gets a chance.
He tells Will (Michael Vartan) how lucky he is; he goes to watch Jack's (Dylan Smith) soccer training. This is his life, and he loves his job because it keeps him in touch with the Yorkin family but also because he has a passion for photos: "if these pictures have anything important to say to future generations it's this: I was here. I existed. I was young, I was happy, and someone cared enough about me in this world to take my picture" which makes selfies a mere scream for attention, a "I'm here, look at me, look at me" yelled at the world, but everybody knows that.
Sy fantasizes to be a part of this family, but one day his existence is shattered when his boss Bill (Gary Cole) fires him. Bill says there's been a big number of photos not accounted for (of course, with all the pictures he made for himself, after years and years he finally noted..) and also that he has been causing problems, and taking too long lunch breaks... so he's fired, it's already done, nothing to talk about anymore. Wow, wasn't that too drastic? Maybe a chance to repay the pictures, a last warning... no, in a moment he's fired, and his face when he hears this!! What a scene.
For him this is huge, a tragedy, he cries alone in 'his' lab. This is the shock, the trigger, they talk about in Criminal Minds.. the event that changes everything, now he fears he'll never see the Yorkins again. Thinking over and over about them, he remembers where he saw a certain customer : Marya Burson (Erin Daniels): in a class picture behind Will and Nina (Connie Nielsen). He goes at night to have a good look at her pictures, which were probably made by Yoshi, who works-worked with him. He finds the unexpected: Will and her kissing, they have an affair! Sy puts those pictures together with Nina's other photos, and follows her home to see the reaction after she sees them. She stops the car because of the shock, looks at them, but she finally gets home and Sy watches the family have their dinner together as if nothing had happened, Nina doesn't talk about it with Will!
"What the hell is wrong with these people?" asks himself Sy, and decides to do something.
First, he takes to his old lab some pictures to develop, and Yoshi shows them to Bill: maybe Sy caught Bill doing something wrong? I thought, but no, it's worse, it's a whole bunch of pictures of Bill's little daughter playing in her garden. Bill is scared now, and calls the police. I don't understand this thing, Sy would never hurt the little girl, why did he take the pictures? Anyway, he calls the police.
Detectives James (Eriq La Salle) and Paul (Clark Gregg) comes to investigate, and take the thing seriously.. They break into Sy's apartment to find it empty, but there is still the wall of pictures of the Yorkins, and in each and every one of them Will's face has been scratched. They get worried and go talk to Nina, but she can't reach him at his office because Will is in a hotel room with Maria. Maybe Will's colleague finally told her, or maybe the police found them because now they have the other woman's name and the room is in her name, anyway they know where to go now. Sy is there too, he breaks into their room with a big knife, scaring them to death, and forces them to pose, naked as they are, for some pictures that Nina will not be able to ignore, this time, then he leaves. The police find them shocked but unharmed, and catches him who tries to explain "all I did was take pictures". They take Will home, and then we are shown the end of the interrogation, where Sy talks about good loving fathers, and how they should not force their kids to do terrible things... and voilà, the childhood drama is revealed. Honestly, I don't think this was necessary, not in 'this' movie, not with Sy. The character didn't need it. I see the reason for it, of course, but I think Sy's character already had all the reasons he needed, this was too much. All in all, he was a good character, he didn't hurt anybody (well, maybe a door in Maria's face to get their serious attention, but that's all), he simply could not stand that Will, a man who had everything Sy did not have, would betray their trust and hurt them like that (with the disgusting old excuse that he's never present because he has to work all the time to give her all the money she spends, but 1:are we sure she could not live with less money? I think she could, and 2:he doesn't seem to have to be working all that hard, spending the afternoon in bed with his lover, what about giving that time to his son who never sees him??
At the end of the interrogation, detective James leaves him alone to watch his precious pictures, and although I understand the meaning of them, (they were pictures of little unimportant things, such as could be a pen, a lamp, a switch, an angle, or whatever little thing people never take pictures of), someone should explain to me how the police got hold of them, and what happened to the pictures he took of Will and his lover..

