Agatha Christie's Poirot : Taken at the flood

A wasted chance. Not too bad, but it never really got to me. 

A major tells the story of rich Gordon who came back with a young bride. All relatives went to meet her but there was an explosion, everyone died but Rosalind and her brother. Gordon was good to his relatives, now they have serious money problems. Some of them know that Rosalind would help them but her brother controls her completely and won’t let it. 

Lynn’s mom can’t pay her bills, Francis’ husband Jeremy lost his clients’ pension money. 

David Hunter seems to enjoy the hatred towards him. 

Francis asks Rosalind for money and she writes a cheque immediately, but then David embarrasses her in front of everyone: “how much?” . He has her give the money back in front of everyone. 

Mr Arden comes telling Hunter that Rosalind’s first husband is still alive, and asks for blackmail money - because if he was still alive, then her second marriage would be null and she’d get nothing.

Lynn is charmed by Hunter and they kiss passionately but then he later calls her telling her to forget him, that he’d destroy her as is his nature, and to marry Rowley instead, as planned.

Mr Arden is found murdered. He was actually Charles, Frances’ brother, playing a part. Major Porter testified about him being the first husband Robert, and shot himself after receiving a letter. Rosalind tried to kill herself but didn’t die because the addicted-doctor had stolen most of her morphine and replaced it with something else. 

Rowley hit ‘Arden’, he fell and died, so he staged the murder. He caused his death and the major’s, but they were not murders. The only cold-blooded murderer here is David. 

He went to pay Arden but found him dead. He left the morphine in sight, for her to take. The girl is not his sister, she’s actually Eileen Corrigan, a simple farm girl. David had murdered his sister Rosaleen two years ago, in her happy marriage to Gordon she had excluded him, and he hated her for that. 

He had charmed a young Irish maid , Eileen, seduced her and made her have an abortion, then kept complete control over her. David blew up the place with dynamite killing Gordon and Rosaleen, and who knows how many other people he didn’t care about. 

David threatens them saying he’s put a bomb in the room, but Lynn walks up to him saying “you won’t do it because you love me” but of course there is no bomb. 

He’ll be hanged, and at the end Lynn visits Poirot. She’ll go back to Africa. She has a gift for him and tells him to write her a letter, “I like your letters”, and she goes away.

And just like that, it ends.

S10E04

ITA alla deriva 

Agatha Christie's Poirot : The yellow iris

It was short, only 40 minutes, so everything was kind of rushed, it could have done with more minutes spent on the characters’ relationships, specially Pauline and her brother-in-law or her boyfriend. It wasn’t bad though.

Hastings tells Poirot of a new French restaurant, the ‘Jardin des cygnes’, and then miss Lemon comes in with a yellow iris in her hand, that someone left, for Poirot... he’s upset, “it is a conspiracy” and “the yellow iris returns to provoke me” and then he tells them of a case he was unable to solve “through no fault of my own”. Two years before, he was supposed to visit Hastings in Argentina. He did get to Buenos Aires then a woman named Iris was killed with poison and the next day everyone had fled because there had been a coup and now the military were in control. Poirot himself was arrested, believed to be a spy. He was thrown out of the country. You know, better that than being shot. 

Having been deported, he could not investigate. Now, two years after, the widower reserved a table just like that time, for six people. Now it is all in London, both the people and the restaurant. The same Italian man, Luigi, who had the French restaurant in Buenos Aires, is now opening it in London. 

A commemorative dinner, to find out who killed Iris, which one of those people... Iris left her money to her younger sister, and Pauline had made a will too and is engaged to a journalist. Iris’s husband was already rich. He never believed it to be a suicide, he always thought someone at the table killed her. This time it’s Pauline who falls dead on the table. Of course she’s playing the part, Poirot went there to prevent her murder and he did. It was the husband, who has spent all of Pauline’s money entrusted to him until her 21st birthday. He was the only one not at the table, both times, and while they were looking at the singer he passed around disguised as a waiter, poisoning both sisters and planting fake evidence, and of course nobody noticed the waiter. 

The ending:

Since it’s late and they haven’t eaten yet, Hastings takes Poirot to eat some street food, “English cuisine”.....

I liked Pauline, and was glad her fiancee had nothing to do with it. 

シン・ゴジラ Shin Godzilla - 2016

Well, this was interesting. I liked all the effects, the destruction scenes were impressive, and I liked the different approach, all shown following those in the government that must deal with it. The ending was a bit disappointing, in the way that it’s not a real ending, I was left thinking ‘what now? what are they gonna do with it?’. The American girl character was annoying. I was surprised, what with this being a Japanese movie, that it made the Japanese government look.. well honestly the government looked like a bunch of old fools, only caring about age and hierarchy, luckily there were also a few younger ones who took hold of the situation and managed to actually do something. 

 At first it seems almost like a documentary. The Prime Minister and all the various ministers talking about it. Something happens at the Tokyo Bay, they start talking about it, if it was an earthquake or something else, and secretary Yaguchi speaks about a video that went viral on the internet. Everyone’s angry at him because he dared to speak, but of course it is soon very clear that he was right and it is indeed a living creature.

Yaguchi calls a young assistant who understands about this things (I don’t know, more than the others for sure) but all the old guys do not appreciate her input, of course because she’s only a young assistant, so the PM does his crappy figure in front of the media declaring the creature will not leave the waters right before it does, starting to ‘walk’.

It’s a strange lizard-fish-like creature walking on four legs, then it evolves and becomes taller, standing on two legs. 

We follow the government, but there are so many names, so many ministers and such that I don’t remember any of them; they keep moving from one room to the other, it’s a long succession of meetings, discussions about names and procedures, it seems like they are having trouble dealing with this situation mostly because nobody before thought of including a ‘in-case-of-giant-unknown-creature-destroying-Tokyo’-protocol, so they don’t know what they should do...

It seems like years ago a lot of radioactive wastes were left in the waters and this creatures ate it, thriving on it. 

The US sends a young woman as their ambassador to deal with this, and it was the most annoying thing, I so didn’t like this character, very annoying.

Anyway, she speaks of professor Goro who spoke about mutations due to radiations but was banned by the governments. They found a few papers on his abandoned yacht, but it’s hard to understand what they mean.

The Americans named the creature Godzilla, and after some discussion they keep the name. It had disappeared because it was overheated, but now it reappears and it’s changed again, much bigger and tougher-looking. 

They launch everything they have at it, but with no effect: bullets are nothing more than flies, then they use rockets and tanks, with the only result that Godzilla strikes back, from its mouth and back, strong rays of light destroy everything they encounter, planes or buildings, killing many government people in the process, so a new PM is appointed, the former minister of agriculture.

Godzilla is out of energy for a while, giving them a little time.

The United Nations are worried about the situation and intend to use nuclear weapons on Tokyo if they don’t solve the situation in time. 

Yaguchi’s team keeps studying the creature and Goro’s notes, and come up with a plan to freeze it. 

Godzilla destroys entire districts.

When they are ready, they provoke Godzilla into using its energy again, they send against it plane drones, and train drones, then they purposefully destroy buildings around it to trap him down long enough to inject into its mouth the cooling solution they have prepared. It takes a lot of work, of course, but they manage it, and Godzilla is frozen solid where it is. 

