In 3 tagen bist du tot - 2006

Nope. One is enough, thank you very much :-/

A group of five kids passes the final exam and goes out celebrating the end of high school. On the road they hit a little Bambi and then don’t know what to do with the poor suffering thing, so Martin puts it out with a blow to the head… this was the hardest scene in the movie. The fact that people told me “look at the close-up on the legs, it was a real one!” didn’t help.

They go back home, and as soon as Nina walks in she gets a strange text message on her phone: “in 3 tagen bist du tot”, which means “you’ll be dead in three days”. That night Martin goes missing, and when they find his phone they realize that they all received the same message. Nina is scared and goes to the police, but they don’t believe her, and after all Martin’s been missing for an hour… They accuse Patrick, a boy from their school who always wanted to be a part of their group, and also had a bad relationship with Martin, apparently they fought.

Someone took Martin, put some weight on him and threw him into the lake, and Nina finds him. Now the police orders them all to stay inside their homes. Nina opens her door for a moment because her kitty demanded to be let in, and that’s enough, she’s taken too; she’s about to be killed like Martin was, when Patrick comes to save her. He succeeds but can’t escape himself, and he’s killed. She’s the protagonist of course, and it seemed to me like everybody had a crush on her, like one of her girlfriends and Patrick too, I think he liked her and that’s why he wanted to be in the group and yet could not stand Martin…

Anyway, poor Patrick is killed, then a girl is killed in the way we were expecting since the beginning, when they showed that the fish tank’s glass was broken and sharp: the murderer pushes her head in the tank to drown her, but the glass is very sharp and so her head ends up inside the tank…

The police ask if something happen just to the five of them to justify all this, and they say no… but Nina reminds them of a tragedy that happened a long time ago: a boy died, Fabian Haas, he was just a child and they almost forgot him. She thinks it was his father that she saw that night when he took her, but police tell her that Mr Haas is dead, he hanged himself.

The remaining three kids are supposed to stay in a house under police protection…and yet the three teenagers are able to go out unnoticed… Nina wants to make sure that the Haas house is really empty like everybody says, because she’s sure she saw Mr Haas and thinks she’s going crazy, and her two friends go with her. 

A cop reads that it took Fabian three days to die, and thinks it’s too much of a coincidence and goes check it out himself. 

The kids have an unpleasant surprise: Mr Haas is dead but his face is being worn by Mrs Haas for her vengeance. She says nothing. She stabs the boy and follows the runaway girl, but when she falls down Mrs Haas probably thinks she’s dead and goes back to Nina. The girl’s not dead, only badly hurt, and she walks on the road until she meets the cop and tells him to save Nina. 

Mrs Haas has taken Nina on a boat, she wants to drown her too the same was Martin did; she thought Nina was unconscious, yes, but to leave a knife next to her… of course Nina wakes up and takes hold of it, and when the woman brings her on her feet to throw her off the boat Nina stabs her, and then the police find her. Two girls are alive, and we see what happened: they were children, and playing hockey on the lake, when someone threw the puck a bit far, and the five of them sent Fabian to get it. Fabian went, but the ice broke and he fell down, and his dad tried everything because he was a doctor but eventually he died. 

That it, nothing special, I thought Nina was a bit unexpressive, I liked more her girlfriend and Patrick, but all in all it was just an average product, not too bad but not good either.

An Austrian movie.

ITA sms-3 giorni e 6 morto

You’ve got mail - 1998

A romantic comedy, not very different from Sleepless in Seattle, actually. Same director (Nora Ephron), same actor, same actress, but also basically the same story, more or less. Only the details change, the soul is the same. Still, it’s not a negative comment, the movie is nice and lovely; not perfect but still enjoyable. 

In this movie Meg Ryan is Kathleen Kelly, owner of ‘the shop around the corner’, a little bookshop specialized in books for children that was once under her mother’s care, before she passed away.

As it often happens, these recent years, a new, bigger bookstore opens near her, ‘stealing’ all her customers. First time she meets Joe Fox (Tom Hanks) she knows him only as a customer, but the second time she learns that he’s the owner of Fox and sons Books (or something like that) so she dislikes him for that and they start attacking each other whenever they meet. 

Meanwhile, they both chat on the internet, and although they don’t know it we can see that they’re writing to each other, and connecting. Of course they will end up together, that’s no surprise in these romantic movies, that’s how it has to be, but it’s nice how it happens. When Kathleen arranges to meet her chat-friend, Joe and his friend Kevin (Dave Chappelle) see her and understand that the monster and the angel he keeps talking about are the same person. Joe doesn’t reveal to her that he’s the secret chat-friend, and for a while they run separate lives. She closes the shop (so soon? not even trying? I mean, she tried once, with some publicity, and that was it? Well, I suppose in a way it was the brave thing to do…) and they both break up with the people they were seeing. Joe because he doesn’t like her at all, and Kathleen because she understands that she likes Frank a lot (Greg Kinnear) but that she doesn’t love him. Lovely scene, they feel the same thing, they realize at the same time, so it’s not a bad break up but it turns into a chat between friends, I liked this.

Joe’s father (Dabney Coleman) breaks up with his latest young girl, and gives quite an image to Joe: every time he simply looks for another pretty young face, but has never felt real love (actually they don’t talk about Joe’s mother, but there’s no hint that it was any different).

Joe wants Kathleen, he’s more and more in love with her, and plans his strategy. He starts acting nice, meeting and talking and joking and making her laugh, hoping she’ll forgive him for putting her out of business, so when at the end he reveals himself to be her chat-friend, she’s happy about it, and even says she was badly hoping for it. The ending scene was nice, but it was better when I was younger, because back then I accepted everything as it was, while now I can’t help thinking: how could she be sure that Joe and him are the same person if Joe doesn’t say it clearly? Only because Joe showed up at her appointment with him? But she had told Joe all about it, hadn’t she? Or has she told Joe just the day and hour but not the place?? Anyway, it doesn’t matter much, not in this movie anyway, because the happy ending is what everyone’s expecting, even demanding, and it was a sweet one.

I liked the scene when after closing her store she ventured inside his, and found out that it was not such a bad place after all, there were people enjoying themselves, a lot of books, children playing… but I also agreed with her complaint that employees there don’t know anything about what they’re trying to sell. That’s not acceptable, they should be able somehow to help the customers. If they don’t know some authors, they should be able to find what the customer needs on a computer or something, or at least try their best…

ITA-C’è post@ per te

Daddy Longlegs - 1955

Honestly I didn’t like the story at all. The movie had other points in favor: Fred Astaire was getting old but was still his classy-self; Leslie Caron is lovely, she has a few beautiful dresses, the set design was very pretty and as it often happened in old movies, every shot seemed like a researched photograph, some of them even like an oil painting.

There’s a lot of dancing of course, and I don’t mind a good dance scene here and there, but sometimes some of them are too long…

The story is what I don’t like; not how it’s written, but the story in itself.

We meet Sir Jervis Pendleton the third, very very rich and quite eccentric, of course, playing the drum and singing whenever he likes.

