I liked it. It's a bizarre story, here and there very touching indeed. It's not funny but it's profound and at times heartbreaking, and also written very well, which is its best part. It's never boring. It gets you, and you just can't stop reading. It's not enough to jump pages to see how it ends, here what matters is the journey, not the arrival. I wanted to read and feel every second, every word.
Warning to future me: it is a very good book, but be careful because it's second half will make you cry, so be warned if you want to re-read it.
The story in general: Harold Fry is an old man, retired, living alone with his wife Maureen. One day he receives a letter from an old friend. He hasn't seen Queenie in twenty years, and now she's writing to say goodbye to him: she's got cancer and there's nothing more anyone can do. He thinks of writing her a reply, but words seem so hollow. He writes a little note and goes to post it, but he just can't do it. She was a friend, she did something for him all that time ago and somehow he let her down, and two words on a card don't seem enough. He meets a girl who tells him her aunt had cancer too, but 'you have to keep positive, though', and she got to him. 'And she got better? Because you believe she could?' - 'She said it gave her hope when everything else had gone..' then she's called back to work so she didn't know the effect her words had on him. He decides that this time he won't let her down, he phones the hospice and tells a woman to tell Queenie that he'll walk (yes, walk) all the way to Berwick-upon-tweed from Kingsbridge and for those like me who have no idea how distant that is there is a comment on that that gives a pretty good idea: 'he pictured Queenie dozing at one end of England and himself in a phone box at the other' ... pretty far indeed. So, this is the story, he's gonna walk through all England to save her life, because she will wait for him and she'll live, that's his idea.
He phones Maureen and writes letters and postcards: to her , to Queenie and even to that girl who gave him the idea in the first place.
During his walk he meets lots of people: someone helps him with food or medication (like Martina, the Slovakian doctor who can only find cleaning work now) and with others he exchanges stories. When a man takes his pictures the madness starts because he goes on the news and suddenly everybody talks about his journey, and some people join him, almost ruining the whole thing because people are like that. A group of people wants to follow him but in fact they slow him down and he feels he can't leave them since they decided to join his cause. They bring only trouble in fact, until one of them acts like the boss and convinces the others to leave Harold behind because he's too slow and old! They go ahead without him, with all the cameras on them, and when they arrive they have their pictures taken and their faces all other the news as if they did something heroic when they did nothing, but that's tv for you.
Harold will finish his walk alone, but he'll get there.
The story in detail , with SPOILERS all round. Be warned in case you've forgotten how it ends. I'm going into details here.
Maureen is home with no idea about his project. They've lived almost as strangers for many years now, barely talking to each other. Their neighbor Rex is a good man who lost his wife; she had a brain tumour and he can't let go of the fact that when they found out there was nothing they could do and she was dying they both gave up, and he didn't rage. Maybe it's because of this that he sort of understands how important what Harold is doing is for him. He helps Maureen get through it.
Harold's story: 'his father had returned from the war an alcoholic prone to depression', and his mother was not the motherly type. They had never wanted kids and didn't know what to do with him. One day she packed a bag and left and he started seeing other women. When Harold was 16 his father kicked him out. He didn't have an education but he worked hard, fell madly in love with Maureen and they had a son and they loved David very much but Harold didn't know what to do, how to be a good parent, he was always afraid. He feels he let him down, let everybody down.
Thing is, David died twenty years ago, suicide. Maureen couldn't cope with it and started blaming Harold. They fought at first and then they barely talked to each other, living together but not really together. This finally explained it to me. I couldn't understand what happened to them. When she lost her parents and desperately missed them she found comfort in him, they loved each other so much, that I couldn't see what set them so far apart. Finally I could see it. It can happen sometimes that when someone can't cope with a pain too great, they take it out on someone else. It may not be right but it's very human, and also destructive.
When David died Harold started drinking, until it was too much. One night he was completely drunk and he broke into his company and broke a collection of things his boss was so fond of because they were his mother's. He was a thug and who knows what he would have done to him had he known the truth, but Queenie took the blame. She said she did it by mistake while cleaning. She worked in finances though, she wasn't a cleaning lady, yet she said it herself and was fired on the spot. After that she disappeared and Harold never saw her again. Still he thinks she saved her life because he stopped drinking after that, and he never got to say thank you.
During his walk Harold has lots of time to think about his parents, his wife, his son; Maureen has also lots of time to think about it, how she said to him bad things that he didn't deserve, how she misses him, how she loved him and wanted to be everything for him against her parents ideas.
At the end Harold gets there and can see Queenie. One visit, and then she'll die. The cancer was really terrible and she couldn't speak. The girl who gave him the idea goes to see Maureen after a letter from him. She says she's sorry she gave him the wrong idea, because her aunt died. She did not save her, how could she? They talk and Maureen goes to Harold. They attend together Queenie's funeral and they finally talk and they find each other again.
I thought it was just right that the writer didn't tell us what it was that she told him the first time they met, because to us it would have meant nothing, but as Harold put it, they laughed so much because they were young and happy, and no other reason. Now they think about it together and they hold hands and go back home together.
A thing I liked about this book was also that the main characters were all good in their own way. I mean, Rex helped her as an understanding friend, with no second motive. Harold wanted to save Queenie because she had been a good person and a good friend, with no second motive.
The pilgrims were all about second motives, of course, they didn't care about Harold and Queenie, not really, but that's 'people' for you.
A beautiful book, I'm so glad I read it. Can you believe it that I found it, in English, in a small town library in Italy? Amazing. When I have the chance I think I will buy it and keep it.
martedì 28 marzo 2017
lunedì 27 marzo 2017
Collision Earth - 2011
A tv-movie, but that's no excuse. The movie was terrible, awful really. Boring and with bad acting almost all around. The story was terrible too, but not as bas as the acting. I mean, most b-movies have scripts or special effects or lines ridiculous to the point of actually being funny, but such acting threw me totally off. I might save only the women and the man (don't remember the character's name) that was in charge of launching the missiles, the one who got his badge stolen by James, and the guards who fought James. I liked him and Jennifer enough, but the worst of them all was the main lead. Terrible.
The story is this: for a second the sun becomes a magnetar, spreading an incredible electomagnetic wave that causes biiiig trouble: Mercury goes out of its orbit, and so does a spaceship out to explore it. This comes totally unexpected of course, because in this kind of movies it's always the same thing: one second Earth is a paradise perfectly safe and the next moment it's a death trap about to be destroyed forever.
This thing causes little peaces of Mercury to fall on Earth causing little holes in the ground, and the electromagnetic field goes wild causing cars to fly... but it sometimes moves slowly enough that someone might run to avoid it... and of course the hero ( :-/ ) is so lucky as to avoid it always.
Anyway, Mercury itself will destroy Earth if they don't do something, and those in charge (at a place called Spread...) think of launching missiles against it but of course that doesn't work.
In the spaceship they all die except Victoria, the wife of our hero, of course, and she repairs the radio but can only contact a guy who build himself a super-powerful radio... her husband James tells her she's their only hope, and that she has to activate a Project7 that was abandoned in space because it didn't work but now he's going to upload an update and it will save Earth...
She's not a pilot but she manages a perfect Picard maneuver and completes the mission, and her ship still has power and energy enough to bring her home...
Many people have died, people we knew and presumably many many others since we saw so many cars flying and crashing and burning, but at the end James uses the radio to call Victoria... no answer so he goes 'Vicky it's James' because you know, if she didn't answer it's because she didn't know who was calling :-/ some more silence to create suspense ( :-/ come on, really? ) and there she replies saying she's coming home, just like that, alone. Despite being no pilot and with a ship who got through a lot, she's coming down without the help of anyone from Earth...
One of the worst movies I've ever seen, and this James was really terrible, how did he manage to get the leading role in a movie is beyond me.
ITA missione Mercurio
The story is this: for a second the sun becomes a magnetar, spreading an incredible electomagnetic wave that causes biiiig trouble: Mercury goes out of its orbit, and so does a spaceship out to explore it. This comes totally unexpected of course, because in this kind of movies it's always the same thing: one second Earth is a paradise perfectly safe and the next moment it's a death trap about to be destroyed forever.
This thing causes little peaces of Mercury to fall on Earth causing little holes in the ground, and the electromagnetic field goes wild causing cars to fly... but it sometimes moves slowly enough that someone might run to avoid it... and of course the hero ( :-/ ) is so lucky as to avoid it always.
Anyway, Mercury itself will destroy Earth if they don't do something, and those in charge (at a place called Spread...) think of launching missiles against it but of course that doesn't work.
In the spaceship they all die except Victoria, the wife of our hero, of course, and she repairs the radio but can only contact a guy who build himself a super-powerful radio... her husband James tells her she's their only hope, and that she has to activate a Project7 that was abandoned in space because it didn't work but now he's going to upload an update and it will save Earth...
She's not a pilot but she manages a perfect Picard maneuver and completes the mission, and her ship still has power and energy enough to bring her home...
Many people have died, people we knew and presumably many many others since we saw so many cars flying and crashing and burning, but at the end James uses the radio to call Victoria... no answer so he goes 'Vicky it's James' because you know, if she didn't answer it's because she didn't know who was calling :-/ some more silence to create suspense ( :-/ come on, really? ) and there she replies saying she's coming home, just like that, alone. Despite being no pilot and with a ship who got through a lot, she's coming down without the help of anyone from Earth...
One of the worst movies I've ever seen, and this James was really terrible, how did he manage to get the leading role in a movie is beyond me.
ITA missione Mercurio
domenica 26 marzo 2017
Romeo killer: the Chris Porco story - 2013
I didn't like it one bit. I know nothing of the real story, I have no idea of what the real story is except what I saw in the movie, so my comments are barely on the movie, and it's terrible.
It's a story of a spoiled kid that killed his father and almost killed his mother to collect their life insurance prize. He used and ax and was always the only suspect, but although the detective was sure he was guilty many other people in town believed his story of innocence.
The movie is filmed like a documentary with bits of re-inactions.
Christopher Porco is played by Matt Barr, but I didn't like it, I didn't know what to make of him; he was supposed I think to look like a charming, evil sociopath, but I didn't feel any of it.
Well, basically I didn't like any of it. I don't know if the movie is loyal to the real story or not, but what I saw was this: character detective Sullivan (Eric Mccormack) asking a severely injured woman, who almost died after being hit more than once with an ax, if she knew her attacker and if it was her son Chris, and he deduced by her movements that she said Chris did it, which seems to me a pretty lame start, since he had nothing to go on at first and he didn't pursue any other line of investigation.
Second thing, this Chris is supposed to have charmed everyone; his college brotherhood is one: all those boys thought he came from a very rich family and that he was a sort of Rockfeller kid while he didn't have all that money and he used trick after trick to make it seem so; all the females he met: all the young ones in love with him and the older ones loving him like a son. Why were all these girls in love with him? Because he told them 'you're my girl'? and they melt like ice in the Sahara? This character Chris was not all that charming, and it's unbelievable that every single girl, every single one was mad about him.
Only character I liked was the mother, Joan Porco played by Lolita Davidovich, who defended her son all the way. Of course, he's her son, and as he said at the beginning she would do anything for him.
With another name I would have never suspected this was based on a true story, but of course who would ever make up the name Porco?
Of course moving on with the movie and the investigation they come up with other things , like the fact that time before he broke in his parents house and stole computers and then sold them for money, and also that that night he was not where he said he was, and that he had cheated many times, and not only on girls. He faked his grades to please his mother, he forged his dad's signature to get more money, and stuff like that. At the trial things came out like the fact that he used to forget his keys in the door like they were found after the murder, but I would have liked to hear that story before, it should have been a strong, a real reason to suspect him.
The jury finds him guilty, and sure many things point that way, but I didn't like that the movie doesn't show us any kind of investigation at all, specially at the beginning. I didn't like that everything started and was based on the detective's question to that dying woman, I mean did she even understand the questions in those conditions?
Speaking about the movie and the movie only, as I said before, I think the investigation was very poor and the guy was more disagreeable than charming.
One more thing I didn't like, the last scene when they show us the mother that night smiling before the attack, to make us sure that she recognized her beloved son and smiled to him, when she kept on defending him. Was that based on some fact or was that to give us a feeling of closure?
ITA Romeo killer: sospetti in famiglia
It's a story of a spoiled kid that killed his father and almost killed his mother to collect their life insurance prize. He used and ax and was always the only suspect, but although the detective was sure he was guilty many other people in town believed his story of innocence.
The movie is filmed like a documentary with bits of re-inactions.
Christopher Porco is played by Matt Barr, but I didn't like it, I didn't know what to make of him; he was supposed I think to look like a charming, evil sociopath, but I didn't feel any of it.
Well, basically I didn't like any of it. I don't know if the movie is loyal to the real story or not, but what I saw was this: character detective Sullivan (Eric Mccormack) asking a severely injured woman, who almost died after being hit more than once with an ax, if she knew her attacker and if it was her son Chris, and he deduced by her movements that she said Chris did it, which seems to me a pretty lame start, since he had nothing to go on at first and he didn't pursue any other line of investigation.
Second thing, this Chris is supposed to have charmed everyone; his college brotherhood is one: all those boys thought he came from a very rich family and that he was a sort of Rockfeller kid while he didn't have all that money and he used trick after trick to make it seem so; all the females he met: all the young ones in love with him and the older ones loving him like a son. Why were all these girls in love with him? Because he told them 'you're my girl'? and they melt like ice in the Sahara? This character Chris was not all that charming, and it's unbelievable that every single girl, every single one was mad about him.
Only character I liked was the mother, Joan Porco played by Lolita Davidovich, who defended her son all the way. Of course, he's her son, and as he said at the beginning she would do anything for him.
With another name I would have never suspected this was based on a true story, but of course who would ever make up the name Porco?
Of course moving on with the movie and the investigation they come up with other things , like the fact that time before he broke in his parents house and stole computers and then sold them for money, and also that that night he was not where he said he was, and that he had cheated many times, and not only on girls. He faked his grades to please his mother, he forged his dad's signature to get more money, and stuff like that. At the trial things came out like the fact that he used to forget his keys in the door like they were found after the murder, but I would have liked to hear that story before, it should have been a strong, a real reason to suspect him.
The jury finds him guilty, and sure many things point that way, but I didn't like that the movie doesn't show us any kind of investigation at all, specially at the beginning. I didn't like that everything started and was based on the detective's question to that dying woman, I mean did she even understand the questions in those conditions?
Speaking about the movie and the movie only, as I said before, I think the investigation was very poor and the guy was more disagreeable than charming.
One more thing I didn't like, the last scene when they show us the mother that night smiling before the attack, to make us sure that she recognized her beloved son and smiled to him, when she kept on defending him. Was that based on some fact or was that to give us a feeling of closure?
ITA Romeo killer: sospetti in famiglia
sabato 25 marzo 2017
The ref - 1994
70 % fun, 10% boring, 20% drama. I liked it. Well, it has Kevin Spacey in it, and I love him and he was great here too. We can feel the atmosphere right from the start, when we see Caroline and Lloyd talking to marriage counsellor Wong (BD Wong :-D nice ) and they constantly quarrel, it appears they are always bickering and just can't stop. On their way home they stop to buy something, and a robber on the run gets her to force them to drive him away, and not knowing where to go he goes to their house. At first they are alone, but soon their son arrives. He comes from a military academy where he blackmails his superior with some compromising pictures.