They say that the radiation caused by Godzilla won’t last long, so Tokyo will be rebuilt. The United Nations say that in case of Godzilla awakening again they will launch a nuclear attack to stop it.

We don’t know what they intend to do with it now, since it’s not exactly ‘over’ yet, but the movie ends here. 

ITA Shin Godzilla 

Mars attacks! - 1996

:lol: this must be watched with the right set of mind, because of course it’s extremely silly, but in a brilliant way :-p There isn’t one line that you can repeat to make your friends laugh, it’s not that kind of thing. It moves slow, the aliens are little, ridiculous things who communicate with strange uac-uac-uac sounds, there are a lot of characters that seem to have little or nothing to do with the main story, and there is indeed a lot of violence in the way that the Martians kill a lot of people. Which could have been easily guessed after reading the title, it says ‘attacks’ after all, there’s even a ‘!’ !

The aliens image I think it was taken from some trading cards, and they move in a funny way and are not ‘real’ at all, which is good in this one case, they actually made me think of toys. There are funniest bits where we laughed, though. The first encounter, when the humans use their machine to communicate, the words we-come-in-peace are heard from everyone, people smile, someone lets a dove fly, and as they see it the Martians suddenly start shooting everyone :-p In a serious film it would have been a painful nightmare, but this was different, like when you like the bad guy in a book, you can just enjoy the entertainment. It was ridiculous how they easily relied on the translator-machine to communicate with the Martians (google translator will prove you that it’s not that simple, if you want a good translation you’d better rely on humans..); also ridiculous: the Martians played a ‘we-come-in-peace’ recording while slaughtering all humans in sight, as if that was enough to fool them; when the Martians landed in front of the White House, supposedly to apologise, the police held a “no applause” and a “no birds” sign in front of the people gathered there; when the Martians kill everyone at the congress, the first lady spills her tea, the president faints, their daughter says “I guess it wasn’t the dove” without even flinching, grandma laughs at the screen, and the doughnut girl says “maybe the don’t liking the human being” or something like that; For unknown reasons the Martians walk around their ships in their underwear; when the Martians attack the White House and the president is taken away, they take a different route because there is a tour going on; the Martians take the place of Tom Jones’ three vocalists before they start shooting inside the hotel; the Martians walk while shooting their weapons and playing a “don’t run, we are your friends” recording; the president has his hands in his hair in desperation when the France Prime Minister calls him to say he has the Martian ambassador in the room, right before they shoot everyone destroying the tour Eiffel; when the Martians neutralise their big rocket, they let them watch while they absorb its energy and laugh like crazy; at the medal ceremony at the end there’s a Mariachi band, and grandma says “thank you but don’t you dare let this happen again”; when Byron walks towards his home, a bulldozer carries away all the dead Martians bodies.

They destroy London, the Taj Mahal, the Easter Island, redesign mount Rushmore, they watch Godzilla and Hazzard on their tv. 

In a few words the story is: Martians ships arrive, America decides to greet them amicably, for some unknown reason the Martians start shooting everyone, America tries to settle the misunderstanding, the Martians pretend to agree but instead attack again, until a boy and his old grandma find out that a specific song makes the Martian’s brain explode.

There are limits to the violence though, because we never actually see any kid getting killed.

Now, the characters in detail:

-----USA president - Jack Nicholson

A president mostly interested in looking good on camera, in making a good speech, he always chooses the ‘peaceful way’, ignoring the warring general. He’s all I-knew-it-was-all-a-misunderstanding and after the Martians kill all those present at the congress and later make their way into his secured office, he tries to get out of it with words like ‘why do we have to fight, because we are different, we should work together’ and blah blah blah, he’s a politician, he likes giving speeches and hearing his voice, as if humans (and America too) never made war, never judge others because they are different, never distrusted someone because is ‘different’ in any way... no matter the times, this speech will always be something, sarcasm-wise.

He is killed with a mechanical hand that stabs him from the back, Alien-style, and from it comes out the Martian’s flag. 

-----Art-Jack Nicholson

A Las Vegas hotel’s owner, he only thinks about making money, it’s the only thing he cares or thinks about, even planning on how his hotel should greet the Martians as if they would stay and eat and drink like everybody else, and is killed when the place he’s in is destroyed.

-----First lady-Glenn Close

She only thinks about her position, looking good in pictures, looking as important as she thinks she is, and of all the things around her that she considers hers now that she lives there (White House of course).

She gets killed when a big chandelier falls on her during the Martians attack at the White House. 

-----Barbara-Annette Bening

Art’s wife, she talks about Buddhism and saving the Earth, she said she had quitted drinking but, maybe because of the Martian attack, she drinks again later. She doesn’t seem too destroyed by her husband’s death, she simply runs to Byron looking for someone that can pilot her plane to get out of there.

She actually kills one Martian, although it’s too late to save the lawyer she likes.

-----Donald - Pierce Brosnan

The professor that kept saying that the Martians are an advanced people and therefore a peaceful one (sarcasm flows like mad in every one of his words, since history tells us that advanced people make advanced weapons...), he was the one that said it was all a communication-misunderstanding that caused the attack, and he ends up in one of their spaceship, used by the Martians for experimenting, we see him again, pieces of his body suspended here and there, while his head is severed but left active (still dripping blood though). When the Martians die and the ship falls, I guess he’ll ‘die’ too...

-----Nathalie - Sarah Jessica Parker

A sort of absent-minded tv-show host, always with her little dog by her side, in a relationship with Jason, who is killed in front of her before she’s taken into a Martian ship. She’s the first to be experimented upon, when they put her head onto the dog’s body and the dog’s head on her body. She meets Donald first while interviewing for her show, and again when he’s only a head and she’s wagging her tail at him... her fate is the same as Donald.

-----Jason - Michael J. Fox

A ‘serious’ journalist, in a relationship with Natalie, he is jealous of her success, and also of Donald because she was indeed flirting with him on tv. At the first press conference announcing the Martians arrival, his only interest was if he could interview them... When the Martians attack, he crawls towards her but when they are close and she manages to catch his hand, that’s the only thing left of him. This has always been the scene that affected me the most, because I see all the rest of the ‘violence’ as a cartoon-type of violence, and not of the realistic ones. 

-----Billy - Jack Black

He is worshipped by his parents as the perfect son, like them he likes weapons and is happy to join the soldiers present while welcoming the Martians. He is killed during the first attack, while his parents are killed later by a Martian robot destroying their trailer.

-----Richie - Lukas Haas

Billy’s brother, considered a disappointment by his parents because unlike the rest of the family he doesn’t care for guns and works in a doughnut place. His insistence on disobeying his parents to go and get his grandma is what saves his life, and also Earth, because he arrives when they are about to kill her so she takes the earplugs out letting the music into the room and the Martians die, so Richie learns that that song can kill them.

-----President’s daughter - Natalie Portman

She starts off as a bored teenager, annoyed by her mother’s attitude towards a place that ‘isn’t hers’, and she’s the one to point out, during the second attack, that the dove had nothing to do with it :lol: When her parents are taken away, she’s left behind. After everyone else dies, at the end there’s only her left so she’s the one to give a medal to Richie and his grandma, also crushing on Richie. 

