Big fish - 2003

At first I thought it was a bit silly and boring, but towards the end I was enjoying the story and I just loved the ending, which is awkward, but to explain why I must explain the movie. Old Edward Bloom (Albert Finney) is a great storyteller, people love him, and his wife Sandra (Jessica Lange, absolutely beautiful) simply adores him. His son Billy did too when he was young, but then he grow up hearing again and again and again the same stories, so big and extraordinary and impossible and absurd, and he can't stand them anymore, specially the old story of how he caught a big big fish on the day Billy was born using his gold wedding ring as bait, ring that the fish gave back before running away to freedom. After a few angry words, father and son stop any contact, but fate will bring them together again when Ed gets ill and Billy comes back home with his wife Josephine (Marion Cotillard). I think Ed has cancer, something bad like this, and his family knows he hasn't got much to live. It's not that Billy doesn't love his father , not at all, but he feels like they are two strangers, he feels like he doesn't know who his father really is. Once he says to Ed that he believed all his stories when he was a little kid, but then growing up he realized how impossible they were and realized they were not true, so he feels like he doesn't know his father at all, who his father is behind all his stories, but Ed simply replies that he's been himself all his life and if Billy can't see it that's his own failing. Josephine spends some time with Ed in his room asking for parts of his story life he doesn't yet know, like how and when he knew Sandra. Ed tells her all his story: when he was a child and for a dare he ventured into an old witch's house: legends says that looking into her glass eye one could see one's own death. After some consideration, he decided that to know when he was going to die could be useful to him so he looked at it and saw it, but never told anyone what he saw. He wanted to do great things so in his small town he was a great baseball player, basketball player, football player, he could do it all apparently. When a giant started killing animals he offered to go talk to him to send him out of town. He was always confident that nothing too bad could happen to him because he had seen his death and knew it wasn't time, so he talked to the giant (real giant, tall as a house) and convinced him to go away together. On his way he discovered the mysterious city of Spectre, where there are no roads and people are comfortable walking around barefoot after an eight-years-old girl took away their shoes and throw them up onto a rope hanging at the town entrance. I didn't understand why they told him he was early, but Ed always loved to put mystery and fantasy and fascinating details into his stories. Ed and the giant Karl watch a circus show, and Karl is hired on the spot. Ed sees the girl he's sure he's going to marry, but she goes away before he has a chance to talk to her. The circus ringmaster Amos (Danny DeVito) says he knows her, so they make a deal: Ed will work there for free and each month Amos will tell him something about the girl. Three years go by: Ed keeps working, dreaming about her, and receiving information each month like: what her favourite flower is , that she goes to college, that she likes music... Ed is satisfied with the deal, but now he wants more so he goes to Amos at night and discovers a big wolf inside his trailer. The wolf attacks him but Ed stops a circus man from killing the animal, and in the morning he finds out it was Amos himself, a werewolf. Thankful, Amos tells him where he can find the girl he loves: Sandra Templeton. Ed leaves immediately only to learn that she's engaged to someone else. Ed however is so sure he's going to marry her that doesn't give up and starts courting her in any way until she accepts. They get married but the war calls him away. Ed never feared for his life because again he knew he was not going to die now, so he did all kind of dangerous missions. His last one was to infiltrate and steal important documents. He did that, but then asked for help to get out of there. Siamese-singer-girls helped him after he promised them he could get them a job in entertainment in America. Still it took him a long time to get back home, and he was declared dead, missing in action. He finally came back though, and found a job as travelling salesman, or something like that, although I didn't understand what it was, that metal hand. He met again his hometown's most famous poet (whom he had met in Spectre), and Winslow (Steve Buscemi) is there to rob the bank, and Ed sort of helps him. Once out of there Ed explained to him why there were no money in the bank so Winslow decided to go to Wall Street, where the real money is. Winslow became a millionnaire and sent ten thousand dollars to Ed as a thankyou, so Ed could buy his wife the house they both dreamed about.
Billy hears these stories, but believes none of it. One day he finds the name Jennifer Hill among his father's documents, and goes to meet her. He always though his father had a secret life, but found out that it wasn't how he thought. Ed never cheated on Sandra. Jennifer (Helena Bonham-Carter) is that eight-years-old girl now all grown up. When the town of Spectre was becoming a ghost town, Ed decided to save it. He bought the town, and with the help of his friends with money, he rebuilt it, restored it to new life. Jennifer didn't want to sell, so he stayed there and  personally worked on the house. Jennifer fell in love with him, but Ed only loved Sandra. Billy learned this last part of the story from Jennifer. When he goes back he finds his family is in the hospital after his dad had a stroke. Billy waits by his bedside the whole time. When Ed wakes up, knowing these are his last moments, he asks Billy to tell him a story, the story of the witch and of how he was going to die, so Billy told him a story, a fantastic, absurd, surreal one in which the two of them run away while Sandra stalls the hospital staff, and they drive to the river, and everybody Ed had ever known was there to salute him, and Billy brought him into the river where Ed turned into the big big fish of his story. I loved this bit, when Billy started telling his story, making it up to please him, it was like a confession of love. It felt like he was in a hurry to come up with a great fantastic lie as long as his father could still hear it, and it also felt like father and son were not so different after all.
At the funeral, finally Billy understands the truth. All the characters of Ed's stories come to pay their condolences for an old friend. Billy thought they never existed, but they are all here, all real, although obviously not so 'fantastic' as in Ed's stories. I mean, Amos is not a werewolf, Karl is a giant but certainly not house-tall, the korean sisters are twins, but not siamese, stuff like that. Ed always loved to enrich his stories, but this didn't mean they were complete lies.
Now you see what I meant with awkward. I loved the bit when Ed died, basically. It's weird, but it's true. When Billy tells his story and the funeral where we realize it was all true, and that Ed simply added a bit of colour to his stories to make them better: he had really been his true self all those years of story-telling. That was his true self, the one that dreamed big, and felt and fantasized big.
As a young man Ed's character is played by Ewan McGregor.

