I love the idea but I don’t like all the absurd faces he makes during this movie, so exaggerated that they make Ace Ventura look plain normal, serious even. Half the movie consists in Jim Carrey making strange faces, shouting incoherently, and generally acting weird. I know this is why the majority of people like him, and he made his fortune on this, and he’s undoubtedly good at it, I accept that, but I can’t help feeling sorry that this wasn’t a more normal comedy. Not boring serious, just without the exaggeration! When he’s not doing that, he’s so good, funny and moving, so great, and yet all the focus is on the absurd gestures - the excessive opening of the mouth when he tries to tell a lie and nothing comes out, his own arm rebelling against him when he tries to write a lie, the overplayed faces when he’s forced against his will to say the truth, when he speaks offensively to the company members and I wished there were fewer of them because the scene was so looong...
The idea is funny: Fletcher Reed is a successful lawyer who made his fortune defending bad guys by shamelessly lying to the court and who has lost his wife and is about to lose his son too because he always tells them lies and never keeps a promise. At his son Max’s birthday he doesn’t show up as usual, and the child is so sad that he makes a wish from the bottom of his heart: that his father won’t be able to tell a lie for a whole day. From that moment Fletcher finds himself telling the truth against his will: he loses his secretary, risks losing his job, makes a fool of himself in court, all before midday. When he finds out about his son’s wish, he tries to make him undo what he did but it doesn’t work because deep down the kid doesn’t want him to lie. Fletcher has no choice but going to court anyway in the afternoon. A lot of faces and screams and beating himself up in the bathroom later, he finds a way to win the case without lying. It’s a divorce case, and the woman lied about her age to be able to get married, she was really seventeen so her prenuptial agreement is invalid. He’s relieved and satisfied until the woman gets greedy and decide to fight for full custody of the two children to get more money. Sad thing is, she didn’t want it the day before but then he filled her head with stupid lies about her husband being the guilty part there. We will never know the fate of those children.
Fletcher feels really bad about it because the husband is a good father - everything Fletcher is not - and the children love him. He yells how not fair all that is, and he’s hold in contempt but luckily his old secretary bails him out, so he can run to the airport where his wife and son are about to leave to stay with Jerry who asked her to marry him and move with him.
A big scene at the airport where he stops the plane and talks to his son, and his wife decide they won’t move away after all, so the child can stay near his father - okay, but if Fletcher is fired or otherwise leave this firm to maybe open his own, couldn’t he do it in Boston? Well, that wouldn’t work with the obvious happy ending where mum and dad get back together.. :-/
Fletcher-Jim Carrey
his wife Audrey-Maura Tierney
Max-Justin Cooper
Jerry-Cary Elwes
Greta-Anne Haney - loved her.
ITA bugiardo bugiardo
I loved it when I was a girl, and I could still remember what it was that I loved when I re-watched it now. It was romantic, it was funny... the only scenes I never liked were when he was aggressive towards her and when they rolled down the hill, but everything else I liked.
I liked that this was all a story that a grandpa was reading to his ill grandkid, and that from time to time they would interrupt the story with comments. I loved that.
The special effects were not great even then, I remember, and yet I didn’t care then as I didn’t care now. It’s a story read from a book, it’s like a fairytale, so who cares if the special effects are not great, they don’t pretend to be. Just think that this is how the kid imagines it :-)
The protagonists Buttercup and Westley were very very pretty, and their love conquered all, a thing that always impresses a girl. The fact that he always said to her “as you wish” when she ordered him around, since he was her farm boy, was romantic because they were so beautiful.
Right at the beginning they tell us that Westley leaves in search of fortune, and doesn’t come back and is believed to have been murdered by a famous pirate. Buttercup is devastated. After five years she is presented as the new princess, the one prince Humperdinck has chosen as his wife-to-be. During a ride she’s abducted by three men, hired apparently to start a war. They want to make it look like a neighbour Country kidnapped and killed her, but while Vizzini thinks it a great idea, the other two don’t like the idea of killing an innocent girl. Fezzik is a gentle giant, strong and good, and Iñigo Montoya is a honorable man seeking vengeance against the man, with six fingers on his right hand, that killed his father.
They notice that someone is following them, and try to stop him. This man in black is undoubtedly Westley, we aren’t fooled by the mask. Montoya is the first to confront him, and in order to do so he first helps him get to him safely, lets him rest so to have a fair fight and then they go at it, and Westley wins but of course doesn’t kill him in cold blood, simply knocks him out. The second obstacle is Fezzik, and again despite Vizzini’s suggestion that he should hide and then throw a big rock on his head, Fezzik too chooses an honourable confrontation, missing the first shot on purpose to alert him of his presence, and then challenges him to a hand-to-hand combat. Fezzik is stronger no doubt, but the man in black is resilient and obstinate and eventually wins, holding Fezzik strongly by the neck until he falls unconscious. After that he meets Vizzini who is so cocky about being the most intelligent man that Westley challenges him to a duel of wit, and asks him to choose one of two glasses where he might have put a poison. He thinks he got it, but he didn’t because Westley grew immunity to that specific poison and therefore he could put it in both glasses and drink it without consequences.
Now alone with Buttercup, he seems bitter and he speaks rather annoyingly of “women” and their falsity in love, and even if this bit annoyed me even when I was but a girl, it annoyed me much more now that I know how many man do this: if one love story doesn’t go well it doesn’t mean that all women are bad or false, but it's certainly easier to think that than to admit that the story has ended because of any other reason, being that his fault or her falling for someone else. Surely nobody can be better than them, and no good honest girl would leave them for someone else!
Back to our story, when he said that she should have waited for her love to come back instead of marrying someone else I was always angry because: 1°- five years without a word had passed; 2°-what she should have done, kill herself? that’s what he wanted the person he loved to do? die?; and 3°-she thought he was dead! there was nobody to wait for!
Anyway, he reveals himself to her and they kiss and try to escape together from prince Humperdinck and his party searching for her. They go thru a dangerous forest where he saves her from geysers and quicksands and “rodents of unusual size”, but then they are surrounded by the prince’s men and fearing for Westley’s life Buttercup surrenders to him after making him promise that Westley won’t he harmed, that he will be returned safely to his ship (since he has now assumed the identity of the famous, dangerous pirate that was supposed to have killed him).
Buttercup goes back with him to his castle, but tells him frankly that she will never love him and if forced to marry him she will kill herself. Humperdinck promises her that he will send a message to Westley to come and get her if he still wants her, but of course he does nothing of the sort. He had Westley brought to the “Pit of despair” where his man Count Rugen - the man with six fingers - tortures people. Now enraged after her words, he goes there and kills Westley.
The prince orders his soldiers to free the forests of all the thieves; Iñigo is there too and fights back, with the help of Fezzik who tells him about Rugen. Montoya thinks that their only chance of success relies on ensuring the help of the man in black, but when they find Westley he’s dead. They take his body and bring it to Miracle Max, hoping he can work a miracle and revive him. Fortunately Westley is only “mostly dead”, and Max gives them something that will revive him, although he will need some time before his strength comes back to him. They plan their assault of the castle: Montoya confronts Rugen, is badly hurt but his favourite mantra “my name is Iñigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die” gives him the strength to go on and kill the guy. Buttercup wants to kill herself believing that she is now married to Humperdinck, but Westley has found her and stops her and tells her that the marriage is not valid since she never said ‘I do’, the prince was in such a hurry that she didn’t say anything at all. Westley outwits the prince into surrendering. Joined by Montoya, they escape with the four horses provided by Fezzik. Montoya doesn’t know what to do with his life now that his vengeance has been complete, and Westley suggests him taking his place as the famous Pirate. The story ends with Westley and Buttercup sharing a passionate kiss, while the movie ends with the grandpa finishing the book and preparing to leave. The kid enjoyed it so much - although being a boy he thinks he can’t show it - so he asks his grandfather to visit him again the next day and maybe read him another story, and the grandpa replies, before leaving: “as you wish”, and we know that means “I love you”, and he does.
The film was not only romantic, it was funny too, light and adorable, there were many funny moments: when Westley and Fezzik put down their weapon in order to ‘kill themselves like civilized people’, when Westley and Montoya set talking amiably to each other before getting to their feet and start they fight-to-the-death, and many many more. Even Humperdinck was funny.
The ending was lovely, much more than it would be had it ended with the kiss, much much more.
Seeing it now it’s a little annoying how helpless the girl is, but it’s a different time, a different world.
Buttercup-Robin Wright, always liked her
Westley- Cary Elwes
Grandpa-Peter Falk, adorable here
Montoya-Mandy Patinkin, I would have never recognized him without seeing his name on the credits!
