Cards on the table by Agatha Christie

I was a bit disappointed by the ending. I was really enjoying reading this, it was about to become my favourite one, but then the ending, the last ten pages more or less, is nothing but a bad trick, a dishonesty that's not her usual way. Agatha always tricks her readers of course, but in an honest way, like a magician. Not this time, in my opinion. Even when the murderer turned out to be the narrator, it still was more honest than here. I was disappointed, very much, because it was a great book, and at some point we have Poirot saying (Spoiler warning if anybody cares) that he knows everything, he knows what happened; he also says that Miss Anne killed Shaitana, he clearly says that, but a few pages later he accuses someone else! I explain. The plot: Shaitana is a bizarre man. He says to Poirot that he collects murderers, but of the best kind, only those that got away with it without any suspicion. He invites Poirot to dinner along with Superintendent Battle (absolutely my favourite policeman, finally someone who's not a complete idiot), Mrs Oliver and Colonel Race, four people on the 'investigation' side. Shaitana has other four guests: Miss Anne Meredith, Doctor Roberts, Major Despard and Mrs Lorrimer, and these four were the only ones in the same room (playing bridge) as Shaitana when he was murdered. We now have four detectives and four suspects who must be the 'murderers that got away with it' Shaitana talked about. Upon investigation it is found out that : Anne Meredith is a thief, and once killed the woman she was working for because the old lady had found her out and threatened to call the police on her; a patient of Dr Roberts kept calling him, probably just to be with him, until her husband lost it and threatened to expose him. Said husband later died of an infection, after Roberts infected his razor blade, while the woman died in Egypt, again infected by Roberts who should have given her a vaccine; Major Despard shot a man whose widow tells Poirot he did it because they loved each other and her husband was jealous and attacked Despard and he had to defend himself, but Despard gives another explanation although with the same result: he did shoot the man, but did not intend to, and would not have if the crazy woman had not caused the accident.
Nothing is found out about Mrs Lorrimer, which is curious because later she tells Poirot that she killed her husband! I mean, Battle knew she was a widow, everybody knew, so how come nobody looked any further into that?
Anyway, at some point cold Mrs Lorrimer confesses to Poirot that she herself killed Shaitana. Poirot can't accept it because it's against his perfect solution and he's never wrong, and moreover the way she says she did it is totally against her character, and Poirot says that nobody can do something contrary to their character: she would have planned it well, before killing him, so she did not rise to the occasion, catch a knife found on a table and stab the man while the other were playing cards.
"You did not kill Shaitana. I see that now. I see everything. Harley Street. And little Anne Meredith standing forlorn on the pavement. I see, too, another girl a very long time ago, a girl who has gone through life always alone, terribly alone" I liked this bit. This book is all about psychology, just as Poirot likes it. At this point Mrs Lorrimer admits she confessed to protect Anne, because the old woman is ill and has not a lot to live while Anne is so young. Mrs Lorrimer says she saw Anne kill Shaitana, and Poirot tells her Anne killed once befofre, that she's dangerous. At this point, right here, the confusion starts. After Mrs Lorrimer suspect suicide, Poirot learns that Despard is going to Anne's and he urges Battle to run to Anne's house because he's afraid something terrible might happen, and he's right, because believing that her friend Rhoda is the only one knowing about her past she tries to kill her (also because both like Despard). Despard is there, and he sees the two girls falling in the lake, neither of them able to swim. Despard goes to save them, and Poirot the old romantic is all interested in who will Despard save first, Anne or Rhoda? He saves Rhoda, but I wonder, it's because he already liked her best or is it because he saw Anne's move? Poirot and Battle saw it and Despard was nearer...
Anyway, he and Battle try to save Anne too, but she dies. Battle tells Rhoda that Anne has killed three times before (the old woman, Shaitana and Mrs Lorrimer), and Poirot doesn't contradict him, not even with a glance. One is lead to believe that Anne did it, of course, since Poirot said it before too. But the last few pages Poirot explains all his reasoning and he accuses Dr Roberts! I mean, this solution agrees with Poirot's psychological investigation. He only asked the four suspects if they can remember the cards they played or if they remember what the room looked like, in details, and Roberts is the only one that not only didn't remember the cards at all, but was able to remember the room very well, and there's also his character and the way he played  the games, all accuses him, yes, but they did say, with clear words, that Anne did it, that's what annoys me. The only thing, actually, because until the end it was my favourite book, but I feel tricked because Poirot too said Anne did it, and never said a word against it. So, Roberts killed both Shaitana and Mrs Lorrimer.
Curiosity: Mrs Oliver is introduced as the famous writer who wrote 'The body in the library' :-) ; Anne knows Poirot for having solved the famous ABC murder case, and Poirot shows Rhoda (in order to leave Anne alone and give her time and opportunity to steal something) a knife given to him by the Compagnie Internationale des Wagon Lits, a knife used once by twelve people to stab a man... so Agatha gave here the solution to the Murder on the Orient-Express :-)

ITA Carte in tavola

The mousetrap by Agatha Christie

It's not a novel, because it's written for the theatre, so there's no narration, just characters talking. I liked it. I read it still has a great success in Britain, and that doesn't surprise me much, if well played I'd like to watch it too. The characters are very alive, but also deep. It's all set in a house that Mollie and her husband Giles have transformed into a hotel. They receive a few guests here: Christopher Wren, very young and lively, always chatting like a child; Mrs Boyle, an insufferable woman no one likes because she was already criticizing everything before settling in: the house, the service, the guests, Mollie and Giles, she has something to say against anyone; Miss Casewell, a mysterious girl who's lived abroad a long time; Major Metcalf, a nice quiet man, and Mr Paravicini, a man whose car broke and therefore he took a room. The weather is awful, they barely manage to arrive, it's snowing so much the roads are now closed. There's been a murder in the city, and they now receive the visit of a policeman saying that a note lead them to believe the next victims are here in the house. This sergeant Trotter speaks of an old case, when three children were taken away from their alcoholic mother and given to a couple that turned out to be awful people. They treated the children very badly, and one of them died. It turns out Mrs Boyle was the judge that gave the children to the Stanning couple, and she's the first one to die. In a way I think this is good for the success of the play, that the one to die is the one nobody likes.
Everything becomes very real now for the house guests. Trotter warns them there might be a third victim, because of a nursery rhyme talking of three little blind mouses. Meanwhile, Giles is very jealous of Wren and Mollie, even more so when she defends him. We discover she was the young teacher at the kids' school, and the poor dead boy had written a letter to her asking for help, but she was ill and didn't receive it, and couldn't help him. I think this is why, somehow, she now wanted to help young Wren. Trotter turns out to be the murderer, the brother that survived, but when he tries to kill Mollie he's stopped by his sister Miss Casewell and Metcalf, the real policeman coming to investigate incognito. The play ends leaving the audience smiling, probably even laughing, because last line and action is Molly running back to the kitchen where her lunch is burning. This is another point in favor of this play: to leave the spectators with a smile. I mean, obviously, that's how plays work.