In Italy it was: Big fish-le storie di una vita incredibile

Monsters, Inc. - 2001

It's so cute :-) I love that little child, her faces and her laughing :-) The only thing that annoys me is Mike, the green one-eye thing, because he never stops talking, he talks too much really, he makes me want to shout at the tv "shut up and try to think if you can"! I don't do it though .
Anyway, the story is nice and little Boo is so cute she makes Mike unimportant. Sully is cute too, in his own way. The story: this world populated my monsters (by our standards, but behaving like regular people do in our world) needs energy and the Monsters, Inc. provides it by scaring human children and get energy from their screams. They have special doors, and each door takes them to a specific child's room in our world (it's not known how doors get made, but once a door is destroyed nobody can ever go to that room again. These are the doors of the children's room's closets).
One night Sully is alone in there and finds that a door has been left there, not put away with all the others. The light's on so he doesn't take it away because there might be someone inside. He opens the door to check and a little girl comes out with him. Now, in their world they believe that human children are dangerous, their touch can kill you, their clothing or other stuff can contaminate the place, so Sully is scared, and Mike too when he's told about it. The child is having lots of fun with them, but they still think she's a danger to all. While trying to send her back home, they discover that Randall is plotting something bad for her. He built a machine to be attached to a child's mouth to extract their screams, poor things. The boss Waternoose is in on it, and they unmask him in front of the CDA (children detection agency or something like that) so he's arrested. Boo is sent back home and her door destroyed, but in time Mike put the pieces of wood back together to allow Sully to see her again. Now the Monsters, Inc has changed. Thanks to Boo they discovered that children's laughters make much more energy than their screams, so now monsters at night enter children's rooms to make them laugh :-)
My favourite things: 1. Boo, hands down. She's so cute and sweet, she totally seems a real child (twelve to eighteen months old, two years tops, what do you think?). 2.I like Sully's colors :-)  3.every scene with Boo, when she plays, cries, laughs, walks, just so cute.  4.Celia, Mike's girlfriend, and her snake-hair :lol: that changed attitude with her mood :-)
5. The detail that among her toys there are other Disney-Pixar's characters :-)
6. The ending, when Sully opens the door, we hear Boo's voice but don't see her, we only see him and his face breaking into a big, happy smile, and I smile with him :-)
The best way to end a movie, to leave the viewers with a smile on their faces :-D



In Italy: Monsters & Co.

Mansfield Park - 1999

I loved the costumes, the scenery, the accent; not so much of the rest. I can't say if the film is loyal to the book or not because I read it a long time ago and don't remember much, only that it was in last place in my list of the Jane Austen's books I've read. When I'll read it again I'll be able to compare the two, for now, I can only say I did not like this film very much. I don't know if the book talked so much of slavery or of Tom's madness (the eldest son, assuming he was actually crazy; either that or Lord Bertram really did commit atrocities towards his slaves). I liked Johnny Lee Miller as Edmund. I didn't like certain scenes; I don't know if it's just me very unsettlingly sexual: the way Lord Bertram and even her own father looked at Fanny, for example, but I don't know, maybe it was normal in those times to look at girls and daughters like that, to value their beauty and therefore their worth like that. It's not too clear for how long Henry kept wooing Fanny, and I don't like how her 'no I don't trust you-yes I'l marry you kisskiss-no I'm not prepared, I can't marry you' pantomime is portrayed. I mean, I understand her feelings, I can totally understand her, but I don't think the film expressed them all very well. Still, Fanny like any girl on this world had every right to feel hurt when she found him in bed with Maria: she was also a married woman. It doesn't matter that Fanny had rejected him so there was actually nothing between them.
I love books and stories but I found Fanny's stories boring here. As I said, the only things I liked were the scenery and the costumes and the accent, the rest was rather disappointing.

What's eating Gilbert Grape - 1993

Well, it's a good movie, I'm glad I saw it once but I won't watch it again, I think. It's very sad, in a deep although peaceful way. Gilbert (Johnny Depp) is the eldest son of the Grape family. Since his father killed himself his mother changed, until one day she stopped going out of her house completely. For years now she's spent her days on the couch eating and she's now so big that boys come round her windows to watch her and laugh (children are cruel). Gilbert is responsible for the family: his sisters Amy and teenage Ellen, and most of all Arnie (Leonardo di Caprio) who is mentally retarded and needs to be looked after because he can't take care of himself.
You can feel how this situation is hard for the Grape kids, all of them, and Arnie's continuous shouting is really trying on everybody's nerves, including the audience.
Gilbert works in a shop to support the family, and they're all planning a party for Arnie's 18 birthday. Their mother does nothing to help as usual, they must think of everything by themselves. Amy cooks for the family and makes a cake for the party, but Arnie keeps running inside the house and causes the cake to fall down on the floor, and poor Amy was there, on the floor, saying what now? I have no time to make another one! So they order one and Gilbert pays twenty dollars for it but Arnie eats it and Gilbert loses it. These poor kids had such a weight on their shoulders and nothing to look for in the future. One's home should be one's safe place, but for them life at home was even harder than life outside. Gilbert likes a new girl in town (Juliette Lewis) , but even spending an afternoon with her causes trouble because he was supposed to help Arnie with the bath instead he left him alone. They never have a moment of peace. After Gilbert hits Arnie he feels so guilty and suffers very much.
The brothers and sisters make peace and towards the end the mother walks upstairs for the first time in years and there they find her dead on her bed. Special measures would be needed to get her body out of the house, but the kids loved their mom and can't bear the idea of all those people coming to watch her and Gilbert decides to burn down the house. They take everything out and then they watch it burn. Next scene is about a year later: no information are given of how they made it this past year without a home. It should be a hopeful ending because now Gilbert and the others can leave and go away wherever they want, but it's too simplistic, too 'thrown out there', nothing more than a 'mom's dead, you're free now'.
That was not a satisfying ending for me.



In Italy: Buon compleanno Mr Grape

Chaplin - 1992

This is Charles Chaplin's life from childhood to the victory of the Academy Award for his career. I really enjoyed every scene about Chaplin's performances, so funny , but I did not like the story of his life and his women, because I love the artist, not the man who kept going after young girls and then marry them so to make it okay :-/ I also did not like the scenes when he was old, telling his story to Anthony Hopkings, because making a young man look old is the most difficult thing, as well as pretending to be old when you're very young.
Robert Downey Jr was great as Charlot, I'd say this is his best role. There were also Kevin Kline as famous actor and Charlie's great friend Fairbanks; Geraldine Chaplin as his mother :-) when in real life she's the real thing, the daughter of the real Chaplin.
Dan Aykroyd as the first movie director to hire Chaplin and make him famous. David Duchovny as the cameraman working for him; Marisa Tomei as an actress, also working for him; Milla Yovovich  as the first underage girl he slept with after he was rich and famous :-/. The film shows how his famous Charlot character was born, how he dealt with the innovation of sound; there were lots of bits taken from Chaplin's real movies, and he was just so funny. He only thought of being funny, didn't care about diplomacy, and one day Hoover had him exhiles from America. I mean, he was born British, but America had made him famous, he had lived there a long time and loved it, but he was exhiled from it. He went back when the Academy invited him, to present him with an award. We see the old Chaplin afraid to be obsolete, until he hears the audience laugh watching bits of his work :-)
Basically the best scenes were when we saw his work: actual footage of old films or RDJr playing the drunk-man-act or other funny movements.
It's astounding, almost unbelievable, how his work is still adorable and hilarious after all this time, but it is, simply irresistible.
ITA Charlot-Chaplin