Fezzik-Andre the giant
Humperdinck-Chris Sarandon
Rugen-Christopher Guest
Grandson-Fred Savage, so sweet
Vizzini-Wallace Shawn
the priest who performed the wedding-Peter Cook
Miracle Max-Billy Crystal
ITA la storia fantastica
Well, if you shut your brain it is actually entertaining, like most of these thrillers. The actors are ok, the making follows all the usual steps seen in every other chasing-movie. The usual entertainment is there, yes, but honestly the story is so far-fetched that if you think about it for a second you may have difficulty in keep watching. The story is very simple, as it often is in these movies: Libby is married to Nick and has a little son, Matty. When the husband disappears and she’s found covered in blood with a bloody knife in her hands, she’s charged with murder and convicted. During a phone call to her son, she hears him say “dad” and is from now on sure that Nick’s still alive and responsible for her incarceration. In prison she’s told that the law doesn’t allow for her to be charged twice for the same crime, so if he’s still alive she can kill him in front of a million people and nobody could do anything about it. After six years she’s granted parole and immediately starts looking for Nick, also trying to outrun her parole officer looking for her. She travels around the US and finally finds him, kills him, and is freed of all charges and then she goes to her son’s school and he remembers her, they hug and it’s a happy ending.
Now, should we take that second to think about it?
Maybe it makes sense and I think it doesn’t only because I don’t know American laws properly, in that case if anyone could explain it to me, that would be nice.
It seems to me though that she was convicted because with Nick’s death she would inherit his two-million life insurance policy, which means that they think she premeditated the murder, but in that case, would she really be granted parole after only six years? Really? For premeditated murder??
And if they convicted her of manslaughter, like she was alone with him and saw a chance and acted on it, then the whole ‘double-jeopardy’ thing blows itself, because the premeditated murder would be a different charge.
Also:
Husband and wife go alone on a boat trip and one night she wakes up to find that she’s alone, covered in blood, and there’s blood everywhere; she follows the blood trail like in shock, and picks up the bloody knife a second before the coast guard approach her boat. Someone might say “why did she pick up the knife!!” but that could be attributed to shock. Still, why did she wake up in that exact moment? How come the coast guard arrived at that exact moment, if nobody alerted them? And if someone did, who was it? Plus, jail must have totally changed her personality: before she was a woman who walked like in a trance because of the shock of waking up and seeing blood on her and around, and later she had the strength to shoot, to plan carefully, to avoid being caught...
The body is not found, so Nick is declared dead and she’s charged with his murder. Can they do that?
In prison she finds two women who encourage her and help her with ‘good’ advice, and never has any trouble. There are no fights and no bullies in this prison, and she can exercise as much as she wants.. Wow, not the tough prison you usually see in movies huh? And it was a place for serious criminals too, murderers!
Libby asks her friend Angie - who is also Matty’s teacher - to adopt Matty because he’ll be without mom and dad and she doesn’t want him in the system, makes sense. Still, after a while Angie disappears with the child. Libby tracks her down with a phone call, and hears her little Matty calling “dad” before the line is cut. From that moment on she’s sure that Nick is alive and living with Angie and Matty. She tries to alert the insurance company, who actually should be interested in the chance to keep the two millions, but they don’t even consider her. She’s told in prison that any chance of a new trial would take years, so she just does her time. Well, at least part of it.
They tell us that six years have passed, and her boy is now eight years old. She has a parole-hearing, and it is granted: wow, so in America you only do six years for murdering your spouse?
Once she’s out, she’s supposed to find a job, keep quiet, and report every night for curfew hour at her parole officer. She has no intention of doing anything of the sort, and goes straight out looking for Nick and for Angie. She goes to the school but a woman tells her that she can’t give her Angie’s address because it would be traumatic for the child to see his mother again... excuse-me, what?!?
Libby breaks into the school at night and finds the address, but is caught by local cops and given to her p.o. again. He wants to take her back, hand-cuffing her to the car, but she manages to almost get free: how? by crashing her car into the other cars parked in front and behind her on the ferryboat, without anyone hearing a thing, even causing a car to fall in the water without anyone noticing. When finally he sees what she’s doing and manages to get in the car, she drives it into the water so he’s forced to free her of the handcuffs or she’d drown. Once freed, she takes his gun and swims away, hitting him on the head in order to escape. He’s saved while she swims back to shore and disappears.
Travis is now in trouble because he lost her, it seems like he lost that job, and yet he starts a big chase around the States intending to find her... why?
She peacefully goes to her mother who gives her a lot of money that she kept under the potato plants, for some reason. Maybe it was too early for her mother’s place to be surveilled? Maybe nobody else but Travis is looking for her? It looks like he’s not even supposed to go after her, so the plan would be for nobody to look for her??
Libby finds out Angie’s new address - how did she know her social security number? Even if it was written on the paper she took at the school, even if it was not taken from her or maybe she memorized it, doesn’t the number change if you change your identity??
She’s no more Angie Green but Riker; unfortunately it turns out she died four years ago, and Libby thinks it wasn’t an accident but Nick killed her. Obviously, what was Angie expecting from someone like that, pure eternal love??
She finds the article that covers the ‘accident’ and recognizes a Kandinski painting, so asks a gallery who sold that specific painting and finds Nick’s new identity.
She goes to his hotel, and ‘buys’ him at a bachelor auction maybe for charity for like 10.000 dollars, which is a lot, but I guess she thought that if somebody else won him she wouldn’t have the chance to speak to him alone..
Anyway, she gets close to him and tells him that she only wants her son back. Travis found her so she goes away promising to call the next day. When she does, he says he’ll meet her with Matty, then he points a kid at her and she follows him believing him to be Matty, although there’s no reason why her son should hide from her, not speak a word.. he’s just a kid Nick paid. Nick hits Libby’s head and when she’s unconscious he hides her into a coffin. He leaves her alive, in perfect old-James-Bond-movie-style, to die in her own time.. and he also leaves her her gun!
She gets out and this time Travis gets her, but it’s okay because now he believes her and wants to help her. Together they confront Nick, saying that they don’t want to kill him (of course not, they’re the heroes of the movie, they’re supposed to be good, better, honest....), what they want is for him to go to prison charged with her murder - another one without corpse, but this time with a taped confession.
The first moment they turn their backs Nick grabs his own gun and shoot Travis in the shoulder. He overpowers her and is about to kill her when Travis jumps on it and they fight - some movies make it look like bullet wounds are not that big deal after all... - then Nick is about to kill Travis this time but Libby shoots him twice, killing him.
Next scene, they’re outside and an ambulance is taking care of Travis. He tells her that she can’t go yet, she must come with him, where her name will be cleared and she’ll be free...
The very last scene is the two of them driving to Matty’s school so she can finally meet him. Despite thinking earlier that Matty was that stranger boy, now it only takes her a look and she finds her son among all those boys playing ball. She calls his name, and he remembers perfectly who she is - good thing he has a good memory then - and they hug, and the movie ends before anyone has a chance to explain to Matty that he found a mother again but lost a father instead, because he thought his mom was dead but surprise surprise she’s here alive and well, but dad is now history.
I’m sure there are more absurdities to point out but right now this is what comes to mind.
Ashley Judd did rather well as Libby.
Tommy Lee Jones in yet another fugitive-role: this time his p.o. is a bit more funny and less secure.
Bruce Greenwood does a good job in being totally disagreeable as the hideous husband.
Annabeth Gish is barely present. Her Angie has only a few small scenes of no real consequence.
ITA colpevole d’innocenza
I don’t like Felacci at all, and I’m not fond of Logan either. I love Goren and I like Eames and Wheeler.
1-Amends
Goren was on leave but he comes back.
Kevin Quinn was Eames’ husband’s partner the night he was killed. Quinn is shot and killed and the captain is called in while he was playing poker with other cops. Quinn was protecting a witness against a gang. Eames and Theresa Quinn are friends.
They arrest the gang leader but Goren knows that Quinn’s partner is not a good witness because he can’t see well. I always hate the scenes where all the cops become hostile, like here against Goren, because he’s doing his job better than them, basically. It is very realistic, because people are like that, it’s people like Goren that there’s a shortage of, but it still annoys me. So many people are really petty, and selfish, and completely lacking any sense of empathy or justice.
Another man dies, a dealer who testified in Joe’s murder case. He and Quinn testified against the same person. Ray Delgado insists he didn’t kill Joe. Goren believes him and wants to look at Joe’s murder again. Eames is hurting and so she’s unreasonable, for a while, but then she goes along.
Ray’s son killed Quinn and the dealer because they lied and put his dad in prison. Ray did not kill Joe. The dealer’s young cousin did it, now Manny’s a doctor and they arrest him.
2-Seeds
Logan and Felacci (Alicia Witt)
Monica, a doctor married to Judge Frye, is killed, shot in her house. She accused another therapist of leaking information. She couldn’t cook so the judge always cooked; she was killed in the kitchen, so Logan thinks that he was the target. The judge sometimes took bribes from people to rule in their favour. Director Clay and actress Christine were battling over their son’s custody, and she was helped by p.i. Ron Hawk. She killed Monica trying to kill the judge, and used Hawk to frame Clay. Hawk loved her and burned proof to protect her, then wanted to star in the new movie so she turned her back on Hawk, putting all the blame on him, but Clay didn’t know what she had done, and that she even coached their son to lie, so they open his eyes and arrest her, and he agrees to testify against her. He’s still her husband, but he can do it if he wants! Not a bad episode.