Gus thought he would just gain some time to get his accomplice to find a way for him to escape, but he couldn't imagine a house like this. After the son other people arrive: two cops visiting (and they answer the phone when the accomplice calls), a drunk man dressed as Santa Claus, and their relatives here to spend Christmas Eve together.
It turns out that Lloyd's mother Rose has been trying to control their lives: Lloyd lives in her house and has to pay her rent, plus she gave them money to open a restaurant (that they closed after a terrible review) and he has to pay it back with 18% interests. Caroline blames him for it and for everything that goes wrong in their lives and says he wants a divorce but the fault is actually more hers than his: she never made a single decision, leaving everything on his shoulders. They moved because she was not happy in their little apartment in New York, he didn't want to accept his mother's money but she was not sure that was wise, and it was always like that for everything.
To go through the evening more easily Gus pretends to be doctor Wong to the family's eyes, leaving the son tied up upstairs to ensure their collaboration. One more surprise comes from the son's superior Siskel who comes home to reveal everything to the parents; he wants this thing to stop.
Drunk George also comes to their house to mess things up even more, then the police starts searching every house, so the family decides to help Gus escaping. In a way he helped them get it all out and sort of make peace, so they have him dress with George's Santa costume and the son leads him away while they lie to the police. It works, when someone sees Gus they think he's George and let him go: it's a little Connecticut town and they all know him.
Husband and wife of course make peace, and everything seems to be well again :-)
Gus the robber - Denis Leary
Caroline - Judy Davis
Lloyd - Kevin Spacey
Rose the mother - Glynis Johns
Connie - Christine Baranski
Siskel - J.K. Simmons
ITA c'eravamo tanto odiati
Gus thought he would just gain some time to get his accomplice to find a way for him to escape, but he couldn't imagine a house like this. After the son other people arrive: two cops visiting (and they answer the phone when the accomplice calls), a drunk man dressed as Santa Claus, and their relatives here to spend Christmas Eve together.
It turns out that Lloyd's mother Rose has been trying to control their lives: Lloyd lives in her house and has to pay her rent, plus she gave them money to open a restaurant (that they closed after a terrible review) and he has to pay it back with 18% interests. Caroline blames him for it and for everything that goes wrong in their lives and says he wants a divorce but the fault is actually more hers than his: she never made a single decision, leaving everything on his shoulders. They moved because she was not happy in their little apartment in New York, he didn't want to accept his mother's money but she was not sure that was wise, and it was always like that for everything.
To go through the evening more easily Gus pretends to be doctor Wong to the family's eyes, leaving the son tied up upstairs to ensure their collaboration. One more surprise comes from the son's superior Siskel who comes home to reveal everything to the parents; he wants this thing to stop.
Drunk George also comes to their house to mess things up even more, then the police starts searching every house, so the family decides to help Gus escaping. In a way he helped them get it all out and sort of make peace, so they have him dress with George's Santa costume and the son leads him away while they lie to the police. It works, when someone sees Gus they think he's George and let him go: it's a little Connecticut town and they all know him.
Husband and wife of course make peace, and everything seems to be well again :-)
Gus the robber - Denis Leary
Caroline - Judy Davis
Lloyd - Kevin Spacey
Rose the mother - Glynis Johns
Connie - Christine Baranski
Siskel - J.K. Simmons
ITA c'eravamo tanto odiati
venerdì 24 marzo 2017
It takes two - 1995
The Olsen little girls were really cute, and this movie is all about them and for those who liked them, because there isn't much else. The story is very simple: two children casually meet and realize they are identical and also in a period of crisis in their young life: Amanda is an orphan and she's about to be adopted by an horrible family, while Alyssa is a very rich girl but her father, a widow convinced she needs a mom, is about to marry Miss Kensington (Jane Sibbet), a woman who doesn't like her and is only waiting after the wedding to send her away. The girls switch places to throw off those plans, and they also arrange something else. They have Alyssa's father Roger Callaway (Steve Guttenberg) meet Amanda's social worker and wanna-be-mom Diane (Kirstie Alley) and they fall in love, but this doesn't change a thing. Alyssa (posing as Amanda) is sent away to be adopted by a couple who already adopted other kids in order to make them work, and Amanda (posing as Alyssa) is about to witness Roger's wedding. Clarice Kensington saw him laughing with Diane but said nothing, instead she convinced him to speed up the wedding plans.
Diane rescues Alyssa and they run to the church where Roger does not say I do because he confesses he loves Diane. Happy ending for everybody, I'll say, because it will not be difficult now for Diane to get custody of Amanda if she marries millionaire Roger.
Well, Jane Sibbet was fun :-) but the story lacks heart. The girls are fun and pretty, but the love story lacks everything. They fall in love with no reason at all, and he was getting married for the wrong, absurd reason in the first place. It seems by his words that he thought Alyssa needed a mother, but he seriously thought that Miss Kensington was a suitable mother? Come on, why didn't he try to find someone more like his beloved wife, meaning someone sweet and good? Besides, I don't like the scenes where one of them (bride or groom) says 'I can't' right there at the altar; I mean, do they have to wait until the very last second??? They come to church, they stand there, they wait for the priest to say what he has to say, then instead of I do they say I can't ... I don't like it, he shouldn't have been standing there in the first place!!!
That's what he likes in Diane I guess, that she's more down-to-earth and fun, how much time did they spend together? Two hours maybe? Is that enough to be called love?
Well, as I said, it's a nice enough movie if you like 9-year-old Mary-Kate and Ashley. Otherwise it doesn't have much to offer.
ITA matrimonio a quattro mani
Diane rescues Alyssa and they run to the church where Roger does not say I do because he confesses he loves Diane. Happy ending for everybody, I'll say, because it will not be difficult now for Diane to get custody of Amanda if she marries millionaire Roger.
Well, Jane Sibbet was fun :-) but the story lacks heart. The girls are fun and pretty, but the love story lacks everything. They fall in love with no reason at all, and he was getting married for the wrong, absurd reason in the first place. It seems by his words that he thought Alyssa needed a mother, but he seriously thought that Miss Kensington was a suitable mother? Come on, why didn't he try to find someone more like his beloved wife, meaning someone sweet and good? Besides, I don't like the scenes where one of them (bride or groom) says 'I can't' right there at the altar; I mean, do they have to wait until the very last second??? They come to church, they stand there, they wait for the priest to say what he has to say, then instead of I do they say I can't ... I don't like it, he shouldn't have been standing there in the first place!!!
That's what he likes in Diane I guess, that she's more down-to-earth and fun, how much time did they spend together? Two hours maybe? Is that enough to be called love?
Well, as I said, it's a nice enough movie if you like 9-year-old Mary-Kate and Ashley. Otherwise it doesn't have much to offer.
ITA matrimonio a quattro mani
What lies beneath - 2000
It's a thriller and not a bad one; unfortunately it's very slow. Being a bit slow is sometimes good for a certain kind of thriller movies, but in my opinion here a few scenes are too slow. I know it's not an action movie, and I like all the scenes with Michelle Pfeiffer walking around, building her suspicions. That's how some thriller movies work right? There's a lot of calm then all of a sudden boom and you jump off your seat. Well, no boom here, because right before it there was too much calm, like they were whispering 'wait, hold your breath..' I mean, if you know when the boom is coming you don't jump off your seat!! I like it mostly because of the actors, I'll say. I'm uncertain about the supernatural side of it. They were not sure on the way to follow, maybe, because it is partially supernatural and partially psychological.
The story is: Claire (Pfeiffer) moves in a new house with her new husband Norman (Harrison Ford) who is a famous professor/scientist, and she spends her days alone since her only daughter just left for college. It's one year since she had a bad car accident, so everybody is concerned for her mental health now that she's all alone.
She hears a neighbour crying and meets Mary, but she's upset and doesn't explain why she's crying. One night she sees Mary's husband carrying a suspiciously looking package in the car trunk, and not seeing Mary anymore she convinces herself that he killed her, she even gets her friend Jody to try and contact Mary's spirit with a seance. She grows more and more sure of it to the point when she publicly comes up to him accusing him of having killed her: he's bewildered, but he has the best help he can get: his wife Mary comes to him after hearing her shout, clearing to her and everybody else that she's not dead! (Apparently that day she was crying, thinking to be all alone with no one hearing her, because she was rather emotional and found it difficult to be away from her beloved husband even for a while...)
Anyway, maybe the seance did contact a spirit, because she saw a message on the bathroom mirror and then the spirit of a girl apparently took over her body when Norman came home one day, finding her trying to seduce him like another girl did once. When Claire comes to her senses she finds she now remembers everything about her car accident: she couldn't before, but now she remembers storming out after seeing him with a girl, a student he was cheating on her with. That girl later on disappeared. Jody knew about the cheating husband, but didn't tell her because after the accident she was scared it might be too much for her fragile state.
Claire talks to Norman about it, and he admits he made a mistake, and also that the girl became obsessive and even came to his house where he found her, dead, and he panicked and put her body in a car and throw it in the lake. He calls the police to confess, but he was fooling nobody. I didn't believe it for an instant, and it took very little for Claire to doubt it too because she tried the redial and discovers he had not called the police after all!
He catches her before she can do anything, drugs her with something paralyzing and puts her into the bathtub, trying to stage her suicide. Norman sees in her the face of the girl he killed and scared falls and hits his head, giving Claire time to try and save herself: she manages to get out and into the car, but it turns out he got in it too. They fight and the car falls in the lake. Claire tries to get out when he grabs her, but the ghost of the girl comes again to her rescue against him, holding him down while she saves herself.
What I didn't like is that they seemed not sure if they wanted it supernatural or not. He saw the girl's necklace and then he saw her face instead of Claire's: was it a ghost or his guilty imagination?
He saw her ghost in the lake, but after his death we see her decomposed body floating in the water: was it really her ghost or was he imagining it when he was touched by the corpse?
Either way, supernatural or psychological, could have been ok in a thriller movie, I just wish they were more clear about it, one way or the other.
ITA le verità nascoste
The story is: Claire (Pfeiffer) moves in a new house with her new husband Norman (Harrison Ford) who is a famous professor/scientist, and she spends her days alone since her only daughter just left for college. It's one year since she had a bad car accident, so everybody is concerned for her mental health now that she's all alone.
She hears a neighbour crying and meets Mary, but she's upset and doesn't explain why she's crying. One night she sees Mary's husband carrying a suspiciously looking package in the car trunk, and not seeing Mary anymore she convinces herself that he killed her, she even gets her friend Jody to try and contact Mary's spirit with a seance. She grows more and more sure of it to the point when she publicly comes up to him accusing him of having killed her: he's bewildered, but he has the best help he can get: his wife Mary comes to him after hearing her shout, clearing to her and everybody else that she's not dead! (Apparently that day she was crying, thinking to be all alone with no one hearing her, because she was rather emotional and found it difficult to be away from her beloved husband even for a while...)
Anyway, maybe the seance did contact a spirit, because she saw a message on the bathroom mirror and then the spirit of a girl apparently took over her body when Norman came home one day, finding her trying to seduce him like another girl did once. When Claire comes to her senses she finds she now remembers everything about her car accident: she couldn't before, but now she remembers storming out after seeing him with a girl, a student he was cheating on her with. That girl later on disappeared. Jody knew about the cheating husband, but didn't tell her because after the accident she was scared it might be too much for her fragile state.
Claire talks to Norman about it, and he admits he made a mistake, and also that the girl became obsessive and even came to his house where he found her, dead, and he panicked and put her body in a car and throw it in the lake. He calls the police to confess, but he was fooling nobody. I didn't believe it for an instant, and it took very little for Claire to doubt it too because she tried the redial and discovers he had not called the police after all!
He catches her before she can do anything, drugs her with something paralyzing and puts her into the bathtub, trying to stage her suicide. Norman sees in her the face of the girl he killed and scared falls and hits his head, giving Claire time to try and save herself: she manages to get out and into the car, but it turns out he got in it too. They fight and the car falls in the lake. Claire tries to get out when he grabs her, but the ghost of the girl comes again to her rescue against him, holding him down while she saves herself.
What I didn't like is that they seemed not sure if they wanted it supernatural or not. He saw the girl's necklace and then he saw her face instead of Claire's: was it a ghost or his guilty imagination?
He saw her ghost in the lake, but after his death we see her decomposed body floating in the water: was it really her ghost or was he imagining it when he was touched by the corpse?
Either way, supernatural or psychological, could have been ok in a thriller movie, I just wish they were more clear about it, one way or the other.
ITA le verità nascoste
martedì 21 marzo 2017
Stonados - 2013
It's a b-movie, that's pretty obvious from the title. No sane person could ever watch a film called Stonados and expect award-winning material. That's what sort of saves it. It doesn't pretend to be what it's not. Anyway, it's obviously nothing "good", but sometimes b-movies can be what one wants, for a movie night with lots of friends for example.
The good thing about this one is that it starts directly with the tornado and it never slows down too much. A rather peculiar detail about Stonados in that there is no blood at all, not even a finger cut, no red whatsoever, and no gruesome deaths either. I mean, lots of people die her, sure, more than a thousand, but we only see people hit and people falling. A lot of falling.
I could almost hear the 'action' before people started throwing themselves everywhere.
The characters are not many, as it always happens in this kind of movies. There's our hero Joe (Paul Johansson) , a single dad, widow, and his two kids: Megan (Jessica McLeod) and her younger brother Jackson (Dylan Schmid). I liked the kids enough, and Joe was exactly what you could expect from this kind of movies. There were also his friend Lee (the local weather-man who invents the title)and Joe's sister, cop Mandy. Personally I could have done without them and their boring romance.
Lee only served for one scene: when a stupid woman instead of running away comes up to him accusing him of being a bad weather-man before being hit and smashed into a wall.
So, the story is: tornadoes come out of nowhere on the water, and throw frozen stones everywhere.
I liked a scene when Megan's friend Julie (Grace Wolf or Vukovic, not clear to me) and a boy she just met hide behind a little table, a plastic one maybe. She wants to run away, and he doesn't agree, he's scared and he feels safe behind that silly little object. She runs away alone and he's hit.
I was very sorry when later on Julie gets killed too :-( come on, why?!?
There's also the man at the lighthouse played by William B. Davis, the unforgettable smoking-man from X-files, only here he actually has a name, Ben, and of course he gets killed too. Only our heroes survive. At the end Joe puts a bomb in a car and lets it move along without him until the wind catches it and takes it up in the tornado. The plan is: the explosion will irradiate heat enough to warm the sky and put the ozone level back as it was, or something like that, and magically, in like a second, the sky is again blue and quiet.
Of course there were many 'mistakes', many things that didn't quite add up, but honestly who cares too much about that in a b-movie.
Why do some people fly away and others don't? The tornados seemed all as strong and as near as the first one that took away the poor, nice guide girl.