Marygold Hotel - 2011

A very nice film, full of emotions, drama, smiles and great actors. It's the story of various English people who decide to go to India to live in the Marygold hotel: Evelyn (Judi Dench) is a widow who's found out that her husband left her with lots of debts, so she has no money, she even had to sold her house, and now finds a job there in India; Douglas (Bill Nighy) and Jean (Penelope Wilton) are an unhappy couple who gave all their money to their daughter to start off her business; Madge (Celia Imrie) is a grandma who doesn't want to spend the rest of her life at home babysitting, she wants to feel alive again and maybe find a new husband; Muriel Donnelly (Maggie Smith) is a bitter woman that was left home alone after a lifetime of service for the same family; Norman (Ronald Pickup) is a lonely man in search of a woman; Graham (Tom Wilkinson) is a judge with a bad health who retires and goes to spend the last days of his life in India where he lived many years before.
You understand from the start, after the characters are introduced, what will the the movie's theme. These are people who feel alone, useless and sort of hopeless and in India they will find a new life, a new purpose, a new reason to smile again. It works for some of them at least. Graham goes looking everywhere for a lost love, finds it, is relieved to see he had a good life after all, and then he dies. Muriel was very intolerant and racist at first, because she felt alone and abandoned and unhappy, but here she finds again  a way to feel useful when she helps Sonny (Dev Patel) save his hotel, where she'll then stay to help him in the practical and financial aspects of the business. Sonny finally finds the courage to tell Sunaina (Tina Desai) that he loves her and stands up to his mother, insisting he wants to marry her. At first the mother strongly opposes this but then an old man living there reminds her of when the same thing happened to her, and she finally accepted Sunaina.
This was a more important scene than it appears at first, because Muriel witnesses the scene, and that old man is like her: they both spent their lives working for the same family, only he was not sent away as unnecessary, useless, as he got old, but he's kept as part of the family, doing what he can and no more.
Douglas here is a new man, he loves the place, the colours, the things to visit, the people, and he enjoys Evelyn's company. On the contrary Jean hates the place, the noise, the dirt, the food, and as soon as their daughter tells them she can give them back the money she wants to run away, go back home to England. He's the kind of man that would never leave her, so it's her to finally admit their marriage is over, and they should split up, so she goes away while he stays here.
I think this is a very delicate, emotional film, and the age of the characters is important because it amplifies everything, gives a new meaning to everything. The scene when Douglas and Evelyn talk and hug would have been totally different with young characters, so easily misunderstood: she says she went to speak with Mugash (or some name similar, sorry) 's wife to see if she knew everything about him and Graham, and learned that yes, she did, he had told her everything before the marriage, there never was any secret between them, and this is great ,but she cries because it wasn't like that between her and her husband, and Douglas hugs her to console her, and you don't think bad of it, you don't believe she's trying to steal anybody's husband and he's not trying to take advantage of a fragile woman. No, you feel how lost she is for realizing she had no idea of what her husband was doing, and he's just glad to be able to connect to someone on an emotional level instead of always arguing or being ordered about. When he doesn't leave , instead he comes back to the hotel and they meet, he only asks when she'll be back from work for a tea together, and inquires how she takes her tea as a kind way of caring. The last image with Muriel at the hotel reception is lovely: she's well again as she had not been in a long time, with something to take her occupied all the time, and really useful in what she does because there would be no Marygold hotel without her :-)

Mine vaganti - 2010

I think outside Italy it's known as "Loose cannons". It's a good film, I liked it, as I do all Ferzan Ozpetek films, he's good! There were only a couple of things I didn't understand or like. Who was the married couple that appears from time to time? I'm not even sure they were a couple, because later she dances with another man. She looked unhappy and I don't understand why.
What I didn't much like was the ending.
The story: Tommaso (Riccardo Scamarcio) lives in Rome, he's gone there to study; he loves to write and also loves Marco. He's determined to tell his family that he's gay in the few days he'll spend in his family's house. They are a very traditional, southern family, in Puglia. He has planned to tell them at dinner, but when he's about to do just that, his brother Antonio (Alessandro Preziosi) unexpectedly sees his last chance and says it before he could say a word. Antonio confesses to his family that he's gay, that he loved a man, Michele, working for his factory and fired him to hide the relationship, but he still loves him. The family is in shock, nobody knew except his grandma (Ilaria Occhini). The mother (Lunetta Savino) won't believe it at first, and the father (Ennio Fantastichini) has a heart attack. Because of this Tommaso says nothing, he feels trapped, as if confessing now could kill his father. A significant scene is when the mother tries to make sense of it and remembers when Antonio gave her a present, a girl-present she believes now, but Tommaso corrects her: "I gave it to you" :lol:
Antonio is sent away, thrown out of the house and the company. The father hides in the house believing everybody knows and laughs at him. Tommaso takes Antonio's place in the factory working with Alba (Nicole Grimaudo, who knows why) who doesn't need to be told because she understands by herself he's gay. They talk a lot, become good friends, I believe she likes him a lot, despite all. Antonio doesn't have his happy ending with his love because after all he did through the years Michele doesn't want him anymore. Saying sorry later is not always enough, you know.
Marco and his friends come for a visit and are invited to dinner, and try their best to appear straight, knowing what had happened. There are of course some funny moments here, but I'm glad to say it's never vulgar, it's simple and light comedy, funny and lovely. Daniele Pecci plays one of the friends.
The night Marco knocks at Tommaso's door. This was my favourite scene. When Tommaso didn't open I was afraid he might be following Antonio's path and lose his love, but at the last moment he opens the door and runs to hug Marco, saying sorry and kissing him. I was relieved for them.
The friends and Alba spend some time together, then they go away. Tommaso confesses that he wants to write, not work in the factory. I loved when he said that sometimes in his life he had felt like going away to write the answer to some question or other and then show it to be read, meaning that writing is easier than talking and very much a part of him : I so related to this bit.
The grandmother has a secret too. She actually loved all her life her husband's brother, although it's not clear to me why she married him instead (maybe forced by the family, I guess), anyway one day she says she's so very tired and the night she dresses properly and eats lots and lots of sweets that are bound to kill a diabetic like her. Everybody cries when they find her. At the funeral Antonio is obviously there. Tommaso is the first to go to hug him, immediately followed by their sister, who doesn't care in the slightest about who he likes to sleep with. The brothers and sister walk side by side, and the mother can't resist any longer, as much she misses him, and goes taking Antonio's arm. The father says nothing but there's a feeling things will be a little better, maybe just because he can stand side by side with Antonio without screaming or fainting. The movie ends at a wedding - I think, a girl has a wedding dress on, but I have no idea who she is; it's the same girl we saw before, the one that looked unhappy and at first I had thought it was the memory of the grandma going hand in hand with the man she loved to marry his brother, but since they are at her wedding it can't be.
Anyway, people are dancing. Marco dances with Alba, and they both look at the man they love: Tommaso, while he looks at them: the woman he could have loved had he been straight and the man he actually loves.
Good, yes, but will he ever tell his family? Why didn't he dance? Will he go back to Rome with Marco? I guess he will, since he doesn't want to work in the factory. Anyway, that's just me, because it's not a bad ending per se, it's a symbolic scene when he stands there watching Marco and Alba dancing and looking at him and he has in front of him the two paths his life could take, but must not be confused with a choice on his part. Throughout the film there's a feeling of how easier his life would be if he was straight because he would love Alba and be approved by his family, but it's never a choice, because one doesn't choose who one must love.
It's a really good film, with sentiment and laughter. I liked it a lot.