-----Byron - Jim Brown

He works in Art’s hotel, dressed like... what, an egyptian? Anyway, tourists take pictures with him, but his family is in Washington so when Barbara tells him she has a plane, he wants to go home, but he stays behind to fight a large group of Martians to give them the chance to escape. He fights well, but while the plane flies away, they see him on the floor, surrounded. Nevertheless, at the end we see him reaching on foot what remains of his family’s home :-) Very glad about this, I loved Byron’s character !

-----Martin Short played the press agent of the US president. He arranges all his press conferences and has a thing for picking up prostitutes making himself important with his big car and his job at the White House. He’s the one who lets in the Martian girl. 

-----Rod Steiger plays the warring general, the one that keeps saying from the start that the military must be involved, that they must attack, but his wish is granted only very late and anyway it has no effect, because they drink/absorb their rocket like an energy drink. Also laughing to their faces :lol:

-----Tom Jones plays.. Tom Jones, singing inside Art’s hotel, he joins Byron and Barbara because he can pilot her plane and take them out of there.

-----Lisa Marie plays the Martian ‘girl’. A Martian disguised as a Earth girl to get inside the White House, but then he gets distracted by the dog barking, wastes time shooting the dog and the bird thus failing to kill the president and his wife, and gets killed by the security man. I found it rather funny the way she moved, so unnatural, so unrealistic, but nobody noticed. Tall, slender, tight dress, big tits, blond hair, heavy make-up and a chewing-gum in her mouth to make her more American. 

-----Byron’s wife - Pam Grier

I liked her a lot, although actually she doesn’t have a big role. She takes care of her two sons, waiting for Byron to come home.

-----Danny De Vito played a gambler in Art’s hotel. He’s not a very important character. He talks a lot, gets annoyed by Byron taking leadership of the group and leaves, then he tries to bribe a Martian with his rolex promising his help as a lawyer, but of course gets killed.

-----Byron’s sons, they like to play videogames. They are at the White House for a tour when the Martians attack and they do a better job than the guards, picking up two weapons from fallen Martians and starting shooting like in the videogames. They actively help in saving the president’s life !

p.s. there’s the guy with white hair reading the newspaper that always makes me think of Nicholas Cage, I don’t know why...

Letters to Juliet - 2010

Well, it’s nice but I didn’t like it much. The first time it’s nicer because of the novelty, the second time it’s much less nice. I didn’t much like the main love story between Sophie and Charlie, and also the ending. Personally, I liked her first boyfriend much more than the last; sure they spent a lot of time together, because they had completely different interests, but I loved how passionate he was about his work, his enthusiasm, he was nice. 

The story:

Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) wants to be a writer, but for now she only check facts - and the way they show this at the beginning of the movie is rather... :-/ she just calls a bunch of people on the phone until someone tells her that yes, he was there, he saw it all and it happened just like that, and voilà, she says she’s 100% sure... :-/ I mean, really? Anyway, this was only to show what she does, very quickly because it’s not really important.

She has a fiancee, Victor (Gael Garcia Bernal), a chef very passionate about his work. They plan a trip to Italy and they go to Verona, but then he takes her to taste wines and cheese and she gets bored, so they decide that he’ll go seeing all the food suppliers he wants and she’ll visit Verona on her own. 

She watches as girls leave letters or notes at Juliet’s wall, and then when everyone goes away (so early, why would they go away so early?) a woman comes collecting all the notes and letters. Sophie is curious so she follows her, stating very honestly “I followed you” and she meets the “secretaries of Juliet” (Luisa Ranieri, Marina Massironi, Lidia Biondi, Milena Vukotic), some women that reply to the letters. I had heard already of the secretaries of Juliet, so this wasn’t really a shock. 

I’m glad to say that the Italian people she meets are really Italian, and the secretaries are actresses I know. 

She’s invited to stay for dinner, and here there’s the stereotype of the old woman offended by her refusal to stay, saying she can’t stand a no, stuff like that :-/ Anyway, she mentions her fiancee so they let her go but is given a dessert to take with her. Victor is enthusiast, wants to know her and wants her to teach him something (the old woman speaks English.. I mean, yes it’s possible, why not), so Sophie spends her time with the secretaries, and she finds an old letter behind a stone that falls down, a letter from 50 years ago: an English girl in love with an Italian boy, but then she went back home without meeting him. Sophie is moved by the letter and says the most annoying thing of the movie: “I have to write back” ... well no, you don’t have to. Maybe you want to and you’re asking if you can, but to say that you have to daring them to say no is very arrogant. Had she said I want to, can I? they would have said yes anyway, but at least it would have been more polite.

It takes her a lot of time to write that letter... Victor leaves for a wine auction in Livorno and Sophie stays with them, until an English guy, Charlie (Christopher Egan) comes in asking who wrote that letter to his grandma. Wow, he found them so easily.

She’s excited, but he’s angry at her because now his grandma has come to Italy intending to see her lost love again, and he’s afraid that it’ll end badly and she’ll suffer, which is very understandable, but she doesn’t want to understand it. She follows him to meet his grandma Claire (Vanessa Redgrave). Claire meets all the secretaries, and tells them her story and that she’s come here to find her Lorenzo, her love at first sight that she wanted to marry but got scared because her parents wouldn’t have approved so she ran away home; she wants to tell him that she’s sorry she didn’t go to meet him. 

Sophie wants to follow the story, so she asks Claire if she can join them in her search for Lorenzo, so she can write about it.

They go together. I thought it was incredible that they muted a word in the Italian song, it wasn’t such a bad word to deserve censor, would they censor the word jerk? It was Un giorno così by 883, I love it so I knew instantly that there was a word missing :-p (when it says basta un giorno così a cancellare 120 giorni ‘stronzi’ e basta un giorno così a cacciarmi via tutti gli sbattimenti che  ogni giorno sembran sempre di più... ecc ecc).

Sophie thinks it’s all very romantic, Charlie is annoyed by it all. Sophie says that her mother abandoned her when she was nine, later on Charlie will say that his parents died when he was ten. 

The first Lorenzo was not the right one, but Sophie insists on continuing and she finds that there are a lot of Lorenzo Bartolini in the area of Siena. 

She says that checking things is her job, they only need a process of elimination. She points a lot of Lorenzos on a map and they start checking them out. Charlie thinks it’s madness, but he’s the driver. Sophie already checks him out when he goes swimming.

One (Angelo Infanti) tells her to come if she doesn’t find the one she’s looking for, the next one leaves Claire horrified she doesn’t even talk to him, another one (Fabio Testi) is quite charming, telling her “I would have never let you go” but he’s not the right one. 

Charlie and Sophie up until now have kept fighting all the time, he tells her that she brings out the worst in him, but they take a walk together, talk a lot, and things start to change. He says he’s single, after an on/off relationship with a certain Patricia. 

They continue their search, one Lorenzo after the other. 

Sophie tells Charlie that she believes in fate and she’s very happy to be there... with Claire, and when they drive the song Sono bugiarda can be heard :-p Coincidence? Mah.

The next Lorenzo is dead, and Charlie starts getting worried again that it might end badly. 

Charlie and Sophie talk a lot, watch the stars together, and he kisses her.. she feels bad because she has a fiancee and walks away. Grandma sees them and smiles.

While driving, they see the vines of their favourite wine so they go check it out, and Claire sees her Lorenzo as he was when he was young. Indeed he’s called Lorenzo Bartolini, like his father, like his grandfather (rolling eyes). Now Claire gets scared, saying she was only 15 back then, she wants to go away but right then the right Lorenzo (Franco Nero, Django himself) comes on his horse and his grandson informs him about them asking about him. 