ITA trappola per topi

This sweet sickness by Patricia Highsmith

I liked it, a lot. I had to go to work, but still finished it in two days, because it was captivating, how it was written. It's more a psychological drama than a crime novel, and the protagonist is more delusional than evil. Page after page we follow his thoughts. David Kelsey had met a girl, Annabelle, and was sure of their love. He went away a month to get a good job, so to have money to marry her, but in that month she met Gerald and married Him. David kept writing letters to her, sure that she made a mistake, didn't love Gerald, and soon enough the 'situation' would be cleared and they would get married. In the meantime he kept his job from Monday to Friday, but spent away all the weekends. He had told everybody he had a sick mother in a hospice, when actually she had been dead since he was fourteen. For two years he spent all his weekends in a house under another name, William Neumester, living a fantasy life, imagining Annabelle with him, talking to her and buying things he thought she might like. He knew she was not really there, but liked that life; he imagined it would be like that once they finally married.
Sometimes Annabelle would reply to his letters saying things like 'yes I miss you too but I'm married and Gerald doesn't like you writing me' and 'I've got a lot to do here so I can't meet you, sorry', and David blamed it all on Gerald. Once he went to their house and spoke to both of them, until one day Gerald went to his secret house, they had a fight, David hit him and Gerald died. Fact is, David had a friend at work, Wes, and also knew a girl, Effie, who had fallen in love with David. A weekend they followed him to that house, so when Gerald went to David's house asking for him, Effie told him where David could be found.
After Gerald died, David went to the police with the body saying it had been an accident, and he did not know the man (as Neumester he didn't). Effie learned all about his secret: his mother being dead, his secret identity as Neumester, but told nothing to the police because she loved him. David sold that house and bought another one, but Annabelle would not go visit it. She had cried her husband's death, and was now going out with the son of a neighbor woman. David went there making a scene and she told him she intended to marry Grant Barber, and soon she did. David kept thinking it another of her 'mistakes', but would get angry anytime someone talked to him about his private life, not understanding the situation. Obviously.
Wes and Effie went to visit him one day, and that night they fought because of it. David's private life and romance was all his fantasy, so of course nobody else could understand it. Wes went out to calm down, and David went to his room: seeing a woman resting on the bed he imagined her to be Annabelle. Realizing it was Effie he was angry and disgusted and threw her out of it, before running away. Coming back, Wes found her dead and called the police. Now David was wanted, and soon the whole situation was discovered and made public. Annabelle said she had always been afraid of him, and David knew it was over. His mind lost it even more. He ran away imagining Annabelle was with him. He spent all he had in his pockets then went to an old school friend to borrow some more, but the friend called the police. David had no escape now, so he finally threw himself down to his death.
It was the only possible ending, I knew it, but it was very well written and interesting, and kept me gripped to the story.
He was very dangerous without knowing it. He actually never intended to kill anyone, but his mind was not right, and lived in a fantasy world. Annabelle never told him 'I don't want you, I love my husband' maybe because she was afraid of what he might do if she left him no hope. He never doubted for a second that she loved him, he kept his delusion alive in any way he could, he was happy in his fantasy world. Maybe nothing bad would have ever happened if Effie and Wes had not spied on him out of curiosity (read respectively jealousy and alcohol). Effie probably did it to find out if he had a woman. Maybe he would have gone on with his fantasy life forever, had they never known of that house, his secret hideaway, or maybe it would have happened anyway, sooner or later, maybe he would have tried to have Annabelle divorce Gerald and go away with him, and had she told him she did not want to he might have lost it definitely, who knows it. He never, not once, thought of being delusional, he was sure of Annabelle's love, so he never asked for help to get his mind back on the right track. He thought to be in the right (as people always do), and got angry when people could not understand the Situation.

Finding Vivian Maier - Documentary 2013

I had never before heard of her; this documentary was interesting. A mysterious woman who nobody really knew took thousands and thousands of pictures without showing them to anybody. She worked as a nanny or as a cleaning lady, living in the house of the people she worked for, and yet so jealous of her privacy that her room had big locks and people didn't even know where she was from. It seems like she worked as a nanny because that way she could take the children out every day and spend her time in the open where she could take her pictures. They were really beautiful pictures, they had something about them, I really really liked them. Honestly, I didn't particularly like the portrait of this woman who didn't seem to me to love the children in her care or the people she worked with. She was a strange woman with problems, who distrusted men and hated to be touched. I wonder what happened of her father, it's strange how little all these people knew about her, and it's also strange that she had no relations with her relatives. I mean, it's not unheard of, but still, none at all, with nobody?
I seem to remember that this John Maloof or something , doing the documentary found a cousin of Vivian  in a French village, but the man was strange too, he only listened with a sort of uninvolved expression, but said nothing about her.
Anyway, it's a remarkable story, all those pictures in black and white and then in colors, so many, seem to document our world in those years better than many videos. To say the truth, I'm neither an expert on photography or a passionate fan, but when I saw a few of her pictures they got to me, they seemed so real, so alive, so incredibly alive. Simple pictures, mind you. People she saw around her, men and women, black and white, young and old, going on with their lives or their business, and yet those pictures had a soul.

Populaire - 2012

It's a French film, very nice. I liked it all, but the ending. A man is very determined to make young Rose (who left her father's home to be modern and feminist and get a job to maintain herself) the best typist of France. Rose Pamphyle (Déborah François) accepts mostly because she likes Louis (Romain Duris). A character I like a lot is Marie (Bérénice Bejo), Louis' ex girlfriend, now married to Bob, who likes both him and Rose :-) She loved Louis, but he went to war without a promise, and Bob offered her a life together, and she made her choice and sticks to it; Bob loves her, they have two children and she's happy now, feeling loved. Louis has Rose exercise every day, a lot. He has Marie giving her piano lessons, and she wins the competition in her part of France, then she also beats the French champion, and at this point Louis leaves her. He says he only wanted her to win, and slept with her because that was what she needed, and that without the competition nothing would have happened between them. He speaks so because he thinks he can't help her anymore, and believes she's good enough to win the world competition and beat the US champion. Rose goes on alone, appearing on tv and papers, magazine covers and signing autographs. When the world competition starts, she gets to the final stage: the finalists are of course France and USA. She wins a round, the American girl wins the second one. At this point Rose walks backstage. Louis has arrived to make peace and tell her he loves her. Love wins, of course, but the competition's not over, and what does she do? She takes the old typewriter her father sent to her, because it is a sentimental move, and she always said she didn't like the new one with the keys so close. She uses the old one and wins, which is absurd because after you've spent months training with a 'small' keyboard you can't be that fast with a 'big' one without even a minute to get again used to it, but it's not enough. The keys stuck together as it often happened with those typewriters, so imagine: the American girl goes on while Rose has to separate each key before she can type again, and yet she wins, which is stupid because those seconds lost should have made her lose. The two girls were close to each other, both really fast, so the tiniest problem should have cost her the title. So, stupid ending, but otherwise very nice film.


In Italy: Tutti pazzi per Rose

The brass teapot - 2013

It ended well. I wasn't at all sure, I feared much darker depths of darkness. It was dark, in a way, painful here and there, but I'm glad I saw it. I'm not sure I want to see it again, though. Maybe in some time. I mean it when I say it was rather painful.  The story: John (Michael Angarano) works in a call center until he's fired. His wife Alice (Juno Temple) doesn't have a job because she wants to find one suitable for her career ambitions. I knew I was about to see what kind of characters they were when I saw Arnie coming to collect the rent. He told Alice that in school she was voted 'the most likely to succeed' or something like that, but then John happened to her. John comes on his bike, she asks him to tell her he got a big promotion and wants to take her out to dinner to celebrate. He replies he found a bonus ticket and brought her sandwiches to eat. I felt this moment was important, right when it was happening. Is she going to resent him for their life? What will she say? I'm glad to say that she laughed and kissed him, and I was relieved, but the real movie is yet to start. They are completely broke, and none of them has a job. One day they have an accident, and Alice sees an old woman holding a brass teapot. She feels drawn to this teapot, somehow, so she enters the Antique-shop and steals it. She soon learns the teapot's secret. It's magical. Alice accidentally burns herself while ironing her hair and in the teapot appears: money! Real money! She hurts herself again, on purpose, and puff: money again. She can't believe it, this will solve all their money problems, she thinks. She has John touch the teapot too, so now it works for him too. They start hurting themselves to gain 'easy' money. John is worried but Alice wants to finally have money, to change her life. They can buy a big house, now. A car, jewels, whatever they want. Problems start when two men come and steal their cash money, claiming the teapot was their grandma's, she stole it from Hitler. This doesn't stop Alice's greed. She wants more money. When the teapot starts giving out five dollars notes instead of one hundred dollars ones, they learn that it gives money whenever they are near someone who is in pain, so they take it to a fight match, near a woman giving birth, stuff like that. When they're out of ideas, she nearly runs a man over with her car, but John turns the wheel in time to prevent it. She tells him something hurtful in her anger, and learns that it also works with emotional pain. She insists so they start revealing each other's painful secrets to hurt themselves. This could destroy a couple, but they love each other, and she tells him one day that she's never been this honest with anyone else in her life. Out of secrets, they start revealing other people's secrets to hurt them. One day they go to her sister's house. Her secret is that her oldest son is not her husband's. He thinks he is, but he's not. This could ruin an entire family, they have other children now and she's pregnant again, but luckily at the last moment Alice can't do it. Instead she says she envies their happy family. I was glad, that would have been a terrible thing to do now. I mean, the woman should not have lied about it, the man had a right to know, but not now, not like this, it would have caused so much pain. Still, back home Alice is angry with herself for not going through with it. John is glad, but she doesn't have enough. She proposes one last big thing: to kill a pedophile. They even start digging a hole to bury him in, but John has had enough of it all, he tries to stop her, to make her reason, but she won't.
At the question: what would she choose between him and the teapot she goes on digging, so he goes away. He goes to professor Ling for help. His family has been looking for it for generations, he wants to hide it where nobody can ever find it. John asks for his help, but Ling says that they have to give it up voluntarily, together. John thinks of what he can do to save Alice from it. He goes back home, takes the teapot and waits for her by the window. Understanding her words are empty, she's not really ready to give it up, he throws himself out of the window. She screams in pain and runs to him. Not to the teapot, but to him, crying and calling for him. He's not dead, and now she truly promises to give it up, but that night Arnie sneaks in and steals it. She's relieved they're now free of it, but John realizes 'they gave the ring back to Sauron', metaphorically speaking :-D so they go to get it back. Arnie has already learned its secret, the roulotte-house is full of money and blood. Arnie and his wife have fireweapons, but luckily for our protagonists the two men come again for their grandma's teapot. Alice and John hide while the four of them kill themselves. They're all dead, now. Alice realizes that it could have been them, so Alice and John take the teapot and voluntarily give it to professor Ling, who will then throw it in the ocean. Good.
Alice wants to give up the big house and everything they bought because they were actually happier in the simpler life they had before. They give the money to a friend that needs it and go away together. Their story ends with the two of them on the road, with presumably no money (unless they kept some, I'm not sure how much they had), lots of love and a baby on the way :-) Wow, it was a close call but they came out of it whole and good. Great.
What a terrible thing that object, most people on this world would lose their mind with such a thing. Very, very few people could keep their mind straight and be the same person they thought there were before having it.