Moon - 2009

Too boring for me. It was interesting at some point, but it went on so, so slowly...
The story isn't bad, it's kind of intriguing. Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) is the only one working on a lunar base. He has a three year contract than he'll go home. His job is to keep the station working properly: the object is to mine for some material the moon is rich of and send it to Earth. One day he has a bad accident outside. When he wakes up in the infirmary he hears the computer talking to Earth, receiving orders to keep him inside the base. This alarms Sam because communications were supposed to be down. He damages something on purpose to have an excuse to go out. He goes where he had the accident and finds a man inside the vehicle. He brings him to the base and when he wakes up there are two Sam Bell walking around on the station. They are both real and they both think they're the original Sam, but soon understand they're not. They're both clones. They could not contact Earth because somebody had put big transmitters some distance from the base to jam his communications, so that he could not contact home and learn the truth. The older clone is at the end of his three years work, and discovers that this has happened many times before. After the three years period they are told they're going back home, but instead they are incinerated and a new clone is revived. He also manages to contact home by going outside the interference-perimeter. He wanted to talk to his wife Tess, but a young girl answers the call saying Tess died 'some years ago'. She's Eve, the daughter he remembers just born but that is now fifteen. This is not the only shocking news: her father is there, in the house with her, which means that the original Sam Bell has gone home.
A rescue-team is arriving to repair the machines and also dispose of the body in the vehicle, so the two Sam realize that they'll be both killed if found together, so older Sam goes back to the crashed vehicle: his health is very very bad, so he goes to die where he can most help the other Sam.
Younger Sam orders the computer to revive a new clone that will meet with the rescue-team, while he plans to go back to Earth. He uses a capsule destined to the transportation of the mined material and returns to Earth. We don't see his return though. We know that he broke one of the transmitters, so the new clone will be able to contact the planet, and we hear news reports informing us that he arrived and made his story public. We don't know, though, how it will end for him and for the company that created these clones in order to save money sending new people over the years. In the station there were lots and lots of clones ready to be revived at the right time. The story was yes intriguing, but too slow, and I'd have liked to learn what happened after his return!
One last thing: I understand movies based in space has to be slow, they all are, but is it really so necessary to be this slow? Do they think that if things move on a little more quickly we won't feel like we are in space anymore? Isn't it possible to have a compromise between veeeery-veeeery-sloooow and action-faster-than-light ?

Il giovane Montalbano - Un'albicocca

Which means the episode "An apricot" of the "Young Montalbano" series. It's definitely not one of my favourite episodes, but it's not bad. This is Montalbano's last week in Sicilia before leaving for Genova. Livia (Sarah Felberbaum) flies down to spend some time with him, but as always he has little time for her because he's too interested in the case, even if he's supposed to leave all the work to Mimì (Alessio Vassallo), and to help him packing, basically she does it all. It's clearly very painful for him to leave his home for what is, well, sort of a different world, and she asks him if he still wants to live with her or if he's changed his mind, but he says he hasn't,  till the last he seemes determined to go. He regrets leaving his home country, but wants to stay with her (and as he said in the previous episode, the honest thief one, he need to move to grow up). I was hoping we might get al least one episode in Genova, that would have been lovely, but no, he never catches that flight. Once his investigation is complete, he is (more or less) ready to leave, when the fact happens. I had seen it coming from the pieces of tv-news here and there on the current crime climate in Sicilia: Falcone's murder, an event so big and tragic that shocks everyone and Livia tells him to stay because 'that's your land', because in a way he can't leave Sicilia after such a wound. At least he didn't back down. Livia might even be able to believe that he would have really gone through with it, although to be honest, he had no real reason to come back into town at the end, so why did he? He had just said that he didn't like goodbyes and because of that he didn't want to stop at the police station, and yet it's exactly what he does. It was quite a scene: having already emptied his house and transferred all his duties to Mimì, the new 'commissario', he sets off early in the morning intending to drive up to Genova, apparently, but before heading for the motorway he turns left, towards Vigata, to say goodbye I guess. He drives through streets and places totally deserted, there's nobody to be seen anywhere, and of course this is so odd he starts wondering why. He arrives at the station and still not a soul anywhere. He can hear words on the radio of people injured and killed, and finally he runs inside. Catarella is crying, the others are all inside Mimì's office looking at the tv-news. Giovanni Falcone has been assassinated, a bomb that blew up his car, the road, also killing three of his guards. After such a terrible thing of course Livia tells him to stay, to help his country, his land that now needs him.
By the way, was he supposed to go to the airport or did he think to drive all the way, to keep his car and his bags with him? It's far way, but the phone call with Livia suggests driving all the way.
This episode's case plot was not interesting. Montalbano (Michele Riondino) accidentally finds the dead body of model Annarosa. An accident, a suicide or a murder? They spent/wasted some time on this question, which was rather pointless considering they eventually learn she died hours before her car fell down on the rocks. The title refers to an apricot kernel in her throat. That seemed a bit random. The guy, her ex-boyfriend, knew she was allergic to apricots so after killing her he faked an accident and planted the apricot kernel to mislead the investigation :-/  He killed her because she had discovered that his new girlfriend and her father were secretly importing drugs.
After Montalbano figured out his involvement, his girlfriend and her dad had him killed to make sure he wouldn't talk about the drug business they had going on. Rather boring, actually.
The part that made me laugh out loud was Catarella trying to learn a folk song in genovese, trying to get the accent right, and then he sang it to Salvo and he asked "what language is that?" :lol:
I don't know, maybe it had a big effect on me just because it's very rare to hear this dialect on tv.