He does his tip-tap dance at the beginning, then he has to go to France , and when the car stops he walks to the nearest place to ask for the use of a  phone. The place is a orphanage, and he sees a girl with all the children, and takes an interest in her. He says he wants to adopt Julie Andre, but she’s 18 and that could be interpreted the wrong way, so instead he gives her an anonymous scholarship for a school in America. The only thing she knows about him is the address of a Mr John Smith, so she can write him a letter a month. The children who have vaguely seen him describe to her an old, very thin, tall and bald man wearing a hat, so she starts calling him Daddy Longlegs. She’s very excited; she goes to the American college and has a room with Linda Pendleton, his niece. He also sends her two trunks of clothes, since she has nothing with her. She writes to him and Mrs Pritchard reads all her letters and puts them in a file like Griggs told her to do. She longs for a reply that never comes, but never stops writing.

After more than two years, he has forgotten about her, but now Pritchard thinks it’s wrong to ignore her like that so Griggs speaks to him, intending for him to write to her. He makes a scene, until Jervis reads all the letters and makes a decision. Here there’s a long dance numbers, I didn’t really like this one (also, with the red boots he looked like a drag queen, and with the monocle and the mustache he reminded me of David Niven, but not enough, but then the guardian-angel dance was nice, with the two of them together, with him behind her helping and protecting her…)

After reading all the letters, he uses his niece Julie as an excuse to go to the college and see her, the same 20-year-old niece that he hasn’t seen since she was born, not even in pictures since he can’t recognize her at all.

 :-/ He doesn’t really care about meeting her, instead he speaks to Julie and dances with her ( the song: “you make your right foot point to the north, you make your left foot point to the south..”) .

Back home, he keeps reading her letters, and sends away a boy to keep him away from her (again, saying that he wants to help the young man, but far far away from there), and he keeps using Linda as an excuse to see Julie, inviting them both to New York (and yet he invited only one of Linda’s roommates…) and then surprise, Linda can’t go, so Julie goes alone! … This 20-year-old girl goes alone to New York to meet the old uncle of her roommate… makes perfect sense… :-/

Finally a man says it like it is, that he is older and rich and he did everything he could to sweep her off her feet.. of course the poor orphan girl would be impressed!! 

When she goes back to school, for some time they don’t see or hear from each other because he’s trying to stay away, but obviously she misses him (she has nobody else, her ‘guardian’ won’t reply to her letters and when they were together he took her dancing..)

There’s a long, long dance number, and then Julie writes again, and this time Mrs Pritchard feels for her a lot, and calls him back telling him that Griggs is terminally ill, because she wants the girl to meet her guardian.

At Julie’s graduation, Pritchard is there to congratulate her and tell her that she’s there to take her to meet her daddy-longlegs. Pritchard takes her to Jervis home and of course all is revealed (it’s enough for her to see the portraits on the wall). He asks her to meet him and they dance and kiss and it’s a happy ending…

supposedly, because the movie ends here and doesn’t show what will happen next, when of course she’ll start seeing a bit of world, and realize how much older he is, and maybe meet something she’ll really like… I’m not saying that there can’t be love if there’s an age difference, but come on: on one side a girl who’s been in an orphanage with children and a woman and the occasional farmer until she was 18, then in a school for four years, and so has seen very little of anything, and has for the most part only met the students who attended her school and nobody else; on the other side a man with experience and a lot of money to change her life, that takes her out in New York, he certainly knows how to make an impression… of course she misses that, she never had it, she never had anything… I wouldn’t call that love… (at least not yet; it might be, but it might not)

ITA Papà Gambalunga

Murder on the Orient Express - 1974

I didn’t like it much, no, although it had many good actors in it and the fact that I love the book and the story. It wasn’t badly made, no no, but most of all I didn’t like Poirot, a mere caricature, so exaggerated, so mean, so rude, and the real Poirot was never rude! He looked like a crazy man when he laughed, and moved like a stiff body. 

It starts introducing the Daisy Armstrong case, so it’s no surprise when it’ll be the key to solve the murder. Little Daisy was kidnapped and killed; Mrs Armstrong gave birth to a stillborn child and then she herself died; her husband shot himself, and poor maid Paulette who was strongly (and wrongly) suspected in the case couldn’t take it and killed herself.

We move to the Orient Express. Poirot (Albert Finney) wants get home with it after he solved some kind of case for some important people. He meets his friend Bianchi (Martin Balsam) and they are both very surprised to learn that the train is full, there is no place for Poirot. They marvel at it being full in December, while in my ignorance I marvel at the fact that a train is full with only twelve guests…

Bianchi orders Pierre (Jean Pierre Cassel) to find Poirot a place to stay, and they depart. A very unpleasant man, Ratchett (Richard Widmark) wants to hire Poirot because someone’s been sending him threatening letters, but he refuses out of despise. When Ratchett is killed, Bianchi begs Poirot to solve the case so they’ll be able to present it to the local police when the train will be freed from the snow. 

He finds out immediately from a piece of paper that Ratchett was actually Cassetti, the man responsible in the Daisy Armstrong case, responsible not just for her death, but for five deaths. 

He questions them all one by one, and finds out that Mrs Hubbard (Lauren Bacall) is Mrs Armstrong’s mother; Greta (Ingrid Bergman) who sounded rather Scottish to me, was little Daisy’s nanny; Countess Andrenyi (Jacqueline Bisset) is Mrs Armstrong younger sister; Pierre is Paulette’s father; colonel Arbuthnot (Sean Connery) was a good friend of colonel Armstrong; Beddoes (John Gielgud) was the butler in the Armstrong household; Princess Dragomiroff (Wendy Hiller) was Mrs Armstrong’s godmother; McQueen (Anthony Perkins) was devoted to Mrs Armstrong; Mary Debenham (Vanessa Redgrave) was Mrs Armstrong devoted secretary; Hildegarde Schmidt (Rachel Roberts) was their cook; Hardman (Colin Blakely) was in love with Paulette; Foscarelli (Denis Quilley) was the chauffeur. 

A uniform is found in Hildegarde’s case and a kimono in Poirot’s room; Foscarelli’s theory is that it was a mafia vendetta against Ratchett.

At the end, like in the book, Poirot presents them with two possible solution: the first is a mafia vendetta, the second is (the truth):

the twelve people involved, who had close connections to the Armstrong family, judged and executed the man responsible for such a crime; Mrs Hubbard had the cabin next to Ratchett, Pierre unlocked it and McQueen put drug in his glass so he’d be unable to offer resistance and smashed the clock to falsify the hour of his death. Then, they all entered through Hubbard’s door and went on to stab him: Hubbard, Arbuthnot, Debenham, Greta, the countess and her husband (Michael York) together, Foscarelli, Hildegarde, Dragomiroff, McQueen, Beddoes, Hardman and Pierre. Then Poirot suggests they choose the first solution.

I didn’t like the portrayal of the Poirot character, and also the makeup of Dragomiroff and Hildegarde, who looked incredibly white and old. 

Also, princess Dragomiroff character would have been better played by a Marlene Dietrich kind of actress. 

Both Bianchi and Foscarelli share a few words in Italian, and very well spoken! Bianchi sounded rather Italian, and Foscarelli was good too.

ITA assassinio sull’Orient Express

Love the Coopers - 2015

Nope. Future me, do not watch this movie again, do yourself a favour. It has a big cast, so one may be tempted, as I was the first time, because after all at Christmas sometimes one likes to watch Christmas movies, but not this. Definitely not this. The characters are stereotypes, not very likable, you honestly want to shout at them. The only decent ones are the child Bo and Ruby. 

First half of the movie is so slow and boring, merely introducing all the characters, never getting to the point. The voiceover narrating the story, and sometimes saying things like that the old guard didn’t intervene when the two teenagers were making a scene kissing at the mall because he remembered all his kisses at Christmas, so instead he went away smiling, was a nice idea, but it got lost in how boring it all was. 