In Italy: Botte di fortuna  -  I don't like this title at all.

The new daughter - 2009

Bah, I don't know. It's a sort of horror movie, but not a stomach revolting one, which is fine by me, I don't like throwing up movies, but not a really scary one either. It starts slow, with Dad (Kevin Costner) recently divorced, moving into the new home with his daughter Louise and his little son Sam. It seems to become interesting when they find a mould in the field that attracts Louise in a strange way, but it wasn't really. I should have known as soon as he found the cat dead, eaten, outside. Something mysterious connects the mould to the teenage girl, she keeps going there and starts acting weird, digging holes, sleepwalking, that kind of stuff. Next thing you know you hear strange noises and the nanny is killed, then the teacher replacing her; a cop investigating the matter is taken out of his car by some strange creature we barely see. A professor investigating moulds say of a strange, dying race that used a human girl to survive. Being a male race, they needed a queen-bee. They tried this before, and a man set fire to his own house to burn his daughter, saying she was not his daughter anymore. Dad now goes looking for her. We are near the end of the movie. He finds a hole leading inside, deep down the mould, and he goes in. He finds Louise and tries to save her, but those creatures are all around them. She says 'don't leave me' and he doesn't. He sets a fire and stays there to die with her, apparently. The movie ends with little Sam outside looking at the fire, and it might be a suitable ending for this movie, but no, they thought it might be scarier to have one of the creature come out. The boy sees him and we hear it. The end.
Basically all deaths were in vain. The creatures weren't destroyed nor saved. Ok, I'm not a good judge of horror movies because I don't like them very much to start with, so I'll just say: it didn't do anything for me. There was a moment of intriguing, scary mystery, but it wasn't develop in a way I liked.

Die Welle - 2008

This was tough, but fascinating. I liked it, it was very interesting. In a school, among the usual courses, there's also a class on Anarchy and one on Autocracy. This last one is teached by Rainer (Jürgen Vogel, according to Imdb) who tries an experiment to better explain what autocracy means. He creates a group. First day they simply have to call him Sir, raise their hand to ask permission to speak, stand up before talking, take an active part in the class discussions. It starts off really well. A girl has trouble expressing her thoughts (nervous like every student being interrogated ): Rainer helps her, he tells her to sit down, relax and try again. She speaks better and feels good. All the kids go home feeling good, thrilled about it; second day Rainer talks about uniforms: with uniforms everyone is equal, there are no more poor or rich, no more cultural differences, they could all be the same, so Rainer proposes something simple: jeans and a white shirt, something everybody has. We see a kid helping a member of his group who didn't have one, proposing to give him one of his, saying he has two, while that same day he goes to a shop to buy two white shirts. Third day all the kids except Carol wear the white shirt, and start acting like a 'group'. Two strong kids help Tim because he was being bullied. They were never close before, Tim had no real friends, a troubled home, he always felt alone, bullied, laughed at, but now he feels part of something greater. The kids are getting more and more involved. They create a logo, a website, a name for the group: "the wave" (which is the title of the movie), a gesture to use as group salute. After school many of them keep the white shirts on, make stickers with the logo, paint it around the city, and start excluding everyone is not part of the Wave. Soon the kids start considering people outside the group like enemies, start fights at the waterpolo game. Tim put images of guns in the website homepage, and shows up at Rainer's house claiming to be his bodyguard, wanting to be with him because no one else cares about him at his home. Rainer doesn't see how far this is going, knows nothing of what they do outside school, can't control the situation. One night Carol fights with Marco because of the Wave; she gives him a push and he hits her on the face. He's shocked, he loves her and yet he hit her. He runs to Rainer's house to explain to him what this thing has done to him, how it has transformed him. Marco urges Rainer to stop it so, after only a week since the experiment started, Rainer sends a message to set up a meeting: all members of the Wave reunite, and they are a lot , now, not just the kids of the class. It's a powerful image when Rainer enters seeing them all there, they looked to me like an army of soldiers. Rainer starts saying how the Wave must go on, how it must stand against all that is wrong in the world. Marco opposes him publicly and when Rainer says 'bring here the traitor' a few kids take hold of him and carry him near him. Now Rainer hopes to explain them the result of the experiment. What should we do now? Why did you bing him here against his will? Answer: because you told us to. So what if I told you to kill him, would you do it? So now Rainer tells them how this thing has gone too far, how it must end right now. He tells them to go home. Nobody is happy about this, they liked being part of a gang, but stand up and start going away when Tim comes forward drawing his gun, saying that the Wave was everything to him, his whole life. He injures a kid to prove how serious he is, then threatens Rainer. The situation is really serious, the kids are all scared, Rainer tries to get him to lower his gun. 'If you come any closer I'll shoot you', 'then what? You'll have no more Mr Rainer to guide your Wave?'. Tim thinks about it, that's not what he wants, he wanted the Wave as it was before but he can't have it back, so he turns the gun against himself and shoots. Everyone is in shock. The police come to arrest Rainer. The injured kid is taken away in an ambulance. Carol and Marco hug and try to console a crying friend. This is the end of a week-long experiment. They all liked the feeling of being part of something big, but Rainer didn't see that some of them were becoming extremists. One thing is liking something, another thing is to become a fanatic, completely different and dangerously easily leading to violence.
Wow, I liked this movie.

In Italy: L'onda

The Ron Clark story - 2006

I like it a lot, I admit it. It’s a simple story, a little film, but also important and likable.  The writing after the end says it’s a real story and a real man and everything, which seems so hard to believe. This world has made me suspicious and harder (well, compared to my little-girl-days) : kindness is so rare nowadays, because let’s face it, not many people believe in it, not really. They do as an idillic concept, but in reality it’s like this: if someone is kind to a person, that person will wonder: are they hitting on me or do they want something from me? And on the other hand, if you’re that someone, would you be kind without wondering if they’ll think you’re flirting or trying to borrow money or whatever? Or even, sometimes you want to help people but the world makes it too hard for you. I know there are many good-hearted people in the world, but thing is sometimes bad people make so much damage they make it hard to believe there’s something else, better, on this planet. 