I girasoli - 1970

Meaning "The sunflowers" . It's not a war movie, but it's a movie about the war. It's a good film, kind of bitter, but interesting; it's about Giovanna (Sofia Loren) who meets and falls in love with Antonio (Marcello Mastroianni) but he has to leave for the war. She thinks, if we get married, you'll have twelve more days at home, and who knows, war might be over... they get married, but twelve days pass so quickly, and they plan to have him locked up as a madman, to try and avoid the war, but when the scheme is found out he is forced to leave for Russia! She's left without news until the war ends, but nobody can tell her if he's dead of alive: he's missing. A man who knew him tells her he had to leave him: Antonio was dying of cold in the snow, but he knows nothing more. I don't recall that war being twenty years long, but all of a sudden she has grey hair: unwilling to let it go, she goes in search of him: she goes to Russia with the only picture she has of him, after promising his mother to find him and bring him back. She doesn't give up, ever, until finally some women recognize the picture! She arrives at a home to find out that Antonio lives there with the woman that saved his life and their pretty little daughter. She's in shock, but waits for him to come back from work: when he sees him, and she's sure it's him, she runs away, crying, and goes back home where she can tell his mother that he's alive but he won't be coming back. She cries and cries, then she tries to accepts it and live on. She starts going out with a man (and her hair is again dark now...) but Antonio now can't leave it at that. Finally he comes to Italy and calls her: they meet at her new apartment, and he tries to explain to her how terrible that experience was, and how he felt sort of at peace, finally, in that unknown house, but it's difficult for him to make her understand. She replies that once he was well again, and with all his memories back, he should have come back home, in Italy. He tells her he still loves her, that he wants her back, and sure enough she feels for him too, she even wears the earrings he bought for her wedding gift.
She's living with another man now, but that's not as important as the crying they hear at that point. Apparently he waited at least a whole year before coming to her, maybe even more. Time to find another man, to move to another city and find a job, get pregnant... She has a child now, so even if it hurts she tells him they can't ruin the children like that. She has a baby, he has a daughter, it's too late now for them. He goes back to Russia and she cries, for that love that had so little time before the war ruined everything.
Her hair must really depend on her emotions, because now they are grey again.
Well now, one thing is to leave the wife for the pretty blonde that saved you, but to write a few words to his old mother to tell her "I'm alive and well, don't worry about me" never crossed his mind? Just a few words, instead of leaving her too without the notion whether her son was dead or alive. That pain was cruel.
The reason for the title is the big field of sunflowers she sees in Ukraine, while searching for him, and they tell her that underneath them are the bodies of many people that died during that war: Italians, Russians, lots of people that died and were buried there, but she doesn't accept that he might be one of them and keeps looking.

Il giovane Montalbano - L'uomo che andava appresso ai funerali

Which means: Young Montalbano: The man who followed funerals. Another tv movie with protagonist young Salvo Montalbano (Michele Riondino) of the Sicilian police. I like these episodes enough, but I'm not fond of how he talks, sort of whispering, and I don't know if he speaks like that because he wrongly believes it makes more 'intense' or if his voice comes out that way in his attempts to have a Sicilian accents.
The plot has many pieces of different stories : the one that gives the title to the episode is the murder of a man, a poor man who had been attending every funeral in town for years now, and for that many people liked him; the rich wife of a man has disappeared; Livia comes to Sicilia to surprise Salvo, but he starts getting suspicious and worries she might have another man.
Fazio father makes a short appearance, which was nice. :-)
A sick man had lately been told he would have very little to live, and he hated the sight of the poor man because he imagined him attending his own funeral and could not stand the idea. He talked to him at first, then he killed him, so he would not be able to be there. When finally Montalbano went to him, the selfish and self-centered man confessed his hatred and his murder, then of course killed himself. This was the best solution for a movie: what could they do, arrest him? For what, to have him die in a cell while waiting for the trial? It's Italy, after all, it's not like he would have had a trial the next week...
The woman that had disappeared was finally found dead. She had been the one with the money, not the husband, so he had her killed to take it all.
Obviously it turns out that Livia was not cheating on him, but yes, she had been lying because she had been offered a good job and didn't know what to do: the job would force her to move to Canada, but at the end of the movie she declares she will not go, because she wants to stay here with him, and on the heat of the moment, while she's on the bus about to leave, he tells her they should get married and of course she says yes, only Salvo has no real intention of getting married, he likes his life as it is, he doesn't want a wife, so something will happen in the next episode for sure.
There's also an attempt on Salvo's life, or so everybody thought. He was in a car with his deputy Mimì Augello when a motorbike came next to it and start shooting them. It turns out that they really intended to kill Mimì, because he had been found out with a man's wife, and he had took it badly, of course.
It was a nice episode, but the best episodes were the first ones they made years ago. These are just nice, still nice enough to wait and watch the next episodes, of course. :-)