As I said, it takes forever before they all get together for the family dinner. Before that, we have to endure the long long introduction:

-Charlotte (Diane Keaton) wants to have a perfect Christmas dinner, before her husband Sam (John Goodman) leaves. They are breaking up because they’ve drifted apart over the years. They lost a baby, and then Charlotte cared so much about her children that she lost herself into it; now Sam wants time for them alone, and asks her to do the trip to Africa they always dreamed of, but she refuses. He thinks she doesn’t love him anymore. 

 -Hank (Ed Helms), their son, is divorced. His wife Angie (Alex Borstein) has left him with their three children: Charlie, Bo and pretty little Madison (Blake Baumgartner). He also lost his job as a photographer because replaced by a machine, and hasn’t find the courage to tell anyone but Bucky.

-Charlie (Timothée Chalamet) is an awkward teenager who took badly his parents separation and now can only think of a girl, Lauren (Molly Gordon)  but the first time they kiss a bully comes and hits his face.

-Bo (Maxwell Simkins) is very sorry about it all, and would like to buy something nice for his brother, something that might help him be happy, and at the end we understand that he wrote a message to Lauren to have her come to meet Charlie at the hospital. It was the one Christmas present actually lovely, and sweet. Of course the scenes of the two teenagers kissing so awkwardly were too much, come on..

-Bucky (Alan Arkin) is Charlotte’s father. His wife died I don’t know how long ago. Now, he spends his days at a diner because he likes the waitress, young Ruby (Amanda Seyfried), and after being very rude to her when he learns that she left that job, that it’s her last day and then she’ll go to another city to start over, he apologizes and asks her to come to the family dinner with him. 

-Ruby’s story is narrated in a nice way, because we follow it from her point of view (more or less, since she’s not the narrator) and we see what a crappy kind of Christmas she’s had in her childhood with her drunk mother, and how much she likes Bucky.  

-Emma (Marisa Tomei) has always had a difficult relationship with her sister Charlotte, since the day when she was just a child when she thought that her sister was superior and became jealous. She steals a brooch and is caught by a policeman who plans to arrest her. During the drive, they talk and somehow she can make him open to her, and I honestly felt much more for him than for her ( Percy=Anthony Mackie).

-Eleanor (Olivia Wilde) is Charlotte’s daughter, and a comedy writer. She feels like a disappointment to the family and she has an affair with a married man. Arrived at the airport, she’s not eager to go home earlier than strictly necessary; she meets Joe (Jake Lacy) who is about to leave as a soldier, but his flight has been delayed and won’t be able to leave until the next day. They talk a lot, mimicking the “Before sunrise” movie, and at last she asks him to pretend to be her boyfriend for one day, to avoid seeing her mother disappointed face.

-Sam’s aunt Fishy (June Squibb) is an addition without a real purpose other than to keep asking Sam if he did that trip to Africa..

Basically I was fed up with them all before they even met for Christmas.

Finally they get together (Percy eventually let Emma go free because it’s Christmas and in movies that’s what happens) but nothing goes as smooth as Charlotte hoped. The dog (the narrator, what a switch, oh what a surprise.. :-/ ) keeps eating their food, Emma keeps drinking their wine, and Bucky’s head drops on the table, so they rush to the hospital. 

Of course things will now eventually get all Christmas-y. Charlotte and Emma fight a lot in Bucky’s hospital room until they’re thrown out, and then Emma takes Percy’s advice and buys Charlotte the most expensive gift she can find (a shower stool at the hospital gift shop) and realizes that she has a family after all. Eleanor leaves her lover (Bucky’s doctor=Jon Tenney) and runs after Joe who of course didn’t leave at all because he likes her, and they kiss (and that is supposed to be a romantic scene, or a funny one after she bumped into everyone on her way? Considering she’s at a hospital, I didn’t find it either :-/ )

Charlotte finally admits how she feels and how she lost the girl she was before into the love for her children, and tells Sam she wants to leave with him, and they make peace but they won’t leave after all because Sam tells her that Hank lost his job…

Hank, who saw Ruby kiss his grandfather Bucky before he went in for tests, asks Ruby to dance with him when all the family is dancing at the hospital, having there their family dinner party… which was rather awkward: does it mean that he accepts her in the family at Bucky’s side, or that he is interested in her since he’s now divorced? Was Bucky ever in love with her or did he bring her along for his grandson? :-/

Of course Bucky doesn’t die, and walks there to see them eating and then dancing all together, without any sign that they even noticed his presence there…

Terrible, honestly. A lot of big names, actors I like (specially Keaton and Tomei) but in roles so boring that they are not able to save.

The only small things I’d save: Bo elbowing Charlie to make him understand he wrote the text so he wouldn’t blow it with Lauren; Sam’s sad face when he told Madison that Charlotte doesn’t love him anymore; Ruby’s character, so sad and sweet, and yet so badly treated in the script.  

ITA - natale all’improvviso

Dirty dancing: Havana nights - 2004

They should have called it Havana nights without the ‘dirty dancing’ bit, because if you compare it with the classic, beloved first movie, this one disappears. It’s not totally terrible, but it not much more than ‘watchable’. For sure it is forgettable. 

First thing first, I didn’t like the leading actress for this specific role, and even less her character. I should see actress Romola Garai in something else to form a clear opinion on her, but I did not like her character Katey Miller at all. Not even a bit unfortunately. I disliked her from the very first words of the movie: “November 1958, my senior year of high school. While other girls were dancing to Elvis or dreaming about prom dates, I was reading Jane Austen and dreaming about college” … yes, she’s the only girl in the world with a brain :-/ ooooh she likes to read!! :-/ 

Anyway, in a week suddenly her family moves to Cuba because of her father’s new job. She meets the rich son of her father’s boss: James Phelps (Jonathan Jackson) who takes an interest in her. She also meets a bunch of snob girls, because of course Katie is also the only girl with a heart, and when one of them mistreats a waiter (Javier=Diego Luna), she takes it upon herself to apologize. Later she sees him on the street, dancing. He walks her home and they stop to listen to people singing rebel songs, for which they are stopped by the police and she runs home telling nothing about it to her family. 

James invites her to a Country Club ball, but instead she takes him to the Cuban club La Rosa Negra, where she leaves him to dance with Javier; James drinks, there’s not much else he can do, and when he should drive her home he tries to kiss her; she pulls back and he tries to kiss her again and so she runs away, as well she should if she can’t manage the situation. That’s good. But, she runs back to Javier, fortunately stopping him from running after James to beat him, and then he walks her home, but her sister and some girls see them and report it. Javier is fired. She feels bad about it - but she also likes him - so she has an idea: she tells him that if they dance together they can win a dance contest and the money prize. She keeps lying to everyone (the good girl) and has James cover for her, or she’ll say what he did… :-/

Eventually Katie forgives her sister for getting Javier fired (she wasn’t alone after all, the mean girl saw her with him too), and tells her everything. 

There are of course a lot of dance training scenes, while Katie and Javier practice their ‘routine’, and the day of the ball arrives. The Phelps invited her parents too, and yet she tells nothing, they see her on the stage. 

Her father (John Slattery) is worried, but her mother is even more (Sela Ward) and they fight. She doesn’t approve of Javier, but “the dancing was incredible” (welllll, more or less…..)