How come some stones explode and others don't? Who cares, the funniest mistake was that at the end, while the heroes seemed to be battling against the wind, the trees seemed painted, not a leaf moving :-p
ITA l'urlo della terra
The good thing about this one is that it starts directly with the tornado and it never slows down too much. A rather peculiar detail about Stonados in that there is no blood at all, not even a finger cut, no red whatsoever, and no gruesome deaths either. I mean, lots of people die her, sure, more than a thousand, but we only see people hit and people falling. A lot of falling.
I could almost hear the 'action' before people started throwing themselves everywhere.
The characters are not many, as it always happens in this kind of movies. There's our hero Joe (Paul Johansson) , a single dad, widow, and his two kids: Megan (Jessica McLeod) and her younger brother Jackson (Dylan Schmid). I liked the kids enough, and Joe was exactly what you could expect from this kind of movies. There were also his friend Lee (the local weather-man who invents the title)and Joe's sister, cop Mandy. Personally I could have done without them and their boring romance.
Lee only served for one scene: when a stupid woman instead of running away comes up to him accusing him of being a bad weather-man before being hit and smashed into a wall.
So, the story is: tornadoes come out of nowhere on the water, and throw frozen stones everywhere.
I liked a scene when Megan's friend Julie (Grace Wolf or Vukovic, not clear to me) and a boy she just met hide behind a little table, a plastic one maybe. She wants to run away, and he doesn't agree, he's scared and he feels safe behind that silly little object. She runs away alone and he's hit.
I was very sorry when later on Julie gets killed too :-( come on, why?!?
There's also the man at the lighthouse played by William B. Davis, the unforgettable smoking-man from X-files, only here he actually has a name, Ben, and of course he gets killed too. Only our heroes survive. At the end Joe puts a bomb in a car and lets it move along without him until the wind catches it and takes it up in the tornado. The plan is: the explosion will irradiate heat enough to warm the sky and put the ozone level back as it was, or something like that, and magically, in like a second, the sky is again blue and quiet.
Of course there were many 'mistakes', many things that didn't quite add up, but honestly who cares too much about that in a b-movie.
Why do some people fly away and others don't? The tornados seemed all as strong and as near as the first one that took away the poor, nice guide girl.
How come some stones explode and others don't? Who cares, the funniest mistake was that at the end, while the heroes seemed to be battling against the wind, the trees seemed painted, not a leaf moving :-p
ITA l'urlo della terra
Wanderlust - 2012
Not too bad, a few laughs but not many; stereotype characters but that's the usual thing in this kind of comedies; some annoying scenes and the inevitable happy ending. I watched it mainly because it has Jennifer Aniston in it, and it was nice but I was glad I saw it on tv and didn't pay for it.
It starts with a couple living in New York. George (Paul Rudd) loses his job and Linda (Aniston) fails to find one. She doesn't know what to do with her life and is constantly trying out new things, and the last one is a depressing documentary on penguins, a really terrible thing.
They can't afford their apartment anymore so they leave to go to George's brother Rick (Ken Marino) who promised to help. On their way there they stumble into a strange community: they see a naked man on the road and when he moves towards them they crash the car trying to escape too quickly. They are forced to stop and rest at the strange place that those people call Elysium. They meet many strange people there: the naked man, Wayne, wants to be a writer. Carvin (Alan Alda) the old owner of the place; Seth (Justin Theroux) the man everyone sort of looks up to as the leader they don't have, and other hippie men and women. It's a very strange and colorful place, very different from what they are used to, and they feel well there. After they all help with the car, George and Linda resume their journey: unfortunately Rick is an obnoxious, idiot jerk, so George can't stand him and he takes Linda back to Elysium. She doesn't want to stay there, she likes things like doors and privacy, but he insists so she gives him two weeks before deciding if they want to stay or not, but things turn out not the way George imagined. Seth is clearly trying to overpower him and he finds it hard to adjust to their way of life, while Linda seems to have found her place.
Some people want to build a casino on that land and only Linda's intervention in front of cameras slows the proceedings. She jumps in front of them undressing herself, and a topless girl sure gets coverage by the media. She's a hero at Elysium now, and she likes it, and she totally adjusts to their way of life. She's welcomed in the community more easily than George and day after day she thinks she has found herself and feels like one of them. When beautiful Eva asks George to have sex with her, he's troubled and Linda doesn't take well to it either,but after the two weeks she's sure she wants to stay, while he longs to go away. He tries to convince her reminding her of the 'open-love-philosophy' they share, but she wants to belong to the place so much she accepts it and tells him so, then she's vexed to learn that he did not sleep with Eva like she thought while she had slept with Seth. She tells him to do it and get even, and we get the most annoying, unpleasant scene of the movie, when George talks to himself in the mirror trying to prepare himself for the sexual encounter. I don't know what got into them: does anyone seriously find that scene funny? I hate it, just for that I would never buy this movie.
He tries to do it but he's so weird that Eva changes her mind.
Shortly after that he reaches his limit and can't stand the place a minute longer.
The pregnant girl who had her baby in front of him on the porch and now walks around with the ombelical cord still attached because she wants everything to happen naturally, and her man saying that they are planning to eat the placenta, is too much, and also Wayne with his boring book is too much. He tells them all that he thinks , getting it all out.
Linda still wants to stay so he goes away alone, and on foot because a man of the community left his car in the lake.
He goes back to his brother's house where he can witness his sister-in-law's outburst: she wants a divorce because she can't stand her husband and his affairs anymore. George comes back to his senses and realizes what he has done, leaving his wife in that place, and he goes back for her.
Linda stays in the community, but misses her husband.
Seth finds and sells to the casino-men the document that proves that Carvin owns the place, for the money to get a house for him and Linda in a nice place, since he wants to go away with her and doesn't care about the others. When George comes back Seth attacks him because he wants Linda for himself, and nobody tries to separate them because they are all against violence, until Linda sees them and rushes to help George. They make peace and Seth's treachery is revealed. George congratulates Wayne on the new version of his book, which is now brilliant after he accepted the criticism and corrected it somehow, and everyone now has a smile for George.
The movie ends with:
the other owners of Elysium coming with their documents, so Elysium is untouchable now; Linda and George publishing Wayne's book who has a huge success, and finding their way.
Happy ending for everyone!
I didn't like the various nude scenes, and I've said this before so it's not depending on who's the naked person; I believe nude scenes to be useless in movies, put there only to attract attention and get talked about.
The hippie community was weird and full of stereotypes, and none of the characters were developed outside the characteristic that mattered to the comedy and was pertinent to the stereotype.
I found the scene when George is in the bathroom and people come to talk to him too long and excessive. The scene I like the most is in the credits at the end, one of the movie bloopers: when Linda and Seth are exercising in the woods and Theroux accidentally hits Aniston hurting her hand, or her arm, whatever. :-p
It was ok to watch the movie once, but I have no intention of ever watching it again, honestly.
ITA nudi e felici
It starts with a couple living in New York. George (Paul Rudd) loses his job and Linda (Aniston) fails to find one. She doesn't know what to do with her life and is constantly trying out new things, and the last one is a depressing documentary on penguins, a really terrible thing.
They can't afford their apartment anymore so they leave to go to George's brother Rick (Ken Marino) who promised to help. On their way there they stumble into a strange community: they see a naked man on the road and when he moves towards them they crash the car trying to escape too quickly. They are forced to stop and rest at the strange place that those people call Elysium. They meet many strange people there: the naked man, Wayne, wants to be a writer. Carvin (Alan Alda) the old owner of the place; Seth (Justin Theroux) the man everyone sort of looks up to as the leader they don't have, and other hippie men and women. It's a very strange and colorful place, very different from what they are used to, and they feel well there. After they all help with the car, George and Linda resume their journey: unfortunately Rick is an obnoxious, idiot jerk, so George can't stand him and he takes Linda back to Elysium. She doesn't want to stay there, she likes things like doors and privacy, but he insists so she gives him two weeks before deciding if they want to stay or not, but things turn out not the way George imagined. Seth is clearly trying to overpower him and he finds it hard to adjust to their way of life, while Linda seems to have found her place.
Some people want to build a casino on that land and only Linda's intervention in front of cameras slows the proceedings. She jumps in front of them undressing herself, and a topless girl sure gets coverage by the media. She's a hero at Elysium now, and she likes it, and she totally adjusts to their way of life. She's welcomed in the community more easily than George and day after day she thinks she has found herself and feels like one of them. When beautiful Eva asks George to have sex with her, he's troubled and Linda doesn't take well to it either,but after the two weeks she's sure she wants to stay, while he longs to go away. He tries to convince her reminding her of the 'open-love-philosophy' they share, but she wants to belong to the place so much she accepts it and tells him so, then she's vexed to learn that he did not sleep with Eva like she thought while she had slept with Seth. She tells him to do it and get even, and we get the most annoying, unpleasant scene of the movie, when George talks to himself in the mirror trying to prepare himself for the sexual encounter. I don't know what got into them: does anyone seriously find that scene funny? I hate it, just for that I would never buy this movie.
He tries to do it but he's so weird that Eva changes her mind.
Shortly after that he reaches his limit and can't stand the place a minute longer.
The pregnant girl who had her baby in front of him on the porch and now walks around with the ombelical cord still attached because she wants everything to happen naturally, and her man saying that they are planning to eat the placenta, is too much, and also Wayne with his boring book is too much. He tells them all that he thinks , getting it all out.
Linda still wants to stay so he goes away alone, and on foot because a man of the community left his car in the lake.
He goes back to his brother's house where he can witness his sister-in-law's outburst: she wants a divorce because she can't stand her husband and his affairs anymore. George comes back to his senses and realizes what he has done, leaving his wife in that place, and he goes back for her.
Linda stays in the community, but misses her husband.
Seth finds and sells to the casino-men the document that proves that Carvin owns the place, for the money to get a house for him and Linda in a nice place, since he wants to go away with her and doesn't care about the others. When George comes back Seth attacks him because he wants Linda for himself, and nobody tries to separate them because they are all against violence, until Linda sees them and rushes to help George. They make peace and Seth's treachery is revealed. George congratulates Wayne on the new version of his book, which is now brilliant after he accepted the criticism and corrected it somehow, and everyone now has a smile for George.
The movie ends with:
the other owners of Elysium coming with their documents, so Elysium is untouchable now; Linda and George publishing Wayne's book who has a huge success, and finding their way.
Happy ending for everyone!
I didn't like the various nude scenes, and I've said this before so it's not depending on who's the naked person; I believe nude scenes to be useless in movies, put there only to attract attention and get talked about.
The hippie community was weird and full of stereotypes, and none of the characters were developed outside the characteristic that mattered to the comedy and was pertinent to the stereotype.
I found the scene when George is in the bathroom and people come to talk to him too long and excessive. The scene I like the most is in the credits at the end, one of the movie bloopers: when Linda and Seth are exercising in the woods and Theroux accidentally hits Aniston hurting her hand, or her arm, whatever. :-p
It was ok to watch the movie once, but I have no intention of ever watching it again, honestly.
ITA nudi e felici
domenica 19 marzo 2017
Darkman - 1990
I had never seen this movie before and knew nothing about it. I wasn't expecting much and everything about it looked old (actually it looked even older than simply 1990) and a few special effects were now boring ( I mean his visions, not at all a correct term but I don't know how to describe it). And yet it wasn't bad. It had its own charm, and I liked the make-up! Darkman was something after all. The ending was good, which is always so very important. The last line is good "I'm everyone and no one, everywhere and nowhere. Call me... Darkman" before he disappears in the crowd. He's like Diabolik but on the good side :-p Sort of. He doesn't leave the bad guys to be arrested like Batman does, he kills them!
Now the story: Peyton Westlake (Liam Neeson) is a scientist working to create synthetic skin, and he's halfway there. The skin is perfect for 99 minutes then it starts decaying until it melts altogether. He finds out that it can last longer in the dark, but that's not good enough for him. Obviously.
He has a girlfriend, Julie (Frances McDormand) and as all career women back in the days she was totally focused on her career and thought to be untouchable. Silly girl, she finds a document proving a very rich and powerful man 'might be' corrupt, and she goes to him to give him the benefit of the doubt. Silly silly girl. This man Strack (Colin Friels) sends Robert Durant (Larry Drake) to retrieve it. Here is the part that left me confused. Did Peyton live in his lab? Why did he have the document with him while working? Anyway, they kill his assistant and blow up the lab. He was in really bad condition already before the explosion, so of course they believe him dead. After the funeral Julie starts going out with Strack, believing him kind and comforting. She had no suspicions whatsoever!
But Peyton didn't die, he was found and cured at a hospital. He can no more feel pain, and because of this he's much stronger than he was and also incapable of properly controlling his emotions.
He runs away from the hospital and goes to his old lab. His hands are ruined and he looks like the face of Death. Very little skin has survived on his face. He hopes to make his synthetic skin work, but in the meantime he works on his revenge. He kills Durant's men by wearing their own faces to trick them and eventually him too. The final showdown will be between him and Strack.
In his lab he recreates his old face to spend time with Julie, happy to find him alive but knowing nothing of his real condition. When he wins a prize for her at a carnival and the man there refuses to give it to him, he becomes furious and loses control; also his skin is deteriorating so eventually he apologizes to Julie and runs away, but she runs after him. She discovers his secret but doesn't run away from him. The emotion of having him back is too great to give him up easily, she loves him too.
She breaks up with Strack and tells him that Peyton is alive (!!) but soon after that she discovers that he's the bad guy responsible of everything when she sees that he has the incriminating document and she (unknowingly, of course, silly girl) leads his men to him. Peyton has created masks with their faces and he's able to confuse them and kill them. Strack took Julie, so Peyton wears Durant's face to meet him but is found out easily. They fight and when Strack is about to fall down and Peyton is holding him by one leg (or ankle, whatever) Strack is still arrogant and confident and tells him that he knows him and knows that he won't let him die. Peyton says "I'm learning to live with a lot of things" and lets him fall. Now Julie is safe, and she had a good look at what remains of Peyton's face, and she says "you'll perfect the skin, you'll make it work, it doesn't matter" because she wants to stay with him, but Peyton tells her that he once believed that himself but he simply has changed now, not only his appearance, and he's not the man he used to be, so he leaves her. Again she runs after him but this time he has put on a mask, a face she doesn't know, so when he hides in the crowd she can't find him.
Cool ending, I liked it.
Now the story: Peyton Westlake (Liam Neeson) is a scientist working to create synthetic skin, and he's halfway there. The skin is perfect for 99 minutes then it starts decaying until it melts altogether. He finds out that it can last longer in the dark, but that's not good enough for him. Obviously.
He has a girlfriend, Julie (Frances McDormand) and as all career women back in the days she was totally focused on her career and thought to be untouchable. Silly girl, she finds a document proving a very rich and powerful man 'might be' corrupt, and she goes to him to give him the benefit of the doubt. Silly silly girl. This man Strack (Colin Friels) sends Robert Durant (Larry Drake) to retrieve it. Here is the part that left me confused. Did Peyton live in his lab? Why did he have the document with him while working? Anyway, they kill his assistant and blow up the lab. He was in really bad condition already before the explosion, so of course they believe him dead. After the funeral Julie starts going out with Strack, believing him kind and comforting. She had no suspicions whatsoever!