This film is the story of a teacher who chose to work where he was most needed; he moved from North Carolina to New York and ended up working in the worst class of an Harlem school. (Sure, one could wonder why he thought that children in famous&important New York needed him more than  other poor children in less-famous-therefore-less-important cities of the United States, or even if he would have become famous had he kept helping/teaching children in North Carolina or such less renown states, but let’s move on). A class of twelve years old kids with such difficult situations at home that it made them hard and reckless and hopeless. Mr Clark gave them back their hope, he didn’t give up on them like anybody else, he believed and even more importantly made them believe they could do it. The kids didn’t pay any attention, they would lie or steal or fight or be generally openly hostile, but he insisted, trying everything to catch their attention and interest. First he had them follow rules: either form a neat line to go to lunch or you won’t eat at all, but strict rules were not going to work just like that, so he tried harder: drinking lots of chocolate milk promising them the chance to see him throwing up, always fun for twelve years old kids, and them the Presidents rap, to make history fun to learn. He went to each house, he did extra lessons; he helped poor Tayshawn (Brandon Mychal Smith) when he was beaten up by his foster dad, he convinced Shameika (Hannah Hodson)’s mother that she was a special girl that only needed time to study to become a brilliant student. Kids not only need, they want someone to care about them, to give them rules, to be proud of their successes, to show them they take real interest in them. It’s touching, I like it. The way the kids get serious about learning, interested; that sense of pride for each thing they learn or get right. The way Shameika went from “go to hell” to “please don’t fire Mr Clark” and “please don’t leave because of me Mr Clark”. I liked the scene when he convinced her mother that Shameika was brilliant, when he told her she might get admitted to a school for ‘gifted kids’. I know it’s not a big movie, but it’s a good movie anyway.

100 Million B.C. - 2008

Such low quality, even less than I expected. I mean, knowing it’s not a blockbuster movie, I guessed it didn’t have a big badget, but even so this was real rubbish. It would have been better if they had built a fake dinosaur, a toy, and moved it across a miniaturized city. The special effects were awful, the actors didn’t react well to them, and the story was stupid and nonsense, the characters’ stories were barely touched and the time-travel-plot was nonsense, plus there was no suspense at all. Not even that. Shall we talk about the title, since we’re at it? Why is it “100 million B.C.” when they only go 60 million years in the past? Even the title is nonsense.

The story is: when he was young, a man developed a way to travel in time and a team was sent millions of years in the past to test it, but something went wrong and they were unable to come back. Now he’s found a way, so he goes with a new team to find them. He gets there six years after they arrived, and only four-five people out of 21 are still alive. He sends them back to our time but stays behind to close the portal. A big, red, dangerous dinosaur makes it in time and arrives here, and breaks loose in the city. How silly is that people tried to find it using warmth-detectors? Not just because the dinosaur is a cold blood animal, but because if there is a big tall dinosaur loose in New York City it’s really so difficult to find it just by looking? It’s not like it can hide, or even try it. Anyway, it’s led to an isolated place when the young scientist comes to help. He was old before, now other time travels are involved and a young one comes, because this way they can have their full happy ending giving him a girlfriend to kiss. Anyway, he takes a couple of them back to his time, while two others stay in this time. The end. Very bad. The dinosaur was not scary at all, and there was no suspense, whoever was close was eaten in a second, there was practically no fight at all; bullets were fired of course, just to make some noise, and didn’t make it any better at all, on the contrary.

In Italy it’s : La guerra dei dinosauri

Entrapment - 1999

A funny action movie, it wasn't too bad. I liked it enough. Nothing really good, nothing great, no, but not too bad.
Gin (Catherine Zeta-Jones) works for an insurance company and goes undercover to catch MacDougal (Sean Connery), an art thief. She follows him, makes contact, works at a job with him, to steal a precious mask. After the 'probation' period is finished successfully, he accepts to help her in another job. She wants to steal eight million dollars from a bank by transferring money from other accounts into hers. This last job is full of complications, they almost get caught, but he makes her escape by staying behind. They set an appointment, but when he comes he's joined by the FBI. The great thief had been caught once and forced to help them catch her, who is truly the thief she always told him she was. Still, Mac manages to let her escape. However, when the cops are gone she comes back and offers him to work together again because, as she said earlier "alone sucks", and what can you argue with that?!?
Well, the love story was inevitable, authors simply can't resist it, but after all he's Sean Connery (although he kinda looks out of heart here, not entirely committed) so ok.
I liked when she was about to escape and she wanted him to go with her and he refused because he's old and she's got all her life ahead and something about him having nothing or whatever, and she cried at him "you've got me!". That was such a true woman-in-love plead, it touched me.
When there's love nothing else other than "I've got you, you've got me" matters.
I liked that scene. She did it well :-)

Saving Grace - 2000

It's a nice little film, funny; it's little more than a fairytale, you know, one of those stories where all goes well, everybody's good and everything ends well = totally unrealistic, but nice to watch. Not all films need to be realistic, right? I mean, we have Grace (Brenda Blethyn) a widow left full of debts who therefore risks losing everything, including her house, who starts cultivating marijuana , and in big quantities! Everyone in her village knows what she's doing, but they all cover for her; her gardener Matthew helps her but his girlfriend is pregnant and she's afraid he'll go to prison, so Grace goes alone to London, stopping people in the street and offering them marijuana. Yep.
Her husband's lover helps her when she's taken in by the police (because she was in a pub with a bad reputation or something) and she puts her in contact with her own pusher (Bill Bailey), only he deals in small quantities, and she has kilos of the stuff, so they go to a bigger pusher (Tchéky Karyo). Then we arrive at the end. Matthew wants out because he doesn't want to lose Nicky, and Grace comes to her senses and decides it's better to get rid of it all.
Even the local policeman knew about it but said nothing. What place is this, where neighbors are so kind to each other? Anyway, there are two women who uses these leaves to make tea and lots of people make laughing by the big smoke coming out of the marijuana's big pile burning. There's the big boss who comes and marries Grace, and we're told she had a great success writing a book about it all. Happy ending for all. Sure, I thought writing a book took time, and it's not clear how she got that time, it seemed like she didn't have any, but this is a little, funny fairytale, nothing more, so who cares.
I loved the village, and I loved the scene where all the villagers were out in the night with chairs, sunglasses and probably drinks, to wait for the moment she turned the lights on, that was the funniest thing.
Martin Clunes plays the local doctor who enjoys his marijuana :-p

In Italy: L'erba di Grace

Equilibrium - 2002

A strange movie, I had never heard about it. It was a bit painful honestly, but interesting and gripping enough. It had a few very fast action-scenes, then everything else was very very slow. It was right, though, it had to be. I mean, it's nothing fantastic, but it's not bad, it's a good movie based entirely on Christian Bale's performance, I'd say. The camera is always on his face. It's all based on repression, silences and emotions. Basically, to get rid of violence and war this society took away emotions completely: no emotions=no anger, no envy, no ambition, no fights and no wars. It worked, but nobody can really enjoy this peace of course, because nobody has emotions anymore, no feelings at all. At specific hours during the day each person has to take a special medicine, inject themselves with a drug that erases emotions completely. Naturally, since humans are humans, although there are no wars there is a special forces corp and a lot of killings in the name of the law. This special "soldiers" are called "clerics" and are sent out to find and kill everyone who doesn't take the drug and therefore "feels".
We immediately know John (Christian Bale) and his partner Partridge (Sean Bean). We learn that John's wife was arrested and executed for the crime of feeling emotions, and John himself kills his partner when he catches him reading a book of poems. Every colour is forbidden, poems and books, music and pictures, paintings and even pets, everything connected with emotions is destroyed. John has a son and a daughter, and he also teaches them his emotionless belief. One morning he accidentally breaks his medicine and doesn't rush to acquire another dose. He immediately starts to feel different. Simply touching a wall with his bare hands is something new, and once he started feeling, he couldn't stop. He began to hide his drugs, but now doing his job became more and more difficult each day. To watch people getting killed by his "colleagues" affects him now, he stops his new partner (Taye Diggs) from killing a woman and becomes emotionally involved. On one occasion he tries to save a bunch of people, he even kills the other non-cleric guards to try and save them, but he couldn't. Other guards killed a whole lot of people trying to protect some dogs. After the people it was the dogs' turn. One of them escaped and John caught him and looked at him. Just imagine one of the cutest little puppies staring at you and licking you. Without the drug obviously John couldn't resist it and had to protect him. He took it away, then went out at night to set it free, but the cute little thing would not leave him so he put it in the car again, and gave it his jacket to make it more comfortable. At that moment patrol guards stop him: he tries to save the situation but it was a desperate attempt. I'm a senior cleric! Then show us your documents. They're in my jacket! Where's your jacket?
Now, he could not tell them it was in the car because they would have seen the dog too, so he kept lying. It was a very bad situation, but then he was recognized and John nearly hoped to make it out of it easily. And then the dog barked. John killed all the guards, and saved himself and the puppy.
He was contacted by the underground rebels: they recruited him to kill the Father, the city boss, and he accepted.
The woman he arrested and then fell for is scheduled to be executed. He did nothing when it happened to his wife, but now he's different and tries to save her but can't. When he ha his first meeting ever with the boss, he discovers two things: one, he was found out and used to get to the rebels, and two the boss died some time ago but it was kept a secret and now another man is the leader, a man who "feels", like him, but different things I'd say. John won't let him taking him down without a fight; he kills all the guards, then all his personal guards and also his 'partner' who was actually sent to him to spy on him. Finally face to face with the boss, they fight and they're both good. John wins though, and the other one tries to plead to his sentiments, explaining that he feels emotions too, he's one of them, would John still kill him after knowing that? Well, John had seen the woman he loved burn to death in front of him, so yeah, he would.
After that all the rebels come out. They know the right time because after killing the leader John also destroyed all the videos, computers that kept broadcasting the Father's propaganda to the People. The rebels starts fires and fights in the city. The heart of the plan was that they would stop the drugs, nad it was enough that people would stop taking it once for nature to win and change everything.
I was glad they didn't do what I feared: his son did not spy on him. No, instead he helped him hiding the drugs he did not take when the guards inspected the house. Brother and sister had stop taking it since their mother did, and just pretended ever since. At the end, hearing the explosions, they smile :-) and the puppy is with the little girl :-)
I don't know, it was a strange movie, different, but it did get to me.

