Penelope - 2006

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

Dreamer - 2005

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

Gamsijadeul - 2013

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

To Gillian on her 37th birthday - 1996

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

In Italy: A Gillian per il suo compleanno

Du hastes versprochen - 2012

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

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

Hooligans - 2005

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

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer - 2007

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

The sixth sense - 1999

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Burn after reading - 2008

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

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

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

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

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

Thor the dark world - 2013

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sleepers - 1996

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

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

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

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