At the final, when it’s their turn to dance, the police come in the room, someone shouts “he’s got a gun”, there’s a big commotion, everybody runs, and Javier goes to save his older brother who was being a revolutionary. Shortly after, that same night, they learn that Bautista left Cuba, and everybody parties. 

Katie’s happy, she sleeps with Javier, but then her family has to leave, like all Americans, so they say goodbye. 

Katie’s last monologue: “Javier once said that dancing was about being exactly who you wanted to be in that moment. Dancing with him I realized I was becoming exactly the woman I wanted to be. We didn’t win the contest but we did win something more important to us. On my last night in Havana, we were king and queen of La Rosa Negra” and I think this should have been the end, but of course she went on to say “we didn’t know when we would see each other again but we knew that this wasn’t our last dance” … :-/

There are a couple of scenes with Patrick Swayze, and I wonder if they put that in the trailer at the time… it’s a little part, and I was glad to see him, but it was a very plain role; they set this movie at an earlier date compared to the first film, so he was just a dance teacher, not necessarily Johnny, and of course there could be no mention of Frances… :-/

ITA-dirty dancing 2

Carmen Jones - 1954

This is a good film, and there can be no saying in the story because it’s Bizet’s Carmen, so we know what it is already, no surprises, if anyone doesn’t like the Carmen story there’s no reason why they should watch the movie. 

This rendition is well done, adapted for America with English songs and a cast entirely African-American. It was very good, with good actors and good singing. 

In adapting to America, Joe (Harry Belafonte) is a soldier applying to flight school to become a pilot. Before he goes, his girlfriend Cindy Lou (Olga James) comes to visit, and he decides they should get married right away, that same night, without waiting his return. Carmen (Dorothy Dandridge) is a sexy, provocative woman that works there making parachutes. Every man likes her but Joe, and because of this she falls for him, and the best piece of movie/opera, the most famous piece of music from the Carmen, is here when she sings “if you’re hard to get then I fall for you” stating that if she wants someone she’ll have him. 

Soon after that she gets into a fight with another woman and put under arrest. A sergeant (Broc Peters) orders Joe to take her into town so she can arrested there because they can’t hold a civilian (so with Joe gone he tries to make a move on Cindy Lou but she says she trusts Joe..). Joe is not happy about it but can do nothing about it because it’s an order. While he drives her there, she tries to seduce him and then escape when he insists on carrying out his order, but eventually she seduces him and he falls for her. She escapes first chance she gets because as she told him she could not live in a cage, she must feel free to survive. He’s put in detention for two months while she waits for him outside, after being cleared. Finally he gets out and meets with her. She runs into his arms, but is very disappointed when he tells her he’s supposed to go away to flight school right away. She says that he doesn’t love her or he’d stay with her, and when his sergeant arrives she says so and moves to go inside the club with him. Joe then beats the sergeant up, and has to run away or face prison for beating a superior officer. They go away together, and rent a room in Chicago. They have no money, he can’t get out because he’s a fugitive, running away he became a deserter. After a while she feels like in prison. Meanwhile her two friends live in luxury with a famous boxer’s managers.  The fighter, Husky Miller (Joe Adams) is in love with Carmen, and they tell her he would give her the world if she wanted to. She loved Joe, but faced with this offer from a charming man, and the prison-like life she was living, she wants to feel free and alive again and chooses Husky. 

Joe is jealous, but Carmen tells him that she’s tired of being locked up. She becomes Husky’s girl, so Cindy Lou knows where to find her in her search for Joe. She can’t get him out of her mind and heart, and goes to ask Carmen where she can find him, but they both meet Joe right there. Carmen tells him that it’s over between them, Cindy Lou tells him to go back home with her but he dismisses her, now he’s obsessed with Carmen. When guards arrive to get him, Carmen helps him, rather forces him to get away. 

Cindy Lou goes home and Carmen likes her life again joyful, with her friends and Husky. The night of his big fight, she’s there cheering for him. He wins and is celebrated by all. When she goes out Joe catches her and tells her that he wants her back. She’ll have none of that, tells him it’s over, gives back the ring, says she wants to be free and to leave her alone, he tells her she’ll be his or nobody’s. She says either kill me or let me go, and he kills her, strangles her, then cries over her dead body for the woman he loved. He’s been seen though, and he’ll pay for it.

All big operas were tragedies, and at least the protagonist girl is sure to die at the end, it’s a common denominator. 

ITA Carmen Jones

Night at the museum - 2006

I liked it. I mean, I didn’t often laugh out loud, but sometimes I did, and I think it was all in all very enjoyable, a nice comedy, a family film. I only wish they had used a bit more time on the history instead on Ben Stiller making faces at the monkey. I mean, saying it like that makes me smile now, but honestly it was too much. Seeing Larry and the monkey slap each other faces once could make you smile, but when it goes on forever it stops being funny and because just annoying… I would have liked Larry talking a little bit of history instead, just a little more.

Anyway, all in all it was nice.

STORY: Larry (Ben Stiller) starts up as a bit of a loser. He’s got no job, can’t keep one apparently, and has a failed marriage behind it. I was very glad that there was no romantic story at the heart of the film. His ex-wife now has a new boyfriend, Don (Paul Rudd) who has a steady job, and this leads Larry’s son Nick to be more proud of him that he is of his dad; Nick didn’t even tell him that there was a career parent day at his school. This is what hurts Larry, he doesn’t want to lose his son, so he goes out to find a job that will allow him to keep his home and stay around. 

The only thing he can find in one day is a job at the Museum of Natural History. He goes there and meets old night guards Cecil and Gus (Dick Van Dyke and Mickey Rooney, who I know are big names but I haven’t seen anything with them, I will have to make up for that) and Reginald (Bill Cobbs, and I’m sure I’ve seen him somewhere; I’m not good with faces but I’m sure about this, in something intense..). They tell him they’re retiring and he’ll be the new night guard. They give him a book of rules but of course he doesn’t read them :-/ They tell him to make sure that nothing comes in …or out at night.

First night on the job, he’s very surprised to see that the big T-Rex skeleton is running around, and so are all the other ‘statues’. They all come to life at night. Larry can only read the first two instructions (throw the bone at the retriever-T-Rex to keep him happy, and lock the lions) before Dexter the monkey steals his keys and his ‘book’. Luckily for him Teddy Roosevelt (Robin Williams) helps him out. The next morning Larry wants to quit, but right outside the door he meets Nick with Don, and Nick seems happy that he has that job, he says it’s “awesome that you work here” so he goes back inside. He learns that an Egyptian tablet is what makes it possible, it’s its power that brings everything to life. The director Dr McPhee (Ricky Gervais) is not happy to find the little tin-soldier Ottavio (Steve Coogan) in chains in the cowboys zone. Larry catches up on his history to find a way to deal with them all, so next time he thinks he’s more prepared, but he isn’t :-p Dexter is still a problem, the cowboys and the Roman army that he let out are having now a big fight altogether, and a Neanderthal man goes out the window that Dexter opened. Larry wants to quit again, then Colombo (Pierfrancesco Favino :D ) makes him notice that there’s a window open; Larry is too late though and the Neanderthal goes into dust when dawn breaks. McPhee now fires him, and Nick sees that because he came in with two friends to show them his dad’s workplace. Larry manages to get one more chance to do right, and takes Nick with him at the museum, to prove to him that he still has the job and that he’s doing something amazing. 