Nana - 2005

I love it. It’s a Japanese movie based on a manga (Nana, of course) but with real actors. It’s lovely, and many times watching some scene I felt like I was seeing a manga coming alive before my own eyes. Not necessarily this manga, because I actually never read Nana, I was speaking in general. When Ren shares a scarf with Nana because it’s very cold, that was such a manga scene, as well as when she jumped off the train, or when Hachi bought two glasses for the two of them :-) I really like it. Sure, there are some very slow moments because they had to put a lot of stuff in, Ren and Nana’s background and history together, Hachi’s love story with Shoji and work problems; at this point I must confess that Shoji and Sachiko are my favourites, Maybe they shouldn’t be because he did cheat on Hachi, but let me say this: of all the excuses people use for cheating, having found true love is definitely not the worst. They weren’t right for each other, it happens. The movie story: pretty Nana is going to Tokyo to meet Shoji, her boyfriend, and meets rock Nana on the train: they talk a lot and like each other. Pretty Nana was thinking of living with Shoji, we see her cleaning the whole apartment like a devoted wife and welcoming him home when he’s back from work, but he tells her she needs to find her own place and a job, to be more independent which actually would be good for her. While looking an apartment with a cheap rent (because on the seventh floor without elevator) she meets rock Nana, coming to see the same apartment, and her friend Yazu gives them the idea of living together sharing the rent, and they accept. Rock Nana thinks pretty Nana is very nice and sweet, but too much like a puppy and names her Hachi :-) It’s true, she really seemed like a puppy :lol: 

The movie gives us their whole stories. Nana has no parents, grew up with her grandmother but she died when Nana was fifteen. During that period she met Ren, a musician. Nana too has a passion for music, wants to be a great singer. For some time they were in a band together, with older Yazu now working in a law firm, and Nobu, a kid that sometimes seemes a bit like a puppy himself :lol:

Nana lived with Ren for more than a year, but then he got offered a position in a famous band in Tokyo, and left. She didn’t go with him because she didn’t want to give up her dream, she wants to become someone, to live her life following her own path and not just be somebody’s wife; as Hachi puts it “she chose pride over love”. They loved each other and never really broke up; we see the whole band at the station to say goodbye to him. She follows him on the train for a hug and a kiss out of the other’s eyes, then she jumps off and starts crying. Nobu is sad and runs to Ren but seeing him cry too he didn’t say a word. Yazu is a good friend, moves to Tokyo too, puts a band together again with Nana, Nobu and a new guy who answered their ad. He also has a part in having Nana and Ren meeting again :-) Hachiko knows nothing of this at first, she just loves Ren’s new band and invites Nana to go together to see their concert. Yazu and the others explain Nana and Ren’s relationship to her. At the last moment Nana accepts and they go together. Ren sees her and calls Yazu, agitated. Yazu calls Nana but she replies like she has no intention of getting back together with Ren, and Yazu tells her Ren is bonded with her, not free to go on. Ren always wears a chain as a necklace with a lock she gave him and she has the key, so she goes to Ren to give it back and put an end to their story. She goes to the hotel and meets him, gives back the key and goes away .Ren goes after her, she’s like ‘let me go’, he takes her hand again and she yells she’s not getting back with him and falls on her knees. He hugs her and tells her he missed her; “I missed you too” and they go to his room  …

Afterwards, in the bathtub, she tells him she won’t live with him because she still has her dream, so we know she’ll keep living with Hachi :-) but she doesn’t want to break up again, they’ll still see each other :-)

Hachiko’s story: She starts a job but is unhappy of not seeing Shoji as much as she’d like. At work, Shoji meets a girl just hired : Sachiko. It turns out they both work to pay their study at the same university. They spend a lot of time together now, seeing each other at work, going together to the station, and at the university too. They like each other, but for now are just friends. A common friend tells Shoji that Hachi thinks of marrying him, and he’s very troubled because he doesn’t know what to do. He knows he should stop seeing Sachiko, but when Sachiko tells him she understands, that she shouldn’t have fallen in love with him, that she can be just a friend without any need to break all contact, he doesn’t want to leave her, instead he takes her to his place and they make love. So, yes, he cheated on Hachi because they’re still together at this point in the story, but he loves Sachiko. One night Hachi and Nana go to the place where he works. Sachiko meets her and she’s troubled too because she finds her very nice and sweet. Sachiko tells Shoji they should end it there. Hachi and Nana wait outside for him to come out, but thinking she’s already gone, he’s with Sachiko. She’s running away and he’s after her. He hugs her but she breaks free so he tells her that he’ll break up with his girlfriend to be with her. Nana and Hachi hears it all. Nana goes forward, angry, asking for an explanation. Sachiko says it’s all her fault, she’s the only one to blame. Up until now Shoji looked very troubled, he doesn’t know what to say but when Nana goes forward , all like “ok then, I’ll blame you” he hugs Sachiko and protects her. He loves her and I admit they’re a beautiful couple and very lovely. I totally love when he hugs her, they’re so cute :-)

Hachi is hurt, of course, and cries a lot. She’s been fired from her job and has a new one where she’s constantly scorned because ‘she can’t do anything right, not even photocopies’. She’s having a hard time. She was always the optimist, happy one but now she’s going through a bad period. To make her happy, Nana asks Ren a favour. When Hachi comes home one night very tired and blue, Kasumi, Ren’s band’s musician she liked so much, welcomes her home and she cries, happy that Nana has done this for her :-)

I like it. Maybe if you don’t like mangas you can’t understand what I find irresistible in it, but I do. Well , of course not all mangas, only the ones with drawings and stories that appeal to me :-)

This was a nice story. Shoji and Sachiko felt so guilty about loving each other, and Hachiko struggled very much to make it on her own. Had she been alone it would have been much harder, It was a good thing that she was living with Nana :-D