He’s shocked and moved, and hugs her and takes them home. He lost his wife, just like she lost her husband. They are both single now so they get together. 

She wants to go back now that the search’s ended, and Lorenzo (middle one) drives her back. Claire tells Charlie not to let her go, so he drives after her but when he gets there he sees her with Victor and goes away without showing himself. 

She goes back to New York, her story will be published and she’s happy about that, but then she receives a note inviting her to Claire’s wedding. She leaves Victor - quite a nice scene, he sends everyone away remaining alone with her in the kitchen because he had sensed what she wanted to say, he doesn’t want to break up but he knows that he can’t change because that’s who he is, so they hug and she leaves. 

At the wedding, she finds that Charlie is with a certain Patricia and her world crumbles. All the secretaries have been invited, which was such a nice touch.

The wedding is in church, can they really do it so quickly? Usually weddings are organised one year before, more or less... 

Anyway, they get married, Claire reads her letter out loud where Sophie encouraged her to do what she did, then Sophie runs away... more or less, actually for some reason she goes on the balcony to play Juliet. She cries, tells him she’s single now, but it’s too late because he’s back with Patricia and that’s heartbreaking because she loves him.... and only now he thinks about telling her that this Patricia is not ‘that’ Patricia, this one is his cousin and he’s still single too. 

He climbs up to reach her, there’s a long boring speech then he falls down so she goes to him and they kiss and it’s the end, just like that.

Colombiana - 2011

I actually liked it, it was better than I expected. Right dose of action, pain and rage. Zoe Saldana does a good job, and the little girl playing her as a child was good too :-) Actually, nobody was bad here, the FBI and CIA actors were good enough as well. I didn’t care much for the bad guys, but that was the role.

It starts in Colombia, a man working for big boss Luis wanted out, but as expected he wasn’t allowed to. Immediately some men are sent to his house, to kill him and his family. He knows it, but wastes a few seconds to instruct his 9-year-old daughter on what to do. After bad guy Marco kills her parents, he sits with her, telling her he was her father’s good friend, asking for the microchip her father had. She sits there without a word, seemingly overwhelmed by what just happened, then she pounces forward sticking a knife into his hand, saying that she wants “to kill don Luis”, then she rushes out. She’s little, she sneaks out of a window and starts running. She swallows the chip so not to lose it, she runs and goes down a manhole to lose them, then as her father instructed she reaches the American Embassy giving them the chip (she has to throw it up actually) which is “her passport”, as her father told her, to go to America. Once in America, she escapes their custody to reach Chicago, where her uncle leaves. He thought the entire family had been killed, and is glad to see her alive. He himself killed the people that killed his son, and now he watches this little girl saying “I want to be a killer, can you help?” - “sure”. 

He pays a lot of money to get her into a school, telling her that weapons are not enough, she must learn many things or she’ll be killed in no time (he says in five years). He tells her she must become smart, understand people, know things, so she agrees and goes to school. 

We see her again 15 years later. She’s now a killer. We see her pretending to be drunk to get arrested for the night so she can reach the man she wants to kill. Every time she kills someone, she draws a flower on them, because her name, Cataleya, is the name of a beautiful flower, an orchid.

It takes a while before the news of the ‘message’ gets out. She wanted the message to reach don Luis, so to find him. When her uncle learns about it, he’s angry, but the anger is driven by fear mostly, for what might happen. He’s the one keeping contacts and giving her new jobs, but is worried that ‘her way’ is too dangerous, for her, for him, for his mother. 

Under the name Jennifer, from time to time she spends time with Danny, mostly showing up at his place to stay with him a few hours before disappearing. He really likes her but she won’t tell him anything about her. It’s the usual story, although the sexes were usually reversed. He’s a good person, he really likes her, but she comes and goes as she pleases and he doesn’t understand why. He even delays sex once to ask her something about her, anything, managing to get only a little thing out of her, that she doesn’t eat breakfast and also: 

“I feel lonely sometimes” - “thank you, me too”. 

The fact that he doesn’t know anything about her is the reason why he’s not at all careful, because he doesn’t know he needs to be, so he takes a picture of her while she’s sleeping and shows it to a friend, who thinks he’s helping him when he asks his sister-in-law to track her using the picture, since she works at the police (... how would that work if she was a normal person? Why should the police computer find her picture anywhere? This bit was rather... nonsense?)

Anyway, for some reason the FBI tracks it, the poor woman who was only doing him a favour will get in trouble, we see the FBI reading her her rights, and the FBI finds Cataleya’s place. She was on the phone with Danny and he told her about the picture, so she got agitated and saw a swat team arriving, so she got out somewhat in time. She went home to find her uncle and grandma dead, killed by don Luis’ men. 

Next thing, she shows up at the FBI man’s house. How did she know that it was him chasing her or how did she know where to find him? Well, I don’t know, but James Bond and all the other action heroes do this all the time, so I’m not really bothered by this.

She tells him about her family being killed by don Luis, both when she was a child and now, and tells him that she wants to put an end to it, she wants don Luis, and wants him to give him to her. He doesn’t know where he is, but the CIA does, who knows why they know exactly where he is but they let him be. Cataleya threatens to hurt his family if he doesn’t find him for her, so he goes to the CIA man, what a coincidence the exact man we once saw exiting don Luis’ house, and no surprise the CIA man acts all arrogant as usual, not helping at all, unmoved by the story of his family being threatened. Right when FBI Ross is about to go away, she calls him, threatening the CIA man’s life, which she proves by firing, shooting a picture near him, and now he is finally ‘moved’ by something and immediately gives the address. (I liked how scared the CIA guy suddenly looked, the fear in his voice, good job :D )

Cataleya finds the floor plants for don Luis’ place, and she barges in fully armed , starting with a rocket moving on to machine guns, taking out all his men. The real showdown is between her and Marco, the one who executed all the killings, a good fight that she manages to win. He was stronger, but she had lived for this and wouldn’t let him stop her, trying to hit where it hurts (which also means neck/face)

After he dies, she stumbles backwards, in tears for all the repressed emotions of so many years, after all this time she finally avenged her family’s death. 

Don Luis gets out, thinks he made it, but she expected that, he’s the big boss that everyone was trying to protect. She put her two big dogs in the back of the van, and they are so well trained that they stayed there not moving, without a sound, so he didn’t noticed them, until she calls him and the dogs hear her saying EAT, which is the signal that they can eat, and the dogs attack him and kill him. It’s over. 

Danny is being questioned by the FBI but he really has nothing to do with it so they will have to let him go. She calls him, knowing that the call will be traced: he apologises for the picture-thing, then she says they have little time to talk, he has time for three questions, so he asks her her real name, then he asks her if she’ll ever come back (we’ll see) and third, he tells her that he loves her :-)

After the call, she stays a few seconds holding the receiver in her hand, controlling her emotions, and for some reason I felt touched by the flyer attached to the back of the public phone, ‘reward lost cat’, clearly from someone who wanted back their lost cat, and it seemed so much like what was happening there between the two of them :-)

Then she gets on a bus and goes away.