3-Smile
Leslie - Amy Acker
A dentist is killed. A woman says that he used to get kids drunk and them molested them, but a kid says something different. The kids were not molested, but there was a drug in his mouthwash. Two boys are dead, and also a man and a little girl, because they drank the mouthwash.
Goren takes Leslie to dinner, then they go out again, but only talk about the case. She killed a man and framed another to get promoted, but who killed the dentist, the mother for real?? :-(
4-Lonelyville
I so don’t like Felacci, she’s so arrogant and aggressive :-/ I don’t like her attitude, even here when she complaints that the lab results are not fast enough for her tastes :-/
A doctor is killed; his brother Eli lied a lot, said he was sterile but he’s not, he donated sperm and did other things, and has two sons, Tom and Ralph. Ralph needs a transplant but Eli refused because of the pain. Tom killed Zach because he didn’t want to be involved, was unpleasant and Tom ‘snapped’, and Eli staged the scene. Tom confesses in exchange for Eli saving Ralph.
5-Depths
Goren hates the beach. A diver is dead; the FBI think that Tarek was a terrorist, but Goren doesn’t. He was a treasure hunter. Another hunter is found dead, but Dana (Kelly Giddish) is found alive, but all the treasure is gone when they go there. She suspects her ex-husband took it, but he says that he only helped her. Harper did fund their ‘expedition’ but he didn’t really want the ship recovered because of some old history, something to do with one in his family that acted badly in 1861. It wasn’t because of the shame, but for some reason not totally clear to me he could have lost his fortune, so he killed the two divers.
6-Courtship
Two women approach a guy at a bar; the next morning he wakes up next to dead Anya, while the other woman will collect the blackmail money. He told nothing to his wife, but he told everything to his girlfriend Tammy, and Tammy’s lawyer Leanne is the mysterious brunette. Tammy’s not backing him up, so Noah feels lost and kills himself in prison. Tammy and Leanne are a couple, and together they blackmailed men. Leanne killed Anya, because Tammy liked Noah and didn’t want to hurt him, sort of. Noah really loved her, so she didn’t want to blackmail him.
7-Self-made
Kira is killed. She worked for a publicist who wants Major Case to work on it.
Goren playing with the spring toys was fun :lol:
They look for her boyfriend, Dante ‘detour’, as a suspect. They find him when he’s run over by a car near his mom’s place. His story makes them look elsewhere.
She wanted to be a writer, like her friend TJ - Goren playing with Lionel’s stuff :lol: - Lionel is a sort of agent/teacher. Gareth is an agent who says he wanted to publish Kira’s novel. He harassed other women before but always settled, so now they suspect him, but Goren suspects Lionel because he finds out that he stole Kira’s book, but he says he stole her words not her life...
Bobby tries to provoke TJ and understands he was never in jail, like he always claimed in his novel. Kira found out about that too, when she had to review his book in the times. TJ was stressed out because of his second book. Lionel set TJ up to kill her making him believe that Kira was about to expose him, after getting him high, but Kira wanted to expose Lionel instead.
They arrest them both, TJ killed her but Lionel conspired to have her killed. So he did, steal her life!
8-Offence
Logan & Felacci
Someone in the football team was accused of rape. Tracy is killed before she can testify. ADA Hoyle was handling the case, and says that both Tracy and her friend Carla were raped. Logan tells Felacci “after ten years at Staten Island, you learn to pick your battles” which means... what exactly??
They investigate more and things look weird: Tracy was a virgin when she died.
It looks like testimonies were never taken. Carla admits that it was her ex boyfriend who raped her and she couldn’t tell her boyfriend Benji because he has a bad temper, so she pinned it on the jerks in the football team who treated them both very badly.
Hoyle’s wife wanted this big case and told the mother of an innocent boy that Tracy would have buried her son so that she would go and kill the girl.
Unfortunately they can’t arrest Hoyle’s wife :-/
9-Untethered
Goren gives 20$ to a homeless hungry man in exchange for his brick. Frank approaches Eames; he wasn’t even at his mom’s funeral because he started using again. He tells her that his 19-year-old son is in trouble. Bobby didn’t even know about Donnie. He’s in jail and there he saw terrible things: he has eight more months and he’s scared to death of the mental observation unit. Goren saw him at Rikers. He says that the isolation unit is where the guards kill people, mistreating people horribly. Looking at the body, the doc says that a 21-year-old was restrained and severely dehydrated, and Eames agrees that he was tortured to death. The captain doesn’t want them to interfere with another jurisdiction, and gives Goren a week of sick leave. Goren says “there’s nothing wrong with me”.
We see Goren breaking a window with the brick in order to be put in jail in the mental observation unit under the name: William Brady. There someone tries to keep him out of trouble but he hits him. He talks to Eames. The nurse tells him to take his pills because he doesn’t want to go to isolation, but he does! He sees Donnie there, in another isolation cell. He’s tied up, with a bright light always on and no water.
Eames tells the captain that Bobby’s call is five hours late and she’s worried. They go there together, and have to find some excuse for him, in order to take him back. He testifies about what he experienced, even though his investigation was unauthorized. Tates Facility will be investigated by the proper authorities, they say, and Goren is suspended.
Donnie escapes and Goren goes to Frank, angry, wanting to know where Donnie is. Frank is all “what have you ever done for me” and other bad words. They have a fight, then Goren goes looking for Donnie. The episode ends there, we don’t know if he’ll find him, but it’s unlikely I think because he doesn’t know where he is and it can’t be easy to find someone in NewYork simply walking the streets.
10-Senseless
Logan and Felacci.
The beginning was so horrible I couldn’t watch: two good, close boys were shot in the head, and a girl was shot in the stomach. Good kids, shot for no reason other than being out late. Two brothers who grew up caring about each other, but met Felix who shot the girl Naomi because he wanted her iphone. She was taken to a hospital, but didn’t make it in the end :’(
They hunt Felix down and arrest him. It was an agony to watch, this whole episode was an agony to watch, so so sad and unfair.
11-Purgatory
Goren & Eames.
Mike Stoat (the actor who plays Brian Cassidy in SVU) approaches Goren while both on suspension, and offers him a job in security. Eames is on the case of a drug dealer and two English tourists found dead.
Goren has been on suspension five months already, so he agrees to work undercover to be reinstated. Eames calls him, leaves messages, tries to talk to him on the street, but he sort of avoids her. (She always calls him Bobby, he always calls her Eames, another result of his trust-issues).
He works with Mike for a club owner who also deals drugs. They want him to shoot a dealer with a wire, but luckily the police burst in, and Eames and Goren find themselves pointing a gun at each other! She was very surprised and upset; the captain had ordered him not to tell her anything but when she finds out she’s outraged and hurt: “eight years I’ve had your back and I don’t even get the courtesy of a phone call”; he says “there were rules” and “this was my only way back” and Eames “I get it, you’re the genius and I just carry your water, right? You have any idea how many times I’ve lied for you? Covered your ass?” and “I hope it was worth it”.
He is reinstated right away, but she’s not the only one giving him a hard time: he finds a dead rat in his desk’s drawer...
12-Contract
Wheeler’s back: good!
Tk was a blackmailer who was blown up next to the blackmailed who was wearing a wire.
Wheeler got engaged :-) The captain and Rogers talk the case at the station bar :-) it was nice to see her outside the morgue, there’s so little personal interactions in this series.
Tk was also a columnist. A director had raped Tk’s 16-year-old sister, and manipulated his wife’s lover into killing him. I didn’t like this episode much :-/
13-Betrayed
Kathy’s a good friend of the captain, an ex-cop that started writing successful books and just donated two millions to the police academy. Her husband goes missing, a young personal trainer.
Goren and Eames are still a little “out of sync”. He tries to make things good again , when he asks her if they should tell the captain that Woody may have run away voluntarily, and she says “let’s confirm it first”, he said “you’re exactly right, I’m just saying, you’re right” with a sort of hoping look... he so wants to be ok with her again, but it’s pretty normal for her to be upset.
Woody ran away with Avery, a married girl. They question her husband Roy, then her family receives a text from ‘her’. Goren doubts Kathy and the captain is angry at first but lets them investigate.
Goren speaks to him about his ‘blinders’, so he accepts and they resume her first husband’s body.
He had cheaten on her too, like Woody, and they’re both dead. They don’t find Woody and Avery’s bodies, but they have the judge’s body as proof and when the captain ‘abandons her’ she sort of confesses.
14-Assassin
Logan and Wheeler
A peace activist, listed for a nobel prize, was at house arrest in Sri Lanka but came to New York, finally. An attempt on her life killed her personal assistant. Her bodyguard killed the killer, who turned out to be, actually, a cab driver. She doesn’t postpone any meeting, and rejects their suspicions about her brother; during a speech at “Hudson University” there is another attempt, and this time her brother is killed. The hitman is killed, again. She’s quick to accept their accusations against her husband, but she was in on it, she planned it all and Logan figures it out looking at the video, at how she pushed her brother away from her and into the line of fire.