High school musical - 2006

I love it. Maybe not as I’d have loved it when I was sixteen, but close enough. I like the actors enough, specially Efron; I like the music, I like the fact that the songs move the story forward, the words explain their feelings, what is going on; I love the message: if the theme ‘choose who you want to be, follow your dreams, decide for yourself what you want to become’ is nothing new, here I like how it is posed, meaning that they don’t have to choose, it’s not ‘do this or do that, your own choice’, it’s more ‘you can do this but if you want you can also do that, feel free to be everything you like’. She doesn’t stop studying and he doesn’t give up basketball. Yes, Troy’s dad was a player and is now his coach, but Troy’s not forced into it. He loves it. He wasn’t living a false life, before, playing simply to please his father, he was always his true self, only now he has discovered a new side of himself, something else he likes to do. It starts on vacation, with Troy Bolton(Zac Efron)’s family and Gabriella (Vanessa Hudgens) and her mom spending new year’s eve at the same place. Gabriella spends her time reading, and Troy playing basketball with his dad, while both mothers are all ‘party!! You must go!’ so they go. As it happens, there’s karaoke going on while waiting for the new year, and the singers are chosen by who-knows-who flashing the spotlight at them. Neither Troy or shy Gabriella feel excited; he starts singing, then motions away when suddenly he hears here singing and he loves it so he stays and they sing together “anything can happen when you take a chance-this could be the start of something new”. Now, in normal life they would have never seen each other again, but being this a movie they end up in the same class! She changed school, she and her mom just moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, and without knowing it she not only applies at the same school, but she’s even in the same class (by the way, in movies a one-hour-lesson lasts more or less five minutes :-/ when I went to school it lasted forever! but then, we didn’t do musicals either, not that I would have auditioned anyway). A new school musical is about to start, auditions are open. They are uncertain if they want to do it or not until  the last moment, when she goes for it and he follows. He tried not to think about it in a nice coreography during practice: “keep your head in the game”, but he liked it so much when they sang together that he wants to do it again. The result is that musical queen and king, Sharpay (Ashley Tisdale) and her brother Ryan Evans (Lucas Grabeel) now have competition. Another consequence is that now everybody knows they’re listed for the callback audition and apparently this upsets a lot of people. Mr Bolton can’t talk about nothing else but basketball, so Troy can’t talk to him. He doesn’t know what to do. Everybody’s like “stick to the stuff you know, stick to the status quo” and the team players team up with the decathlon team to end this. Madness breaks loose and the players trick Troy into saying he doesn’t care about the musical or Gabriella, only about the game, while her ‘friends’ show it all to her. She’s hurt, and here they put a Vanessa Hudgens-videoclip where she alone sings how it was all just a fairytale but now her heart’s empty. Troy doesn’t understand why she won’t talk to him anymore, and is very upset and hurt. He can’t concentrate and plays very badly, and she doesn’t do any better. I like the scene when they meet at lunch, she walks away and he looks so hurt. Seeing how sad they are the friends try to make amends and reveal all the truth. Troy makes peace with Gabriella. At the end, the memorable day arrives. Because of Sharpay (is this a real name?) callbacks are moved to the same day of the game and the decathlon, but the kids all work together to interrupt both to give them time to go to the callbacks. Gabriella is suddenly too scared, because she plays the nice, shy little girl, although she had no problem singing on new years’ eve, and the only difference is that they didn’t know her, otherwise it’s the same situation: on stage, lights, microphone, people staring at her. Troy goes ‘look at me’ on her and they sing together and all applaud, then he wins the game, she wins her competition and all gather together for the final party. When did Gabriella put on that red dress? Anyway. Zeke wins Sharpay over with his cookies. They are all friends, total happy ending. I really like it. Only two things bother me. Hudgen’s videoclip, and the decathlon-practice-scenes, that looked to fake and unreal. The line I liked most is Troy’s answer, when his father tries to ‘reason’ with him and tells him “you’re the playmaker, not a singer” and we’ve often seen scenes like this, where the kid is supposed to answer ‘that’s not who I am, that’s who you want me to be’, but it’s not Troy’s case because he’s not forced into basketball, he really loves it, but there’s no reason why it should be ‘his only thing’, so Troy replies “did you ever think that maybe I could be both?”. I love that line, it’s my favourite. 

Zoolander - 2001

A very stupid movie, but meant to be. Very funny in its own idiot-way. Ben Stiller is Derek Zoolander, the greatest male model of the last years, incredibly stupid and vain. His new rival is Hansen (Owen Wilson), the new model in town. The movie theorizes that unspeakable things have been committed in the name of fashion business, from the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and Kennedy to the one that’s been attempted here: the Prime Minister of Malaysia wants to stop child labour, so current fashion bosses order Mugatu (Will Ferrell) to kill him using an unknowing model. He chooses Zoolander and brainwashes him to murder the man when he hears the ‘Relax’ song Fortunately for him a journalist, Matilda (Christine Taylor) is not stupid and discovers that this has happened before: models died young, and every time Katinka (Milla Yovovich) was involved. Knowing she works for Mugatu, Matilda is worried for Derek. J. P. Prewitt , a hand model, explains it all to them. Do I need to talk about the fact that David Duchovny plays the man uncovering the big conspiracy? :lol: Thanks to Matilda Derek and Hansel make peace and work together to stop Mugatu’s plan. Derek becomes a hero and his father (Jon Voight) , a mine worker who was ashamed of him before, now is all “that’s my son!”. I’m not actually fond of idiot movies, but this is fun: Derek thinking he’s so so beautiful, Derek who’s been working for years on his new expression :lol: they all look the same, as Mugatu says at the end, but Derek proves him wrong because with his new Magnum-expression he’s able to stop the blade about to kill the Prime Minister (right now I can’t remember what are called those round-things throwned by ninjas..). A lot of real celebrities make an appearance in this movie: a few of them I could easily recognize: Christian Slater, Cuba Gooding Jr, Natalie Portman, Fabio, Lenny Kravitz (presenting the award for best model won by Hansel, in that funny scene when Derek thinks he’s won and goes up on stage :lol:) Paris Hilton (well, he calls her by name, so it was easy) David Bowie :-) and Stephen Dorff; others I either didn’t see or don’t even know: Steve Kmelko, Mark Ronson, Tyson Beckford, Fred Durst, Lance Bass, L’il Kim, Garry Shanding, Veronica Webb, Carmen Kass, Frankie Rayder, who are they?

Donald Trump, Claudia Schiffer, Tom Ford, Tommy Hilfiger, Gwen Stefani, Heidi Klum, Lukas Haas, Sandra Bernhard, I didn’t see. Derek is friend with Billy Zane and calls him by name, yet he’s not in the credits, while there is “Billy Zane’s date” in there… I mean, he was Billy Zane, wasn’t him?

Apparently James Marsden played Lincoln’s murderer, but he appeared for just a moment and I didn’t recognize him. I clearly saw Vince Vaughn as one of the two brothers of Derek (with no lines) and Josh Brolin playing the reporter (with lots of lines) yet neither of them appeared in the ending credits: they were Vaughn and Brolin, weren’t they? I think I also saw Winona Ryder, but am not sure.

Mamma mia! - 2008

Well I … sort of like it… I love the music of course because this is entirely based on Abba songs, so if you don’t like Abba, well don’t even start watching this movie. Here and there I didn’t like the exaggerated coreography and the things too silly. The story was nice: Donna (Meryl Streep) raised her daughter Sophie( Amanda Seyfried) all by herself. Sophie doesn’t know who her father is (obviously since her mother doesn’t know either), but now that she’s getting married she finds her mother’s diary of twenty years ago and sends invitations to the wedding to the three men that had a flirt with her mom back then. One of them is her father, and like a child she thinks she’ll know who it is the moment she lays eyes on him. Of course it doesn’t go like that. All three come, but she has no idea which of them is her father. Sam (Pierce Brosnan) was the one Donna fell in love with, but he told her he had to go because he was engaged. She knew Harry (Colin Firth) and Bill (Stellan Skarsgaard) and had a brief story with them too, so now even she doesn’t know who her father is. Wondering why Sophie invited them, they all convince themselves to be the father. At her wedding, Sophie and Donna clear things up between them; Harry declares he’s happy to be Sophie’s father, even for a third only, and the other two agree, so they won’t investigate the matter further. Sophie calls off the wedding deciding instead to travel for a while with her boyfriend, which was what he dreamed to do all along. Instead of them, Sam proposes to Donna saying he never stopped loving her, that he had come back to Greece for her but she was with someone else so once more he went home. Sam and Donna get married: happy ending. They really liked the number three here: Donna has two friends, Sophie has two friends, and three fathers. Donna’s single friend ends up going “take a chance on me” with Bill, so I guess they made Harry gay just to avoid the only three men with a name ending up with the only three women with a name. 

Amanda Seyfried was the happiest cast-choice here, I think. The others were all great actors but I don’t like how Pierce Brosnan sings (he’s ok and a very handsome man, but I wouldn’t have chosen him for a musical), and as incredible as it sounds I would have preferred different actors in all the main roles. .