Transcendence - 2014

Not bad, I liked it enough, although it's nothing spectacular. It poses the usual themes of how far humans can morally go with artificial intelligence, and how scared humans are of everything they can't understand. Love is the other important theme.
The story:  a group of terrorists opposes the scientists and technology. One day they kill many people, and also shoot Will (Johnny Depp) with a radioactive bullet, so he will die in a month, for sure. His wife Evelyn (Rebecca Hall) can't accept it. Will stops all his work to spend the time he has left with her, but instead of bringing all the material to his colleague Joseph (Morgan Freeman) she starts studying it herself and comes up with the idea of "uploading" Will to a big computer of the newest generation, as they had done with a monkey. Will accepts, and it's a success, the computer starts talking to her in his voice, but their friend Max (Paul Bettany) doesn't believe that machine is "really" Will, so she sends him away. She has back the man she loves, and won't hear a word against it. "Will" needs more space and data so she connects him to the internet; then he needs more power and chooses a little town where they have a big complex built; many solar panels give it power, and underneath is situated the big big computer that is now Will. The terrorists have abducted Max and want to stop Will, but for two years they can do nothing, and Will goes forward with his experiments in nanotechnology on regeneration. She still loves him, and when Martin, a man working for them, is robbed and very badly beaten, they have him brought inside and Will cures him with nanotechnology. A video of this man healed and lifting impossibly heavy things goes viral on the net and other people come to be healed This is where Will goes too far, because these men are also connected to him and he can talk through them and control them if he wants to, and Evelyn can't stand this.
Obviously Joseph and the Fbi get in touch with the terrorist group via Max and together they abduct Martin to study a virus that will shut down all the internet, "killing" Will.
Tired of the situation, after talking to Max Evelyn accepts to help them and offers to carry the virus in her blood so when Will will upload her, he'll upload the virus too.
Believing it won't work, the army attacks and she's mortally wounded. Will can stop the attack, but he has less power now. Evelyn wants him to stop, not believing his words that he is saving them. Once connected she sees that he was regenerating the planet as she always dreamed of, and when the virus kills them, shutting everything down, Joseph and the others see that nobody was killed by Will. They feared him because they could not understand what he was doing, and because they thought he was building his own army, and they believed he was becoming too powerful and therefore a threat, although he had never done anything threatening to the world. He had worked to save the world, because that was Evelyn's dream.
Bettany was the best part of the film, I liked him a lot. It definitely was not Depp's best role, I guess they chose him because of his fame, but such a part as this did not need a great actor. The character that indeed needed a great actor was Evelyn, and I didn't like the choice of Rebecca Hall. Her Evelyn was too plain, she could not carry the weight of the whole movie on her shoulders. Evelyn is a character that is at the center of everything the whole time, it all goes around her.