But Peyton didn't die, he was found and cured at a hospital. He can no more feel pain, and because of this he's much stronger than he was and also incapable of properly controlling his emotions.
He runs away from the hospital and goes to his old lab. His hands are ruined and he looks like the face of Death. Very little skin has survived on his face. He hopes to make his synthetic skin work, but in the meantime he works on his revenge. He kills Durant's men by wearing their own faces to trick them and eventually him too. The final showdown will be between him and Strack.
In his lab he recreates his old face to spend time with Julie, happy to find him alive but knowing nothing of his real condition. When he wins a prize for her at a carnival and the man there refuses to give it to him, he becomes furious and loses control; also his skin is deteriorating so eventually he apologizes to Julie and runs away, but she runs after him. She discovers his secret but doesn't run away from him. The emotion of having him back is too great to give him up easily, she loves him too.
She breaks up with Strack and tells him that Peyton is alive (!!) but soon after that she discovers that he's the bad guy responsible of everything when she sees that he has the incriminating document and she (unknowingly, of course, silly girl) leads his men to him. Peyton has created masks with their faces and he's able to confuse them and kill them. Strack took Julie, so Peyton wears Durant's face to meet him but is found out easily. They fight and when Strack is about to fall down and Peyton is holding him by one leg (or ankle, whatever) Strack is still arrogant and confident and tells him that he knows him and knows that he won't let him die. Peyton says "I'm learning to live with a lot of things" and lets him fall. Now Julie is safe, and she had a good look at what remains of Peyton's face, and she says "you'll perfect the skin, you'll make it work, it doesn't matter" because she wants to stay with him, but Peyton tells her that he once believed that himself but he simply has changed now, not only his appearance, and he's not the man he used to be, so he leaves her. Again she runs after him but this time he has put on a mask, a face she doesn't know, so when he hides in the crowd she can't find him.
Cool ending, I liked it.
You again - 2010
It wasn't bad, funny at moments and very excessive in others but all in all a nice watch. Marni (Kristen Bell) is now a beautiful woman who successfully works in public relations, but she can't forget what nightmare her high-school years were. She just got a big promotion and she's going back home because her beloved brother is getting married: everything's great until she learns that Joanna (Odette Annable) her future sister-in-law, is the same JJ that tormented her in high school, the bully that made her every day a nightmare. She can't say a word because all her family loves her, but she can't get it out of her head. Joanna seems not to have recognized her, but it'll soon be clear that she did.
When finally Marni confronts her Joanna refuses to apologize, she only threatens her to keep her silent: 'who will they believe, me or you?' (more or less) so it's war between them.
Not just that, Marni has parents: dad Mark (Victor Garber) but most of all mom (Jamie Lee Curtis) who was popular and happy in high school, but at the prom her friendship with her best friend ended and she never understood why (come on!! seriously?!?). Joanna doesn't have parents, they died years ago, her only family is her aunt Ramona (Sigourney Weaver) who.. surprise! is Gail's ex-best friend, and they appear to be very competitive.
Again, nobody else knows about it, the competition is rather subtle, or rather Gail appears to be the competitive one, actually, and Ramona appears to come out 'the winner' every time.
There's also Betty White playing the funny grandma, and Marni is jealous of her as she is of her dog, she feels like Joanna has taken her place.
I didn't like at all the Georgia-scenes (Kristin Chenoweth), they were excessive and I don't like that.
Will (James Wolk) is Marni's brother, and he's just the usual perfect guy found only in certain movies. He's cute and nice, such a good man and with a good job (he's a lawyer, which should contradict what I said above, but not in this movie). His friend Charlie is nice and cute, but with very little space because Marni's attention is all on Joanna, and romance will have to wait.
Tim (Kyle Bornheimer) is Joanna's ex-boyfriend who will give such an awkward speech at their party before the wedding that he made me forget Marni's plan. I don't like that kind of long, awkward speeches.
Marni had retrieved the 'time capsule' of her school, and now she shows that video at the party. Hell breaks loose. Everyone sees teenage Joanna speak and act like the bully she was and Will can't believe she lied to him like she did. At the final showdown, Marni has a fight with her while Gail has a conciliation with Ramona. It appears that Ramona was 'the good one' here. At school all the glory and attention were for Gail but they were best friends anyway, until Gail won once too much. She went to the prom with the boy that Ramona liked, and I agree with her: IF Gail knew that she liked him, the answer 'he asked me' is not good. She should have said no, she didn't care for him and she betrayed her friend. Anyway, they make peace.
Marni will only make peace with Joanna that night, when she'll find her in her kitchen wearing her wedding dress and eating out of desperation. I'm not decided if I find the whole scene 'Joanna don't do it, put down that cheese' is funny or stupid, probably both :-p but Joanna saying there's no more reason for her to be pretty since she'll never get married is both understandable (she's desperate because she's lost the man she really loves) and sad (a girl should be pretty to her own eyes for herself, not for men). Of course it'll all go well. They make peace and Joanna truly apologizes for what she was in high school, and Marni talks to his brother so he goes back to Joanna.
Unfortunately there's a little accident when they fall down from the house on the tree and they end up in a hospital with an arm (Joanna) and a leg (Will) broken. They should postpone the wedding, and they really should have, instead they get married anyway in the hospital (organizing everything in a few hours! did they find a magic wand or what?!?)
I didn't like the wedding nor I liked the ball afterwards. I understand that the important is for them to be together, not the fancy party, blah blah blah, but it's also true that there was no rush, it's not like they had a deadline or 'if we miss this Sunday we'll have to wait a year' kind of thing, no, why the rush?
I also didn't like the scene in Ramona's hotel, when Gail appears (to make peace or something??) but in the bathroom she makes a mess. She almost loses one of Ramona's precious earrings and ends up tearing her dress apart, and I didn't like their showing up at the party with the same dress (coincidence or not? how could Ramona know what dress had Gail chosen?) Also it was not the right dress for Gail.
I liked that Marni never backed down, because things like that when you're a teenager deeply hurt and can't be forgotten easily.
A scene I despised was when Gail makes Ramona meet Richie, they boy who took her to the prom. Point one: she just learned about that and to make amends she rushed to call him? Point two:they were in high school and now they are adults, many years went by and things/people change, what was she thinking of accomplishing? It's an embarrassing scene. Should I believe that she's twice divorced because she didn't go to the prom with Richie and now they'll be happy together? That's stupid. Possible, yes, everything's possible, but to assume it will be necessarily so is stupid.
I must admit I liked this Odette Annable, I didn't know her at all but she was alright. Not only she looked stunningly beautiful (not an uncommon thing for a young actress) but she played well both the bully and the saint (truth is in the middle, as it so often is).
A scene I loved, my favourite scene actually, is the one on the plane, when Marni has just learned Joanna's identity and goes crazy so security has to restrain her and the security man is played by Dwayne Johnson who is very funny, and they sit together (because he has to keep her under control) so he listens with interest to all her story :lol: That was definitely my favourite scene, I loved it :lol: :p
ITA ancora tu
Mr Beaver - 2011
A strange movie, that's for sure. I liked some aspects of it but was not convinced by others. Still, not as bad as I feared.
It's a story of a very troubled man, Walter (Mel Gibson). He had a business company, a loving wife, two sons, but in the last years he suffered from some sort of deep depression that made him lose everything. Meredith (Jodie Foster) left him despite loving him very much, not able to cope with the situation any more and not wanting her sons to witness it.
Left alone, he tries to kill himself. Honestly, when he tried to hang himself in the bathroom it should have been a dramatic scene I suppose but it just looked silly; how could he think that thing could bear his weight? On the other hand, maybe something inside him didn't really want to die, so: moving on. He had previously seen a stuffed beaver puppet in a garbage bin and he had picked it up (I really hope he washed it at least, yeuch). Now that beaver starts 'talking' to him, getting the suicide-idea out of his head, telling him he'll help him, that everybody needs a friend. At least I'm glad there was no pretence that the beaver actually spoke, Gibson speaks clearly with no attempt at hiding it, using only some kind of southern accent when impersonating the beaver. It's like a mask, in a way. It's like, not being able to cope with the world on your own, so deciding to hide behind someone or something else. With the beaver to speak for him, he manages to live again. From now on, every scene with Gibson, sorry, with Walter features his left hand inside the beaver puppet (thinking about it, wasn't the right hand when he was in bed with Meredith?)
Each and every scene: at home, at work, on television, at the police station, wherever he goes, the beaver speaks for him. I must give it to them, Foster and Gibson did a good job, because after what I told you I'll add that I did not go 'come on, that's stupid' every five seconds.
I have no idea if this plausible or realistic, but this (I'll call it transfert, but I'm not a psychologist) seems anyway possible to me, because Walter's head clearly needed to escape, to run away from himself. That's what I think this is about. His brain struggled for a way to survive his suffocating emotions, but it wasn't a single episode it could try to forget, it was his own life, his being.
The beaver said clearly that the past was gone, that the man he was was gone.
Anyway, through the beaver (called Mr Beaver of course) and referring to himself as Walter, in the third person, he manages to get back into 'normal' life. Back to his wife, and to his work.
The youngest son is but a child, so he obviously has no problem with it. His wife doubts his sanity at first, but he tells her it's a new form of therapy, so she tries to be patient and supportive, and it cannot have been easy, the beaver was there 24/7, even in bed, even while making love.
At work, hard to believe as it might be, they all gave him (well, him and the beaver) a chance. Maybe because they had nothing to lose, they were facing failure, who knows.
He got an idea from his son. The child was happy when they made wood things together, and he liked when his dad talked to him (maybe because of the beaver's funny accent or maybe because he simply liked to spend time with his father, that's the thing children need the most) so his company's new toy will be: tools and a beaver. He even gives tv interviews with the puppet.
Sidestory: his son Porter (Anton Yelchin) is a teenager and his specialty is writing papers for others, mimicking their own style. Norah (Jennifer Lawrence) asks for his help. She's successful at school, class valedictorian, but she's not satisfied with her attempts to write her final speech. This story is nice because they're both troubled: she lost her beloved brother and has not been able to deal with his death, while he hides himself behind other people's styles instead of finding his own. Yet their story lacked something, didn't really get to me like it should have. It had no soul, only an attempt at it.
Back to Walter, the next phase is quite intense: he can't face anything without the beaver. At their anniversary dinner, Meredith refuses to sit in a fancy restaurant talking to a beaver puppet, and demands to speak to him. It was great acting. She tried her best to bring her husband back to her, while Walter was evidently in pain, he didn't know what to say or what to do, it was too much for him, and when she showed him old pictures, the beaver took over to protect him, yelling at her, saying that Walter will never again be what he once was, asking her if she wanted him dead, making a scene until Walter ran out of the restaurant leaving her there. You know, like : 'you made him commit suicide but I saved his file' kind of thing.
Meredith takes her two sons and leaves him again. He loves his family, doesn't want to lose them, but the beaver has control over him now. We see how serious it is when he says to a woman at work (his secretary? his 'number one' in the company? don't know) that the beaver is actually alive, and her expression is priceless, and also our own: fear he has lost it.
The beaver won't even let him talk to Meredith, and they even have a big physical fight! The beaver says he'll never leave Walter because it loves him more than anyone else and maybe that made Walter realize that he loved his family more than he needed/wanted the beaver. Anyway, he wanted to get rid of it, so he took extreme measures, exactly the one I thought. Not able to bring himself to take his arm out of the puppet, he built a little wooden coffin then cut off his own arm to kill the beaver. Porter found him and called for help (we didn't see anything bloody, appreciate that, it had nothing to do with the movie). Now he's free of the beaver and he allows the doctor to help him.
Norah gives a speech about how 'everything will be fine' is nothing but a lie, and about how she and many others feel, saying we don't have to bear it alone. The very last scene shows images of how things will be: better. Porter with Norah and Walter back to his family.
One thing I'm not sure about: all the beaver-tools that we seen in the garbage or much discounted mean that his idea didn't sell?
There was a lot of talk when this movie came out, because Gibson was in some kind of trouble, I don't know what it was with him, but he said out loud things he shouldn't have and it seemed like Jodie Foster was giving him the chance to make peace with the public. Personally I was never a big fan or a big antagonist, plus I watched the movie five years later so I was not biased by any personal feeling in advance.
It's a story of a very troubled man, Walter (Mel Gibson). He had a business company, a loving wife, two sons, but in the last years he suffered from some sort of deep depression that made him lose everything. Meredith (Jodie Foster) left him despite loving him very much, not able to cope with the situation any more and not wanting her sons to witness it.
Left alone, he tries to kill himself. Honestly, when he tried to hang himself in the bathroom it should have been a dramatic scene I suppose but it just looked silly; how could he think that thing could bear his weight? On the other hand, maybe something inside him didn't really want to die, so: moving on. He had previously seen a stuffed beaver puppet in a garbage bin and he had picked it up (I really hope he washed it at least, yeuch). Now that beaver starts 'talking' to him, getting the suicide-idea out of his head, telling him he'll help him, that everybody needs a friend. At least I'm glad there was no pretence that the beaver actually spoke, Gibson speaks clearly with no attempt at hiding it, using only some kind of southern accent when impersonating the beaver. It's like a mask, in a way. It's like, not being able to cope with the world on your own, so deciding to hide behind someone or something else. With the beaver to speak for him, he manages to live again. From now on, every scene with Gibson, sorry, with Walter features his left hand inside the beaver puppet (thinking about it, wasn't the right hand when he was in bed with Meredith?)
Each and every scene: at home, at work, on television, at the police station, wherever he goes, the beaver speaks for him. I must give it to them, Foster and Gibson did a good job, because after what I told you I'll add that I did not go 'come on, that's stupid' every five seconds.
I have no idea if this plausible or realistic, but this (I'll call it transfert, but I'm not a psychologist) seems anyway possible to me, because Walter's head clearly needed to escape, to run away from himself. That's what I think this is about. His brain struggled for a way to survive his suffocating emotions, but it wasn't a single episode it could try to forget, it was his own life, his being.
The beaver said clearly that the past was gone, that the man he was was gone.
Anyway, through the beaver (called Mr Beaver of course) and referring to himself as Walter, in the third person, he manages to get back into 'normal' life. Back to his wife, and to his work.
The youngest son is but a child, so he obviously has no problem with it. His wife doubts his sanity at first, but he tells her it's a new form of therapy, so she tries to be patient and supportive, and it cannot have been easy, the beaver was there 24/7, even in bed, even while making love.
At work, hard to believe as it might be, they all gave him (well, him and the beaver) a chance. Maybe because they had nothing to lose, they were facing failure, who knows.
He got an idea from his son. The child was happy when they made wood things together, and he liked when his dad talked to him (maybe because of the beaver's funny accent or maybe because he simply liked to spend time with his father, that's the thing children need the most) so his company's new toy will be: tools and a beaver. He even gives tv interviews with the puppet.