That night together, Larry sees that the three old nightguards are trying to rob the museum, planning to blame him for everything. Dexter opens the door and everything’s go out. Larry hopes Teddy will help him but “I’m made of wax Larry, what are you made of?” which was the best line of the movie. Larry frees the Pharaoh (with a difficult name I don’t remember) who now feels in debt and wants to help him. He acts as a translator between Larry and Attila the Hun. Larry tells everybody in the museum that they’re all in danger because the tablet has been stolen, and convinces them all to work together to save the museum, so: Confederate and Secessionist soldiers together stop Gus, while Colombo and the Neanderthal guys stop Reginald. Cecil gets away in a coach, after Jed (Owen Wilson) and Ottavio together deflated one of his van’s wheel. To track him, Larry frees the Indian girl (so beautiful), but then she stays behind to help poor Teddy who got cut in half when he saved her from the coach… Larry goes after Cecil on Teddy’s horse, with a little help from the two little guys and the T-Rex, and stops him. Larry tells Attila to bring Cecil back and keep an eye on him, and to go easy on him because Attila seems to be a limbs-ripping enthusiast; Larry then tells the Pharaoh to use his tablet to order everyone to go back to the museum before sunrise. They all go back in time, and Rebecca (the museum guide who thought he was making fun of her passion for history when he told her everything) now comes in and can meet her heroine, the Indian girl :-)

Next morning Larry gets fired, of course, after such a disaster. Not only the museum conditions, but also all the news on tv: Neanderthal men on the roof, mammoth footprints in the snow… McPhee is about to walk him out when they see that the museum is full of people! After last night’s publicity, a lot of people came to get a look, and I love that scene, when McPhee stops at that sight, looks at all those people, and then hands Larry the keys back, with just a nod, rehiring him. Now Nick is all proud :-)

Can I say my fav here were Colombo (small role, but he did the Genoa accent :heart: ), Debbie (Anne Meara, also a small role, but I liked her a lot), Ottavio and McPhee, the funniest two of the whole movie :-) I liked those two :-) 

ITA una notte al museo

X-men - 2000

I like it, of course. It has very cool scene, great actors that I like like Stewart and McKellen, and good characters, story and effects. I could have done without Logan hitting on Jean, but what do you know, they can’t resist (or maybe was that in the comics? I never heard of it but I’m not an expert).

It starts introducing some of the characters and how they discovered their powers. Eric was a jewish child in Polonia and when they took away his parents he cried and tried to resist and reach them, and the iron gate started moving towards his outstretched arms, and it took like five men to keep him and it still was enough until one of them knocked him out  hitting him on the head. A girl, Marie, (Anna Paquin) kisses her boyfriend in her room and he almost dies because she took his life energy. She’s so shocked and terrorized that she runs away from home. 

At the Congress, Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) is pro-mutants and against the law that would force them all to get registered, listing their true identities and their powers, while senator Kelly (Bruce Davison) is strongly for it, making a speech that sounds rather racist.. to Eric too, who now calls himself Magneto (Ian McKellen) and says that he’s heard these things before, while his old friend professor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) tells him not to lose faith in humanity. 

Marie now calls herself Rogue, and she comes to a place where Logan/Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) fights for money (did anybody go : ‘does he have his adamantium already? I mean, come on, he went clang!)

She hides in his truck but he finds her, and lets her seat with him. They are attacked by Sabretooth (Tyler Mane) but Cyclope (James Marsden) and Storm (Halle Berry) save them and take them to New York, to Xavier’s school for gifted youngsters. Mystique (Rebecca Romijn) and Toad (Ray Park) abduct senator Kelly and bring him to Magneto, who transforms him into a mutant using a machine that drains his energy. Kelly realizes he can pass through the iron bars now and escapes from his prison and swims until he reaches a beach - Stan Lee is one of the people looking at him on that beach. He’s taken to the school, where later he’ll die turning into water. 

At the school, they are healed and well treated, and Rogue finally feels like she has a place to stay, but one night Logan has nightmares and she goes into his room without touching him, but he wakes up suddenly and instinctively draws his hand’s blades and injures her, so she touches him to use his regenerative powers to cure herself, but then people come into the room and see that, and say that it is forbidden to use one’s power against each other… but it’s not what she was doing!!

Mystique, disguised as her friend Bobby the iceman, tells her that everybody’s terrified of her and that Xavier is furious with her for what she did, and tells her to go away! That was a nasty thing to do!

She runs away but Xavier finds her using his Cerebro machine. Logan takes a bike and goes to find her, as well as Cyclope and Storm who are attacked by Sabretooth and Toad, and I like the scene when Storm’s eyes turn white when she used her power. 

Logan is talking to Rogue, convincing her to go back to the school, when Magneto comes in and tells him that he’s not interested in him at all, and Logan understands he wants Rogue, and takes her with him. He wants her to absorb his power and then activate the machine to turn a lot of people into mutants (only those politicians together or the whole city? boh).

Of course they stop him and rescue Rogue at the last second, but the machine leaves her with a white lock of hair. 

At the end, Magneto is put in a special plastic prison, where Xavier meets him to play chess and talk, and Mystique disguised as Senator Kelly speaks against the law on mutants.

Coolest scenes were: Storm’s powers against Sabretooth, Magneto using his power to turn every policeman’s weapon against them and Xavier using his mind-power to control Sabretooth, and the school with all those kids finally leaving in peace like normal kids should, and probably something else that don’t come to mind right now. 

There was nothing under the credits, they had not yet started to put scene about future marvel movies, apparently. 

Jurassic world - 2015

I had heard good comments about this movie, but honestly it was disappointing, it only had a couple of good scenes and they both were about the dinosaurs, not about the people. I didn’t like the characters much, or the story. It starts with two brothers, a child and a teenager, boarding a plane alone and than taking a boat to reach the island where their aunt works, to visit the famous Jurassic World because the child is obsessed with dinosaurs and knows everything about them. All children that age I’ve ever known or seen only knew about games, but somehow on tv they are always experts on something.

Their aunt Claire of course has no time for them because she’s a superbusinesswoman who runs the entire island, so she has a girl show them around, not thinking twice about her when she’ll end up eaten.

The old nice dinosaurs are all under control, after years of dealing with them, but since they are not news anymore the park is becoming less interesting apparently, there are even children riding and feeding the dinosaurs, it’s basically a zoo now, so they created a new one, genetically modified, called the Indominus Rex… yeah. Owen has the decency to laugh and they say it’s a nice easy name for children..

Owen (Chris Pratt) is training the raptors, and Hoskins (Vincent D’Onofrio) wants to use them as weapons… *rollingeyes*

When a young man working there falls off a boardwalk, he’s not even slightly injured, but he landed in raptor territory so Owen goes there to stall them like a modern Dundee.

They all have modern phones, so it’s a modern setting, and yet Claire wears something that nobody would dare take out of their 80s closet. 

Claire and Owen had one date but it ended there because they’re too different; she tells him that he smells, and she walks around the park in heels.. 

Finally we get to the Indomitus Rex area: we don’t see it but scratches on the wall (only 12 meters high? against a dinosaur? a big, genetically modified one??) make them think that he escape so they enter the area because their scanner see no thermal signature… and yet it’s still here and comes out so they freak out. Owen maybe saw Predator because he pour petrol on him (I think, right?) and stays still so it won’t notice him. The fat guy can’t run and can’t think so he opens the gate to go out and the Indomitus goes out too. 

Ignoring everything that’s happening, Claire’s assistant is always on the phone so the two kids run away leaving her behind, because there are no obedient kids on movie-world.