15-Kissinger - (or Please note we are no longer accepting letters of recommendation from Henry Kissinger)
Goren and Eames.
A man is shot in the park while he was out with his two-year-old son. They try digging into his personal life and find that he had met a man thru the internet so Eames sends an email setting a date for Goren, nickname Bigfoot :-p
Later, a woman walking her baby is shot too. Another victim turns up and finally they discover what they all have in common: their children were on a waiting list to be admitted to an exclusive pre-school for three-year-olds. Another child, Henry, has a horrible grandma, Eleanor, and when she accidentally let a gun drop from her bag, while looking for her keys, I so wanted her to be the killer. It was the same gun that killed the three victims, but the murderer is Henry’s mother: she has a conversation with Goren at gunpoint at the preschool; she is alone far away from home, people are too busy to make friends, her husband is always busy and always away, his friends are too smart for her, she feels like she can’t keep up, and she’s sad that Eleanor loves Henry but not her who after all made him... after talking for a while she starts thinking that Henry would be better off without her and points the gun to her temple, and Goren shouts “you’re irreplaceable, he needs you”. She gives him the gun, he immobilizes her so Eames and other cops can come in to arrest her and free the two hostages: she’s taken away while screaming “I thought you were my friend!” but Goren says “they had kids too”.
She was so alone she had really believed that. She must pay for what she did to those poor people, but she makes me sad too, I pity her.
16-Reunion
Logan and Wheeler.
The host of a tv talk-show about rock’n’roll is murdered: Sylvia.
Michael Massee plays Geordie Black: Wheeler was a big fan of Black’s band in high school. An assistant is a con-artist with a boyfriend just out of jail, so they’re first suspects.
Wheeler’s fiancée is still in London.
A restaurant is called “Toniolo’s” so of course the man tries to speak Italian :-p well, he really tries, gotta give it to him, he said those words right enough :-) “la sua morte mi ha spezzato il cuore” meaning his death broke my heart, and “maleducato”=rude about the son; it was a really good attempt. :-)
Sylvia didn’t like at all that her teenage boy spent so much time with Geordie, he was even about to go on tour with him as a guitarist. Geordie is trying to make amends, these last years, staying sober, doing charity, being clean... but there’s talk of him being interested in boys so they suspect him now. He has pictures of teenage boys and Milo on his laptop. They think he was having a relationship with Milo but actually Milo was sleeping with Tara, Geordie’s wife. Geordie was really doing research on abused kids, and Milo helps him playing because Geordie’s hands don’t work well anymore because of all the past drugs. Geordie’s shocked to find out about Tara and Milo.
Milo is Geordie’s son, but Sylvia didn’t want Milo to know. Sylvia told Tara the night Tara killed her. Milo doesn’t look anything like Sylvia or Geordie, though :p
I was amazed, for once Massee didn’t play the bad guy! I like him, this was a nice change :)
17-Vanishing act
Goren and Eames.
Miles Stone has been buried for 30 days as part of his big survival-act. He dies live on camera so they dig him out but when they open the casket, it’s empty. The body appears at another magician’s show, in the blade-box with his body stabbed with the trick-swords. This old magician, the great Carmine, taught him once. They look at the casket and Goren; “gotta be a trap door somewhere” and Eames to a man: “when my partner is done playing, send this over to the specialists at the garage” :lol: Miles died of malnutrition, starved to death.
Later they find potassium chloride, that triggered a heart attack.
Carmine escapes from his cells, and Goren demonstrates to his captain how he did it. They try to find Carmine’s assistant too because she disappeared and Goren plays with Carmine’s stuff, having fun I guess, and Eames laughs :-) Carmine has pictures of her and says he hired her because she had worked for another magician already. The casket had a trick, a door leading to a tunnel, leading to a room with an identical casket and a camera, he didn’t spend 30 days buried. His friend Jacob designed the trick to help him, to take care of him.
Carmine’s assistant is Jacob’s fiancée.
The mind-reader magician Dean Holliday tries it on Eames: “I’m getting something here. I think there are some unresolved issues with a man in your life, some trust issues, he’s betrayed you hasn’t he? kept a secret from you - (Goren’s face here: awww) - and not for the first time, poor thing” :-p he guessed of course, he said it already there’s always a trick, and tells Bobbi “I admit I’m a fraud, how about you?”
Jacon and his fiancée maybe helped killing Miles, but not knowing. Miles was dead an hour before, the fans were watching a dead man and didn’t know...
They have no evidence that Dean killed him, but if the case remained unresolved Miles might become more famous than he deserves so Dean confesses to the murder, vanity to let everybody know how smart he was.. stuff like that.
18-Ten count
Logan
A boxer who just won a match is shot, killed in an alley. Logan knew him and his brother, he was like a mentor for them. Their new trainer, Gus, had tried to rape Peter’s girlfriend and she told Gabriel because they were good friends. Gus thought that Cristina, like Logan, were soft, he wanted to bring out the killer instinct in his boxers, so Gus had Gabriel killed. When Peter realizes this, he beats Gus to death to have the names of the men that killed him, so Logan has to arrest Peter.
19-Legacy
Paul is found dead, hanged, in the boiler room in his high school: it wasn’t suicide, he was hanged and two days before he had been beaten up.
Rogers is annoyed again when Goren tries to lift the body’s cover himself :-p
They suspect the pack of girls that beat him up two days before, then the teacher who found him, who is the mother of one of the girls, Tessa Noble. Something else comes up: someone invented Joe Cardinal using the face of a model. A rich kid created him to trick Tessa and blackmail her mom into resigning. Goren and Eames confront the kid in his dad’s office, and Jack Walker the third admits everything to show his father what he did. Dad always thought he was some kind of failure that needed his help to go on.
20-Neighborhood watch
A nineteen-year-old boy had sex with a fifteen-year-old girl and was in jail for five years and even got on the sex offenders list, so now everybody in the neighborhood hate him. He’s found decapitated. A guy did it to ‘impress a girl’ and be famour, for the thrill of it, and “didn’t even enjoy it”. :-/
Logan meets Colin, Wheeler’s fiancée.
21-Last rites
A priest comes to Logan, wanting him to reopen an old case saying that the wrong man was convicted of triple murder. ADA Terry Driver charged him. She bribed the witnesses. The guy in jail was trying to break into a car but killed nobody. He’s been in jail for sixteen years because he tried to steal a car radio..
The couple was killed by a man they knew, a con artist using a false identity. The driver also withheld information. Logan talks to the press and after the story makes first page she releases the poor man, trying to appear the hero of justice :-/
The captain tells Wheeler that Colin is being surveilled by some agency. At the end Colin is arrested for money laundry and fraud while he’s with Wheeler.
22-Frame
Bobby is at his mom’s grave for her birthday, then at home to call Frank. He’s on drugs again. When Bobbi goes to him there’s police all around, and Frank is dead on the floor outside. Nicole killed him. She sends Bobbi flowers, then a picture of Donnie thru Gwen, the girl she loved.
Next stop leads them to a package: the heart of Nicole herself. Goren can’t believe it, he’s sure Nicole has Donnie. The captain investigates Goren and when he talks about his ‘father’ Goren gets furious and makes a scene in the morgue because Rogers promised to keep it confidential, the paternity test he asked her for - he’s the son of that serial killer, Grady or something).
At the end it turns out that his old mentor Gage partnered with Nicole and then killed her. He saw him at his mom’s funeral: “you broke my heart. I wanted you to engage again so I gave you a puzzle to solve, to play”. His daughter is in a coma: “after Jo I had no-one and you... you are the son I never had”. It ends with Gage telling him: “you’re free now Bobbi, you’re free”. He also asked him if he’ll miss more Nicole or his brother, and that dying Nicole said that Bobbi was the only man she ever loved.
Bobbi Goren-Vincent D’Onofrio
Alex Eames-Kathryn Erbe
Rogers-Leslie Hendrix
Logan-Chris Noth
Wheeler-Julianne Nicholson
Falacci-Alicia Witt
Nicole Wallace-Olivia D’Abo
Gage-John Glover
Frank Goren-Tony Goldwyn
“A delicate matter” - I liked this episode, it was very complex. The mystery too, but specifically the dynamics and emotions among the various characters. As it often happens, it has a major case and a minor one, two different stories that intercept each other. It starts, for once, with Salvo Montalbano in Liguria, Boccadasse where Livia lives (beautiful, wish they’d show more of it). He should stay a few more days but is called back in because Fazio knows that Mimì is making a mess of the last case.
Of course Livia is upset, but they’ve known each other a long time now, they know what to expect.
As soon as he’s back in Sicilia, he can see for himself that Fazio was right, Mimì is convinced of an absurd theory that is totally wrong. It happened that a 67-year-old woman, Maria, was killed. She still worked as a prostitute, despite being married a long time and having two grown-up children. She had a devoted husband who always knew about her job but never judged her and kept loving her till the end. She also had two sons who were always ashamed of her... well, it’s understandable that it must have been difficult for two children to grow up with everybody knowing what their mother did, and yet it was sad to hear one of them, the only one who attended the funeral, speak that way of her, who loved them very much, and provided for them a good education and a good life.