Cast

Cataleya-Zoe Saldana

Danny-Michael Vartan

Cataleya age 9 - Amandla Stenberg

Marco-Jordi Mollà

Uncle-Cliff Curtis

CIA man-Callum Blue

Ross-Lennie James

The hateful eight - 2015

I didn’t like it. I know it has many good points going for it, but it’s not (entirely) what I was expecting. There was no mystery at all and the dialogues were rather plain for my taste, that’s why I didn’t like it. 

I knew it would by somehow splatter because it’s a Tarantino movie, so even if the blood-vomiting/heads-exploding scenes were a bit over the top it was nothing really unexpected, but I would have appreciated it if someone had washed the woman’s face from time to time; no gentleness had to be involved, but they could have thrown some water and a towel on her face.

What I liked was the idea, the whole thing happening in the same confined space, inside a shop in the middle of nowhere, surrounded only by the snowy Wyoming mountains; also, the cast, the lights, the set, there nothing I had a problem with in the technical aspect of the film, but to me the dialogues were a bit plain, meaning that during the time before the actual splatter nothing really happened and nothing was really said. 

At some point I was hoping that it would become a bit thrilling to find out who was who, but it wasn’t. 

The hateful ones were really hateful, although I thought there would have been fewer characters: who were the eight? The major, Ruth, Bob, Gage, Osvaldo, Daisy, and it’s six. Another hateful could be Jody, Daisy’s brother, although he shows up much later, and it’s seven. Who should be the eighth one? Chris? The general? OB? Or should the eight be the first eight we see? The major, Ruth, Daisy, Chris, Bob, Osvaldo, Gage and the general? It’s indeed eight, but why are Chris and the general among the hateful, because they fought in the war among the losing side?

Anyway,

my favourite moments all include Daisy, although her image was rather hideous, her face was always covered in blood, ‘really’ covered I mean, and her front teeth were broken leaving a big hole there. 

Ruth spoke too much without really saying anything interesting, Gage barely spoke a word but also barely did anything at all. The movie was set right after the civil war’s end, so that’s what they are all talking about half of the time. 

The general is from the south and killed a lot of black soldiers which is why the major hates him and wants to kill him, still his long story about how he tortured and killed his son was really long... it was obvious from the start what would happen, that he wanted the general to pick up the gun so he could have an excuse to kill him, but it really went on for a long time... and there’s still a little doubt whether that story is true or not, did he really meet and kill his son or he’s making it all up to provoke him and kill him? We see images of the man walking naked in the freezing snow and giving him oral sex before being killed, but that doesn’t mean it really happened, maybe it’s just what he’s making the general imagining; knowing the major, it could be a lie, we know he lied about Abraham Lincoln’s letter, a lie that as he put it, allowed him to ‘disarm the white men’, like Ruth who agreed to give him a ride on his coach and then asked to see the letter. So everything’s possible.

Ruth was a bounty hunter like the major, but he never killed his preys right away, he took them alive into town to watch them being hanged. Which is what caused all the troubles.

Osvaldo said he was a hangman, Gage said he was going to spend Christmas with his mother, Bob said that Minnie (the rightful owner of the place) had gone to visit her mother with her husband leaving the place to him for a while. 

OB was simply the coach driver, and Chris said that he was going into town to be appointed the new sheriff.

They have to spend two or three days together in that place until the snow storm ceases; Ruth doesn’t trust them so he takes everybody’s guns but the major, since they made a pact to help each other. 

At some point, when everyone is distracted by the major’s story on how he killed the general’s son, Daisy sees someone poisoning the coffee pot. She smiles and says nothing, watching Ruth drink it. OB drank too, and soon both of them start spitting blood, copiously, and then both die. Chris was about to drink it too but he stops. At this point the major points his guns to the four man still standing, while Daisy is on the floor, handcuffed to Ruth’s corpse, her face full of the blood he spit on her. 

The major gives a gun to Chris, since he was about to drink the coffee he can’t be the one poisoning it. 

The major knew Minnie and her husband, he saw many signs already that something had happened, and now also says that Minnie didn’t like Mexicans and would never have left her precious shop to Bob, so he shoots him dead saying that he killed Minnie and her husband.

He threatens the other two with killing Daisy if the poisoner doesn’t confess, and Gage confesses, but at this point someone hidden in the basement shoots the major from below. Osvaldo shoots Chris and Chris shoots him, and both are left badly injured. 

We see now what happened before their arrival. Another coach arrived: Jody, Gage, Bob and Osvaldo together. Quite soon they killed everyone inside (Minnie and her husband, plus Gemma who worked there and also Judy and her man, the ones driving the coach) sparing the general because he adds a touch of credibility, a bit of colour to the scene.

The major and Chris are the only ones with weapons now, so they make the mysterious man come out or they’ll kill Daisy. It’s Jody, her brother, they are in a gang together, and of course he comes out and they smile at each other.. and then the major shoots him totally squashing his head and his brain and blood all fly on Daisy’s face. Daisy tries to convince Chris to let her go, saying there are other men from their gang ready to kill him; Chris and the major shoot dead Osvaldo and Gage who had taken a gun hidden under a table. 

Now left only with Daisy, she keeps trying and Chris hears her out, making the major worry: he’s without bullets now, so if Chris wants to shoot him there’s nothing he can do, but Chris is only amused by Daisy’s words, he doesn’t believe her at all, and also there’s the fact that both him and the major are mortally wounded. Chris would like to shoot her, but the major doesn’t want her to die like that. He says she was Ruth’s prisoner after all, and she should die like he wanted, and Chris is after all (almost) a sheriff, so they hang her watching her die, then they’ll die too. 

Cast:

Daisy-Jennifer Jason Leigh

Major Warren-Samuel L. Jackson

John Ruth-Kurt Russell

Bob-Demian Bichir

Osvaldo-Tim Roth

Joe Gage-Michael Madsen

Chris Mannix-Walton Goggins

General Smithers-Bruce Dern

OB-James Parks

Jody-Channing Tatum

The last airbender - 2010

I didn’t like it, it was boring and superficial and without depth and I didn’t like it, I really thought I would have because I usually like this sort of things, fantasy stories, where there are people that can control the power of the elements, the water tribe, the air tribe, the fire tribe and the earth tribe, and I was prepared for some stereotype, like the fact that as it always happens the fire tribe is the villain, but I was disappointed by all the rest. The characters were all kids but the worst part was that there was very little ‘power’ in action. I didn’t like the main character, 

Plot:

A girl and her brother from the water tribe find a young boy who we’ll find out is the long-searched-for Avatar, the only one who can use all the four elements. Because of him their village is attacked by a Fire Prince that wants his father to like him by bringing him the avatar. The boy surrenders but then he escapes later, with the help of his two new friends. They go together to the air tribe to find out that all the monks have been killed while looking for him. They go to a earth village for help, but it’s under fire control. The boy reminds them that they control the earth and they are surrounded by earth (they hadn’t noticed??) so they rebel and send the fire people away. 

Even if he’s the avatar, the boy never learned to master the other elements, he only knows air, so they go to a water village seeking help and lessons. 

On route, he’s betrayed by a man and sold to the fire people, but a mysterious man helps him. It’s actually the fire prince, and the boy ends up helping him as well. 