Sidestory: his son Porter (Anton Yelchin) is a teenager and his specialty is writing papers for others, mimicking their own style. Norah (Jennifer Lawrence) asks for his help. She's successful at school, class valedictorian, but she's not satisfied with her attempts to write her final speech. This story is nice because they're both troubled: she lost her beloved brother and has not been able to deal with his death, while he hides himself behind other people's styles instead of finding his own. Yet their story lacked something, didn't really get to me like it should have. It had no soul, only an attempt at it.
Back to Walter, the next phase is quite intense: he can't face anything without the beaver. At their anniversary dinner, Meredith refuses to sit in a fancy restaurant talking to a beaver puppet, and demands to speak to him. It was great acting. She tried her best to bring her husband back to her, while Walter was evidently in pain, he didn't know what to say or what to do, it was too much for him, and when she showed him old pictures, the beaver took over to protect him, yelling at her, saying that Walter will never again be what he once was, asking her if she wanted him dead, making a scene until Walter ran out of the restaurant leaving her there. You know, like : 'you made him commit suicide but I saved his file' kind of thing.
Meredith takes her two sons and leaves him again. He loves his family, doesn't want to lose them, but the beaver has control over him now. We see how serious it is when he says to a woman at work (his secretary? his 'number one' in the company? don't know) that the beaver is actually alive, and her expression is priceless, and also our own: fear he has lost it.
The beaver won't even let him talk to Meredith, and they even have a big physical fight! The beaver says he'll never leave Walter because it loves him more than anyone else and maybe that made Walter realize that he loved his family more than he needed/wanted the beaver. Anyway, he wanted to get rid of it, so he took extreme measures, exactly the one I thought. Not able to bring himself to take his arm out of the puppet, he built a little wooden coffin then cut off his own arm to kill the beaver. Porter found him and called for help (we didn't see anything bloody, appreciate that, it had nothing to do with the movie). Now he's free of the beaver and he allows the doctor to help him.
Norah gives a speech about how 'everything will be fine' is nothing but a lie, and about how she and many others feel, saying we don't have to bear it alone. The very last scene shows images of how things will be: better. Porter with Norah and Walter back to his family.
One thing I'm not sure about: all the beaver-tools that we seen in the garbage or much discounted mean that his idea didn't sell?
There was a lot of talk when this movie came out, because Gibson was in some kind of trouble, I don't know what it was with him, but he said out loud things he shouldn't have and it seemed like Jodie Foster was giving him the chance to make peace with the public. Personally I was never a big fan or a big antagonist, plus I watched the movie five years later so I was not biased by any personal feeling in advance.
sabato 18 marzo 2017
Lightning strikes - 2009
A tv-movie and a b-movie, let's start with that. It's not a great movie, that's obvious, but it's not all that bad. It's actually very average. No burst of enthusiasm but no disgust either. It's not funny but it's not too boring. The story has that little detail that keeps you awake. The characters are all stereotype: the mayor who wants his 'pumpkin festival' to be a success and won't allow the sheriff to do his job and evacuate the city before it's too late is such a clichè in disaster movies. There's everything you expect. It starts with a nice mother&son moment then the lightnings start, it seem they might get away from it but these are not common lightnings, these ones are stubborn and keep trying to hit them, until one cuts their car in half, but both appear safe (it was a precise half, between the two seats). They try to escape but there's a creature in the lightning and it won't give up. It strikes them both and they both see it, but it kills only the kid, the mother is left alive. The sheriff (Kevin Sorbo) comes to investigate and finds her. What happened is a mystery to him, but not to the newcomer in town: Donovan (David Schofield) comes to town chasing the monster in the lightning because some time before it had killed his son and now he wants vengeance. More newcomers chasing the lightning: a professor and his assistants Angel and Jerry, chasing the lightning to find a scientific explanation. The sheriff has a son but not a wife, she died a year before and he has to raise a teenage boy alone. I'm very glad they didn't put any romance in it, as it's often the case although totally out of place. Nancy (Annabel Wright) is a single mom who has just lost her son, it would have been totally inappropriate but this doesn't seem to stop so many moviemakers.
There's a lot of talking in the middle but not too much: trying to put some sense into the mayor's head, trying to keep his son Billy out of trouble, explaining to the sheriff what that thing is... which is not much because basically Donovan saw what we saw so he doesn't have big explanations to give.
He only says that there's a monster there and he wants to be hit by the lightning to go to its place and kill it. Simple!
We don't know what it was at all. Is the monster IN the lightning or maybe he IS the lightning? Why does it come here to kill? Why sometimes it kills instantly and sometimes it doesn't? Why is it that sometimes it hits nothing at all (a road, a roof..) it it can aim?
But never mind, this is light entertainment, nothing to be taken seriously, only a way to spend 90 minutes, possibly with friends like any b-movie should be watched. The comments are the fun-part
:-p So, we are finally towards the end. Billy and Jerry want to help Donovan build his big thing that will draw the lightning on him. The sheriff tries to evacuate the place anyway but it's too late, so he goes with Nancy to find Billy. The lightning strikes, again and again, killing and destroying, but mostly killing, until Donovan succeeds and we see him fighting the monster. We don't see him winning (at least I didn't) but when it all stops maybe we can assume that he won? What happened to him? Nobody knows.
The funniest part (company will make it fun) is betting on 'when will the mayor die?' :-p
The best scene is when Donovan explains to Nancy his plan, his story. She could-not/would-not explain what she saw, but he helps her telling what he saw, and she's totally for him and his plan to kill the monster. The actress played it right, I liked that look of comprehension and vengeance on her face.
The worst scene was when the lightning strikes Billy. First time Nancy protects him and it's fine; second time it strikes him directly but he doesn't die like all the others. Donovan tells the sheriff to help him if he wants to save Billy so he does and Donovan goes to fight the monster. In that time before Donovan's arrival, why didn't Billy die? Everyone else did, if taken separately.
Nancy survived because, like Donovan, she had been taken with her son and the lightning only takes one. Billy should have died but he survives to give the emotional scene 'please don't die' to the sheriff, but I didn't like it at all.
The very ending was nice and quiet. No more lightning, all the survivors gather in the open, and the sheriff properly introduces himself to Nancy, which I liked :-) Nice scene :-)
There was no time before but now it's such a normal thing to do it's pleasant and gives a sensation of peace that's quite nice.
p.s. many die, including the professor, Jerry, Doc, the mayor..
There's a lot of talking in the middle but not too much: trying to put some sense into the mayor's head, trying to keep his son Billy out of trouble, explaining to the sheriff what that thing is... which is not much because basically Donovan saw what we saw so he doesn't have big explanations to give.
He only says that there's a monster there and he wants to be hit by the lightning to go to its place and kill it. Simple!
We don't know what it was at all. Is the monster IN the lightning or maybe he IS the lightning? Why does it come here to kill? Why sometimes it kills instantly and sometimes it doesn't? Why is it that sometimes it hits nothing at all (a road, a roof..) it it can aim?
But never mind, this is light entertainment, nothing to be taken seriously, only a way to spend 90 minutes, possibly with friends like any b-movie should be watched. The comments are the fun-part
:-p So, we are finally towards the end. Billy and Jerry want to help Donovan build his big thing that will draw the lightning on him. The sheriff tries to evacuate the place anyway but it's too late, so he goes with Nancy to find Billy. The lightning strikes, again and again, killing and destroying, but mostly killing, until Donovan succeeds and we see him fighting the monster. We don't see him winning (at least I didn't) but when it all stops maybe we can assume that he won? What happened to him? Nobody knows.
The funniest part (company will make it fun) is betting on 'when will the mayor die?' :-p
The best scene is when Donovan explains to Nancy his plan, his story. She could-not/would-not explain what she saw, but he helps her telling what he saw, and she's totally for him and his plan to kill the monster. The actress played it right, I liked that look of comprehension and vengeance on her face.
The worst scene was when the lightning strikes Billy. First time Nancy protects him and it's fine; second time it strikes him directly but he doesn't die like all the others. Donovan tells the sheriff to help him if he wants to save Billy so he does and Donovan goes to fight the monster. In that time before Donovan's arrival, why didn't Billy die? Everyone else did, if taken separately.
Nancy survived because, like Donovan, she had been taken with her son and the lightning only takes one. Billy should have died but he survives to give the emotional scene 'please don't die' to the sheriff, but I didn't like it at all.
The very ending was nice and quiet. No more lightning, all the survivors gather in the open, and the sheriff properly introduces himself to Nancy, which I liked :-) Nice scene :-)
There was no time before but now it's such a normal thing to do it's pleasant and gives a sensation of peace that's quite nice.
p.s. many die, including the professor, Jerry, Doc, the mayor..
Fight club - 1999
I watched this movie for the second time, and I understood it better but am still unsure about the ending. It's a cool movie, and it has a strange charm. It's very well done. Not my usual kind of film, plotwise, but it was very well done and I enjoyed it. It's narrated by the protagonist, and this is the clever detail that, first time I watched it, made me overlook the fact that we didn't know the name of the leading character! It's a story of mental disorder, solitude, isolation, social values, consumerism, rebellion, 'growing-up', etc etc. There's more to it than just men fighting. It's a liiiittle bit a case like 91/2weeks, which had characters and a story but all people remember (and saw) is Kim Basinger's striptease, and people who haven't seen it are now convinced it was an adult movie. I mean, it was for adults, but not in that way. It was a drama, not a porn. Fight Club too has many sides to it (many more actually) and many people only remember the first rule making it look like, to those who haven't watched it, nothing more than a soul-less macho movie. There's a lot to say about it. Edward Norton plays (greatly) the narrator-with-no-name (so I'll refer to him as EN). He has a job he doesn't like, in an office he doesn't like, with people he doesn't care for. He seems to be alone in the world, and he surely lives alone adn tries to 'fill the void' by filling his house with Ikea stuff to give an appearance of the perfect place where satisfied dynamic people live their happy lives. He has insonnia and never sleeps, and of course without sleep everything is not only more difficult but also plainer and tasteless. He asks a doctor for help, something to help him sleep, but this unsympathetic doctor doesn't take him seriously, doesn't believe he really has a problem. Maybe he thinks that EN is one of those people that takes pills for everything, he surely doesn't believe he has a real problem and simply suggests exercising more. He doesn't believe he's in pain and tells him to go see the testicular cancer victims reunited at a support group meeting to see what real suffering is.
This is the first thing that calls for anger, in a way, because he doesn't even try to understand. Two days without sleep and I'm a zombie; EN never sleeps. That's a kind of torture, definitely not good for the body and even less for the mind.
EN goes to the meeting and at first you think he's criticizing or mocking the people there, then you realize he's not, he's enjoying the 'support' part of the meeting, and when this man Bob (Meat Loaf) hugs him and tells him to cry and get it all out, because he believes him to have cancer too, EN finds himself crying in his warm embrace. Obviously that night he is finally able to sleep: a good cry does this for you. He becomes addicted to it because it's the only thing that works for him. Every night he has a different meeting, a different nametag; he never actually says to be ill, I think, it's just that since he attends the meeting and keeps quiet, people assume he has a sad story inside. Every night the meeting helps him, until he notices Marla Singer (Helena Bonham Carter). He has seen her many times so he knows she's not ill, and this disturbs him. It ruins it for him, because she's like him and in a way she has no place there as he hasn't. He confronts her and his speech is quite something because every word applies to him too, he's also a fake, and she says so: 'you expose me and I'll expose you'
It's not clear why she goes to the meetings, but she's also troubled: the way she walked across that road was something, not caring at all about all the cars that could hit her, she showed a sad indifference. They talk and make a deal to attend different meetings and exchange numbers. Unfortunately the whole blessed thing has been spoiled for him and his insonnia claims him back.
He has to travel a lot for work, and all that traveling is depressing, until he meets Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) who makes and sell soap and is so very different from him.
EN is , or was, uptight, a slave of convention and society and consumerism, but Tyler is free, he doesn't care, he says what he wants to say and how he wants to say it.
When EN finally gets home, he finds his apartment has been destroyed by an explosion and he has lost everything. For a moment he thought of calling Marla, but then he called Tyler; they went for a beer together, and Tyler made his first speech about how society has made us slave of useless, insignificant things. It was a very true, meaningful speech, it's a shame that Pitt's now so so famous I couldn't avoid thinking of his huge collection of motorbikes, fact that kind of ruined the whole thing.
Anyway, Tyler can't believe that after three beers En still can't ask for his help, meaning a place to stay, and so he makes him ask. It seems like the two of them are already friends. Tyler has the attitude of a man who is always comfortable, anywhere, who doesn't care about things or rules, someone who does whatever crosses his mind. Tyler asks him to hit him, and after he insists for a while they do indeed fight, and afterwards they feel better and share a beer. From now on his whole life changes. What happens is: they are always together and they often fight for fun, until they are seen and other men ask to join in, then they find a place where they can meet and fight without being seen. They create the Fight Club, and it slowly attracts more and more men. Tyler sets the rules and becomes a sort of God/leader.
One night Marla calls saying she took too many pills in an attempt of suicide, EN seems not to care but Tyler goes to her and in the morning she's in their home. EN is annoyed, he's all 'what are you doing here? this is my house, go away' and first time I watched it her reaction didn't make much sense, but I guess one accepted it on the account that she was weird. He said 'what are you doing here?' and she was surprised/angry when she replied 'what?!?' and the first time I saw it I thought his question was kind of legitimate but when you realize the truth you understand her.
I admit that the first time I watched it I was totally surprised at the switch, and had not even noticed that he appeared to sleep regularly now.
EN seems jealous of Tyler now, and also unable to control him. EN has changed and can't cope with his office job anymore. He's more and more sloppy and uncaring, day after day, until he talks to his boss blackmailing him with what he knows of their job in order to get his money without having to go to work. If anyone had any doubt that EN was out of his mind, here is the proof: when his boss calls security, EN starts hitting himself hard (and the narrator voice says that 'somehow' that reminded him of his first fight with Tyler: very true, since it was exactly the same thing); when the security men arrive, he's on his knees, his face a mess, all bloody, saying 'don't hit me anymore' so he gets what he wanted! Tyler starts recruiting people, and these men are completely devoted to him, following their leader whatever he asks of them, obeying every rules and completing every task he gives them.
EN seems often surprised, in the morning, seeing what kind of enterprise he put together. They do a lot of work in the house, and also various acts of sabotage as planned by Tyler. During one of these actions the men are caught by the police and Bob, slower than the others, is shot and killed. EN takes it very badly. . After that he's scared of that whole thing and wants to stop it but can't. He tries to find out what Tyler is up to and when he can't find him he travels around to every place Tyler has been, and finds out that there are fight clubs in all those places, and also that people know him. When he confronts a man about it, we are told as well as he is that he is Tyler Durden. that he created the clubs. A call to Marla right before Tyler magically appears in his hotel room reveals to him the unbelievable truth that he himself is Tyler, and the one played by Pitt is but a projection of his mind. He's the one who's been sleeping with Marla and planning sabotages. When EN thought he was sleeping, 'Tyler' would take over! Afraid that she might be an obstacle to their plans he sends Marla away then goes to the police, but the men there are part of the organization too and follow his rules to the letter so he has to escape!! He tries to disarm the bombs but 'Tyler fights him' to stop him, and finds himself in a room, at a higher floor, with Tyler pointing a gun at him until he realizes that since they are the same person he's actually the one holding the gun, so to get rid of Tyler he puts the gun in his mouth and shoots, and we see a hole in Tyler's head when he 'dies', but EN is not dead, he only has a hole through the (left I think) cheek but he's alive, and when a bunch of members bring Marla in, he apologizes to her saying she met him in a strange-messy period (unfortunately I don't remember the words) then they hold hands and watch all the buildings around them collapse one after the other, and the movie ends.