Il giovane Montalbano - La transazione - 2015

Which means "The transaction", a movie of the "Young Montalbano" series. I liked this one, it was more sentimental and less confusing. Again it sort of had three different themes going on: 1. a robbery at a little bank that turns out to be affiliated to the Sinagra family. They had taken the money in their care and put up a theft lie to cover it up, then killed a robber of the Cuffaro family to make it look like they did it, but Salvo understood the scheme and gave an interview hoping to avoid a mafia war. The two family 'made up' with a transaction, which includes the murder of the people responsible. One is killed but Fazio finds the other one who accepts to talk to save his life.
2. A man is murdered, the same man that a seer called 'the murderer'. Montalbano finds out that with the italian SS he betrayed the partisans and killed one of them, that the sees was the sister of his victim, and that even if he was around 70 years old he wanted to get married. Salvo looks for the seer, but when he finds her she confesses she had been looking for her brother's murderer for a long time, but also that she really has a gift, and saw that the man had little time to live, that a woman would have killed him. Montalbano remembers a woman he found walking on the road that night, when he drove her home. He goes there and she confesses everything. They had loved each other as kids but could not be together because their families were enemies. They had kept loving each other, but could not spend time together. They had made a deal that whoever of them did fall in love with someone else would have paid with life the betrayal, and she had not forgotten, so she made him pay by shooting him in the head.
3. After last episode's crisis, Salvo has not seen or heard from Livia. He starts going out with that young bank director we had already met; he was hesitant, almost frightened and at the same time something make him want to see her again (well, she is nice and beautiful so..). They kiss a lot but go no further because he doesn't feel like it. She asks him to join her in Madrid, but he arrives at the airport to see that there is also a flight to Genova. Which girl does he really want? We knew already of course, so yes he takes the flight to Genova, goes to Livia's house and they finally hug again. Happy ending :-) Obviously.
Again, I so did not like his constant sighing while speaking, it's very annoying and I can't understand why he keeps doing it, is it because it's the only way he can make the accent or simply because he thinks it is more 'intense' this way? Either way it's so annoying that I might stop watching it just for that.
I liked the rest enough, and also the story with this Stella was hot and the whole thing was romantic. The thing I cared less was the robbery, but it was ok and was useful to make Salvo in contact with Stella, to ask her about banks.
We also see his father here, and strangely they seemed to be getting along fine, no trace of the hostility I remember in old-Montalbano.

Il giovane Montalbano: la stanza numero 2 - 2015

Which means "room number two" of the "Young Montalbano" series. It was nice enough, but nothing special. There are a few things going on: 1.Salvo and Livia are planning their wedding: Salvo is annoyed for the meetings with the priest and all the other things he'll have to do, and he also has to choose his best man; he says he doesn't want Mimì because of his obsession with women, so he asks Fazio senior, who is happy and honored. Mimì, however, is hurt and takes it very badly, so Livia decides to make peace and she asks Mimì herself, instead of this dear friend we've never heard of before, telling Mimì that Salvo asked Carmine because it was a kindness after his heart attack, and Mimì accepts and forgives and forgets.
2. An anonymous letter to the police says that a woman cheating on her husband might be in danger, but the husband turns out to be a good peaceful man, so Salvo realizes the scheme was all hers; she had prepared everything so that at the moment to kill her husband it would look like a robbery gone badly, only her lover had thought back on it and had sent the letter to try and prevent it.
3. The case of the title. A hotel is burned down and a man killed in the fire. Montalbano follows up on any possible suspicion, but they all lead to nothing, until one of the clients turns out to be a mediator for the city mafia families. He says a deal was reached successfully, but Salvo is not convinced. A mafia man who had raped a prostitute is killed by her brother, and Salvo finds all the proof he needs, and it all appears clear, a deal had been reached all right. Salvo arrests the mediator too, at the end. The title refers to a room that was not clear if it should have been occupied or not, and after much looking into it Salvo finds out what the hotel owner and one of the guests already knew. It had been the dead man: he caused the fire, crazy because inside there was his ex-wife with another man, but after the fire broke out he didn't see her coming out so he ran back inside to find her, but the fire was too violent and he died.
The rapist had not been convicted because an arrogant philosophy teacher had given him an alibi for that same hour, but due to Salvo's persistence he realizes he made a stupid, common mistake of looking at a clock through a window-glass, and therefore mistaking 11pm with 1am.  :-/ ok he's all about philosophy and doesn't care for material things, but come on!
I quite enjoyed the scenes about the marriage, and it was as always a pleasure to see again Fazio senior, but did not like the two sons of the man that died in the fire, not a good acting. Anyway, the marriage is still on for now. I'll have to wait to see what happens to call it off. I mean, this is their past, so we know they'll stay together but will not get married at least for some years, maybe forever, judging from how things were going between the 'old' Salvo and Livia.

Foxfire - 2012

It’s a bitter movie. It’s not bad but I don’t like the ending because it’s not a clear one, at least not to me. What happened to all the girls that escaped from the police? What happened to the man who was shot? Was he saved or did he die? I understand that before this movie there was a book and a previous  film as well, but I know nothing of either of them. 

The movie is a bitter one because it’s placed in a world very difficult for girls. We see that one gets raped by a guy while outside his friends laugh and go on with their business. A teacher humiliating a girl in class. Generally men and adults doing what they want and nobody caring for this girls poor and powerless. A group of them gets together to form a gang called Foxfire to rebel against this society and defend one another. It starts slow, with writings and drawings, then it escalates. They beat the uncle of one of them who wanted to abuse her (how many of this shit are really in this world?) and one day Legs (Raven Adamson) stops a boy harassing one of them by pointing a knife at his throat. Only the girls, all the them, are expelled from school. They go away like inebriated and on the heat of the moment they steal the car of a rich man. The police follow them; they have an accident and are caught. They are all convicted but only Legs is sent to prison. In there the worst of all was a nasty woman who put thumbs in her eyes, and Legs wonders why a woman would do that, men are the enemy but women are not all of them allies, she learns. 

Finally out she reunites with her friends. She has a dream and rents a house where all girls could live together. She pays for the house and the car, happy of the sisterhood she created. 

Only Maddy is concerned about trivial things like the money to buy food for everybody. Their number is growing and everybody gives what they can, but only a few of them work so it's not enough. Another thing that upsets Legs is the other girls' attitude towards her prison friend. They don't want her because she's black, thus showing how little they believe in this sisters-thing. Only three of them accepted her, eight of them said no. By now Legs decides they need money and they'll take it from men, by having them come to an empty place where they think they'll get sex while instead they'll get robbed. I didn't like how this choice was portrayed. I don't know how it was in the book, I must look for it because the story is intriguing, but in the movie it was just like "i'm tired of Maddy nagging about money problems, let's go and steal some".

Legs made another friend in prison, a rich girl come to visit as a form of charity, I suppose, but that is indeed a nice girl with a nice family that opens their house to her. Legs wants to abduct the father and ask a big ransom, so to not having to worry about money ever again. He was offering her and Violet a good job, but it wasn't enough for her. Maddy leaves the group, it's too changed for her, and Rita (I think) gets expelled because she liked a guy. The girls go on with the plan, but it's not as easy as they thought; they hide him in the house, but he won't collaborate. One girl accidentally shoots him and it all goes bad. Legs sends all the girls away to protect them, and only three or four of them stay with her. She calls for an ambulance for him and they run away, Legs driving. This time they're not caught, but we don't know what happens to them. We then see that Maddy has a job she likes and Rita has a beautiful baby. They meet and they talk remembering the times of the Foxfires. Good for them that they got out, still they don't know what happened to the others so we don't either. Rita thinks she recognized Legs in a newspaper picture among some revolutionaries somewhere, but they can't be sure. 