The three friends reach the water village, and the water boy falls in love with the water princess, and the avatar starts learning to control water. The fire people attack, the fire prince is again trying to capture the avatar but is stopped. The fire real villain kills a sacred fish which is the spirit of the moon or something, so that the water people won’t have their powers anymore, but the water princess was once saved by the moon spirit so now she gives that life back, reviving the moon spirit, and she dies. 

The fire prince and the fire villain fight, but the uncle stops them, he’s strong. The fire prince and his uncle leave and the fire villain is attacked by water, and I guess he died?

The avatar is able to master the water moving the ocean to send the war ships back. 

The fire lord sends now his daughter to stop the avatar. 

The boy still needs to learn to master earth, so that will be his next move, but the movie ends here.

Now, reading it like this, one might think that it was something interesting, something I should like, and I would have thought so too, but I didn’t. Every time an ‘element power’ was used, there was a lot of movements like they were doing a martial arts performance, and then very little happened. 

I don’t know how else to explain it, there was very little ‘power’, very little action; there was a lot of talking around the child, the avatar, but he didn’t do much, there was nothing epic about it, nothing exciting. 

ITA l’ultimo dominatore dell’aria

盛势 (势不可挡) Advance bravely

I’ve only seen 15 episodes out of 30, but can’t really bear it anymore. I don’t like to leave shows unfinished, but this is unbearable. It’s so boring, so so boring. Nothing happens at all, it is indeed extremely boring. Probably it is specially so because I don’t like the main lead at all. He’s supposed to be so beautiful, so charming, so lovable, a champion, an unbeatable fighter or something, oh so cool, but he isn’t and I can’t stand him. He’s more like a pouting child, he’s very very annoying and basically I don’t like him at all. Since everything seems to revolve around him, I can’t watch anymore of this. I guess that maybe they’ll get together in the end, he’ll admit he’s gay and they’ll be a couple, I don’t know but I don’t care to find out, it’s unbearably boring. I don’t really know what will happen because he doesn’t like girls but it’s not clear if he likes men or not, only that his friendship with an older guy is becoming more and more stronger. This guy for whatever reason keeps staying around him, protecting him and spoiling him. 

The side characters weren’t any better: of his two friends, one becomes friends with an effeminate guy because he says that in this way he can get closer to the girl he likes, and wonders why... what’s there to wonder, it’s always been pretty obvious to anyone why a girl would refuse to go out with a straight guy but accept to meet a gay guy, it’s no mystery at all. The other friend, just like him, seems to like guys but is uncertain, the only sure thing is that he’s childish and annoying as well.

Actually both him and his two friends seem like children who are about to throw a tantrum at any moment, what is this? Come on, it’s unacceptable. Only good thing is, the older guy, the bodyguard, is really really handsome. 

The Martian - 2015

Well, it wasn’t bad actually, it was quite nice (to watch once) - this is being said by someone who knows nothing about all that science, so I don’t really have any idea if they said reasonable things or just a load of nonsense. 

It starts with a group of six people on Mars, doing research and stuff, when all of a sudden there’s a big storm, much worse than they anticipated, and they need to run away and leave. Mark is hit by something, and he should be dead, so the others launch, can’t wait anymore, specially since they think he must be dead.

When Mark wakes up and realises what happened, he has some logical explanation on how he didn’t die, but he’s hurt. He walks to the base, treats himself the best he can, then starts reflecting upon his situation. He knows it’ll be many months, years before he has the slightest chance to get rescued, so he needs provisions. There’s a lot of stuff there, but not enough - they should have stayed a month, so there’s provisions for a month, but they packed double to be on the safe side, so there’s two months, and then there’s the fact that he’s alone now, five people less, so he has food for a year give or take. It’s something but not enough for a smart long-term planner. Luckily, as he says, he’s a botanist, so he sets up a sort of greenhouse, using their toilet waste as fertilizer, and this was easy and obvious, and does something to create water, although it didn’t seem much to me but what do I know, so: he made water, and in due time he has potato-plants, so he can increase his days. 

I’m not sure but I think it was like a month after the shuttle launched that some people at Nasa found out that he was still alive, then he retrieved an old pathfinder and used it to communicate with them, and they could talk now. 

At first Nasa didn’t tell the other five crewmembers about him being alive, which is good and bad at the same time. I was like ‘don’t tell them’ as well for a while, because they would have felt terribly guilty for leaving him there. It wasn’t their fault and they had no choice, but still !

After a while I started thinking that those five were affected by his death of course, and knowing he was alive would have eased their grief, obviously. Nasa only told them when Mark started swearing at them for not telling them.

Since day one Mark knows where they’ll be landing whenever they’ll come, so he planned a way to get there, which is quite far, the Schiapparelli crater. 

Nasa is trying to find a solution, but when one of the greenhouse’s doors explodes, all the plants are ruined, and so is the soil and everything, so he won’t be able to make more food. They try sending him provisions quickly, saving time cutting the tests, and the ‘cargo’ explodes. Apparently it almost never happens during tests, it happened this time. 

They are desperate for a solution, because time is running out. Luckily this is a movie so what happens is: Chinese officials are more concerned about saving the life of one American astronaut than they are about their super-top-secret project, and offer to help. 

One man figures out a plan that could work, they all say, although hearing it seems rather ridiculous, but again this is a movie so it works. 

The director of Nasa refuses the idea because it endangers the lives of the other five astronauts, that should go back to pick him up, but one man (Sean Bean, not sure about everyone’s role in here) tells the crew about the plan, thus ending his career (because in this world everyone is so concerned about the life of one single man... wait, no, because this is a movie, right) and obviously the crew goes on with the plan because they want to rescue him, they felt so bad for leaving him there. 

So what I understood is: they accelerate towards earth, grab the Chinese thing with the provisions, then use gravity to get thrown back and they go towards Mars. Mark reaches Schiapparelli and uses the old shuttle-thing after throwing out everything inside because it’d be too heavy otherwise since he needs to go up extra-fast. Without the computers inside he can’t do anything, so one of the crew will pilot it instead. When they are near he’s launched into space, but it’s still too far, so he cuts his spacesuit to use air as propellent as Iron Man and manages to get onboard. Once there, there’s nothing more for us to see, they are reunited and they’ll come back in a year or so. 

Next thing we see is Mark on Earth. He’s teaching aspiring astronauts now. 

Just one curiosity, during the whole time he kept recording videos of his experience, where are those videos now? On Mars?

Anyway, by reading this it sounds a bit boring but it wasn’t actually, it was fine, although not something I’d watch again too soon.

ITA the Martian-sopravvissuto

From dusk till dawn - 1996

I liked it more back then but even now it’s a funny crazy thing if what you’re looking for involves a good dose of horror splatter combined with a bit of crime movie-style. It was quite good back then, surprising and funny-entertaining, I’m not sure how it would look like now to someone who has never seen it, though.

It’s silly, splatter, full of mistakes, but it’s a horror movie Tarantino-style, what else to expect? It’s also very cool in its own way.

Of course I never liked Tarantino’s character because he plays a f**ing piece of sh*t (sorry, that’s what this movie does to you), who rapes and kills women, so I couldn’t wait to get rid of him; the surprise was that he stays alive for half the movie! It must be a record for a character played by Tarantino, I wonder if anyone has ever made a list of all his characters and how long it took them to die.. 

Back to the movie. The plot (there is, indeed, a plot)

Seth Gecko was on trial, he’s a thief, and his brother Richie helped him escape, leaving dead bodies behind. We hear this from a reporter (way too enthusiastic I must add, which I take as rightful subtle-sarcasm on nowadays media).