Not clear to me where he is: will his building collapse too? Probably not, since there's a lot of members there and they know he's there too, so this means that 'Tyler' transported him to another building, not just to a upper floor, because the building he had tried to enter was one of those set to explode, right?
There were scenes where EN took actively the role of narrator and the actor turned to the camera to explain what was going on, like in the restaurant to tell us how these men do things like peeing in the soup and more.
I like the movie mostly because it is very well done: well written, well directed, well played. Everything works.
There were disgusting scenes like EN and Tyler going to retrieve human fat, wastes of liposuction operations, to make the soap. Disgusting, I had to close my eyes.
Amazing the revelation that it was all EN, all along, everything was him: he created the clubs, founded the Project Mayhem, planned the whole thing. The only detail that leaves me sort of confused is the real birth of the club itself. At first it was believed that people saw these two friends having fun fighting each other and asked to join in, but now it's clear that he was fighting himself, he was alone there, so these men asked to join in after seeing him punching himself hardly on the face?? They didn't think: this one's nuts, better stay away, no, they felt attracted to him! Well, anyway, the best detail of the 'revelation' is that he regarded himself, and showed it to us, as a kind of 'loser' when compared to Tyler, and then it turns out that he had the girl, he had the devotion, the ideas, the 'control', although he didn't know that.
'Tyler' had destroyed his apartment, meaning that he had destroyed his own, to force himself to change his life.
There's a lot of anarchic speeches, against this age that wants us as mindless-careless consumers, only interested in consuming and accumulating, but there's a lot of good speeches and messages in movies, and yet the world keeps going on the same way, where people try to save money on many things like food but then there's a big queue when a new i-phone comes out. Things they often don't need, but they want it simply to have it, to show that they have it, because there's always a lot of talk about being rebels or different or transgressive but in the end they try to be the same as everyone else, buying/wearing the expensive things that will make them cool and so conforming to the rest. Sometimes it seems to me the only way to be transgressive nowadays is not having a tattoo, or stuff like that...
This is the first thing that calls for anger, in a way, because he doesn't even try to understand. Two days without sleep and I'm a zombie; EN never sleeps. That's a kind of torture, definitely not good for the body and even less for the mind.
EN goes to the meeting and at first you think he's criticizing or mocking the people there, then you realize he's not, he's enjoying the 'support' part of the meeting, and when this man Bob (Meat Loaf) hugs him and tells him to cry and get it all out, because he believes him to have cancer too, EN finds himself crying in his warm embrace. Obviously that night he is finally able to sleep: a good cry does this for you. He becomes addicted to it because it's the only thing that works for him. Every night he has a different meeting, a different nametag; he never actually says to be ill, I think, it's just that since he attends the meeting and keeps quiet, people assume he has a sad story inside. Every night the meeting helps him, until he notices Marla Singer (Helena Bonham Carter). He has seen her many times so he knows she's not ill, and this disturbs him. It ruins it for him, because she's like him and in a way she has no place there as he hasn't. He confronts her and his speech is quite something because every word applies to him too, he's also a fake, and she says so: 'you expose me and I'll expose you'
It's not clear why she goes to the meetings, but she's also troubled: the way she walked across that road was something, not caring at all about all the cars that could hit her, she showed a sad indifference. They talk and make a deal to attend different meetings and exchange numbers. Unfortunately the whole blessed thing has been spoiled for him and his insonnia claims him back.
He has to travel a lot for work, and all that traveling is depressing, until he meets Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) who makes and sell soap and is so very different from him.
EN is , or was, uptight, a slave of convention and society and consumerism, but Tyler is free, he doesn't care, he says what he wants to say and how he wants to say it.
When EN finally gets home, he finds his apartment has been destroyed by an explosion and he has lost everything. For a moment he thought of calling Marla, but then he called Tyler; they went for a beer together, and Tyler made his first speech about how society has made us slave of useless, insignificant things. It was a very true, meaningful speech, it's a shame that Pitt's now so so famous I couldn't avoid thinking of his huge collection of motorbikes, fact that kind of ruined the whole thing.
Anyway, Tyler can't believe that after three beers En still can't ask for his help, meaning a place to stay, and so he makes him ask. It seems like the two of them are already friends. Tyler has the attitude of a man who is always comfortable, anywhere, who doesn't care about things or rules, someone who does whatever crosses his mind. Tyler asks him to hit him, and after he insists for a while they do indeed fight, and afterwards they feel better and share a beer. From now on his whole life changes. What happens is: they are always together and they often fight for fun, until they are seen and other men ask to join in, then they find a place where they can meet and fight without being seen. They create the Fight Club, and it slowly attracts more and more men. Tyler sets the rules and becomes a sort of God/leader.
One night Marla calls saying she took too many pills in an attempt of suicide, EN seems not to care but Tyler goes to her and in the morning she's in their home. EN is annoyed, he's all 'what are you doing here? this is my house, go away' and first time I watched it her reaction didn't make much sense, but I guess one accepted it on the account that she was weird. He said 'what are you doing here?' and she was surprised/angry when she replied 'what?!?' and the first time I saw it I thought his question was kind of legitimate but when you realize the truth you understand her.
I admit that the first time I watched it I was totally surprised at the switch, and had not even noticed that he appeared to sleep regularly now.
EN seems jealous of Tyler now, and also unable to control him. EN has changed and can't cope with his office job anymore. He's more and more sloppy and uncaring, day after day, until he talks to his boss blackmailing him with what he knows of their job in order to get his money without having to go to work. If anyone had any doubt that EN was out of his mind, here is the proof: when his boss calls security, EN starts hitting himself hard (and the narrator voice says that 'somehow' that reminded him of his first fight with Tyler: very true, since it was exactly the same thing); when the security men arrive, he's on his knees, his face a mess, all bloody, saying 'don't hit me anymore' so he gets what he wanted! Tyler starts recruiting people, and these men are completely devoted to him, following their leader whatever he asks of them, obeying every rules and completing every task he gives them.
EN seems often surprised, in the morning, seeing what kind of enterprise he put together. They do a lot of work in the house, and also various acts of sabotage as planned by Tyler. During one of these actions the men are caught by the police and Bob, slower than the others, is shot and killed. EN takes it very badly. . After that he's scared of that whole thing and wants to stop it but can't. He tries to find out what Tyler is up to and when he can't find him he travels around to every place Tyler has been, and finds out that there are fight clubs in all those places, and also that people know him. When he confronts a man about it, we are told as well as he is that he is Tyler Durden. that he created the clubs. A call to Marla right before Tyler magically appears in his hotel room reveals to him the unbelievable truth that he himself is Tyler, and the one played by Pitt is but a projection of his mind. He's the one who's been sleeping with Marla and planning sabotages. When EN thought he was sleeping, 'Tyler' would take over! Afraid that she might be an obstacle to their plans he sends Marla away then goes to the police, but the men there are part of the organization too and follow his rules to the letter so he has to escape!! He tries to disarm the bombs but 'Tyler fights him' to stop him, and finds himself in a room, at a higher floor, with Tyler pointing a gun at him until he realizes that since they are the same person he's actually the one holding the gun, so to get rid of Tyler he puts the gun in his mouth and shoots, and we see a hole in Tyler's head when he 'dies', but EN is not dead, he only has a hole through the (left I think) cheek but he's alive, and when a bunch of members bring Marla in, he apologizes to her saying she met him in a strange-messy period (unfortunately I don't remember the words) then they hold hands and watch all the buildings around them collapse one after the other, and the movie ends.
Not clear to me where he is: will his building collapse too? Probably not, since there's a lot of members there and they know he's there too, so this means that 'Tyler' transported him to another building, not just to a upper floor, because the building he had tried to enter was one of those set to explode, right?
There were scenes where EN took actively the role of narrator and the actor turned to the camera to explain what was going on, like in the restaurant to tell us how these men do things like peeing in the soup and more.
I like the movie mostly because it is very well done: well written, well directed, well played. Everything works.
There were disgusting scenes like EN and Tyler going to retrieve human fat, wastes of liposuction operations, to make the soap. Disgusting, I had to close my eyes.
Amazing the revelation that it was all EN, all along, everything was him: he created the clubs, founded the Project Mayhem, planned the whole thing. The only detail that leaves me sort of confused is the real birth of the club itself. At first it was believed that people saw these two friends having fun fighting each other and asked to join in, but now it's clear that he was fighting himself, he was alone there, so these men asked to join in after seeing him punching himself hardly on the face?? They didn't think: this one's nuts, better stay away, no, they felt attracted to him! Well, anyway, the best detail of the 'revelation' is that he regarded himself, and showed it to us, as a kind of 'loser' when compared to Tyler, and then it turns out that he had the girl, he had the devotion, the ideas, the 'control', although he didn't know that.
'Tyler' had destroyed his apartment, meaning that he had destroyed his own, to force himself to change his life.
There's a lot of anarchic speeches, against this age that wants us as mindless-careless consumers, only interested in consuming and accumulating, but there's a lot of good speeches and messages in movies, and yet the world keeps going on the same way, where people try to save money on many things like food but then there's a big queue when a new i-phone comes out. Things they often don't need, but they want it simply to have it, to show that they have it, because there's always a lot of talk about being rebels or different or transgressive but in the end they try to be the same as everyone else, buying/wearing the expensive things that will make them cool and so conforming to the rest. Sometimes it seems to me the only way to be transgressive nowadays is not having a tattoo, or stuff like that...
Keeping mum - 2005
Strange thing, funny at moments, with Maggie Smith (always great) but a disappointing ending.
Young Rosie (Emilia Fox) killed her husband because he cheated on her. Now an old woman, she finds her daughter Gloria (who knows nothing about her, not even that she's her mother) and Rosie goes there 'to help her', disguised as housekeeper Grace (Maggie Smith).
Reverend Walter Goodfellow (Rowan Atkinson) only thinks of his sermons, the daughter is a nymphomaniac apparently (says her mom), the son gets bullied by other boys, Gloria (Kristin Scott Thomas) is having an affair with Lance (Patrick Swayze), a perv who also like Holly, her daughter.
Grace kills the neighbor's dog so Gloria can finally sleep and rest (the dog always kept her awake barking all night long); she kills the neighbor himself because he saw her burying the dog ( I think). She kills Lance after he videotaped Holly undressing.
She helps the reverend with his sermon, suggesting the use of jokes; she helps their marriage suggesting sex-related readings in the Bible; she helps the boy by breaking the bullies bikes to that brakes don't work and they fall and get hurt and she has him believe he caused it by wishing it.
In a way she is helping them :-p until they find out about her from the tv and confront her, and they learn all the truth. Only the women, that is. The two males of the family still know nothing.
Grace goes away, but they keep in touch. Gloria writes to her, and at the end she herself kills two men that wanted to drain the little lake where Grace had put the bodies. It can be considered a funny ending in a way, or a silly one if considering that someone else must know about the draining-project and someone must know they went there to do it and all that kind of things.
Still, the film was fun enough, the women were very good, all of them, and the men too :-p
Gloria: you can't go 'round killing people just because you don't approve of them
Grace: that's what my doctors used to say. It was the one point we could never agree on
There a moment when Grace and the reverend talk about the 'song of Solomon': she says it's about sex and he says it's 'beetween a devout man and God', then we hear it and come on! what man and god, the thing he read doesn't make you think of God!! (I'm talking of the words he said in the film, because I don't know this thing)
ITA la famiglia omicidi
Young Rosie (Emilia Fox) killed her husband because he cheated on her. Now an old woman, she finds her daughter Gloria (who knows nothing about her, not even that she's her mother) and Rosie goes there 'to help her', disguised as housekeeper Grace (Maggie Smith).
Reverend Walter Goodfellow (Rowan Atkinson) only thinks of his sermons, the daughter is a nymphomaniac apparently (says her mom), the son gets bullied by other boys, Gloria (Kristin Scott Thomas) is having an affair with Lance (Patrick Swayze), a perv who also like Holly, her daughter.
Grace kills the neighbor's dog so Gloria can finally sleep and rest (the dog always kept her awake barking all night long); she kills the neighbor himself because he saw her burying the dog ( I think). She kills Lance after he videotaped Holly undressing.
She helps the reverend with his sermon, suggesting the use of jokes; she helps their marriage suggesting sex-related readings in the Bible; she helps the boy by breaking the bullies bikes to that brakes don't work and they fall and get hurt and she has him believe he caused it by wishing it.
In a way she is helping them :-p until they find out about her from the tv and confront her, and they learn all the truth. Only the women, that is. The two males of the family still know nothing.
Grace goes away, but they keep in touch. Gloria writes to her, and at the end she herself kills two men that wanted to drain the little lake where Grace had put the bodies. It can be considered a funny ending in a way, or a silly one if considering that someone else must know about the draining-project and someone must know they went there to do it and all that kind of things.
Still, the film was fun enough, the women were very good, all of them, and the men too :-p
Gloria: you can't go 'round killing people just because you don't approve of them
Grace: that's what my doctors used to say. It was the one point we could never agree on
There a moment when Grace and the reverend talk about the 'song of Solomon': she says it's about sex and he says it's 'beetween a devout man and God', then we hear it and come on! what man and god, the thing he read doesn't make you think of God!! (I'm talking of the words he said in the film, because I don't know this thing)
ITA la famiglia omicidi
Holiday in handcuffs - 2007
Not bad. Very predictable and I didn't like the ending, but all the rest was nice and fun.
Trudie (Melissa Joan Hart) has a breakdown, frustrated painter who works as a waitress and gets dumped near Christmas and now she has nobody to introduce to her parents. She has to go and meet her family, to spend Christmas with them, and she's desperate for their approval, so she loses it and she kidnaps a man :-p David (Mario Lopez). She takes him to her family's place, an isolated cabin with no phones and no computers. Finally he discovers that her brother keeps a hidden phone and is willing to lend it to him (not suspecting a thing) so David calls his girlfriend explaining everything, telling her to call the police. After that is done with, he's much more relaxed because he thinks it'll end soon, so he plays the part, for fun. He understands now how she feels, and gets to know her and like her. During Christmas dinner her perfect family kind of breaks down: her parents have a big fight, her brother says he's left his perfect girlfriend because he's gay and her sister says she left school because she does not want to be a lawyer, she wants to open a gym instead! As if it wasn't enough the police arrive and reveal to them the truth: the man they know as Nick is actually David, and Trudie kidnapped him!
They are all arrested, but they are soon released because he won't press charges. He goes back to his engagement but his heart is not into it now because of course he thinks of Trudie now.