Mimì follows the sex-lead, thinking that it must be someone who likes to have sex with old women and that killed her by accident during a sex-game, but that’s Mimì for you, he always thinks about sex :-/
Montalbano and Fazio investigate Maria’s life more deeply; Catarella is excited because he thinks he solved the case watching a movie on television about a serial killer who murdered prostitutes because he was the son of a prostitute, and even buys the dvd for Montalbano :-p
Salvo doesn’t think much of this theory, but when he watches the dvd with Livia, who came down to Vigata to be with him, he realizes one thing that he hadn’t realized before: Maria had a picture at home of a boy that was not one of her sons. She had another son for a couple that could not have children, a lawyer and his wife. Later she regretted giving him up though, and always thought of him and kept his picture where she could see it. The lawyer is now old and with dementia, his wife is dead, and his son Marco cares for him. When Marco met Maria she confessed to him about being his mother, and they talked a lot and liked each other, but when Marco found his father near her dead body he thought that he had killed her and tried to protect him, eventually killing a man who wanted to blackmail him. Montalbano realizes though that neither of them killed Maria. He suspected the husband for a moment, but he never hurt her, no. Actually it was the local school principal, who had been a friend of Maria for many years, and had advised her many times on how to invest her money or where to send her children to school, and some time ago had borrowed a lot of money from her for some risky investment. He had never been able to repay the debt, and when she asked for her money back or she would press charges against him, he felt betrayed and killed her.
During his investigation, while going to question the principal at school Montalbano stumbled on another case, of a woman saying that a teacher had molested her little girl. Carefully questioning the child, and through some investigation of his own, Montalbano finds out the truth that the woman used her child to take revenge on the man that had left her after falling in love with another woman.
Side notes: Livia has a dog that she called Selene :-) Montalbano has a smartphone, and a kid teaches him how to send pictures... I didn’t know he had a smartphone, I’ll re-watch the latest episodes to see when it happened, if they said something :-p
The funniest moments: when Fazio and Montalbano are discussing Mimì’s theory, Fazio asks: “can I speak freely?” , and Salvo considers it a moment and then says “No!” :lol: and then, since Maria’s neighbour is a very attractive woman, Salvo warns Mimì to be careful because Beba is not dumb and he should stop going after other women, but Mimì who is his usual despicable self says that that’s his nature and he can’t help it, and Salvo says that if Beba murders him because of it he won’t put her in jail, and to this Mimì totally agrees, even tells him that she’d be totally right and that he can instruct him since now to do everything possible to help her in such a case :-p
The conclusion of this matter is rather annoying, because Salvo finds Mimì in the house of that woman, having sex; when he realized it he sent Fazio out of the house hoping he wouldn’t found out, but Mimì had tried to hide in the only available place, on the little balcony, and Fazio saw him from the street, but of course he won’t say a word about it.. Needless to say I never liked Mimì, I only bear his presence in the show because I like the actor, I think he’s really good, although I don’t like the mustache one bit :-/
As always I wish Fazio had more space ...
Montalbano-Luca Zingaretti
Augello-Cesare Bocci
Fazio-Peppino Mazzotta
Livia-Sonia Bergamasco
Pasquano-Marcello Perracchio
Catarella-Angelo Russo
missing: episode 4
1-Mr. Monk and the Candidate: part 1
Monk is consulting on a case but keeps worrying about the gas at home. Sharona tries to calm him long enough to finish what he has to do, then they rush home to check.. The cops there are kind of shocked: “that’s the famous Adrian Monk?” - “yeah the living legend” - “you call that living?”
Monk talks to his therapist trying to appear normal...
A sniper kills a bodyguard of a man running for mayor; Monk is asked to consult on the case. At the funeral, he accidentally drops his keys in the casket; later he shows up at Sharona’s date ruining it, so she tells him she quits.
Monk and Trudy were married seven years. Sharona says “his wife was murdered four years ago, a car bomb” and about him “a sort of severe anxiety disorder”.
2-Mr. Monk and the Candidate: part 2
The captain hears that Sharona quit, then the Deputy Mayor goes to her house to convince her to help them; she goes back of course, and he solves the case - the head of the campaign wanted to kill a girl, a volunteer who found out about some stolen money, and hired a hitman. First he asked the bodyguard who refused, that’s why he had to kill him too.
When the sniper takes Sharona prisoner, Monk goes thru personal hell to save her :-p
The candidate congratulates him and he’s now famous. Still, not cured enough as to be reinstated: Tuesday is chicken-pot-pie and when Sharona suggests making something new he panicks..
Monk keeps working on his wife’s murder case.
3-Mr. Monk and the psychic
A woman is missing, the wife of a friend of captain Leland Stottlemeyer. Dotty, a psychic, wakes up the next morning in her car without knowing where she is, and finds her body. Sharona believes in psychics, Monk doesn’t. When Dotty drives away, Monk says that “she moved her seat” when she got in the car: proof that someone else drove that car last... and that’s the problem I have with this type of Sherlock-Holmes-tv-series: they don’t account for different people doing different things in different ways; I always move my seat back when I get out, so I move it forward again when I get in: that can be a clue, but not proof.
The former commissioner is the husband. This Dolly offers Monk some water in a dirty cup with big traces of lipstick... come on, who’d do that?? You don’t have to be Monk to go ‘yuch’.
At the end, Monk arranges a little farce to get the husband to confess, having Dolly accuse him of something else and to defend himself he says that she’s no psychic and Monk “yes, she is, she found your wife” - “no she isn’t, I drove her there”.. et voilà, pure Columbo style.
4-Mr. Monk meets Dale the whale
5-Mr. Monk goes to the carnival
The captain asks Monk to help in a case: a friend and fellow cop is accused of murder. Also, there’s a review to see if he’ll be reinstated, and they ask the captain if he believes that Monk should be reinstated, and he says no, that he’s not ready. Monk is sad and hurt, and Sharona is angry at him. The captain would love to see Monk reinstated, but he’s right, he knows that Monk is not ready, and Monk probably realized it himself after he put Sharona in trouble and then failed to save her: I mean, he wanted to help, he started the brave thing, getting on the wheel at the carnival, but then he froze, afraid of heights. Luckily, the cops arrived.
Monk solves the case, it was a set up against the cop.
Monk at the carnival, makes Benji win a radio guessing the number of beans, so at the end Sharona takes one of Monk’s shoes to force him to tell her how he knew :-p
6-Mr. Monk goes to the asylum
Monk enters the wrong house and the couple living there call the cops :-p It was Trudy’s old house, and it was the anniversary of the day they met.
Sharona has been taking care of him for four years. Monk is admitted into a hospital to be evaluated. Now Monk has a room-mate who tells him that there was a murder four years ago. Monk’s only there for 48 hours. Dr Gould was murdered, now there’s Dr Lancaster, and Monk thinks that he’s the murderer. He wants to keep Monk there, and makes him look crazy - I mean, really, not simply anxious or obsessive, but just like another girl there, like they see things that aren’t there; the girl says that she ‘thought’ she had seen Dr Lancaster with a gun..
Poor Monk is worried: “am I losing my mind?”, but Sharona makes a research of her own, finds out that Gould was appointed director and Lancaster was furious. Lancaster killed him and then he stole some drugs to blame it on some addict. Monk calls Sharona and she calls the cops. Sad though, he was a good doctor :-p
7-Mr. Monk and the billionaire mugger
Sharona has money problems. Archie shoots a man trying to mug him, and the man dies. The mugger was Sidney Teal, a millionaire. Sharona is super pissed because Monk doesn’t seem to care to be paid a fair amount and then he doesn’t pay her! The captain on the other hand is pissed because apparently there was a cop who fled the scene and the press is obsessing about it.
The captain believes that it was a crime of passion, that Teal wanted to kill Archie because of a fling with Teal’s wife, and Sharona is happy to call the case close and get paid, but Monk knows it makes no sense and she leaves, and Monk feels lost. He says “tell me what to do” and “can you find somebody who will tell me what to do?” . Sometimes Monk is unbearable, but other times like this one, you really feel for him...
Trudy was the one paying everything and thinking about money, so now that’s a problem for him, even his therapist has not been paid in nine weeks - and yet he keeps seeing him, maybe he actually really does care...
Monk is lost, keeps thinking about his wife’s murder, and goes to a woman’s house thinking that he found something new but actually it turns out that he’s been there three times already, every year. He tries to get paid from that Leo that didn’t pay him after Monk found his Picasso for him, but Leo goes away. Sharona investigates by herself and finds out everything. Archie and Teal were friends once. Teal pretended to mug him to make him look good and impress a girl, but got shot instead. An actor playing a cop for him, saw the whole thing and ran away. He’s the proof against Archie, and when Archie pulls a gun he runs away again, followed by reporters.
Captain:”shoot him” - Randall:”can’t do that” - Captain:”shoot me” :lol:
At the end, Monk and Sharona hire that actor again to convince Leo to pay them.