The movie starts at an isolated shop, where the owner starts talking with the cop (sheriff?) who just entered. It seems all normal and boring until the guy goes to the bathroom and we see that the Geckos are hidden and they have two girls hostage. The owner is doing his part and it might all go well if Richie didn’t come out all of a sudden shooting. I was rather glad that the two girls managed to escape, though. They kill the cop and the owner, Richie only gets a hole in his hand, and they set the place on fire then leave with Seth quarrelling with his brother, reminding him that he said they needed to keep a low profile which means Not taking hostages, Not shooting police, Not setting places on fire, and they drive away. 

They stop at a motel, they have a woman hostage in the trunk and bring her inside the room, and Seth leaves her alone with Richie (come on Seth, you know your brother...) so when he comes back he finds her very dead on the bed. He gets angry but he’s still his little brother so he takes him along anyway.

They take a family hostage. Jacob and his children Kate and Scott. They have a big American-style-camper and the Geckos want to use it to cross into Mexico. Jacob was a pastor his whole life but left his congregation and faith behind after his wife died. 

All together they manage to get into Mexico (thanks to the fact that Seth finally knocked Richie unconscious, thanks a lot) and now all that remains is to drive to the place where the Geckos have an appointment with Carlos. He’s like some big boss of Mexico and they need his permission to stay there, also giving him 30% of their money. He told them to go to the Titty Twister bar, open from dusk till dawn, then they’ll meet at dawn as Seth wanted. 

They all drive there and it’s one hell of a place, meaning that it’s a place that makes me think of hell, full of dirt, drinkers and naked women. Seth seems enthusiastic of the place, but he also looks still on edge, and Jacob says “are you so much a fucking loser you can’t tell when you’ve won?” - “what did you call me?” - “Nothing, I didn’t make a statement, I asked a question, would you like me to ask it again?” and he does :lol:

The noise suddenly stops and the biggest attraction of the place is announced, Satanico Pandemonio, Salma Hayek comes out wearing a little bikini and a big snake on her shoulders; she starts dancing for like three or four minutes, making Richie drink from her foot; she is indeed beautiful and really hot but I felt more like Kate who had a bored-slightly annoyed look on her face. 

When the music finally stops, a guy they beat before comes in with a grudge against them, so the Geckos kill him and the two men with him, one of them the bartender, who Richie stabs multiple times. There’s a lot of blood around, and maybe that’s what initiates it all. Pandemonio changes into a monster and jumps on Richie biting his neck killing him. The three men that were shot stand up again, some girls lock the door and all those who work there transform into monsters and start attacking the customers. The band uses a man’s corpse as a guitar, everyone gets killed but Seth and the family, plus two men who fought a lot and survived, Frost and Sex Machine. It’s vampires, so those that got killed rise up again as monsters and must be killed again, including Richie. 

I was a bit disappointed that Pandemonio died so easily, she was presented as something special, ‘bow to her’ kind of goddess-special, and yet she died quickly and easily. 

Frost took out a monster’s black-rotten-heart with one single move :p

There’s a lot of splatter here, pieces of bodies everywhere, disgusting fluids and dissolving monsters and stuff. Sex Machine saves Kate, but then one of the risen monsters bites his arm. 

Now that all enemies inside are out they start talking about what they know and what they can do to kill them, because there are many more outside wanting to come in. They talk a lot. 

Sex Machine didn’t tell anyone about his injury, of course, but now he starts to change, and when he’s fully monster he jumps on Frost and bites him. Jacob too, but for some reason Frost changes very quickly, the other doesn’t. Actually, all the previous victims only became monsters much later when they thought it was all over, so if anybody cares about things-making-sense in the middle of  a splatter scene, well, this doesn’t make sense.

Anyway, Frost throws Sex Machine out of the door, breaking the door and letting all the bats inside (how come later the door will be whole and locked is another mystery). Seth takes the two kids and they hide inside a little storage room. Jacob is still himself for now, and joins them after keeping the monsters away with a big cross made from a baseball bat and a rifle. He knows he’ll change but he tells them that for now he can help in the fight, but when he’ll change they must promise to kill him like any other monster.

In there is stored all the stuff that was taken from the truckers and bikers that Pandemonio and company have killed over the years, and they look around for weapons. Kate finds a crossbow (Americans love crossbows against vampires, so like a gun..) which has six arrows but she uses it for a long time... Seth makes one of those silly-stupid weapons that sometimes you see in this kind of movies (sticking a bit pointed wooden stick into a jackhammer), Jacob keeps his cross-rifle, while Scott has a water rifle full with blessed water, which could do much more damage if he knew how to use it.  It’s actually the best weapon they have but he makes little use of it. 

When Jacob changes, Scott is not ready to kill him quick and is killed instead. 

Only Seth and Kate remain, with little bullets and little hope, but still fighting, when a few sunrays start coming through, and then they hear Carlos voice, surprised that the place is closed and maybe that he can hear shots. Seth shouts for him to break down the door, and when his men do that, they run out, and the sun enters making the remaining vampires explode. 

Carlos is surprised, Seth is very much pissed, and asks a question that everyone’s been waiting for: why did he choose that place??? Answer, “the place is just as good as another”, simple as that, he’s never been there, only drove by a couple of times... Seth wanted to meet in the morning, the place was open from dusk till dawn, so....

Carlos makes it up to him by taking 25% instead of 30%. Seth then gives some money to Kate before going his own way. She asks to go with him (because she’s now alone in the world and they fought side by side and shared a tragic experience and all that) but he says “I’m a bastard but I’m not a f**ing bastard” or something like that, with a low voice that I barely understood what he said, but I already knew what he said in Italian (“sono un bastardo ma non sono così bastardo” ) so I had quite an advantage there.

Kate drives away (where did she get the keys? oh well) and we see that the club was actually the tip of some big Aztec temple (according to internet, what do I know), and all around you can see the trucks of the people that were killed...

Cast:

Seth-George Clooney

Richie-Quentin Tarantino

Jacob-Harvey Keitel

Kate-Juliette Lewis

Pandemonium-Salma Hayek

Carlos-Cheech Marin

Bartender-Danny Trejo

FBI agent-John Saxon

Frost-Fred Williamson

Sex Machine-Tom Savini

ITA dal tramonto all’alba

Love actually - 2003

I honestly can’t understand why this film is so famous, and why it i rated so much on IMDB, after 15 years it’s 7.6? Why? What did they see? Sure, there are a lot of famous faces, which is what makes it bearable, and a couple of stories are nice, but for me it doesn’t deserve more than a 5. Which is a total disaster!!! A film with Emma Thompson and Alan Rickman and many others and they managed to make it so boring and unsatisfying at the end. So disappointed. I wasn’t expecting a masterpiece, but maybe something romantic, given the title. 

It tells the stories of various couples:

---David is the new Prime Minister and Natalie works for him. As they meet she’s so nervous she starts swearing a lot. It seems like he’s immediately gripped. She’s nice and beautiful, and it’s obvious that he likes her a lot. He asks her about herself, she says she just came out of a relationship, with a moron who said she’s too fat, and David says “being the prime minister, I could just have him murdered” - “thank you sir I’ll think about it” :lol: that was the funniest thing of this movie. When he sees the US president too close to her, he changes his politics turning against him at a press conference (becoming the hero of the nation, and although I’m glad he took away the president annoying smirk, I don’t think impulsive actions are the right way to go in politics).