She reads of him in the papers (rich girlfriend..) and then she gets accepted in a gallery (well, one painting only, but still...).
Her family comes too, now happy because counseling works (really?? that easily?) and they finally talk to each other and she says what she really wants to tell them.
Of course it ends with the couple having their happy end, there was never any doubt that Trudie and David would fall for each other, that was obvious and expected, inevitable I'd say, but I didn't like at all the way it happened. I didn't like the obvious detail that he had bought her painting. They presented it like a romantic thing, personally I find it sad: nobody else liked it?
I understand it was the painting about their story, in a way, but had he chosen it in a gallery full of her works it would have been nice because it was about their night together (skating and talking..) but like this, the only one she had in the gallery, it's somehow different, as if nobody could want it unless trying to get to her.
-The skating scene was bizarre, it so obviously wasn't her, they should have masked it better, people have to believe, that's the magic of cinema! People should not point and ask 'who's that woman?', that's wrong. Still, the idea was nice.
The film was mostly nice and fun anyway, although basically the same plot (more or less) than her film "my fake fiancé", also with Melissa Joan Hart.
ITA un fidanzato per mamma e papà
Trudie (Melissa Joan Hart) has a breakdown, frustrated painter who works as a waitress and gets dumped near Christmas and now she has nobody to introduce to her parents. She has to go and meet her family, to spend Christmas with them, and she's desperate for their approval, so she loses it and she kidnaps a man :-p David (Mario Lopez). She takes him to her family's place, an isolated cabin with no phones and no computers. Finally he discovers that her brother keeps a hidden phone and is willing to lend it to him (not suspecting a thing) so David calls his girlfriend explaining everything, telling her to call the police. After that is done with, he's much more relaxed because he thinks it'll end soon, so he plays the part, for fun. He understands now how she feels, and gets to know her and like her. During Christmas dinner her perfect family kind of breaks down: her parents have a big fight, her brother says he's left his perfect girlfriend because he's gay and her sister says she left school because she does not want to be a lawyer, she wants to open a gym instead! As if it wasn't enough the police arrive and reveal to them the truth: the man they know as Nick is actually David, and Trudie kidnapped him!
They are all arrested, but they are soon released because he won't press charges. He goes back to his engagement but his heart is not into it now because of course he thinks of Trudie now.
She reads of him in the papers (rich girlfriend..) and then she gets accepted in a gallery (well, one painting only, but still...).
Her family comes too, now happy because counseling works (really?? that easily?) and they finally talk to each other and she says what she really wants to tell them.
Of course it ends with the couple having their happy end, there was never any doubt that Trudie and David would fall for each other, that was obvious and expected, inevitable I'd say, but I didn't like at all the way it happened. I didn't like the obvious detail that he had bought her painting. They presented it like a romantic thing, personally I find it sad: nobody else liked it?
I understand it was the painting about their story, in a way, but had he chosen it in a gallery full of her works it would have been nice because it was about their night together (skating and talking..) but like this, the only one she had in the gallery, it's somehow different, as if nobody could want it unless trying to get to her.
-The skating scene was bizarre, it so obviously wasn't her, they should have masked it better, people have to believe, that's the magic of cinema! People should not point and ask 'who's that woman?', that's wrong. Still, the idea was nice.
The film was mostly nice and fun anyway, although basically the same plot (more or less) than her film "my fake fiancé", also with Melissa Joan Hart.
ITA un fidanzato per mamma e papà
venerdì 17 marzo 2017
The hundred-foot journey - 2014
It was nice, I liked it. The tragic background at the beginning of the film I honestly could have done without, or maybe it could have been put in a different way (it gave the wrong impression), but the rest was nice. Funny thing is, the young couple falls in the background because it had hard competition. The best of the film is found with the complicated relationship between M.me Mallory (Helen Mirren) and papa Kadam (Om Puri).
The story: The Kadam family lived in India where they had a restaurant, until it was burned down and Hassan's (Manish Dayal) mother died. She was the cook, and taught him a lot. Because of the violence in their country, papa Kadam takes his family and runs away to Europe. It is said that they stayed a while in England, but the food there had no soul, so they kept driving south until the car broke down in France. A kind girl, Marguerite (Charlotte LeBon) helped them. Papa Kadam saw a property for sale and bought it against his family's will, and decided to open a restaurant there. Across the street, though, there is another restaurant run by Madame Mallory. That restaurant has one Michelen star. It seems like madness, and yet she's worried enough to boycott them by buying all the fish at the local market. Papa accepts the war, they keep fighting, involving the city mayor (Michel Blanc) in their dispute. One of the chef is strongly against them: she says he'd be a good soldier, but when he finds two men to burn their restaurant she fires him : he's a chef, he should not burn things, she says. She wanted to beat them, not to burn their place down.
She says he did indeed bring peace, because now she changes. She personally cleans the wall where someone had written 'France to the French' (well, in French) and she accepts Hassan's offer of an omelette. That is how she usually tries them out, she asks for an omelette and she understands from that is they've got the gift or not.
She confesses he has the touch of the great chef and wants him in her restaurant at all costs: he accepts and gets even better and she has her second star. She and papa are allied now that they both believe in Hassan. Marguerite is jealous because she also was working at M.me Mallory's restaurant hoping to become a senior chef, but she doesn't become bad because of it, she's still a good girl.
Mallory and papa spend a lot of time together now, and after the second star Hassan is hired in the big city, and works in a big restaurant where he can experiment as much as he likes. Happy at first, slowly he loses the joy of it and doesn't care for stars at all. He cries when another Indian working in that place shares with him the food his wife prepared for him, food that tastes like home.
He decides to go back and I guess what happens is: he'll run the restaurant with Marguerite now. Mallory's restaurant, that is.
It was nice, but does this mean they'll close the Indian restaurant and keep only one together? Will it be Mallory's or Kadam's? Or both? *winkwink*
Anyway, a nice film, funny at moments, touching in others. Not bad.
ITA amore cucina e curry
The story: The Kadam family lived in India where they had a restaurant, until it was burned down and Hassan's (Manish Dayal) mother died. She was the cook, and taught him a lot. Because of the violence in their country, papa Kadam takes his family and runs away to Europe. It is said that they stayed a while in England, but the food there had no soul, so they kept driving south until the car broke down in France. A kind girl, Marguerite (Charlotte LeBon) helped them. Papa Kadam saw a property for sale and bought it against his family's will, and decided to open a restaurant there. Across the street, though, there is another restaurant run by Madame Mallory. That restaurant has one Michelen star. It seems like madness, and yet she's worried enough to boycott them by buying all the fish at the local market. Papa accepts the war, they keep fighting, involving the city mayor (Michel Blanc) in their dispute. One of the chef is strongly against them: she says he'd be a good soldier, but when he finds two men to burn their restaurant she fires him : he's a chef, he should not burn things, she says. She wanted to beat them, not to burn their place down.
She says he did indeed bring peace, because now she changes. She personally cleans the wall where someone had written 'France to the French' (well, in French) and she accepts Hassan's offer of an omelette. That is how she usually tries them out, she asks for an omelette and she understands from that is they've got the gift or not.
She confesses he has the touch of the great chef and wants him in her restaurant at all costs: he accepts and gets even better and she has her second star. She and papa are allied now that they both believe in Hassan. Marguerite is jealous because she also was working at M.me Mallory's restaurant hoping to become a senior chef, but she doesn't become bad because of it, she's still a good girl.
Mallory and papa spend a lot of time together now, and after the second star Hassan is hired in the big city, and works in a big restaurant where he can experiment as much as he likes. Happy at first, slowly he loses the joy of it and doesn't care for stars at all. He cries when another Indian working in that place shares with him the food his wife prepared for him, food that tastes like home.
He decides to go back and I guess what happens is: he'll run the restaurant with Marguerite now. Mallory's restaurant, that is.
It was nice, but does this mean they'll close the Indian restaurant and keep only one together? Will it be Mallory's or Kadam's? Or both? *winkwink*
Anyway, a nice film, funny at moments, touching in others. Not bad.
ITA amore cucina e curry
Marple - The secret of Chimneys
It wasn't bad but of course there's the usual little problem of wanting to put too many things in not enough time. I liked the inspector though.
The plot: once again someone invited Marple and then someone died.. I say: don't tempt fate, don't play with luck, leave Marple at her own village, what the... anyway, Chimneys! Big house of Lord Caterham (Edward Fox) and his two daughters : Virginia (Charlotte Salt) and 'Bundle' (Dervla Kirwan). Virginia is the focus of the show, Bundle is there for no reason at all, she's useless, and that was rather annoying because that name is associated with quite a different figure of a girl. There's an unpleasant man - George I think is the name - (Adam Godley) and his secretary Bill (Matthew Horne) both hoping to marry Virginia. There's an Austrian Count (Anthony Higgins) invited by that man to sign some kind of contract. There's the loyal maid Tredwell (Michelle Collins) , also Blenkinsopp (Ruth Jones) a woman who wants to buy Chimneys for some reason I don't remember, and of course Miss Marple (Julia McKenzie), cousin of the lady of the house who died maybe a year before.
That night the Count says he'll sign the contract with George if he'll give him Chimneys as a bonus gift. Lord Caterham signs too, against Bundle's will. They all go to bed then a man wakes them up and they all come down to hear that a guard has been knocked out. They hear a loud noise and they all say it was a shot and the Count is missing. They look for him and when they try Chimneys' secret passage they find him there with a young man. The Count has been shot and says the Austrian word for 'wall' before dying. The young man is Anthony Cade (Jonas Armstrong), another one in love with Virginia, but one she actually loves back.
Inspector Finch (Stephen Dillane) comes to investigate. He was my favourite character on the show; he was nice, I like the way he spoke and that he brought Marple in on the case and the investigation. There's a lot of talk around a famous diamond that was stolen 23-24 years before during a party at Chimneys: young maid Agnes is thought of as the thief, until Tredwell reveals that that night she saw the count (back then he was a musician) dispose of her dead body by placing it inside a tomb. After that she's found dead too, and in her room they find many letters that she had hidden: love letters from the count, so they think, at first, that they had stolen the diamond and wanted to retrieve it now. A bit absurd, but then the solution: the fire that Cade saw that night was set to cause the loud noise they all heard, but the murder had already been committed. Not Tredwell but Lady Madeleine had had an affair with the musician/now-count. Lord Caterham had accidentally killed poor Agnes in his determination to witness the truth and covered it up by staging the theft. He had allowed the count in his house with the plan to kill him. He had retrieved the diamond buried with Agnes' body and put it in the pond where Marple went to pick it up again. He had killed Tredwell too, probably fearing that she would ultimately reveal the truth about the affair, but she wouldn't have and by killing her he doomed himself because they found Madeleine's letters that she was trying to hide from them. The big jewel the count was looking for was not the diamond but Virginia, his daughter, although it is not clear to me what that map and the 'wall-word' meant, how they lead to this truth. Anyway, in this kind of films they always try the same tricks so I was sure it was him because he seemed to be the only one with the perfect alibi, since he was with Marple when they heard the 'shot'.
I didn't like how hard they tried to make the audience suspect Tredwell: from the start she was shown with a mysterious expression like someone with a big secret, like someone who is plotting something. There's nothing to say about Bundle because she was totally useless as a character, they made her so: she was there to say she didn't want to sell the house, and nothing more. No father-daughter moment (it seemed almost as Virginia was his only daughter: my darling here, my darling there....), no sisters-moment, nothing. I would have liked it if she had joined the investigation, maybe taking a fancy to the bright inspector, or maybe not. Anyway, doing something!
Conclusion: nice enough, but not good.
2010
ITA il segreto di Chimneys
The plot: once again someone invited Marple and then someone died.. I say: don't tempt fate, don't play with luck, leave Marple at her own village, what the... anyway, Chimneys! Big house of Lord Caterham (Edward Fox) and his two daughters : Virginia (Charlotte Salt) and 'Bundle' (Dervla Kirwan). Virginia is the focus of the show, Bundle is there for no reason at all, she's useless, and that was rather annoying because that name is associated with quite a different figure of a girl. There's an unpleasant man - George I think is the name - (Adam Godley) and his secretary Bill (Matthew Horne) both hoping to marry Virginia. There's an Austrian Count (Anthony Higgins) invited by that man to sign some kind of contract. There's the loyal maid Tredwell (Michelle Collins) , also Blenkinsopp (Ruth Jones) a woman who wants to buy Chimneys for some reason I don't remember, and of course Miss Marple (Julia McKenzie), cousin of the lady of the house who died maybe a year before.
That night the Count says he'll sign the contract with George if he'll give him Chimneys as a bonus gift. Lord Caterham signs too, against Bundle's will. They all go to bed then a man wakes them up and they all come down to hear that a guard has been knocked out. They hear a loud noise and they all say it was a shot and the Count is missing. They look for him and when they try Chimneys' secret passage they find him there with a young man. The Count has been shot and says the Austrian word for 'wall' before dying. The young man is Anthony Cade (Jonas Armstrong), another one in love with Virginia, but one she actually loves back.
Inspector Finch (Stephen Dillane) comes to investigate. He was my favourite character on the show; he was nice, I like the way he spoke and that he brought Marple in on the case and the investigation. There's a lot of talk around a famous diamond that was stolen 23-24 years before during a party at Chimneys: young maid Agnes is thought of as the thief, until Tredwell reveals that that night she saw the count (back then he was a musician) dispose of her dead body by placing it inside a tomb. After that she's found dead too, and in her room they find many letters that she had hidden: love letters from the count, so they think, at first, that they had stolen the diamond and wanted to retrieve it now. A bit absurd, but then the solution: the fire that Cade saw that night was set to cause the loud noise they all heard, but the murder had already been committed. Not Tredwell but Lady Madeleine had had an affair with the musician/now-count. Lord Caterham had accidentally killed poor Agnes in his determination to witness the truth and covered it up by staging the theft. He had allowed the count in his house with the plan to kill him. He had retrieved the diamond buried with Agnes' body and put it in the pond where Marple went to pick it up again. He had killed Tredwell too, probably fearing that she would ultimately reveal the truth about the affair, but she wouldn't have and by killing her he doomed himself because they found Madeleine's letters that she was trying to hide from them. The big jewel the count was looking for was not the diamond but Virginia, his daughter, although it is not clear to me what that map and the 'wall-word' meant, how they lead to this truth. Anyway, in this kind of films they always try the same tricks so I was sure it was him because he seemed to be the only one with the perfect alibi, since he was with Marple when they heard the 'shot'.
I didn't like how hard they tried to make the audience suspect Tredwell: from the start she was shown with a mysterious expression like someone with a big secret, like someone who is plotting something. There's nothing to say about Bundle because she was totally useless as a character, they made her so: she was there to say she didn't want to sell the house, and nothing more. No father-daughter moment (it seemed almost as Virginia was his only daughter: my darling here, my darling there....), no sisters-moment, nothing. I would have liked it if she had joined the investigation, maybe taking a fancy to the bright inspector, or maybe not. Anyway, doing something!
Conclusion: nice enough, but not good.