8-Mr. Monk and the other woman
Monk’s therapist tells him : after four years since Trudy died, has he been dating? Monk thinks about it and says “it’s inconcervable. I can’t think about anything, life, other people, until I find out who murdered her” and “she was my better half”.
The new case is about a friend of the mayor: stabbed and strangled, and the assistant was stabbed too. There’s a woman, Monica, who looks like Trudy and she understands about his disorder and he appreciates how perfectly neat her garage is: “can I say something? If ever I have a garage I want it to look just like this”. He asks her to dinner! and he takes her to the place he went with Trudy.
She asks him how he managed it to get out of the house after his wife’s death: “captain Stottlemeyer was worried about me and he hired a nurse to take care of me. She showed up one day and she’s never left”. She chooses the same song at the juke-box that Trudy liked, D7..
The police’s first suspect is killed in Monica’s garage. Now the captain suspects her and she calls Monk. She says she’s afraid and Monk spends the night at her place. Sharona is worried because she thinks she might be dangerous. The captain even thinks that she killed her husband too, two years ago and that he’s buried under the garage, and he warns Monk and now he’s afraid to eat: “are you trying to kill me? It’s ok if you are, I just need to know” but Derek is not dead, he’s just in a mental institution. Monk finds the real killer, a guy who forged the will of his dying uncle to inherit his fortune. Monica says that she’ll go to visit her husband and won’t come back until he’ll be better, then she kisses him goodbye but Monk doesn’t brush it off with a wipe this time...
9-Mr. Monk and the marathon man
A 63 year-old man is running a marathon, and he’s also Monk’s hero because Monk ran in high school. The man gives him a pair of free running shoes and Monk acts like a baby, running around Sharona all happy.. at the end he also gives him the headband that he wore when he won the 1973 race, and Monk is so proud :)
A girl is thrown off her building after she was strangled. She had a married boyfriend. The killer’s alibi is that he was in the marathon. Monk goes to talk to the people working at the marathon, and there’s a little misunderstanding. Sharona was late getting the wipe, or better while she looked for it Monk shoot hands with like four people, and the last one was a black guy, right before Monk cleaned his hands, so they think him a racist.
The poor girl’s boyfriend killed the girl by attaching his marathon-chip to the camera bike, then left the race and went to kill her and then joined the marathon again to finish it.
10-Mr. Monk takes a vacation
Monk, Sharona and Benji are at the beach. Sharona plays tennis with a man. Benji:”do you think she’s letting him win?” - Monk:”I wouldn’t be surprised” - “you know why do girls do that?” - “some day you’ll understand; when you do call me and explain it to me” :lol:
Benji sees a woman being murdered; Monk believes him, Sharona doesn’t. Monk thought that a man killed his wife, but she’s alive and throwing a surprise birthday party for him.
The hotel comedian makes fun of Monk and calls him a freak :-/
Benji finds the body, goes to call Monk but when they’re back it’s gone. Monk is the only one who believes him.
The maids steal information, taking pictures of important documents, but one of them rebelled and the other four killed her. Monk still has no proof and no body. He’s already checked out but he goes back because he found out where the body is :-)
11-Mr. Monk and the earthquake
There’s been an earthquake, and a woman took advantage of it to kill her husband. Monk’s place is a mess; he seems strangely calm, but then he speaks strange words. Sharona calls his therapist: “he’s having a dissociative episode”.
Sharona knew the dead guy, so they go to his place and Monk finds out things; at first he spoke only gibberish but finding clues of a homicide turns him back to ‘normal’.
Sharona, Monk and Benji go to live at her sister’s place. Sharona and Gail keep chatting and competing: who moved here first, who bought that bag first... :-/ they all play charade and Monk guesses everything before they even start mimicking it... obviously spoiling the fun.
There’s also a man, a journalist that Sharona met on the street. Sharona and Gail compete for him too, but he’s there to spy looking for something, he’s actually the murderer’s lover. He also kills a workman who saw him try to break into Sharona’s house.
The dead man left a message on her answering machine that accuses his wife. Monk figures it all out and Sharona is in danger, but there’s another quake and Monk can’t speak again. Monk isn’t much help but luckily the captain arrives in time to save them :-)
At the end, Monk pretends to be off again talking gibberish to avoid paying Sharona the last three weeks... :-/
12-Mr. Monk and the red-headed stranger
Country singer Willie Nelson is suspected of murder. Monk is a big fan.
The captain is not here so Randall is in charge. The captain will join in later, with an arm on a sling. The witness is a blind woman. Monk gets Willie Nelson to sign a vinile to Trudy... when he’s asked to play with the band, he’s over the moon with joy :-) but then a man puts his lips on the instrument and Monk can’t play, so he just whistles.
It turns out the witness regained sight in one eye. The dead guy was the one driving the car that killed her parents 36 years ago, leaving her blind, and only served 1and a half years.
To thank Monk, Nelson goes to Trudy’s graves and sings for her, and Monk plays with him ...
13-Mr. Monk and the airplane
Sharona has to leave for seven days and asks Monk to go with her. A woman is killed by a woman dressed just like her, who then takes her place with her husband on the plane, only this one is taller than the real wife and Monk is on the same plane and guesses the truth right away.
This is Monk’s first flight and he’s very nervous: at 27 he was crying so much they asked him and his mother to leave :-p
Sharona chats with an actor, while a little girl drives Monk crazy , probably because he simply can’t avoid answering to her...
Monk tells the hostess that Sharona is not allowed to sit in first class, so she has to go back to her seat. The murderer also kills a man on the train because he knew his real wife.
The plane staff won’t believe Monk because of his manic behaviour. Randy believes him blindly though, and goes to the airport and finds the body of the wife, so the murderer and his accomplice are arrested.
Adrian Monk-Tony Shalhoub
Sharona Fleming-Bitty Schram
Captain Leland Stottlemeyer-Ted Levine
Lt Randall Disher-Jason Gray-Stanford
Dr Kroger-Stanley Kamel
No. They say it won something, well I don’t see how but different people like different things. Me, I didn’t like it at all. At first it didn’t seem so bad, but then the story went wildly down.
The story: Zinos owns a restaurant, the Soul Kitchen; he cooks too, but is not a chef. His girlfriend Nadine doesn’t understand his attachment to the place, and she has to move to Shanghai for work. Zinos’ brother Ilias is in jail because he’s a thief, but if he can prove that he has a job he can spend some time outside, so he asks Zinos to sign a document where he hires him. Ilias has no intention of working for real, but he gets interested in the Soul Kitchen’s waitress Lucia. Zinos and Nadine talk over Skype, and when he hurts his back she tells him to go to Anna, a physiotherapist or something, for help. Zinos meets Thomas, a guy he hasn’t seen for some time, and Thomas asks him to sell him his restaurant, and is very insistent. You can tell that he is trouble, but Zinos can’t. Thomas tries everything to make him fail and close, but Zinos who can’t work anymore because of his back, hires a new chef, Shayn, and the place slowly gets new customers and starts working great. Zinos want to go to Shanghai to be with Nadine, so he gives his restaurant to his brother, who is an idiot and loses it playing poker, so to pay his debts he gives it to Thomas. Nadine comes back because her grandma died, and Zinos loses his mind when he sees her holding hands with another guy.
Now, it might seem not too bad, but it was not only annoying that Zinos walked the whole time with a slipped disc looking like a zombie, but there were other scenes that I didn’t like. The party when the chef put so much of an aphrodisiac root into the dessert that it turned out an orgy was not fun because that was like a drug that people didn’t know they were ingesting, and watching the IRS woman looking around to find a man to have sex with was also not fun because she didn’t really want to, she couldn’t help herself. The place should have been shut down and the chef arrested.
Many things were obvious, you knew it way before they happened: since you see Thomas taking pictures of himself having sex with the IRS woman and subsequently you hear her asking for his name, you can imagine that she won’t take it lightly and seek revenge, now that she’s back to her senses. As soon as Thomas sits at the poker table, it was obvious that Ilias would have lost the restaurant, no question about it. Even the ending is obvious: Zinos getting together with Anna. It was obvious from the first time he speaks on the phone with Nadine that they wouldn’t last, and Lucia got together with Ilias, so Zinos had to get involved with Anna.
The only thing I couldn’t imaging way ahead was how he could get the restaurant back: after Thomas was arrested the place was sold at an auction, and Zinos asked Nadine, now rich after inheriting her grandma’s money, 200.000 euros to buy it back. That wouldn’t have been enough but for a stroke of luck: the other man bidding ingested a button and couldn’t raise, so Zinos won, for 200.000 and 15 euros. I didn’t like even this, that it all turned out ok only because of sheer luck.
I didn’t like the chef at all, because he was way too arrogant, talking about his ‘art’, the great man who couldn’t lower himself to make the simple things that people wanted to eat.
Only one good thing: the first few minutes, Nadine’s grandma was fun. I liked her.
Zinos Kazantsakis-Adam Bousdoukos
Ilias-Moritz Bleibtreu
Nadine-Pheline Roggan
Lucia-Anna Bederke
Shayn-Birol Unel
Anna-Dorka Gryllus
Thomas-Wotan Wilke Mohring
Grandma-Monica Bleibtreu
Missing episodes: 8,12,13.