Boyhood

The never-ending movie! I thought it would never end, it was so boring. I liked the idea, it was fun to see this kid actually grow up in front of my eyes, but there was so much, really too much useless chatting! The characters were not likable. They were at first, I enjoyed it for a while. The child Mason Jr is the only protagonist, and the others mean nothing. He lives with his older sister and his single mom. They live in Texas, and the father comes back from Alaska to see them after one and a half year, and it seems like everything is mom's fault, because she's difficult, according to him. She remarries to a professor with two kids just like hers, the four kids bond, it might be a nice family, but he drinks, more and more, he shouts more and more, and when he becomes violent she leaves him taking her kids away, unable to do anything for the other two. We'll never hear of them again. She finishes school and starts teaching. Easy. The sister goes to college, mom finds a new man, who this time is actually right when he scolds Mason, because he goes out at night, comes back when he wants not even bothering to call... he cares about nothing an nobody. Dad has now a wife and a baby. At sixteen Mason receive's from dad's family a bible and a new suit to go to church, and a rifle. Yep. It must be a cultural thing I guess.
New mom's partnere (or husband, it's not clear) gives him a photo camera and he'll be forever interested in photography. I have no idea what happens to the man because suddenly he's not there anymore. I guess it didn't work out. Mason graduates and goes to college. Mom is all: good, I'll find a small apartment just for me, to start my new life alone, then loses it when he's actually about to leave, seeing herself already dead, her life over... which is a bit exaggerated, since she's like 40 to 45 now (at 23 she was either pregnant or giving birth, to one o the two children) .Every time Mason spends time with his father, Senior goes on and on, chatting me to death, as if it was a bad copy of "Before Sunrise". With those mustaches he insists on telling me that he hate Bush and McCain and support Obama, which is not what I expected from such fans of weapons, so you see, you can never know. Mason loved Harry Potter but didn't read Twilight, and things like that.
So many words that actually say nothing, so many bad words, so many words in general, but not from Mason. Only a couple of times he chats so much saying nothing that at the end that girl leaves him.
Finally, he goes to college, looking with hope at his future ( I say) and the movie ends. Thank you! Booooring. I expected much better. I was damn glad to switch off the tv! No, I didn't like it like this. The idea was good, but it came out pointless. It was one hour too long, full of useless things, and lacking any sign that this kid had a soul or was interested in something. It was so long at some point I simply wanted to get it over with. Now I've seen it, ok, that's done. I'll never ever watch it again in my entire life, be sure of that!

Invictus

I like this movie and I love the story, to think that it is true, it's amazing. It's incredible to think that a man really was so great, I mean that it is easy to talk about ideals when you don't have the power, saying that you want it to help the Country, but it's incredible that a man really did that after gaining the power!
Morgan Freeman is the perfect choice to play Nelson Mandela, he's great. Matt Damon plays the captain of the rugby team of SouthAfrica, and I know he was praised for his accent, or something like that, but I can't judge about that because I have no idea how a real SouthAfrican accent should be.
The president calls him to talk, "I think he wants us to win the world cup", and he follows every game with hope. He really counts on this world cup because millions of people will be watching and because it'll help to bring the Country together, all supporting the same team. The title is apparently taken from a poem Mandela repeated to himself in prison: his invincible soul..
The only thing that doesn't convince me are the sport scenes. Obviously there are a lot of those, and that would be ok for me, I like rugby, but they are not done very well. I can't believe I'm saying such a thing of a Eastwood movie, but honestly that didn't feel like a real rugby game, every scene was so forced, so fake.