2010
ITA il segreto di Chimneys
lunedì 13 marzo 2017
New year's eve - 2011
Mixed feelings. I enjoyed it on some level, but I can't say it was a good movie because it was a mess. Mostly I enjoyed watching Michelle Pfeiffer because I love her, but that's basically it.
First the plot, then the comments: There are many stories that happen during the same day and night in the same city.
1-
Ingrid (Pfeiffer) is not satisfied with her life and makes a big decision: she quits her job and decides she wants to do all her new year's resolutions in one day: on new year's eve, of course so she hires Paul (Zac Efron) for the day, asking him to use his imagination and offering him something in return that makes him drool (don't know what: 4 black envelops, I guess Americans know it so well it doesn't require an explanation?)
2-
Stan (Robert De Niro) is dying at the hospital but refuses treatment and only accepts painkillers; nurse Aimee (Halle Berry) stays with him all the time because he's alone. His dream is to go on the roof to watch the 'famous ball drop': another New York thing.
3-
two couples are competing to win the prize for the first baby born in the new year. They are pregnant Tess (Jessica Biel) with her man (Seth Meyers) and pregnant Grace (Sarah Paulson) with her James (Til Schweiger).
4-
One year ago famous singer Jensen (Bon Jovi) asked Laura (Katherine Heigl) to marry him than he ran away scared. Now he wants to win her back but she refuses to abandon her job and her life to follow him on tour.
5-
Randy (Ashton Kutcher) doesn't care at all for new year's eve. Elise (Lea Michele) is new in the building and very excited for the most important night of her life. They get stuck in the elevator together and get to know each other a bit.
6-
Hailey (Abigail Breslin) is 15 and would like to go to Times Square that night with all her friends so she can kiss her boyfriend at midnight but her divorced mother Kim (Sarah Jessica Parker) 'is not comfortable' with the idea, so they fight and Hailey runs away from home.
7-
Sam's car (Josh Duhamel) breaks down and a family drives him to New York and he tells them his big story: a year ago he met a woman and they had a fling but he never saw her again. She wrote something on a napkin he still has: to meet again a year later on new year's eve, and he's both afraid and excited because he hasn't stopped thinking about her.
8-
Claire (Hilary Swank) is in charge of the rising&dropping of the ball when something goes wrong and she has to solve the big crisis ..
Now, where do I start: Bon Jovi seemed there to promote a new album and when he wasn't singing he simply put on his 'what do I do now?' expression all the time. Laura's love/hate feelings were boring: good thing that there was Sofia Vergara, very funny, to revive the story.
Randy's story was boring too: two strangers talking about their life and sort of falling for each other. It doesn't work very well: how long were they in there? Because a lot goes on in the meantime, basically all the movie, and yet she was hurrying to work and when she got out she still was in time for the show... she was to be a backup singer for Jensen :-/ This whole story seemed to be a filler waiting to hear her sing :-/
De Niro's story... well, I've known for quite a while now that he would accept any job, but here what I don't understand is why they called him. He doesn't add anything to the character, and I could not 'feel' the character at all. Since there were so many stories, this one only got 1/8 of the available time, of course, and that was not enough to 'feel the characters' enough to forget we are watching De Niro.
Halle Berry had a side story for herself, because when she could leave his side (his daughter had come to him) she put on a beautiful dress, closed herself in a room and opened her computer to speak with her man at war. I think that deserved a line or two more.
They could have her mention something , like how long it is since she met her husband, how much she misses seeing him or that she would sort-of spend new year's eve with him, leaving us to wonder why until the end. Anyway, they didn't.
Duhamel's story: OMG I'd say, but not in a good way. A woman one year ago asked him "how's your heart?" and promised to meet him again if life's troubles let her; "who says that?" and that's exactly what I was asking myself, actually :-/
Swank's story: well, she was nice, and she made a great speech: false and improvised to gain time, she spoke of taking out time to think of our mistakes/regrets/people we love. It was heard by many people: Bon Jovi thought about his story and decideed to give up his tour to stay with her. She was in his arms in a second, without a single question, so we don't know what'll happen. Will he give up his career? Or keep singing but never making another tour in his life? Or will he miss just this one tour but he'll do the next one? who knows... :-/
Back to Swank: she needed time to solve the technical problem with the ball, and to repair it she called Kominsky (Hector Elizondo) and the whole thing was rather silly and quite contemporary at the same time. He arrived like a god, saying he had been fired because he had pointed out the faults in the system. She even moved herself and she left Kominsky in charge to run to her father (De Niro, big surprise :-/ ). So she knew he was dying and was fretting about a ball and some lights!!! :-/
She goes to him and steals her way to the roof to let him see the ball drop as he dreamed, then he died.
The teenage girl: naturally she thought she was old enough to do anything on her own, but they made it look like her mom was being unreasonable and over-protective! Sure, New York is famous to be the safest place on Earth, like all biiiig cities of the world: the perfect place for a teenage girl to walk at night... :-/ I found the mom very reasonable.
Amazing how her friends managed to get to the front row, and how she managed to get there at the exact moment when her boyfriend got kissed by another girl, and how her mom had managed to get there and find her and see her right then ready to comfort her... now she agreed to let her go with her friends and Hailey made up with her boyfriend. The only nice bit was the woman spying on the kids :-p a girl's mom, I think. :-p
At this point what happened? SJParker went home to dress for a party and took a carriage (!) to meet Duhamel! She was the mystery woman and he had waited till now to meet his princess... :-/ boring.
Pfeiffer's story was the one I liked. She played a sort of Selina before her catwoman-days, and with them we took a tour guide of New York City, basically, but it was nice. I liked that to 'save a life' he made her adopt a puppy :-) he also turns out to be Parker's brother, and so silly as to say on the phone that Ingrid was 'pathetic but in a cute way' so she felt sad and called the thing off but still giving him his reward. He felt bad and went back to her to finish her list, then they said goodbye, and at midnight she was at Times Square with nobody to kiss until he came and kissed her in a very, very bad scene.
Amazing how they all managed to find one another in such a big city and in such a crowded place......
As if it wasn't enough how many known actors they put together, I also saw Matthew Broderick telling Swank she might lose her job if she doesn't fix the ball-thing; Carla Cugino in the pregnant-women story, and Jim Belushi who repaired the elevator the exact moment when Kutcher was about to kiss the girl, interrupting them, so the guy had to put a coat on his pajama and he went to kiss her at Times Square, where she sang solo when Bon Jovi went to make up with his Heigl... :-/
There was also Cary Elwes playing De Niro's doctor ( I did not recognized him at all) and Alyssa Milano playing a nurse in that same hospital. That explains a lot: with so many names in the movie, they thought the plot was an optional...
ITA capodanno a New York
First the plot, then the comments: There are many stories that happen during the same day and night in the same city.
1-
Ingrid (Pfeiffer) is not satisfied with her life and makes a big decision: she quits her job and decides she wants to do all her new year's resolutions in one day: on new year's eve, of course so she hires Paul (Zac Efron) for the day, asking him to use his imagination and offering him something in return that makes him drool (don't know what: 4 black envelops, I guess Americans know it so well it doesn't require an explanation?)
2-
Stan (Robert De Niro) is dying at the hospital but refuses treatment and only accepts painkillers; nurse Aimee (Halle Berry) stays with him all the time because he's alone. His dream is to go on the roof to watch the 'famous ball drop': another New York thing.
3-
two couples are competing to win the prize for the first baby born in the new year. They are pregnant Tess (Jessica Biel) with her man (Seth Meyers) and pregnant Grace (Sarah Paulson) with her James (Til Schweiger).
4-
One year ago famous singer Jensen (Bon Jovi) asked Laura (Katherine Heigl) to marry him than he ran away scared. Now he wants to win her back but she refuses to abandon her job and her life to follow him on tour.
5-
Randy (Ashton Kutcher) doesn't care at all for new year's eve. Elise (Lea Michele) is new in the building and very excited for the most important night of her life. They get stuck in the elevator together and get to know each other a bit.
6-
Hailey (Abigail Breslin) is 15 and would like to go to Times Square that night with all her friends so she can kiss her boyfriend at midnight but her divorced mother Kim (Sarah Jessica Parker) 'is not comfortable' with the idea, so they fight and Hailey runs away from home.
7-
Sam's car (Josh Duhamel) breaks down and a family drives him to New York and he tells them his big story: a year ago he met a woman and they had a fling but he never saw her again. She wrote something on a napkin he still has: to meet again a year later on new year's eve, and he's both afraid and excited because he hasn't stopped thinking about her.
8-
Claire (Hilary Swank) is in charge of the rising&dropping of the ball when something goes wrong and she has to solve the big crisis ..
Now, where do I start: Bon Jovi seemed there to promote a new album and when he wasn't singing he simply put on his 'what do I do now?' expression all the time. Laura's love/hate feelings were boring: good thing that there was Sofia Vergara, very funny, to revive the story.
Randy's story was boring too: two strangers talking about their life and sort of falling for each other. It doesn't work very well: how long were they in there? Because a lot goes on in the meantime, basically all the movie, and yet she was hurrying to work and when she got out she still was in time for the show... she was to be a backup singer for Jensen :-/ This whole story seemed to be a filler waiting to hear her sing :-/
De Niro's story... well, I've known for quite a while now that he would accept any job, but here what I don't understand is why they called him. He doesn't add anything to the character, and I could not 'feel' the character at all. Since there were so many stories, this one only got 1/8 of the available time, of course, and that was not enough to 'feel the characters' enough to forget we are watching De Niro.
Halle Berry had a side story for herself, because when she could leave his side (his daughter had come to him) she put on a beautiful dress, closed herself in a room and opened her computer to speak with her man at war. I think that deserved a line or two more.
They could have her mention something , like how long it is since she met her husband, how much she misses seeing him or that she would sort-of spend new year's eve with him, leaving us to wonder why until the end. Anyway, they didn't.
Duhamel's story: OMG I'd say, but not in a good way. A woman one year ago asked him "how's your heart?" and promised to meet him again if life's troubles let her; "who says that?" and that's exactly what I was asking myself, actually :-/
Swank's story: well, she was nice, and she made a great speech: false and improvised to gain time, she spoke of taking out time to think of our mistakes/regrets/people we love. It was heard by many people: Bon Jovi thought about his story and decideed to give up his tour to stay with her. She was in his arms in a second, without a single question, so we don't know what'll happen. Will he give up his career? Or keep singing but never making another tour in his life? Or will he miss just this one tour but he'll do the next one? who knows... :-/
Back to Swank: she needed time to solve the technical problem with the ball, and to repair it she called Kominsky (Hector Elizondo) and the whole thing was rather silly and quite contemporary at the same time. He arrived like a god, saying he had been fired because he had pointed out the faults in the system. She even moved herself and she left Kominsky in charge to run to her father (De Niro, big surprise :-/ ). So she knew he was dying and was fretting about a ball and some lights!!! :-/
She goes to him and steals her way to the roof to let him see the ball drop as he dreamed, then he died.
The teenage girl: naturally she thought she was old enough to do anything on her own, but they made it look like her mom was being unreasonable and over-protective! Sure, New York is famous to be the safest place on Earth, like all biiiig cities of the world: the perfect place for a teenage girl to walk at night... :-/ I found the mom very reasonable.
Amazing how her friends managed to get to the front row, and how she managed to get there at the exact moment when her boyfriend got kissed by another girl, and how her mom had managed to get there and find her and see her right then ready to comfort her... now she agreed to let her go with her friends and Hailey made up with her boyfriend. The only nice bit was the woman spying on the kids :-p a girl's mom, I think. :-p
At this point what happened? SJParker went home to dress for a party and took a carriage (!) to meet Duhamel! She was the mystery woman and he had waited till now to meet his princess... :-/ boring.
Pfeiffer's story was the one I liked. She played a sort of Selina before her catwoman-days, and with them we took a tour guide of New York City, basically, but it was nice. I liked that to 'save a life' he made her adopt a puppy :-) he also turns out to be Parker's brother, and so silly as to say on the phone that Ingrid was 'pathetic but in a cute way' so she felt sad and called the thing off but still giving him his reward. He felt bad and went back to her to finish her list, then they said goodbye, and at midnight she was at Times Square with nobody to kiss until he came and kissed her in a very, very bad scene.
Amazing how they all managed to find one another in such a big city and in such a crowded place......
As if it wasn't enough how many known actors they put together, I also saw Matthew Broderick telling Swank she might lose her job if she doesn't fix the ball-thing; Carla Cugino in the pregnant-women story, and Jim Belushi who repaired the elevator the exact moment when Kutcher was about to kiss the girl, interrupting them, so the guy had to put a coat on his pajama and he went to kiss her at Times Square, where she sang solo when Bon Jovi went to make up with his Heigl... :-/
There was also Cary Elwes playing De Niro's doctor ( I did not recognized him at all) and Alyssa Milano playing a nurse in that same hospital. That explains a lot: with so many names in the movie, they thought the plot was an optional...
ITA capodanno a New York
Janet or, the Christmas stockings by Louise Elise Gibbons
1899. Don't be fooled by the title, this is not what I consider a Christmas story: this Janet is another 'little match-girl', another sweet child with a cruel fate, after a cruel and short life.
Janet is very, very poor: she has brothers and sisters, a poor mom she loves and a drunk as a father; when a contagious illness kills her family, she's left alone. Her only friend is Roy, a poor boy who sells papers on the streets. He finds her a shelter, pays for it, and gives her hope, but when he's run over by a carriage and dies, she's left all alone in the world, with no education to help her and no religion to comfort her; she's alone, sad and starving. One night at the park, she sees a star she feels like her only companion and wants to reach it. When she sees its reflection in the water, much nearer now, she goes for it and disappears under water... poor child, with rich people despising her for being a ragged vagabond instead of helping her.
The title comes from a scene right at the start. A good bishop saw her and gave her a git: two Christmas stockings full of candy and a few coins. She kept her stockings till the end like a treasure, but she could not go to him for help because she didn't know where to find him. He never forgot about her, and instructed his people to find out how she was doing, but when they were told that the family who lived in that room was now dead, of course they thought she was too and stopped looking for her :-(
Such a sad story, just like the little match girl :-(
Janet is very, very poor: she has brothers and sisters, a poor mom she loves and a drunk as a father; when a contagious illness kills her family, she's left alone. Her only friend is Roy, a poor boy who sells papers on the streets. He finds her a shelter, pays for it, and gives her hope, but when he's run over by a carriage and dies, she's left all alone in the world, with no education to help her and no religion to comfort her; she's alone, sad and starving. One night at the park, she sees a star she feels like her only companion and wants to reach it. When she sees its reflection in the water, much nearer now, she goes for it and disappears under water... poor child, with rich people despising her for being a ragged vagabond instead of helping her.
The title comes from a scene right at the start. A good bishop saw her and gave her a git: two Christmas stockings full of candy and a few coins. She kept her stockings till the end like a treasure, but she could not go to him for help because she didn't know where to find him. He never forgot about her, and instructed his people to find out how she was doing, but when they were told that the family who lived in that room was now dead, of course they thought she was too and stopped looking for her :-(
Such a sad story, just like the little match girl :-(
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