My problem with this film is the unsatisfying ending and the bitterness of the girls against other girls (although that is so true in real life, which is even more bitter), and the reason for it all. Maddy and Rita talk about Legs as if they miss her, as if she was the reason for doing it all, but when you watch the movie she's like a normal girl with a dream of sisterhood, but it almost seems like the other girls followed her because it was fun to be all together without parents and because it was more fun to steal the money from shit men than to actually work, and because they were like inebriated by this we-can-do-everything-we-want policy. They didn't seem to really care about what happened to other girls, they didn't seem to really, really care about each other either. Why did all this happen? They didn't like the idea of working like regular people? I didn't understand why Legs made such choices. Why did she hate men so much? Why didn't she trust anybody at all aside from the girls she wanted to protect? Also she put all her ideas on their mind, everything they do was their choice, and yet she accepted without a second word when they didn't accept her friend. 

I don't know. The film was good, the actors were good, specially the one playing Maddy, but all in all it was not 100% convincing.

In Italy: Foxfire-ragazze cattive

Die hard - 1988

Well, there's Alan Rickman in it and that's good; the rest is just the kind of action movie that was loved in those years I guess. The L.A. Police Department appears to be full of stupid people, and the FBI too for that matter, just better dressed to show they've got more money. When the troubles start and John McClane (Bruce Willis who will never get rid of him) uses some radio or whatever it was that was there for emergency calls, he gets this response: this line is for emergencies, if you have problems call 911 from your phone! What? Didn't she hear him talk about terrorists?!? Then there's shooting, so what does she do? She sends a policeman (one, alone in the car. I thought they were always supposed to work in pairs...) to check the building: he enters, looks around the empty atrium and goes away: everything's fine. What? John saw him get back in the car, which looked somehow distant, but when John throws out of the window the dead body of one of the criminals, it landed exactly on the car :-/ Now things get more serious, the whole department is mobilized and the chief is all: what do we know about him, he might be the terrorist himself... yeah right, and he called you all to have a bit of fun on Christmas' eve, I suppose. Anyway, he has to do it all by himself because neither the chief or the FBI are of any help. He gets beaten, shot at, he walks barefoot on a sea of broken glass, he shoots almost all of them dead, he blows up a part of the building, but the hero wins at the and and comes out walking on his own two feet... ooook :-/
Well, sense was not the primary target here, but all in all, take it for what it is, it's not too bad. The character though, is not in my favs list: he comes to L.A. full of rightful anger and hurt feelings, shouts at his wife for registering with her maiden name: Holly Gennaro instead of Holly McClane, but then we see the whole picture: he's a cop in New York, she got a big big job so she had to move to L.A. and he didn't go with her, didn't ask for a transfert, and acts like she left him. He could be a cop anywhere, she could only have a career in Los Angeles, so what, she should have given up everything to be home waiting for him? For how I see it, she did not leave him, he let her go, and proof is how she looks at him with adoring eyes, and the fact that it's him who wants to start a fight.
Yes, towards the end he has the decency to say sorry, yet not to her. So yes, saving her life was the least he could do... :-)


In  Italy: Trappola di cristallo

Iron man 2 - 2010

A funny toy-movie, I liked it. This is where the villain Ivan something (Mickey Rourke) seeks revenge by building his own iron-armor. This puts Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr) into trouble with the public. He also has his own trouble because that thing in his chest is killing him. He makes things worse by getting drunk and creating such trouble that not even Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) can make things right. Ivan is secretly freed from jail by Hammer industries' leader Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell) who wants him to work for them, but he has his own agenda, he hasn't given up on his revenge. To solve the situation Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) reveals to him Natalia's true identity: Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johanson) saves the situation by hacking Ivan's system and get away from him the control of all the armors including War Machine's (Rhodey is Don Cheadle), because she's also a computer expert, apparently, and she's there to evaluate Tony so she's a psychologist too... this Black Widow has no superpower but appears to have every possible ability you can think of...
It all ends relatively well, of course, with Tony and Pepper finally getting together and kissing. There was also Coulson (Clark Gregg) in here, who after a couple of scenes with Tony leaves for New Mexico where Thor's hammer has landed :-) This is nice because I love Coulson :-)
A cool scene was when Ivan appeared at the race and use his weapon to cut Tony's car in two :lol:
You know, when I started watching this I couldn't help thinking about how there are actors like Maggie Smith or Terence Hill that have the exact face they had when they were thirty, obvious wrinkles aside, and then there's Mickey Rourke, that I know it's him and I still can't believe it.

The client - 1994

I like this movie, I admit, just for the actors. For Tommy Lee Jones and Susan Sarandon too. I'm not
thrilled that the third main character is a kid because, although Mark's reactions are totally understandable for a kid his age and class, I can't help finding him annoying. I don't like shouting but to be fair in many movies adults do it too and they don't even have the age excuse. Let's entirely forget the criminals, who are almost embarrassing. Basically I didn't care for anything else but the scenes with Tommy Lee Jones and/or Susan Sarandon.
The story is simple: Mark knows stuff he'd better ignore but is sure that if he talks he'll be putting his mom and little brother in danger so he's very determined to shut up. Lawyer Reggie (Sarandon) takes a heartily interest in him because she lost custody of her own children and now neither of them wants to see her because she's an ex alcoholic (although she started drinking after she lost her kids).
Roy (Tommy L J ) is with the Fbi and although he appears to be more interested in success and press conferences, he's not a bad guy. Reggie and Roy are in conflict because he'd like to drag the boy to testify no matter what, while Reggie wants to protect him/ help him stay with his mother. Once she learns everything herself she demands a deal: protected custody for the whole family, starting money and a job for the mother. Once it's done, printed and signed, and the three of them are on the plane, she reveals to Roy where a dead body can be found. The end.
Not bad, but as I said, too much of the kid.
In Italy : Il cliente