1-Playing dead
Goren.
A young man is killed, his girlfriend survived, trapped under his dead body for hours. She’s the stepdaughter of a councilman. After being taken home by her family, she tries to commit suicide. Gren understands that she was abused by her stepfather. He got her pregnant, then the family took her to Siena to have her baby, so Sophie is not really her little sister, she’s her daughter. When she confronts him at the station, the piece of s#@# tries to blame it on her, to scare her. His mother always protected him, helped his career, even had Stacey’s boyfriend killed.
2-Rock star
Nichols and Wheeler
Nichols arrives at a crime scene full of food, and the captain introduces him to Wheeler. The captain and Nichols were once partners. Nichols parents are both shrinks, he took a seven-year leave, and is a brilliant cop.
A young wanna-be-rockstar is found killed. Later another one falls down an elevator. Wheeler says to her captain “when does the brilliant part start?” and the captain “not big on trust at the moment, are we?” and adds “one partner quits on you, your ex fiancée is about to go on trial”... so Logan quit? Maybe I haven’t seen it yet.
Nichols plays the piano in front of those wanna-be-famous to prove how difficult it is to really make it.
At the end, the old manager murdered the first kid because he was jealous of a girl, and a musician killed the other kid because he wanted to get his place on stage and be famous. Nichols is all happy because he got two murderers in one go.
I was shocked the first time I saw these episodes, because I can’t understand why I don’t like Goldblum here as Nichols. Everything should lead to me loving Nichols= Jeff I always liked, and he’s the smart type.. and yet I don’t. I don’t like how he speaks, how he poses, and it’s very strange, and I haven’t been able to figure out why...
3-Identity crisis
Goren and Eames
Years ago some cops coerced a child to testify against his brother. Now that brother has grown up to be a conman and a murderer. As a child he did not kill his schizophrenic mother, but now he killed his brother believing that he wanted to destroy the life of lies he had created for himself.
4-In treatment
Nichols and Wheeler
A rich man is killed at a banquet, right after he learns his firm is under investigation. His partner Archie gets himself admitted into a mental clinic. They talk to his shrink but he talks instead of Nichols’ problems with authority figures and his rebellion.. Nichols hates him :-p
Nichols hasn’t seen his father in decades. He studied medicine & then dropped out to become a cop.
From the beginning of this episode he had been wondering if Wheeler was pregnant, and he finally asks her :p she is, but the father is in a federal prison..
Zachary joins the therapy group only to get Archie’s tea-cup. An investor who felt betrayed is found dead, believed a suicide. The doctor convinced his patients to make huge investments in Archie’s Company, as if he was part of it. The dead man told him that he was about to talk and bring down Archie’s Company, and he thought of it as his own, so he killed both men. They arrest him.
5-Faithfully
Goren and Eames
We see Goren having dinner with a family. He has a nine-year-old niece, so Frankie had other children? At the end, Molly sends him a beautiful letter “dear Robert it was nice having you at our home. I hope you can visit us soon. I’m sending you some pictures to remember us by. Love, Molly” So nice, Goren has a family :-D
A doctor is killed at his home. His wife had an affair with the local reverend. The reverend’s wife taught young Kevin how to speak without stutter and used him to kill the doctor, and then tried to blame it on Kerry, the doctor’s wife, by leaving messages imitating her voice. They don’t know if they have proof to charge her, but her husband hears and can’t forgive that, so he leaves her and they arrest her.
6-Astoria Helen
Nichols and Wheeler
Zach talks of a woman who always chooses the wrong guy as “probably insufficiently praised as a child” - “were you insufficiently praised as a child?” - “Me? No, they praised me all the time which backfired and made me think too much of myself” and Wheeler: “you over that?” - “I’m working on it” :lol: The captain is annoyed because Nichols always finishes his sentences for him. :p
Wheeler goes hard on a woman that ‘accidentally’ provided information about her work, info that were used for a robbery. She had a relationship with a man who, she thought, would be a perfect father for her seven-year-old son. Joe was a thief, yes, but not a killer. He really cared for the boy, and helped her when the murderer kidnapped her son.
7-Folie a deux
Goren and Eames
It seems like a child has disappeared. The father has a rich aunt, and her assistant sends a ransom request because he thought she’d never had any intention to give him anything after her death, but he was wrong; now yes, he’ll have nothing, of course.
It’s a case of “shared psychotic disorder”: the photos were of the neighbour’s kid, there never was a baby in that hotel room; little Emma died the previous summer, left alone while her mom was looking for her cheating husband. He convinced her that the baby was fine, to get his aunt’s money I guess.
8-The glory that was...
9-Family values
Goren without beard and Eames.
A man kills his sister-in-law and her husband, then he kills his daughter’s drama teacher because he disapproved of her choice of theatre play and because she was gay. He sends a bomb to an office; a man gives his name to the police so they go looking for him. He’s not at home, but the dog and his wife are dead, and his daughter is missing. He took her to a remote cabin and she tried to escape after hearing the news. He wants to go to God’s realm, a fanatic nutjob, well all fanatics are; a crazy man who thinks that since God didn’t stop his murderous hands it means that he approved. Such evil craziness. What I think is, if you believe Abraham’s story that he raised his knife to kill his son but God stopped him, what you learn from it is that the son was Not killed, and that maybe Abraham’s faith was so great he knew He wouldn’t really have him do it, and most of all that Abraham did Not want to kill him. People hurt and kill, Jesus helped men and women, good or bad, he did Not hurt or kill.
10-Salome in Manhattan
Nichols and Wheeler
A girl, Lisa, is killed at a rich people party. Chef Max (Eric Balfour) gave her an engagement ring (she kept it but didn’t wear it). Nichols enter the place and sees a videogame on the screen (something like Doom or similar) and says “male teenager” which of course turned out to be true, but females like videogames too, Nichols!
Nichols plays the piano again, to think, like a sort of Sherlock Holmes..
Max’s friend Larry killed Lisa because she wouldn’t help him with money, she didn’t like him, like others she thought of him as a loser, and he was angry and envious.
11-Lady’s man
Goren and Eames
Ten years ago Eames worked at the case of Boz, a man accused of killing his wife but the body was never found. First case she worked after her husband’s death. Kevin Mulrooney (Raùl Esparza) was the prosecutor on the case, and a friend to Eames... When Mulrooney lost the case his career went down. Goren is concerned for Eames, he thinks Kevin is unstable, so he goes over the old case evidence. I always found it funny how Kevin slammed the door on Goren’s face :-p but the solution always left me like :-/. I mean, he forged a letter using paper only sold in Ireland??
So, he had a double personality, Kevin and Gabrielle ‘Gabby’ Roth. Dressed as a woman he had killed Joe leaving clues to involve Eames.
12-Passion
13-All in
14-Major case
Nichols + Wheeler + Eames.
We see Eames at her desk, she took Wheeler to the hospital when her water broke, with a ‘look’ at Ross and Nichols because they didn’t notice :-p So the case is worked by Nichols and Eames. Wheeler told her that he required “adult supervision” :lol:
Grace is found dead, cleaned with bleach and thrown in a dumpster. The murderer is a friend of Nichols, a forensic scientist who wrote books and testified various times: Henry. He tries to blame it on a guy out on parole by a fake test result.
Ross tells them : “by the way, it’s a girl”, they go “oh!” and he adds “you sent roses” :lol:
Ross wants Nichols to stop going after Henry, and adds that when they were partners he got suspended once a month. Still, they catch him anyway, luring him into falsifying more evidence. So in the end Ross let him go on..
At the end, Eames comes in saying “it’s official: Margot Jane Wheeler”. Nichols asks Eames if Wheeler knows that they solved the case and she replies “she wondered what took you so long” while the elevator doors were closing :-)
15-Alpha dog
Goren and Eames.
First thing first, what kind of thermos do they sell coffee in? Apparently, since the coffee is room temperature, it means that it was more than two hours, it was like four... I mean, four?? I thought they were simple paper cups, not powerful thermos! This is supposing the coffee went from hot to warm, but maybe it went cold.. although in that case it would have made more sense to say ‘it’s cold’ instead of ‘room temperature’... anyway, moving on.
Rich cover boy Hamp is killed. His wife did a movie called “Venefica” and she says Goren pronounce it right when he said “Venefìca”... I mean, what?!?
When they talk to Rogers about the cause of death: “detective Goren once again has an irritating way of being right” :-p the guy was suffocated.
Eames meets Stash, they worked together before she moved to major case. Now he’s working security for the man they question: Duke. A girl called Gala is also killed. Gala was an escort and Stash was in love with her.
Duke wanted Gala to expose Hamp as an addict, but it still wasn’t enough for him, he was envious that women liked Hamp so much so he killed him, and Gala too. His wife was scared at first, but when they show her Duke in the interrogation room she sees fear in his eyes and she likes the change, and will testify against him.