Gone girl - 2014

I liked it a lot for a while, then it became so predictable and obvious and maybe just a little annoying too. The beginning was very interesting, with this woman Amy Dunne (Rosamund Pike) diasppeared and her husband Nick (Ben Affleck) at the center of everything; I mean, working with the police, the media, the people to try to find her, and yet he looked like he couldn't care less! First scene had been him talking to his sister telling her how badly things were going between him and Amy lately, and yet he tells nothing of it to the police and he's not surprised whey they find the first clue of the treasure-hunt she used to do every year for him. I was, why wasn't he? Things were so bad, she was so cold and distant, and yet she prepares sexy messages for their treasure-hunt, its price his anniversary gift??
It doesn't make a lot of sense, just like his attitude: I can understand he doesn't love her anymore, but he looks like he doesn't give a damn that she might have been killed. No emotions at all.
Then we hear her narrating voice tell their story of how they fell in love, got married, going on and on telling how he changed and became violent, so that she feared for her own life. She tells us of how she tried to save the marriage having a child, but he strongly opposed the idea. We then see Nick with his sister, talking of how he wanted a child, all the opposite of her version. From that moment everything became boring, when it wasn't even annoying. I knew only one of them was telling the truth, so: if she's sincere, then he's killed her and that's that, incredibly boring final with the husband suspected from the start turning up to be the murderer, really Non exciting. If HE is telling the truth, it means she's writing those things in her diary to use it against him, then why it hasn't turned up? But I didn't have to wait long and there it is! At that point, all clear: she used his credit card and disappeared to frame him. It was so obvious that they didn't even try to deny it, and soon showed Amy going away with lots of cash, changing her look and identity, until a girl and a guy discovered she had money and robbed her. At that point she could only do one thing: she called Desi (Neil Patrick Harris) the rich man in love with her since the time when they attended the same university. He took her to one of his houses, full of cameras, believing her story of how she had been mistreated and how scared she was and he was happy to have her there and said "this time I won't let you go and leave me" and for a moment I had a little hope and I thought: what if now things turn around and he keeps her prisoner? But no, she simply did it all over again, preparing it all, her usual farse, hurting herself to say he raped her; I knew she wanted to go back to Nick after hearing him saying he loevd her on tv. Not only that, Amy cut Deni's throat, killing him. Obviously she wanted a scapegoat, to justify all that time she had been gone without a word: he had kept her prisoner.
She went back home and demanded to live together an look happy to the cameras, and when she tells him she's pregnant he decides to stay with her! :-/ that's how it ends. Yep.
What nobody explained to me is why he was so hostile at the beginning, why he hated her, before all that happened. He had been having an affair for at least 15 months, it all seemed against him, and it was like he didn't care or he didn't even consider it. The Fbi never doubted her version, they didn't even look if during all that time Desi had even been to that house, or if the day she said he abducted her he was anywhere near her, nothing. They don't ask how she managed to get hold of the weapon that she used to cut his throat open, they don't question if it is normal for a terrified desperate young woman who is being raped to aim for the throat, instead of the easier, nearer stomach. They don't even bother, they're happy to say -of really, that's how it went? good, case closed, thanks -
Maybe it's because all the media were on her side, because it made a good story? So what, the moral of this film is that all that matters is what people think and what the media like? Well, I don't like it.

Gran Torino

This movie is great, really great. So so sad, I felt sick for Su and from that moment it was tears after tears. Walt's ending was right, indeed a right ending, even if it brought more tears. Gran Torino is his car, a 1972 Ford that Walt did when he worked there. Walt is a sad character, the movie starts with the funeral of his beloved wife, then we see how he can't interact with his family. They don't understand each other, and specially the granddaughter is not a nice one, who only thinks of what she'd like to take of his as if he was already dead, she even used the cell phone in the church, as if she found her grandma's funeral too boring.
He's not in good health, he coughs blood. He's definitely not a politically correct man, but deep down he's a good one, a much better one than all those hypocrites who are very much 'politically correct' on the outside, but really despise everyone.
He doesn't like all kinds of foreigners, but when gang members start bullying his not-exactly-Chinese-but-can't-remember-what-exactly neighbors he steps forward to send them away. Of course it's not a simple thing to do.
Anyway, his young neighbor Thao was sent by the gang to steal his Gran Torino but he stops him. To make amends, Thao's mother forces him to work for Walt. Walt doesn't want him around at first, but then he 'uses' Thao to work on all the houses of the neighborhood, to repair and clean. He teaches Thao a job, and take an interest in the boy, arriving to lend him his precious car to take a girl on a date. He likes Thao's sister Su, and she likes him, telling him he's a good man, and worrying when she sees him cough blood. Unfortunately the gang won't leave Thao alone, so Walt beats one of them, telling him to stay away. As a result, they shoot at Thao's house, and violently rape poor Su. That was a terrible thing, so horrible, I felt so badly, and so sick, and so tired of these pathetic men in the world feeling big because they can take on a girl.
I can never remember that scene that I feel awful again and all crying.
Walt protects Thao from his want for revenge, locking him in the house. He gives his dog to them and goes alone to the gang's house. He speaks to them, and everyone in the nearby houses watches the scene. He was like a hero now, for helping Thao and taking the gang away, and they all see him when the whole gang shoots him dead. He didn't even have a gun, he was reaching for his lighter. Now people will finally testify and they'll all go to prison for murder, finally. In his will, he leaves his Gran Torino to Thao, not to his granddaughter. Good. Thao earned it, and the car created a bond between them it helped.
It was really sad indeed,  but still a great movie, done so well. Needless to say, it worked so well with Clint Eastwood protagonist, because the character was so perfect for him, and also because I think everyone, first time they watched, gave a thought about Walt going all Callaghan on them, so when it is clear that he went there to get killed in front of all those people that had not come forward to testify against them after Su's violence, it gets you so powerfully it knocks you down.