They look for the Indomitus and find that he tore the locator from his back (but where did they put it?? somewhere where he could reach?? Had they never had a pet?? And they are the experts..) 

Claire sends a team to find it, but with no serious weapons, just electrified sticks and ropes, because they want him alive after all that work and money… I’m not an expert like them, but it sounds to me like catching a tiger with a piece of cheese in one hand while chanting ‘come kitty kitty’.

Finally Claire recalls that she has two nephews in the park :-/

Owen speaks to my heart when he confronts her on her ridiculous shoes, and yet she makes it to the second movie, that’s just luck :-/ 

Hoskins gets his way when they can’t find the Indominus; they even sent soldiers with machine guns on a helicopter, and yet they missed it, and then are killed by flying dinosaurs, that keep going on and feast on visitors, 

so he suggests sending the raptors after it. They follow the raptors and we come to one good scene that I liked, when the raptors find it but do not attack it, instead they seem to chat and then the raptors turn towards the humans. This was the big surprise, the Indomitus is part Raptor! Yes, they created a part Raptor/part T-Rex dinosaur! Good job!

There is more running, escaping, saving the children, a few here and there get eaten, but not our couple and the kids or it wouldn’t be a happy ending, and at the end the raptors choose Owen against the Indomitus and fight it, and they get killed: the moral here is that human heroes are more lucky than anything else and everybody and everything should be careful in giving them their friendship or they’ll end up dying for them.

At this point Claire frees the T-Rex and runs towards them, on heels of course, and we get to the big battle, the strong point of this movie, which sees the Indomitus against the T-Rex and the one surviving Raptor, with a little help from the dino-whale. When the battle is over, the ‘good dinosaurs’ just go on their own way, just like that, and it’s all well and good again, and next morning the kids parents are already there… and after such a scare I guess mom and dad won’t divorce anymore so = happy ending! *rollingeyes* 

Honestly, I didn’t like it, it had only a couple of scenes where the dinos were entertaining, but the story and the characters… not just Claire on her heels, but also the child who must have eaten a whole encyclopedia! And the scene when they find an old Jurassic Park Jeep and the kids are able to repair it and drive it… come on, someone should have asked them to look after the grown-ups, they would have done a better job :-/

защитники (Guardians)- 2017

I happened to watch this Russian movie on tv… some special effect might not be bad, but otherwise it’s just an attempt at recreating the x-men/avengers, with a weak story.

A group of superheroes is reunited again to defeat a dangerous enemy, the same Kuratov that made them that way and now makes clones to use them as soldiers, and has the power to control electricity and machines.

Major Elena finds four of them, that were more or less trying to hide. 

Khan, in Kazakistan, is like Goemon, and Ursus in Siberia is like a werebear :-p, and Ler can control rocks, and Xenia can become invisible when she touches water. They attack one of Kuratov’s labs, but he was waiting for them and as prepared something against each one of them.

Ler is ko, the other three captured, and nobody asks about him. Kuratov attacks Moscow and Elena frees the three ‘heroes’, simply with soldiers and guns, I guess only Kuratov is super, but not his clones.

Very originally Kuratov wants to dominate the world *rollingeyes* to prove that he’s a real genius..

Once free they are given special suits that strengthen their powers and new weapons, so now Ler has an electrified whip (? what does that have to do with his power over rocks? :-/ ) and the werebear has a  machine gun (??) but no costume or armor of any kind because sometimes he’s in full bear form, and let’s not talk about the costumes, they saved a lot on Xenia’s… and somehow it makes her invisible at will, not just with water, even if it leaves so much skin uncovered. 

They try to stop Kuratov, but he has a force field of some kind, and they battle against him but don’t seem to get anywhere… they fail their first attempt, and Elena hurries to them to tell them that they could join their energy and their powers into one big powerblast, a sort of group-kamehameha but that could be very dangerous for them.. it seems like she’s worried for them and is kind of against it, and yet she tells them that so obviously they are all ‘we have to risk it’, so they do it and they bring down lots of buildings and everything that Kuratov needed for his plan, and win.

They go home because ‘the world is not ready for them’, but Elena tells them that they have found other Guardians and that the Patriot program is not over… well, I won’t hold my breath until the next one.

The mysteries of Laura - season 1

Well, I like Debra Messing, and Laura is not bad, but she’s a bit too aggressive, some scenes are too forced, Max is too stereotypical, I don’t like Jake at all, sorry about that, and the mysteries are not very interesting. I kept watching for the personal stories, but only because it was on tv, I would not pay for this. My favourite character is Billy. I would have liked Meredith a lot but they went too far, making her an expert on everything, either nerd or sporty..

I like the fact that Laura is very practical, driving a sensible car and wearing sensible shoes, still she’s a divorced mother and people keep remarking of her choice of shoes. 

It’s the 21st century and apparently in America you are not a woman if you don’t wear heels… is this because women in heels look sexier? Does this mean that it’s more important for a woman to look sexy than to be good at her job? 

1-Pilot

It starts with everyone chasing a guy that ends up taking a hostage, but Laura shoots at him anyway.

Laura and the captain to go a rich man’s house to protect him after he received death threats, but he’s killed anyway. Laura buys a bathing-suit to approach a suspect and then returns it right away because it’s way too expensive, changing right there where she is, next to her partner Billy. 

Her captain lost his wife a month ago. He calls Laura Hotshot and they are close. All the evidence lead to the dead man’s wife, but Laura knows it was her captain! because the guy was his wife’s lover. When exposed, he tries to run away, and then asks her to let him go, and then tries to shoot her but she had taken away the bullets. Now Jake, who is a lieutenant, is her new captain. 

Her two sons make trouble at school but their father, about to become Laura’s ex-husband, is not helping. In the morning Laura and Jake meet their sons school principal and he informs them that the boys are expelled because they are troublemakers, and are really too much. Laura gets angry because Jake doesn’t seem to want to help at all, he simply tells her “you’ll figure it out” … Also, Jake doesn’t want to divorce her and says that cheating on her was a mistake… oh really? rather easy to say it later..

She finds that it’s very difficult to find a school that will accept her boys, so she looks for someone to blackmail, and she finally finds a coach that she can threaten with six months of jail : “I’m just a mother with a shiny badge, a loaded gun, and very little patience”. she gets an interview for her sons, but it doesn’t go well, one boy throws up and the other shoots at the lady with his toy-gun, plus Jake is late and also calls her Nazi-Queen. Laura clearly still loves him - she told him the ring won’t come off but it does, she could take it off any moment if she wanted, yet she’s very angry at him, so eventually gives it back to him and he agrees to sign the divorce papers. He also found a school that would take the boys…

2-The mystery of the dead date

Apparently everybody loves Jake at the precinct. I don’t remember what Meredith did or said but Billy told her “remind me never to date you” :-p 

Jake keeps trying to get back together with Laura but she’s still very angry that he cheated on her.

A woman dies after she dated someone found on the ‘passion pairing’ website under the name ‘Samantha Jones’, so Laura joins the site and goes to a bar wearing high heels to find the guy with the same perfume and anger issues. A girl brought in for being a protester gives her advice :-p

3-The mystery of the biker bar

Laura hires last episode’s protester girl as her boys babysitter, then asks Max to check on them, unable to believe that she can handle them :-p As a result the babysitter quits because she didn’t trust her. Too bad, I liked her. Later she hires her again with a 6-months payment in advance. She accepted right? I don’t remember.

Jerry, a man Laura knew, is shot dead. To talk to a crazy homeless guy Laura puts up a ‘safe zone’ like their boys did, in the interrogation room. 