16-Revolution
Nichols and Eames
A banker and his ex-cop guard are killed, then a car is left to be found, with a bomb inside that Nichols finds after breaking the window. Looking at a note of a revolutionary group, Nichols comments on the language: “it could be a native Spanish speaker or German, some language where the present perfect is the same as the simple past” - Eames”you’re starting to remind me of someone” - Ross”this one is taller” :-p
They wanted to get that big capitalist as a prisoner, but things got wrong and they killed them. The FBI joins the investigation.
The German man and his girl place another bomb but without killing anyone. The girl is pissed off when she finds another woman in their house: “people do revolutions to be free and this is what free people do” is what he says. The girl kills her, and he’s angry because she was just a ‘lonely woman’, and no threat. When they catch him she runs away. Nichols interrogates him but the man’s all “I do not recognize your authority”. It turns out that the girl is his daughter, and she takes up hostages in order to free him. Nichols goes in with her dad. Truth is, the man had killed her family and taken her when she was a baby, and had raised her as his own, brainwashing her into his revolution cause. Still, he raised her and loved her as a real daughter, so he doesn’t want her to die. He tries to save her by telling her that she means more to him than the revolution, but she gets shot by snipers anyway even though she was probably about to surrender. Nichols catches her, not letting her fall because she had a bomb on her.
Robert Goren-Vincent D’Onofrio
Alexandra Eames-Kathryn Erbe
Zachary Nichols-Jeff Goldblum
Megan Wheeler-Julianne Nicholson
Danny Ross-Eric Bogosian
Beautiful movie, I liked it a lot, definitely worth watching again. And again. The story tastes of old, but who cares. It was well done, well acted, and made me smile and cry and it had a happy ending to ensure that I won’t keep crying for the rest of the day. Jim Carrey was simply amazing, amazing, such a great actor, and the story was heartwarming (also breaking, but mostly warming). There are a lot of nice people in this movie, which means that it’s not very realistic, but from time to time that is a good thing; besides, it was not long after the war and in that town many boys had not come back, so maybe people were kinder to each other because of what they all went through, I didn’t live that period but I’ve heard stories about the war or the years after it and since people were all in the same condition they were nicer and helpful towards each other, they didn’t have all that feeling of entitlement and subsequent resentment that goes around today. Even the agent seems to care about him, the only shitty people seems to be those of the Fbi (I think, they are the ones after him right?). Of course movie people don’t come out splendidly either, ready to offer any name just to get out of it relatively cleared. Still, all real normal people seems to be ok and with their hearts in place, even the LA bartender was rather nice to him.
It’s set in the 50s, and our protagonist is Peter Appleton (Carrey). He starts narrating the story for us: he lives in Hollywood Los Angeles and is a movie writer whose first movie just opened in the theaters. His girlfriend stars in it, and he thinks he’s ‘living the life’, as they say. He’s working on another script when suddenly the tide turns for him: he’s being accused of being a communist, his movie has been put on hold, he’s risking everything he’s got for something he never did and doesn’t care about. He’s not into politics at all, but his life is about to change because someone made his name. Of course the girl dumps him right away. One night he drinks a lot and then goes for a ride, alone in his car. When he notices a small animal on the road he turns the wheel and crashes his car, not too violently, and is kind of relieved that things didn’t get worse, but it doesn’t last long because things go worse indeed. It starts raining heavily, and trying to move his car back on the road, the car slips and slowly falls into the river. He couldn’t get out because he locked his coat in the door, so he falls down too. He manages to get free of the coat and get out of the car, but it’s difficult to swim and he ends up hitting his head. Next thing we see, he’s on a beach, alive, and a man asks him what happened to him. He doesn’t remember. Everyone in the little town of Lawson is happy to help him, until Harry (Martin Landau) says he recognizes him as his son Luke Trimble, who’s been missing for nine and a half years. He never came back from the war, but Harry never lost hope and is sure that he’s Luke.
The town lost many young men to the war, and they’re all so happy to welcome him back. Everyone accepts him as Luke and they try to help him remember. Luke’s girlfriend Adele too. They say that his memory will come back and seeing old things might jog it sooner, but nothing seems to work, nothing rings a bell.
Of course we know why, we know that he’s not Luke, we know he’s actually Peter, and therefore nothing they say can jog his memory because those are not his memories.
There’s a celebration for him, and Harry wants to reopen the old movie theater - the Majestic - now that he’s back, and all the town helps and they all attend the movies, and they are all getting along, happy to have him back. He’s still troubled by the fact that he doesn’t remember anything, but he likes this new life and those kind people, until they show the movie that he - Peter - wrote: “sand pirates of the Sahara”. Watching it, he remembers the lines, finally realizes that he wrote it, and he can see on the movie poster his real name. He doesn’t say it right away because Harry has a heart attack, and so he lies to him to let him die happy and in peace. At the funeral though he tells Adele, who is crushed by what she had suspected already what had ignored because she had wanting him to be Luke so much, she even fell in love with him.
Meanwhile, the Peter Appleton case has not been forgotten of course. They’ve been trying to track him down and finally succeeded. Big black cars invade the town, and Federal men come out with a subpoena for him. Now the truth is out and everybody in the city learns that he’s not Luke.
The old man working at the theater is the only one who was sure that he wasn’t Luke since the day of the celebration, when he couldn’t play the classical music that was Luke’s specialty but could play, on the piano, more modern, danceable tunes that were impossible for Luke. He didn’t say anything, actually lied to protect the lie, saying that he taught him that music, because Luke being back had meant so much for that town who had lost so much.
Peter has to go back to Los Angeles to appear in front of the court. The lawyers had prepared a statement for him, where he sort of apologizes, he ‘gives up’ his communist activities, naming other communists, and by doing this he’ll have back his life.
Adele is horrified to hear that he proposes to confess something he didn’t do,but he yells that he’s not like Luke, that he only ever wanted to survive, that he’s not as brave as Luke was and he wants back his life. Adele gives him the book of the Constitution of the US that Luke had given her, and also the last letter that Luke wrote to her (that according to the credits was read by Matt Damon). It’s the letter of a brave young man who knows he’ll probably die in the next battle but who is determined to do what’s right and stand up to bullies, as he says.
The whole town of Lawson has their radios on to listen to what Peter and the court will say (well, the doc and Adele have a tv). Peter says that the only reason he once attended a communist meeting is that he wanted to impress a girl. At the moment of the reading of the statement, he can’t do it; he starts sweating and talks about Lawson, and Luke and the other boys who died in the war, and the America they died for, free and just. He makes a big speech and then walks out under the flashes of the reporters. In the car with his lawyer, he thinks he’ll go to jail, he’s sure of it, but the lawyer tells him that to save face they managed a deal, and basically he’s free.
He goes back to his old life, going on with the movie he was making, but his heart is no more into it. He replies to the studio executives (that we never see, only hear) something like “that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard” and walks out, and I guess he’s sort of giving up that part of his life. He sends a telegram to Adele, saying he’s coming back to return what she gave him - the book and the letter - hoping to see her at the station but understanding if she won’t be. He’s rather surprised when he arrives and sees that the whole town is there to welcome him back, as Peter this time.
He’s again part of the community and goes back to work at the Majestic, and the last scene is a panoramica of some pictures that show us that he will marry Adele and have a kid, and they’ll be happy.
I liked it a lot. My favourite moment might be the one when he realizes he’s not Luke. It’s a sad moment, he doesn’t want that, but he’s finally found something that can really jog his memory because it belongs to him. There’s a moment, when he’s watching the movie, and “Roland the Intrepid Explorer” (Bruce Campbell) has defeated “the evil but handsome Prince Khalid” (Cliff Curtis) and is about to kiss the girl, while Peter is standing at the entrance watching, and I’m all caught up in this tense moment and then the actors go “Oh Roland” - “Oh Emily”, and he goes “oh shit!”, and I laughed and cried at the same time. It was funny and yet it was a dramatic moment, because he runs to read his name on the poster and realizes that he’s living a lie.
Also, on a side note: Carrey is so talented that when you say his name people say how good he is or how funny he is, but can we add how extremely good-looking he is here? Why nobody ever says that? He’s so handsome.. I mean, after saying what a great actor he is, why nobody adds how beautiful he is too?
Reading the credits, I also saw that the voice of the studio executives were of Garry Marshall, Sydney Pollack, Carl Reiner, Rob Reiner, and two more that I don’t know, sorry.
I saw other things, that maybe are normal but I never noticed before.
Jim Carrey had his own security guy, a massage therapist, his own costumer, make-up artist, make-up designer, hair stylist (or designer, whatever, I read ‘hair design’..), and also his own driver, while the other 14 drivers were listed all together. A curious thing: I read “second assistant to Jim Carrey” but I didn’t see a first assistant, how bizarre, I'm sure I'm missing something here..
Anyway, it’s not a critic, it’s probably normal in that world, it’s just a curiosity.
Just one question: what does a stand-in do? I read a stand-in name for Carrey and another one for Landau. What was those people’s role?
Adele-Laurie Holden
Doc-David Ogden Stiers
Lawyer Kevin-Ron Rifkin