The wedding planner - 2001

A nice, funny comedy for the first half, but very stupid the second half.
At the beginning it's nice to know Mary Fiore (Jennifer Lopez), a successful wedding planner, very very good in what she does but alone, at home. One day she has a little accident and is saved by Steve Edison (Matthew McConaughey) . They go out one night, dance together and have a lovely evening. For three days she keeps smiling like an idiot, a sure universal sign that she's found someone she likes, until she learns that Steve is the groom of the wedding she's about to plan. What a coincidence!
I so didn't like his face when she found out. She looked surprised and shocked, he looked like he was having fun at her expenses, but it makes no sense.
They go on with the wedding plan and the bride Fran Donolly (Bridgette Wilson-Sampras) even leaves them alone for a week! They therefore spend a lot of time together to plan everything, during which time they break a statue with no consequences, apparently, then they meet her ex-fiancée now married to the woman he was caught making love to shortly before his wedding with Mary, so Mary gets drunk and Steve takes her home and they feel it again, that feeling they felt that night, but things have changed, he's about to get married and Mary knows Fran, which is a problem because Fran is actually a nice girl, really a lovely person despite her being so rich, so nothing happens .
It was a nice film up to this point, then it went down. Mary accepts to marry Massimo, even if she knows she doesn't love him. A few minutes before the ceremony Steve makes a stupid speech to Fran, something like 'why do you want to marry me? Do you really want to? Because we're not the same people we were when we were at school together, we've changed, but if you say you want it I'll come and marry you' which is such a load of crap, it's unbelievable. The 'asking her' hoping to be dumped so he can go looking for Mary with a clear conscience; the 'we've changed'  as if this meant anything: everyone changes after twenty years, that's normal, but it doesn't necessarily mean they stop loving who they loved before, I've even heard of people being together for forty years and more!
The worst of all: the 'if you want it I'll marry you' which sounds to me like a subtle trick, he hopes she doesn't want to, but what about if she says yes? You'll marry her even if you love another woman? Is this what you're saying? Or maybe at that point you'll go back on your word saying 'actually, you know what? I don't want to, sorry' ??
I know they needed a way to make Fran leave him because she was a nice girl and we didn't want to break her heart, but this way is stupid.
When Mary's wedding is called off, already at the altar, she goes away alone while Massimo and her father stay there for no reason other then be there when Steve comes to tell her he's not married, so Steve finds them there and Massimo told him 'we didn't get married because I'm not the right one, you're the right one, and I would hate to be an obstacle between Mary and her true love' or something like that. I mean, come on! Seriously? He's dumped at the altar then he goes to his 'rival' saying 'she loves you, not me' then he even takes him to her on his vespa? Who would do that?  (No doubt they've seen Roman Holidays too and know that every Italian in the world has a vespa... sigh).
Finally when Steve finds her he obviously has already on his face the smile of the winner, knowing that she loves him, and when Mary sees him she talks about candy instead of asking right away : what are you doing here on your wedding night? as if this wasn't the first question to ask. She gets there eventually, quietly, undirectly, asking where is Fran. No, I didn't like this ending.
The two of them ending up together was rather obvious, of course, but it's the way they do it that I don't like.
I didn't like how he behaved all along. He went out with her while he was about to marry another woman, then he didn't have the nerve to clear the situation, but managed to be dumped by her, because all along he was sure that Mary was in love with him and he wasn't risking anything.
Not at all all that romantic, in my opinion. Nope.