Jerry and his wife own a biker bar, and Laura’s upset to find out that his wife killed him for money and anger. 

4-The mystery of the sex scandal

It’s Laura’s day off and she wants a day at a spa but Jake wants her on a case. She has to follow a girl, a Congressman’s alleged mistress, so she sees Kaitlin getting shot and killed. The girl herself lied to a reporter about the affair. For this episode Laura partners with Jake and Billy with Meredith. Apparently Meredith is a hard-core videogamer but keeps it a secret because it’s hard to be taken seriously as a young female detective. She keeps playing until they find the ‘overlord’ location.

Kaitlin’s best friend Heather is killed too. Heather helped Kaitlin pass a test by taking it in her place. Kaitlin was blackmailed into making up the affair story so that her candidate would lose, but then she wanted to confess so she got killed by her ex lawyer-partner who turned to the other candidate who promised to make him a judge, or something.

5-The mystery of the terminal tenant

A man is found dissolved in his bathtub. It was Mark Harris apartment but apparently it was Cody who died. Cody rented the place for a few days. 

Cody was a drug dealer. Laura gets punched in the face by an undercover cop :p It turns out that Mark was the real victim and that Cody planned it all to disappear and start a new life.

Jake babysits the boys at Laura’s home while she stays in a hotel to relax, and he invites in a boy’s divorce mum. She hits on him inside the house and is seen by one of the boys. 

At the end Jake bursts in Laura’s home with Chinese food hoping to retrieve a piece of underwear left by that woman, and then stays for dinner.

6-The mystery of the red runaway

Max calls Jake ‘captain Jake’ - “it’s either captain or Jake, we’re not pirates” :-p To save their coffee machine Jake wants to find a way to save money elsewhere in the budget, and he discovers Max and Laura’s secret :p so Max leaves. Jake calls him and tells him that “according to the NYPD you don’t exist” - “here I am, existing away” :p then Max adds ‘coghito ergo sum’ which made me laugh more than the whole series.

Laura hired an unpaid intern, and Jake suspends her for a day, but she goes in anyway to tell him not to fire Max: “I can’t fire him because he doesn’t work here”… At the end: Jake traded his beloved cappuccino machine to have Max officially hired.

A junior fashion designer is killed while walking his boss dog and wearing his clothes, so Laura thinks maybe Tyler was not the target, but Tom Burke. He won’t cancel his charity event that night, so Laura goes there to protect him. Tom comes to her house armed with dresses and people to work on her like Cinderella… which might have been nice and fun but as a surprise becomes rather insulting, in my opinion… When they get there she says “all this for some clothes?” which sounds a bit stupid, has she ever watched the news?? She’s a detective…

While there, she stuffs her purse with food, not knowing that it’s worth 12.000$. It was all because of a counterfeited bags business. Tom was the boss of it and wanted Tyler killed, and Gabriella was too :-/ She was the Italian woman who explained to her how to recognize a real bag.. :-/ nobody asked her why she volunteered the information, like it was the normal thing to do to a stranger at an elegant even while you’re both filling your mouth with food…

7-The mystery of the art ace

A guy is killed. Laura goes undercover at a poker game so she asks her father’s help to refresh her playing a bit (at the game they never show any card, only Laura talking and showing her badge…)

The guy David was laundering money and his dad confessed suspecting his daughter, but it was her boyfriend, not her. In Laura’s words to her dad “he was trying to save his daughter but she didn’t need saving”! Laura’s dad apologizes and stays for dinner.

8-The mystery of the mobile murder

The undercover cop from ep 5 comes in to ask Laura out and Jake acts all jealous and stupid and tells Alejandro to back off because he wants Laura back, and also agrees to take part in the Rock’n’run competition, a course designed by British Special Forces, and has Billy train him, because Billy and Meredith are the best at it. She tries to train him next but she’s very tough on him and he hurts himself. 

At the competition, Billy and Meredith help Jake finish the course, but because of him they end up last! Still, he’s the only captain to do it with his men so he gets asked for pictures…

Meredith and Billy stop a chicken fight event…

A girl is found dead on a party-bus. Laura and Billy follow her steps from a strip club where two male strippers robbed her of her purse and wallet, to the hotel she was staying at. Laura:”the imprint on Jane Doe’s cheek, it might not be a half moon, it might be a half leaf” - Billy:”how could you possibly spot that?” - “I kick ass on kindergarten homework, it’s all about shape recognition”. They see a lot of women with the same leaf-shaped ring and Laura calls them “the real housewives of Stepford” :-p

It’s the “annual convention 2014-Garden of flow” and they find Jane Doe’s identity: Julie Campbell, a skincare products top salesperson. 

When they talk about skincare, Meredith says that she already follows a strict regime and Laura:”you waste yogurt on your face?” - “I’m not gonna be 32 forever, one day I’ll be…your age” - “you’re being very optimistic” :lol: 

The Garden of flow leader is Margo Preston, who is 43 but says that she’s 59 and her creams make her look so young.. Julie found out and Margo’s obsessed fan Heidi killed her for it. 

9-The mystery of the dysfunctional dynasty

Jake calls a new babysitter, the same woman that saw the twins pissing on each other at the park.. 

Meredith went out with a guy her mom set her up with , and Billy encourages her to choose for herself and ask out someone she likes… so later she asks him out for a beer. 

Laura’s pissed when Jake tells her that the new babysitter Alicia questioned the boys ability to read, but then she comes home and everything is clean, the boys are acting like angels, and so she tells Jake not to fire her “not if you value your life”.

An old couple is killed in their bed. Their son Daniel has a boyfriend, Tyreek or something, and Laura suspects Tyreek’s brother because he was supposed to marry a rich girl , but the guy didn’t do it. Daniel’s lawyer did it.  

10-The mystery of the fertility fatality

A woman cries to Laura that her seven-year-old daughter has been terrorized by the twins and wants to leave taekwondo because of them. She has the support of other moms, who think the boys got their bullying attitude from her, but when Laura learns that Zoe’s been bullied before, she takes action and puts Max on the investigation, and then films little Zoe bullying the twins and biting her own arm and shows it to all the moms at the gym, and says that her boys are a handful, no doubt, but they are not bullies.

Jake is on a diet because his insurance company is checking his cholesterol level, so Laura keeps throwing away his food :-/ throwing away food is not a good or funny thing :-/

A doctor is missing: Laura and Billy thought that he was having an affair with “beautiful Becky” but that’s a horse, and that is where they find his body. Laura ‘doesn’t like’ horses and is allergic to hay. 

A man, angry at all the fake procedures the doctor was putting his wife thru on the false hope to get pregnant, injected the doctor with a needle, killing him with air. When he learns that the doctor died he wants to kill himself, so Laura tells him of her first pregnancy, a girl, that she lost before the twins came along. When it’s over she tells Billy that she made it up, but it’s true. 

11-The mystery of the frozen foodie

On team-bonding night, Laura beats Jake at darts, so Jake and Billy must do whatever Laura and Meredith tell them for a week.

Laura says she knows her chemistry because she had a crush on her teacher. She gets a date with a chef she chased during her investigation but doesn’t tell Jake who thinks “a week taking care of Laura… isn’t that bad”. Tony cooks for her at her home, but then Jake walks in while they are kissing so Tony goes away. I know I don’t like Jake, but here he looked hurt :( how stupid was him cheating and ruining the life he loved :-/

At the end he gives her back the spare key.