Feeling that he’s getting too attached, he asks Annie to find her another position. There’s an embarrassing dance scene where he dances around like Tom Cruise in Risky Business, only Cruise was 20 back then. I’m not saying he danced badly, only that a 43 y-o man, even if he wasn’t the prime minister, could keep those activities in his own room.

When he reads a few random Christmas cards, he finds Natalie’s: she tells him “I’m actually yours, love Natalie” ... just because this is a movie she finds love, in real life she’d get something different. Anyway, he takes a car and goes to her neighbourhood knocking on every door until he finds her. He goes with her to a children’s play where he meets his sister Karen, who says to Natalie “twenty years ago you’d have been his type” or something like that, then he kisses Natalie in front of the whole audience. 

---Jamie finds out that his girlfriend is cheating with his brother. He leaves and goes to France to write his new mystery book. Aurelia, a Portuguese girl, comes to work as a maid. They understand nothing of what the other says. That’s the nicest part. How they can tell out loud what they think, looking the other in the eye, because they know the other doesn’t understand. A pity that the ending was lame. When they separated because he goes back to England for Christmas, they couldn’t speak one word of the other’s language, Jamie actually spoke three words in Italian :-p maybe a couple of those could be Portuguese too, but not the third for sure :-p He spends a week tops learning Portuguese, then he goes back to France. A lot of people follow him while he goes to the restaurant where she works as a waitress and he asks her to marry him in what he thinks are understandable Portuguese words, she agrees and they kiss and people clap. 

---Sarah has been in love with Karl for months, never able to say a word, until finally at a party he invites her to dance, drives her home... they jump on each other and then the phone rings! She has a retarded brother and she never misses his calls, so she answers both times and agrees to go see him. Karl asked her not to answer the second time but she does, and their night ends like that. She goes to visit her brother. Later on, Karl simply wishes her a merry Christmas, and she spends it with her brother. 

---Harry and Karen are married with two children. She loves to listen to Joni Mitchell, she says she loves it and “true love lasts a lifetime”.  At work, a girl is very obviously trying to seduce him. At the party, Karen sees him dancing with her, she knows she’s trouble right away :’(  After a while, he gives in and when he goes Christmas shopping with Karen he buys a gold necklace for her. Karen sees the box in his pocket, but then she receives a cd... (when she hides to cry I wanted to slap his face so hard! the f.ing idiot!) . At the children’s play Karen asks him what would he do in her position, wait around to find out if it’s just a necklace, or a necklace and sex or a necklace and love, would he stay to find out? She tells him that he made a mockery of her life :(

---Colin is unbearable, he can’t get a girl because he’s an annoying loser/idiot but he thinks it’s the girls’ fault so he goes to America sure that they’ll drop at his feet simply hearing his accent... and the stupidest things of all happens, as he arrives three girls jump on him :-/ come on :-/ and then he ends up with the fourth :-/ I don’t know many American girls, I’ve personally known only one which doesn’t make a majority, but however they are, I’d be offended if I was them. 

---Daniel lost his wife recently, the funeral is right at the beginning of the film, and he’s left with her son who shuts himself up in his room. Nobody grieves here, little Sam soon tells him that he’s in love with a girl in his school but she doesn’t know he exists. He suddenly makes a choice: learn an instrument so at the children’s play she’ll notice him because girls like musicians... and in three weeks top he becomes a drummer. I guess they all think that being a drummer is the easiest thing, I wonder what drummers think about this. 

When Sam is sad because Joanna will go back to America, Daniel says “we need Kate, we need Leo and we need them now” and they watch Titanic together. 

The girl, Joanna, is about to leave right after the play, so Daniel tells Sam that he should tell her how he feels, so they drive to the airport, Sam avoid security and runs after her. She gives him a kiss on the cheek and leaves. Yeah, victory.

At the play, Daniel met Carol, the mother of a child in Sam’s school, and they liked each other.

---Billy Mack is an old singer. He made a new single “Christmas is all around me”. He keeps saying the single is crap, and much much more, but his agent Joe keeps promoting the single and eventually it becomes Christmas number one. Billy is invited to a party at Elton’s place, but he leaves to spend Christmas with Joe who was alone, telling him “you turned out to be the fucking love of my life”, and they get drunk watching porn together. 

---John and Judy are body double in erotic scenes. They keep talking while shooting naked, faking love scenes, and they get to like each other. Right before Christmas, he walks her home and is all hesitant, he’d like to kiss her but then she kisses him saying “all I want for Christmas is you”. When they attend the children’s play and are asked how did they meet, they both go “ehm...” which was cute. They are the second funny thing of the film. That’s it, there isn’t a third.

---Peter and Juliet get married. Mark is Peter’s friend. He never talks to her and everybody thinks he doesn’t like her. When she insists on seeing the video of the wedding, and it’s all her from beginning to her, she understands that he actually ‘likes’ her. At Christmas, he shows up at her door. Luckily she answers it, they never contemplated the possibility that Peter might answer the door.... anyway, he has her read his confession of love then she gives him a light kiss on the lips and goes back inside. He goes away saying that that’s enough. 

After that, there’s one last scene that’s supposed to wrap everything up: 

one month later, at the airport, all the characters meet, some are coming back and others are here to greet them. 

Karen and her children are there for Harry and they go home together, but she still has a sad face of course, but it looks like they’re trying to move on.

Peter, Juliet and Mark are there for Jamie and Aurelia who got married already. 

Joanna comes back and Sam is there for her, and Daniel is with Carol (wow, I mean, I don’t want people to be sad or anything, but to find someone new after a month, and being together with her two months after your wife’s funeral... )

John and Judy got married too. Colin comes back with the fourth girl and her sister. Will the two of them go around kissing every English man they meet? I mean, this is London...

David comes back and Natalie jumps on him (literally) in front of all the cameras. 

Cast : 

Emma Thompson - Karen

Martin Freeman - John

Alan Rickman - Harry

Liam Neeson - Daniel

Colin Firth - Jamie

Hugh Grant - prime minister

Laura Linney - Sarah

Joanna Page - Judy

Bill Nighy - Billy Mack

Keira Knightley - Juliet

Andrew Lincoln - Mark

Chiwetel Ejiofor - Peter

Rowan Atkinson - the guy selling the necklace

Billy Bob Thornton - US president

Nina Sosanya - Annie

Rodrigo Santoro - Karl

Lucia Moniz - Aurelia

Martine McCutcheon - Natalie

Gregor Fisher - Joe

Thomas Sangster - young Sam

Olivia Olson - young Joanna

Claudia Schiffer - Carol

January Jones, Elisha Cuthbert, Ivana Milicevic and Shannon Elizabeth - four American girls who fall into Colin’s arms, who knows why. Denise Richards is another American girl just like them, only maybe not with Colin, but then, who knows.

And and Dec playing themselves. (Why the usual joke ‘who’s Ant and who’s Dec? Do people really confuse them? How is that possible? They work together but they’re very different and they call each other by name, so it’s not difficult to guess, I mean, I know it! Dec is cuter and has a kindlier face)

ITA love actually-l’amore davvero