Rear window - 1954

Great movie, another classic, another one that must be watched by every movie-lover. The basic plot is already amazing by itself: a man that I think is called Jeff (James Stewart) broke his leg so he's stuck at home in a wheelchair. To pass the time he watches his neighbors by the window.
Here and now he would most of all see walls and curtains, but there and then he saw a lot of these people's lives. Based on what he saw he believes a man murdered his wife. His girlfriend Lisa (Grace Kelly) doesn't believe him at first, but starts changing her mind when she sees the man closing a big trunk with thick ropes. Apparently this woman was not in good health, but for a whole day nobody checked on her, plus she's not at home anymore, and there's the big trunk and him cleaning his bathroom walls. Jeff talks about it to a policeman friend, but he's not believed. It appears witnesses saw Mrs Thorwald leave to go on holiday, but Jeff is even more sure of it when he sees Mr Thorwald (Raymond Burr, can you believe it? I didn't) with the wife's purse, and her jewels. Lisa is absolutely positive no woman would go on holiday without her purse and her jewels, and is now of his same belief. So much that she sneaks into his house to find some clues, and she finds Mrs Thorwald's wedding ring. Mr Thorwald comes back home too early though, and finds her inside. All Jeff can do is to call the police and watch from his window what happens, feeling worried and helpless. The police arrive in time to save her, but Mr Thorwald now knows about him watching, and goes to him: he tries to strangle him but Jeff screams and the police come to help him. He falls out of the window but he's alive: he only broke his other leg :-p
He was right about everything :-)
I'm very glad to say that at the end we see the 'conclusion' of the other neighbor's stories too. The woman that cried and yelled during the night when she found her dog killed now has a new one. The dancer's boyfriend comes back, the musician has completed his work and I'm happy to say the lonely woman did not kill herself with pills: she was about to but stop when she heard that music. Now they are talking together, the lonely woman and the musician, and she tells him something like 'you don't know what that music has meant for me'. Beautiful movie, very interesting. I think that this 'simple movies' are the best, when well done. This is shot all in the apartment and looking out of it, just like "dial M for murder" was all in the house. Really great school, this is, to make a movie with no distractions or cheap tricks: here it's all about the story and the actors: no special effects, no sex, no nudes, no blood (only a brief, attempted strangling), no songs. It's not easy to make a movie like this and never become boring, keep the attention high, move the story forward keeping it interesting without actually do anything. Masterful.





In Italy: La finestra sul cortile

Dial M for murder - 1954

This is a great movie, a classic, a must see, real class. A man, Tony (Ray Milland) married Margot (Grace Kelly) for her money but without love. She loved him at first, but one day she fell in love with Mark (Robert Cummings), but they left each other when he went back to America. Tony knew of it, he knew she didn't love him anymore, and started thinking that if she left him he would be left with nothing. He's gotten used to having money, so he carefully plans to get rid of her. We hear his intention when he calls to his house a con-man, maybe even a murderer (did he kill that woman or did he give her the drugs that killed her?), a man he has followed for a long time. Tony knows all about him, and proposes to pay him to kill his wife. The plan is simple: Tony will go out with Mark and Margot will be alone at home. Swan will find the key to the house hidden in the stairs, hide inside and wait. At a specific hour Tony would phone home to get Margot to the telephone. At that point Swan will come out and kill her. Toni will come home later with Mark, and he'll have a perfect alibi for the whole evening. As Mark the writer said before things in real life never go according to one's plan, and Toni finds out soon how true that is. At first Margot didn't like the idea of staying home, then she didn't die because in the struggle, while the man was strangling her, she touched with her hand the scissors she had forgotten to put away and stabbed him. He died instead, so Toni quickly thinks of a new plan: to have her arrested and executed for murder. He quickly arranges things to make it look like she invited him in and then killed him because he was blackmailing her for her secret love for Mark. He really thinks of everything: it does look like she did it on purpose, and she is found guilty in the trial and sentenced to be executed. Toni doesn't know he made one mistake: according to his plan Swan was to put back the key after the murder, while going out, so when he saw him dead he believed that Swan had that key in his pockets. He took it and put it back into Margot's purse. Unfortunately for him Swan had put it back right after using it, before entering the apartment, so the key in his pocket was of his own place. This chief inspector really reminds me of Columbo, and not for his coat but for the fact that he suspected something wasn't right when he found no key in the dead man's pockets, that was not normal, how could he have no keys at all? He had no explanation, but by chance he also found out that the key in Margot's purse was not the right one for her door, so little by little he put things together. Also, Toni had been spending the cash money he should have given Swan, raising suspicions, although the evil genius had a convincing answer for this: it was the money Margot had taken to pay her blackmailer. He was about to win but the chief inspector saved Margot's life with a simple trick. He tried to find out who between husband and wife knew about the key in the stairs. He did, and by taking that key now he proved his guilt.
A great movie, Hitchcock's fame was not for nothing (he appears in a picture, shown twice very clearly, sitting at a table with young Toni and young Swan).




In Italy: Il delitto perfetto

Fifty shades of grey - 2015

Oh my God what a stupid sick load of crap. Worse than I thought. I've never read the book, I speak only about the movie, but one thing I'm sure of: one thing is to read about sex and imagining it with your own fantasy, and another is to see this girl naked all the time, doing strange things that in this movie are neither exciting or despicable, just plain boring and ridiculous. Sure, Jamie Dornan is hot, ok, but that's not enough to make this movie worth another watch. Ever.
Also I thought that the book was a success among women, not men. I say this because if they did this movie for the women who fantasized on Grey while reading the book and maybe for the women that never read it but became curious after so much talking about it, then why on Earth did they keep showing a naked girl all the time? That was so annoying. They wanted a sort of scandal-thing, and maybe there wasn't enough plot to make a decent movie, but they should have tried, they should have created it. A movie is not a book, it needs different things. They aimed purely at the scandal, at the sex scenes, and nothing more. The nicest part of it all was when they texted each other and when at the end she says No!. They could have made an effort, create a background for her so that when she meets him we already know the kind of girl she is (and why she dresses that way! Tell me what girl would have entered that building dressed like that!). Not everyone's read the book, but everyone's heard about it, so they should have made a movie for everybody.
I saw a very unreal girl (Dakota Johnson as Anastasia) falling so badly for this confident rich guy that came to pick her up because he had heard she was drunk, that she agreed to anything to be with him. Christian Grey met her father, then her mother, even introduced her to his family at a dinner in their house as his girlfriend, and yet he kept saying "I don't do romance", and when she says "I've fallen in love with you" as if it's something shocking, he actually is surprised! He says "you can't love me". How stupid he seems to be. The 'romance' bits were boring too: buying her a car (big deal when you're a billionaire) , taking her flying (the scenes didn't have to be that long, they really didn't know how to fill the movie maybe).
The beginning was so annoying, when this girl who doesn't seem to know a lot about life tells him she's got a feeling nobody really knows him well, or that maybe he wants to hide that he's got a big heart... yeah right: first, girl, you don't know him, and second, usually when a man says something bad about himself you'd better listen and believe it.
How boring it was all that stuff about the contract, and how he talked was just ridiculous. "I'm not gonna touch you until I have your written consent" , famous last words since she never signed it, and "I don't make love. I fuck. Hard". Ridiculous, and not sexy in the slightest. I almost laughed in his face.
None of this was the least bit exciting. By the way, the bit about his lawyers insisting on having various documents signed before he has sex with a girl... how did this start? Did he go to them saying: nobody knows this, not my family, friends, no one at all, but I like to handcuff women and spank them till they cry in pain, is that alright for you? I mean, who started the 'contract' idea?
Anyway, it was all very plain, and by the way, this man has big issues, probably since he was introduced to it very young by a friend of his mother (that's child abuse, people, let's stop this 'we're friends' nonsense), he never had any kind of real relationship with women. He sort of reminds me of "9 1/2 weeks" Micky Rourke's character, who wanted total power over her, control, but did not know how to actually 'relate', and ended up losing her even though he loved her. Same principle, complete opposite movies. That one was good, exciting drama, while this is a boring attempt to give scandal in 2015 when viewers have "Game of thrones" and "Rome" and "Spartacus" and whatever else. Good luck with that...