A man’s body is found in the trash and they investigate.

12-The mystery of the fateful fire

Jake has signed Laura in to help working at the school winter carnival, so she uses two days of vacation to work on it. At the end she managed just fine :-D

Jake’s ex girlfriend Angela Ryan asks their help on a fire case, with one guy dead. Laura says she doesn’t care but is obviously jealous of her, in that annoying woman vs woman way that is the cause of all the inequality in this world. :-/  Nobody makes it easier for her, they all talk about it, even Angela brings it up while talking to her.. it was nice when they finally had a nice talk :) 

Laura can’t stay away from the case and finds out a little boy was left alone at home because his single mom had to work, and the kid was cold and started the fire. I was glad that their theory about the guy starting the troubles to look like a hero was wrong, and this Gil Carter, the ‘hero’ that saved the boy Sean from the fire, was really a good guy :-)

13-The mystery of the deemed dealer

Laura keeps dating Tony :-) The cop Alejandro asks her out but she’s seeing Tony now and has to say no, and asks him “what took you so long?” and he reveals that Jake interfered :p 

Laura’s dad keeps trying to get her back with Jake :-/ but at the end he gets his family dinner…

Drunk Laura sounds a lot like drunk Sherlock :lol: “a promising case in the lead” …

Miguel Santos is found dead. They investigate the prestigious school he attended. Laura flirts with a kid to get him to show his stash of marijuana, then they pretend to be parents looking for a school to spy around. After that, he comes to her home with the other spare key that he kept to kiss her and tell her he still loves her. She says he’s sexy but she know it’s a bad idea, that he’s bad for her, and she’s able to resist, and sends him home.

Meredith goes to talk to a girl, and she says that she was an outsider in school “being into manga and d’n’d did not exactly made me prom queen”: my girl :-)

A girl killed Miguel to get her boyfriend in the hockey team in his place, hoping he’d get noticed by big schools like Princeton and they could go there together :-/ 

14-The mystery of the popped pugilist

Laura meets Lisa, deputy commissioner: they were friends at the academy. She has a night out with her girl friends, drinking mostly, and laughing and sharing and remembering, but still following the investigation via texts from Billy and Meredith, together on the job, undercover as a married couple at a fight club. This ep’s victim is Mickey, a guy who sang in a drag-queen club and also fought in a fight-club. Mickey was supposed to lose a fight but got angry and won, and the guy who lost a lot of money killed him.

15-The mystery of the alluring au pair

A IA detective called Frankie (short for Francesca :D ) comes in to question them all regarding personal relationships at work, and Laura thinks it means her and Jake. The result of this investigation: Frankie (Meg Steedle) Polanski is the new member of the 2nd precinct squad, and she reminds Laura that she herself filed the complaint five months before, when Jake joined the team. :-p Frankie will keep her secret and Laura won’t reveal to anyone that her husband died on the job, so she can start over.

The coroner teaches a dance class :) 

The girl that was killed turns out to be the nanny of an autistic little boy who is now missing. He is soon found, but the girl’s killer takes more time.  It’s a guy that works at the Brasil embassy, so Laura hits his precious car with a baseball bat to have him come out so she can arrest him while he’s on American soil. 

16-The mystery of the exsanguinated ex

The ex-husband of the victim, MD Andrew, is also Laura’s ex-fiancée (Eric McCormack). Jake is jealous, no surprise “I’m protecting you”, yeah right. Everyone suspects Andrew but Laura. Jake wants him to be guilty. Now, Andrew, he is charming :-p 

Everything is against him because he was framed, but Laura finds the real killer (the victim’s sister). 

At the end, Max finds a date for his day with the family, and Laura&Andrew have a nice goodbye :-)

17-The mystery of the intoxicated intern

Laura sent Alicia out with the twins so Tony could come to the house, but work interferes again. Then he plans a weekend with her but Jake sabotages her by making her work: Tony doesn’t give up and surprises her one night that Jake has the kids.

A girl is found dead; at first they suspect her sisterhood, then her place of work. The friendship-compatibility program says that Billy and Meredith are a 96% match, so he says “we’re gonna be friends forever” :-p apparently he doesn’t see that she’s drooling over him :-p

18-The mystery of the sunken sailor

Laura feels sick aboard a ship even if it’s not moving. 

Frankie wants to plan a birthday party for Laura. Max is jealous of Frankie and tries to sabotage her my making her plan all the things that Laura doesn’t like , so Laura’s home ends up full of people and things pink :-p Laura’s still sick and wonders if she might be pregnant.

Navy officer Greg is murdered, and they share jurisdiction with the NCIS - why? shouldn’t NCIS handle the case?

Meredith is jealous of Billy and the NCIS woman Jennifer and she’s right to be because they hook up. Greg and other men were having email-relationships with Nancy, so her stalker killed two of them before they stop him. 

19-The mystery of the dodgy draft

A young teacher assistant is killed. First suspect is Marco, and Laura is very eager to free him of suspicions. Marco’s girlfriend is Sara, and her mom has been making all her decisions for her, to the point that she killed Marco’s ex-girlfriend because she wanted to make a trophy-wife out of her daughter.

It turns out that Laura is not pregnant (so why did she feel sick? doesn’t matter? why?) but Tony is not contrary to the idea of having kids with her

20-The mystery of the crooked clubber

Jake tells Laura that Angela is his girlfriend and so he introduced her to the twins. After Tony and Jake’s words, she tells Jake that it’s ok that the boys met Angela, and at the end of the episode Laura has them meet Tony at home :-)

While investigating the death of a young man Frankie goes to a rave party, asks for some plain water and ends up drugged. 

They stop a duo of jewel-thieves, a man and the dead-guy’s girlfriend. Frankie stops Laura and Jake’s plan to overhear the robbers conversation because she thinks it would be bending the rules, with a plan of her own, and she helps. Later she’ll apologize to Laura and thank her for her support, admitting that she had been trying hard to prove her worth, and Laura tells her that she doesn’t have to because it’s already obvious that she’s a good cop, and very tough. 

21-The mystery of the deceased documentarian

Thomas, a delivery guy, is shot in the street. He was looking into an old case of a girl killed the night of her prom. He had made a film stating that Raquel had been killed by her own brother Oliver, so the real killer kills Oliver too to make it look like guilty suicide. Actually Raquel’s boyfriend killed her. Melissa Joan Hart plays Kasey, an online journalist.

Laura is planning to rent a beach house for a holiday with Tony and the twins. 

End: trying to stop a robbery at a store, Jake gets shot.

22-The mystery of the corner shop crossfire

I understand the panic, knowing someone you love in at the hospital in critical conditions, about to have surgery, but it always makes me crazy that they’d think keeping the surgeon talking to them or being in the op.room is the right way to go :-/ instead of letting the doc go to the patient as quickly as possible and perform the operation without any distraction that might interfere with his concentration :-/

Also, it’s funny how hospitals are often so clean and empty in some movies :-p

Of course it turns out to be something much bigger than a simple, single store robbery, that wouldn’t be worth their time :-/

Undetectable guns, so the FBI and Homeland Security get involved.. At the end, the perfectly functioning plastic gun was for a woman who wanted to kill the man that killed her baby girl.

Jake pulls thru and tells her that he wants her back and that they still love each other…

Laura Diamond-Debra Messing

Jake Broderick-Josh Lucas

Billy Soto-Laz Alonso

Meredith-Janina Gavankar

Max-Max Jenkins