Lemony Snicket's A series of unfortunate events - 2004

Nothing special; not bad but generally unsatisfying: because it creates questions that are not answered; because it doesn’t have a real ending, since we don’t know where the Beaudelaires will go next and what will be of them. I know, the message is that it doesn’t matter, wherever they’ll be, whatever will happen, they’ll be fine as long as they have each other. 

At first it wasn’t bad: I liked knowing Violet ( Emily Browning) the resourceful inventor, her brother Klaus (Liam Aiken)  the voracious reader, and Sunny (Kara & Shelby Hoffman), their little sister who loves to bite things :-) I still smile at the image of this little girl hanging from the table only by her teeth :-) 

When their parents die in a fire, they need a tutor. Count Olaf (Jim Carrey) offers to take them in only because he’s totally broke and wants their money. As soon as he has legal custody he tries to kill them; nobody listens to children so nobody believes how evil Olaf is; still, he’s thought to be too irresponsible, unable to take care of children and they’re brought to uncle Mortimer (Billy Connolly) a weird but nice man. I liked him :-) Unfortunately Olaf gets to him and kills him. They are sent to Aunt Josephine (Meryl Streep) who has become weak and afraid of everything after her husband died. Olaf gets to her too, but manages to look good in the eyes of the law and regains custody of the children. Minor setback, he learns that he won’t have the money because the children themselves won’t get it until they become of age or get married, so he plots to marry Violet, forcing her to say “I do” by threatening Sunny’s life. His evilness is revealed to all, and Klaus finds out Olaf’s responsible for the fire. Olaf is arrested but then let free and he escapes. The children find a letter of their parents telling them they only need to be together to be able to face everything. 

At the end we see them on the road again, about to be taken to another tutor, but the movie ends here so we won’t know what becomes of them, as we will never know what kind of legacy their parents left to them. What kind of group was theirs, why they were investigating the fires, when the fires started and why, and all this kind of things. Did Olaf start a lot of fires or just one? What did he gain from them, since he’s totally broke? Apparently it doesn’t matter, still the movie left me very unsatisfied.

In Italy: Lemony Snicket una serie di sfortunati eventi

The borrowers - 1997

It was nice enough. Not the kind of movie I’d like to watch again and again, but a nice movie nonetheless. A movie for kids, sure, and as an adult there were a few scenes that were too silly for me, but in general I liked this story of these little people, it make me think of Terry Pratchett’s little people. It’s been a long time since I’ve read those books, I must dig them up :-)

The story is: there are little people that live under our houses or under the city. They call themselves Borrowers because they don’t steal, they ‘borrow’ from the big people the things they need. A bored teenage girl goes exploring alone and is found out by the house young boy. He tells her the house is about to be demolished, so they agree to go with him to the new house. Because of a minor accident the girl and her little brother fall out of the van; the boy tries to make his parents stop with many excuses, but they won’t. I didn’t like this at all. Had I told my parents I was sick, or simply that I wanted to go to the bathroom, they would have stopped, if possible, and here it was very possible, they were just about to leave the house-yard. Anyway, not it begins the odissey to reunite the family with an added twist. Potter (John Goodman) enters the house, finds the hidden will and plan to destroy it, but the girl takes the will before he can burn it. With that will the boy and his parents can save their house, because it has been left to them. Potter sees them and tries to kill them many times, but they are helped by more Borrowers living in the city. With their help they stop him. The boy comes with a policeman (Hugh Laurie) to take the will and have him arrested. The police now think Potter’s completely nuts because of his story of thousands and thousands of little Borrowers living in little houses… :-)

In Italy: I rubacchiotti  (sic)

Battle Los Angeles - 2011

I think this is the right title. Very good war movie, the action scenes were well done. Sure, the war was against aliens, so it’s more a sci-fi movie, actually. Aaron Eckhart plays the hero-sergeant, doing a good job. One thing I hated was when the soldiers were giving the sergeant bad looks because he had lost a couple of men in some other battle, as if it was his fault, as if for him to come back alive was a crime, as if no commander ever lost any soldiers, as if those men were not Marines by their own choice, as if he could have done something, as if for soldiers to die was unheard of. I was very annoyed at that soldier complaining “are we expendable for you?” or something like that. Now, I understand that he was hurting because his brother was one of the men who died, and that he’s exhausted for the terrible situation they’re in, but that whining is not what I expected from a Marine, specially against his commander, who by now has helped quite a lot in the battle. 

Obviously this movie does not betray the usual aliens-movie-plot: The aliens look invincible at first, then begin to fall down like fruits against our heroes; there is of course a sort of mother-ship, or central command, that controls all the flying drones. Aliens always have something like that, although one thing is not clear to me this time: the one they destroyed controlled the drones in the whole Earth or just those in L.A.? I suppose the aliens attacked the whole planet, since it’s called ‘World invasion’, and yet our heroes find it right in front of them.

This things aside, I think it’s a good movie. It starts very quiet, with tv-news talking of some meteors about to impact on Earth, only thing is, once arrived they slow down, land, and aliens come out and shoot and bomb everything they see. They really make a big mess, a very noisy and burning one. Our group of Marines arrives at their mission destination and find only three children and two people to save. They call for an helicopter to take them out of there, it comes and only takes wounded soldiers. The sergeant shout: wait, take the children, but they’re all : there isn’t enough space, we must go, only to be shot down and destroyed. Naturally the Marines are shaken, “they’re all dead”, they weren’t expecting a war and they weren’t prepared for the aliens having such power in the air. I couldn’t believe the scene where the civilian father has his child sit in front of the tv while the news speak of the war and people shot dead, and the man only barely covered the kid’s eyes, not worried that he’s listening too. Sure, this is a hard time and the kid is living it, still tv news don’t help at all, on the contrary! 

The group finds an alien almost dead and bring him in to open him up and take a good look at how it can be killed. Our sergeant finds out and orders his people to shoot “to the right of where the heart would be”. Nice and easy, isn’t it?  :-/   From now on it’s almost one shoot-one kill. Where the hell where they aiming before??

He also discovers that the aliens are tracking their radio signal, so he switches one on and places it at a gas station, so he manages to blow off a big, shooting and flying drone. This is where he finds out about drones. When he comes back to the others he’s all shacking, poor thing. I liked this scene a lot, well done and with a touch of humanity that was even more heroic. 

Soon afterwards the lieutenant in command until now is badly injured, and says: go get them out of here sergeant. Our hero wouldn’t want to leave him, ‘not again’, but he has to. The lieutenant dies an honorable death every Klingon would be proud of. He blows himself up killing many aliens. The civilian man dies saving/helping the soldier helping his child. Finally a new helicopter comes to take them to safety, but our soldiers follow the sergeant down. “Marines don’t quit” so they go looking for the central control, to stop the drones. They destroy it, and are then welcomed by the rest of the army offering them to rest and eat , but “Marines don’t quit” so again our iron-sergeant and his soldiers pack all the weapons they can and go back into battle to “let’s get Los Angeles back”. The end. 

Funny how, if you think about it, this is not at all the end of the war. They simply won a battle, but the invasion is not stopped. Not yet, at least. I guess they’ll pass their information around to all the places that have been attacked, so Earth will be able to better defend itself.

In Italy : world invasion

To Rome with love -

What is this? It’s a Woody Allen movie, so I guess I’m supposed to say it reflects the futility of fame, it shows the complicated mechanisms of personal relationships, that this is a great satire of  our modern times and its superficiality… but this blog is for me so I’ll honestly say the truth: future me that you’re reading this, spare yourself a second view of this movie. Sure it’s not bad and yes, it shows some true things like how obsessed people are with fame and with sex, but maybe the satire goes too far. Taking a common man like Leopoldo (Roberto Benigni) and making him famous for no reason, with all famous women wanting to sleep with him and talking on the news about his breakfast. Satire it is, because after all people go on tv to “find a date” or something similar and they become national star for years.

Leopoldo always complained about it, how he was harassed by journalists and people asking for his opinion on everything, but when it ended he missed it terribly. His former driver told him that life is often equally full of disappointment for the rich and famous as well as for the poor and unknown, but being rich and famous is much better. Really? Is this the message? Fake, unreal lives with no true relationships but people who stick to you because you’ve got fame and money and money means power and therefore you’re a God? Yeah, this world sucks.