Three act tragedy by Agatha Christie

I liked it, although it was rather simple, yet nice enough. I sure like more Poirot in a more central role that as a sort of guest appearance as in here, still it was a nice little story.
Plot: famous actor Sir Charles has invited a few friends for dinner, and Poirot is among them, yet it doesn't start here for him because when Vicar Babbington dies he doesn't suspect foul play at all, even after Sir Charles suggests the idea he discards it. Some time later Sir Charles and his friend Satter are in Montearlo when they read that their friend Doctor Strange died in pretty much the same way. Satter gets Poirot involved when he meets him in Montecarlo and tells him about Strange, still all the investigation is done by the little group of friends while Poirot has only a small part: he listens to their stories and thinks. The poor vicar appears to have been a good, quiet man with no enemies in the world, and Poirot still can't see why anyone would want his death. Sir Charles, Satter and young Hermione, in love with the great, although old, actor, dig into his past and also question all the people that were present in both parties. Now the 'big spoiler': apparently Strange had been enjoying himself very much that night he died, he was happy and jovial and even talked to a servant, Ellis, that later disappeared, thus getting upon himself all the police's suspicions. A patient of the doctor was later found dead after Poirot received a telegram from her. She couldn't get out but apparently she gave the message to a homeless wanderer, or something like that, who then paid a kid to send it. Now, someone might think that Agatha tricked us this time, but I don't see it that way. Sure, we were lead to believe Sir Charles was in Montecarlo the whole time of the second murder, but we also know he was alone at that time, he met Satter later, and we are told in numerous occasions how good an actor he was and how much he liked to play some part or another even in real life, so it was kinda obvious to suspect him. Come on, a waiter that disappeared into thin air and a poor homeless guy? These seemed so much like impersonations. Therefore I was not surprised when Poirot revealed the name of the murderer. It was interesting, though, to learn the reason. I had absolutely no clue about this: a patient of doctor Strange was Charles' wife who nobody knew about, and since he wanted to marry Hermy nobody else had to know about her. Strange would not have let him trick the girl into a marriage with a married man. The poor vicar's death was just a rehearsal, and his death was accidental, meaning that one glass was poisoned and anybody could have drank from it, even Poirot!




In Italy: Tragedia in tre atti

The A.B.C. murders by Agatha Christie

I really like it. It's interesting and gripping. I read it very quickly. Agatha and Poirot dealing with a serial killer! I'll come to the plot, but first I want to say a few things. Hastings comes to London for a few days from his life in Argentina. Talking about the kind of mystery they'd like to work on together, Poirot gives a nice rendition of what "Cards on the table" will be: imagine a middle-class living-room, four people at a table playing bridge while a fifth sits by the fire. At the end this person is found dead. One of the four killed him while the others were concentrated on the game and didn't notice. :-) Nice.
Another thing is how humanity is still the same after all these years (this book dates 1935). When the first woman is killed, many people gather around her shop out of curiosity, and nobody seems to care about the poor old shopkeeper that got her head smashed. Hastings most of all didn't think it was worth their attention. This is one thing I hate about Hastings (and about people, actually, because he's such a more realistic character than Poirot, of course). He's depicted as a good man, naive, honest and good-hearted, but here and there we see the truth of how snob he is. He is only caring when people are important, rich, or beautiful young women. Working-class people don't matter to him, even less a working-class old woman. Shame on him.
The story is interesting. Poirot receives a letter announcing something will happen at a certain place and date, a sort of challenge, and the right day a woman is found dead. Hastings is bored by her murder and becomes interested only when it is connected to Poirot's letter, and therefore could be the first of a series. Detective Crome is intelligent, a good cop, but too arrogant, full of himself. Another letter comes, this time announcing a different place: the first started with A, this one with B, just like the victims. This time it's Betty Barnard, a pretty but silly girl. Next up is a rich man, Sir Carmichael Clark, and they couldn't even try to prevent it because the letter arrived too late. At this point a group of people joins Poirot in trying to solve the case and prevent any more murders. This group is formed by poor old Ascher's niece, by Betty's boyfriend Donald Fraser and also her sister Megan, and by Sir Clark's brother and heir Franklin, and by beautiful Thora Grey who used to work with Sir Clark but his wife fired her, and is now getting close to the new Sir Clark. Unfortunately there's another murder, but at this point the investigation leads to a man, a travelling salesman, Alexander Bonaparte Cust, who seems the perfect solution; because of his memory losses and headaches he's actually convinced he killed those people, but not Betty, because he has a strong alibi for that night in a man ready, insisting I'd say, to witness and swear to it. Good man, he knew Cust could not have done it since they were together, and was determined to have everybody know.
Poirot believes the alibi, and starts to think that if he didn't do that one, maybe he didn't do the others either. Looking at it in a different way, he unveils the truth. It was not a madman's work, on the contrary a very calculating man had planned a murder, and built up this whole 'series' thing to cover up the only one he cared about. It was Franklin Clark who wanted to inherit his brother's fortune, and had created an alibi and a scapegoat to get away with it, but he couldn't fool Poirot!
I liked it, yes. I don't see why in books Agatha's stories are said to be of the 'Sherlock Holmes' type, because the only similarity is that Hastings is a bit like Watson, but that's it. You can't guess anything there because Holmes sees and understands everything without giving you a chance, while Agatha does. They are different in this. Even here, you can very well guess the truth, because poor Cust wasn't at all the same character that was boldly challenging Poirot in the letters, and because that letter came late: how could they think of a mistake? The killer was very methodic, and had written the precise address twice already, so it did seem rather strange that he would make such a mistake; also, Sir Clark was rich with a very sick wife and a beautiful young girl in the house that in no time could have been his wife and given him children (read heirs) while now Sir Franklin inherits it all and looks like he also might get the beautiful young girl as well. Now, he had motive for a cold-blooded murder! Can I also say 'romantic Agatha strikes again' ? There's a romance forming right in front of us between Megan and Fraser, with a little help from Poirot at the end. I also like the ending, with Cust thanking Poirot and Poirot telling him he's now the most famous man in England and should make a lot of money by selling his story to various papers. I liked when Cust said that with the money he could also give a wedding present to a good girl: Lily, that when her boyfriend told the police about his suspicions on Cust, she phoned the man to warn him of the police arrival, because she never really believed he could have done those horrible things. That was nice. In movies they always fail to give secondary characters any recognition of value, it was nice to see that Cust (and Agatha) still remembered Lily and thought of thanking her :-)


In Italy: La serie infernale