Sex and the city 2 - 2010

I'll add the plot and the names at the end, first let me say some things. I haven't seen the first one yet, still I enjoyed the series enough. There were up and downs but it was generally funny and nice, and I liked their friendship and the Manhattan life and how they were changing through the series, in a way 'growing up', so much that at the end of the series even Samantha was starting to feel her old life a bit ... you know, like, old , and was starting to consider relationships, and I know I haven't seen a whole bit of story missing the first movie, but in this one here Samantha is worse than ever. I guess they thought the audience wants her like this otherwise they don't like her... which I hope is not true because that would be so sad. Of course they're not going to make any more movies, or one day they'll have Samantha jump on every man in the hospice. I so did not like her big scenes in Abu Dhabi, I thought they were disrespectful and rude and gross, and to think that I remember when she used to say that with her it was 'class all the way'. Real class indeed :-/
Mind you, I liked Samantha in the series, but she was supposed to grow up like the others. Anyway she's not the only one I have to say something about: what about Carrie? She finally got the man she wanted, he's all happy to live with her but she's always complaining. They used to go out more, yes, but there was a time when they were younger and single, then people move on, which does not mean simply make do with what you have because you can't have what you had, not at all. What she has now it's no way less then what she had, it's just different. In the series she went out to have fun with her friends and to meet men at the same time, now she keeps saying she wants to stay with him and do things with him, and yet she only wants to do what she always used to when she was alone. So selfish, and a bit stupid too: she made such a big deal out of him buying a television, as if that meant doom for the relationship, and she could take a few days at her old apartment alone, without consulting him before; not that she needed to, but then when he says they could make that a regular thing, to take a couple of days alone, each of them, she panics! He wants time alone without me, sigh sigh! What a face, that's exactly what she did herself, but he can't. He was only trying to please her, in a way, but the poor man could not understand what she wanted. And then, when she calls him to tell him she kissed her old boyfriend, he says nothing and when she comes back home he gives her a ring... this is not a comedy, this is science-fiction, Mr Big is more fictional than spider man.
Can I start about Charlotte, now? She never noticed that her nanny is a beautiful girl who likes to go around with her breast naked, as if that was a normal thing, which is not. She's so burned that she's not worried that her husband might cheat on her, but that she might lose the nanny! She can't deal with her little baby always crying or her little girl wanting some of her time, which might of course be very much understandable with real women who have lots to do , always, every day, but in her case what do I see? She doesn't seem to have a job, and if she has it it must not take much of her time anyway. What I saw was Charlotte in her perfect house making cupcakes for some event concerning the children (I think) and she did it while chatting on the phone and thus ignoring her girl's questions, and then she yelled at her when the poor little thing ruined her skirt. Well now, if you're so dumb to be cooking with two children while wearing vintage fashion - white!!! - then you have no right to be yelling at her. You are the one who is stupid and wrong.
This whole movie also portrayed people who like money even more than fashion. Everything was shamely rich. Disgustingly rich.
The whole plot is around the four friends going on  a trip to Abu Dhabi because Samantha might have a new business contract there, but as soon as they arrive they go crazy! Samantha has no respect at all for where she is, thinking every place should adapt to her american way, never the other way around. Carrie meet Aidan again, and she goes out of her mind too. Of course it would end with him kissing her, of course, but she went anyway to meet him. She's the one that was confused, but instead of admitting it she threw all the blame on Big wanting some time alone, then after the kiss she went crazy again: I don't want secrets, I can't keep this inside me, I must tell him right away! Sure, on the phone from far far away, so now she feels lighter and he feels like shit. What a good girl..
I really can't understand why Aidan is so crazy about her, now. He has his own family, and I didn't remember him like the kind of guy who would do something like that.
Then there was Miranda... and here I finally have nothing against her. She had his usual job, but with added trouble because her new boss could not deal with intelligent powerful women, like many pathetic people, so at the end she finally leaves that job to start a new one where she's more appreciated, has more time for her family and is less stressed. Good for her.



Carrie- Sarah Jessica Parker
Charlotte-Kristin Davis
Miranda-Cynthia Nixon
Samantha-Kim Cattral
Mr Big- Chris Noth
Steve-David Eigenberg