There’s also a guy falling for Monica, an actress friend of his girlfriend Sally, arriving on the verge of breaking up with Sally, prevented only by the announcement that Monica just got a new job in a movie shot in Japan. So, goodbye. (p.s. why was he constantly talking to Alec Baldwin??)

There’s also a couple who got separated once arrived in Rome. He pairs up with a hooker (Penelope Cruz) who decides to teach him a thing or two about sex; he gets thrust around by some relative that want to change his life, while his wife meets an actress (Ornella Muti) and is introduced to a famous actor (Antonio Albanese). I guess he’s so irresistible only because he’s famous? I know Albanese as a funny comedian, not exactly a sex magnet. 

She’s about to sleep with him when a thief comes out of the hotel bathroom (?) with a gun to rob them, but when the actor’s about to be busted by the wife, the thief saves the situation by pretending it’s his own room, in bed with his girlfriend. Now, Riccardo Scamarcio is one of the actors in the ‘attractive’ category. Someone please, tell me: are there really women like this, thinking and saying: I’ve never been with a criminal before and after all I’m already in bed so….

I mean, seriously? Bah, I guess there are, after all.

Then there is the american couple coming to meet their daughter’s about-to-become-mother-and-father-in-law. Jerry (Woody Allen) hears the man sing in the shower, top of his voice, some opera piece. Was it the Nessun Dorma or the Vincerò or what else? Gosh, I’ve already forgotten, my head is just unable to concentrate.

Anyway, Jerry won’t accept the idea of being retired and just won’t leave the man and his family in peace. He plans an audition for the man but it doesn’t go well, as his family thought: “what good is it if he can only sing in the shower?”, so absurd following absurd, Jerry manages to get him to shower on stage, with real water and soap and absence of clothes. The man sings greatly, but the idea is of course stupid, and it ends there because the man just won’t leave home to go on tour with the shower!

Jerry is nonetheless quite proud of it and of his reviews. A newspaper called him “imbecille” and he’s happy about it…. I mean, seriously, ok he’s American so yeah, not a word of Italian sure, I get it, but the Italian word Imbecille is really so different from its English translation Imbecile?

 I don’t think many Italians would be glad to read the word ‘stupid’ about themselves, because even if they don’t know English, still the word’s too similar to its Italian ‘stupido’, you see?

Jerry didn’t have even a suspect. Well, I see the satire and everything , but is this supposed to be how he sees Rome? For me, watching it once was enough, and I let Romans say what they actually think life in Rome is.

Death becomes her - 1992

I never liked this film, for the simple reason that it’s unsettling. It can be fun, if you’re not disturbed by the two dead, crumbling bodies. It was certainly something noteworthy, regarding the special effects. Even now they look pretty good. The message is good too, sure, because the male protagonist Ernest (Bruce Willis) even while he was facing almost certain death he still refused to drink the potion of immortality, and he said wise things like: people around me will still grow old and die, and what if I get bored, I could never go back, I don’t want to live forever. After he finally escaped, he created a new life for himself: a wife, children and grandchildren and a great work that will make him immortal in the best of ways, the only true one. The only reason I dislike it is because these women upset me, disturb me, give me the creeps, make me physically sick. 

The story: Madeleine (Meryl Streep) and Helen (Goldie Hawn) are old friends turned worst enemies. Helen hates Madeleine for always stealing her boyfriends just to hurt her, which is true, and Madeleine hates Helen because she grew up feeling refused, unwanted, treated as if she was not at her level. The only thing they’ve got in common is their obsession with youth and beauty. Separately they both seek Lisa (Isabella Rossellini)’s help and drink her potion. Full of hatred, Helen wants to kill Madeleine, but she doesn’t die because of the potion. Well, not really because she walks and talks, but she is clinically dead, cold and without heartbeat. When he realizes this, Ernest is shocked but thinks of a miracle. When Helen shows up at their house, Madeleine shoots her with a rifle, opening a big hole in her stomach. They think she’s dead, obviously, because they don’t know she drank the potion too. After she’s back on her feet, the two women fight vigorously, talk for a while and make peace. At this point Ernest realizes that miracles have no part in all this, and only wants to escape from them, but he’s a nice guy and accepts to take care of their bodies before going, because well, Madeleine’s neck won’t stay as it should, and Helen has a big hole you can see through. Ernest makes them beautiful again, but now they realize they need him around, so knock him out and take him to Lisa hoping she’ll convince him to drink the potion and be with them forever. He refuses, as I said, runs away, ends up in a very bad situation, still refuses preferring death to being a monster, but even after a long scary fall he manages to survive. He falls into a pool, gets up and goes away. Madeleine and Helen realize they need to stay together to help each other with their bodies’ maintenance. We switch to 37 years later, at Ernest’s funeral, where we see how they managed without him: they look awful, terrible, their faces are like bad masks and their legs don’t walk properly. Also, when Helen’s about to fall down the stairs and Madeleine appears to enjoy what’s about to happen instead of helping her, Helen grabs her and they both fall down and their bodies break into various pieces and still they’re ‘alive’ and who knows what will be of them afterwards, because the movie ends here. For some reason this makes me physically sick.

In Italy: La morte ti fa bella

Gone - 2012

A good film, in a way. I mean, if you want to think about it, at the end it doesn’t make a lot of sense. Basically the bad guy hid Molly only to induce her sister Jill (Amanda Seyfried) to go looking for him, thus having her go to him voluntarily. One could say: how could he know she would have found him? Or maybe he didn’t are? Anyway, the whole plot is simple: time ago Jill was abducted and put in a hole in the woods, but she managed to escape. The police looked for a week, found no hole, no kidnapper, and since she had no evidence of physical abuse they thought she had invented it, which is a bit ridiculous in a way, I mean, ‘we can’t find him? Not possible! She must have made it up!’ come on, seriously?  but it is true that there are crazy ones everywhere so everything is possible, even a crazy girl making up an abduction. Anyway, Molly goes missing (which is to say that she misses an exam) and Jill rushes to the police “he came back! He took my sister, he’ll kill her tonight if we don’t find her”; the police think she’s delusional, and sends her home. Jill starts her search for Molly. To a neighbor she says “they stole my bike tonight. Did you see anything?” A van! To the firm of the vans she says “someone stole a car, next to your van, what did you see?” and when she took out her gun she finally had her true answer: the firm guy rent a van to some guy. In the van there was a receipt (how lucky, she looked in one van and it was the right one? It seemed to me they had more than one, or did I imagine it?) so she goes to that store and they tell her who bought that stuff. By now the police are looking for her because she has a gun and since she has been in a mental hospital she cannot keep one. She finally finds his home, empty, but with the same matches they have in the place she works as a waitress… Okay, it’s not too clear how she can be so sure of everything, as I told you, at the end you think back and of course it seems like a load of nonsense, and yet while you look at it first time it’s not bad, no. Anyway, at this point she goes to her waitress colleague to ask about the man; the woman is skeptical about her sanity but helps her anyway, lending Jill her car and giving her the guy’s phone number, so Jill calls him and he leads her to his place in the woods. She drives alone, in the night, taking her gun with her. She finds pictures of other girls abducted, then the hole, but at this point we already know it’s a trap because Molly has freed herself and told the police everything, right after hugging her boyfriend Billy (Sebastian Stan). She was under her own house. Because of this it was not a surprise when the guy caught Jill and sent her down the hole. He went down too, but she fought, got hold of her gun and shot him, got out of the hole then burned him. It was nice that they didn’t show him clearly; his face was not important. I saw the face clearly only when he was out and talked to him still down there. At that point it was inevitable. 

She hurried back home after throwing her gun in the woods, simply out of the car window. 

Back home she hugged her sister, and I liked that hug, it was a good hug, that made me feel the love between these two sisters, the relief in finding each other alive and well. Jill secretly told Molly that she killed the guy, so they need fear him no more, then told the police: a gun? never had a gun. where was I? out looking for my sister. The guy I was following? never existed, I made it all up.

Last scene, the police receive the pictures of the other girls abducted and a map with an X where they can find the remains. The end.

Conclusion, enjoyable the first time. Nothing special or unforgettable, but it might even be worth a second watch :-)