小门神 - 2016

AKA The Guardian Brothers, or Little Door Gods.

Not bad, it’s interesting, not boring, it’s nice and the little girl is nice, but it’s a movie more for kids than adults I’d say. Nothing I’d watch more than once.

Details:

There were once two spirits who protected anyone who would put their images on their doors (or something like that) but the world changed and people forgot about the spirits, and now the spirit world is in chaos. Only Rain’s grandma still believes in them, and keeps the images on the doors of her old diner place. But Grandma died, and Rain and her mother Luli kept the place going. 

The new mayor in the spirit world wants a radical change, wants to totally cut any dealings with the humans, and he bans old Beckett because he helped an old human lady who had fallen down.

He remembers when many many years ago there was an evil enemy called Nian, and spirits and humans had to fight together to seal it away. Now one of the brothers thinks that if they freed the Nian, humans and spirits would work together again.

Nobody wants to eat in that old place and even the kids are mean to Rain, and she is very unhappy now. 

The slim brother is tired of these new rules and upset when he’s ordered to destroy the images that are portals to the humans world, so he crosses over. YuLei saves Rain against angry dogs, then he leaves. YuLei breaks the first seal to free the Nian, and the dragon takes his powers and his youth. That was easy, Colossus was a friend and didn’t fight him, but the second is guarded by Bloom and she stops him, but then she sits to talk to him and he sneakily breaks it, and she’s sucked away, and YuLei ages a bit more. There’s still a third seal. Despite all the troubles he’s causing to humans too (no water, no rivers) he goes on. His brother ShenTu tries to stop him. 

When they got no more water, Luli got some from their neighbour, who put something in it and they got in trouble. Then they accidentally put petals in it and their soups were now magical, but now there are no more petals. Rain and Luli decided to try on new ingredients and got more popular, and Rain finally found some friends to play with.

Still, YuLei is going on, and losing a bit of his spirit each time, and he almost breaks the third seal but ShenTu stops him in time (well, he had sort of stopped himself already, he had destroyed the statues/images of himself, but couldn’t bring himself to cut his brother’s) but then ShenTu accidentally finishes what he started, and breaks the third seal. Now both worlds are in trouble but Rain finds out that fireworks keep it at bay. 

In the spirit world, the brothers and the flying kids defeat the evil tree Nian (nooo, I love trees, couldn’t it have been an evil insect? :p)

Now YuLei is young again and the brothers open a restaurant for the spirits in their world, and the humans now believe again in the spirits and feel safe knowing that they are watching over them.

P.s. What happened to Bloom though? Is she alright?

Beautiful creatures - 2013

It’s… honestly a bit boring. The story is not bad, but it’s a very slow building, and only becomes intriguing half-way through, but still the ending is rather unsatisfying, so not a movie to watch and rewatch, no. It was enough the first time, actually, I was tempted to give up more than once.

Details:

In a small town in the south lives Ethan, who has lost his mother in a car accident and lives with a father who never lives his room. He dreams of leaving, and he literally dreams of loving a girl he has never met. 

Lena is the new girl in town, and her uncle is the infamous Ravenwood. Everyone talks badly of him, as if he and his family are satanists or something. The popular girl in class are all ‘my mum says’, all prayers and bad-mouth. 

Ethan is intrigued by this girl. He finds a locket and wants to give it to her so he goes to her house. Ravenwood sort of freaks him out, when Ethan tries to say how he wishes to study far away from here and instead he starts saying how he will live here for the rest of his life, marrying a girl and having an affair with another, divorcing and becoming an alcoholic until he commits suicide, or something like that.

When he and Lena both touch the locket they have a vision (of a couple in love that died during a war?) and wakes up at his house with no recollection of how he got there. He goes back and a spell prevents him from reaching the house until Lena arrives to save him. She tells him her family is different, they have powers, and she’s tired of hiding. In two or three months she will be sixteen, and then her powers will be judged, and only her true nature will decide if she’ll belong to the light or the darkness. 

Macon’s sister Saraphine arrives to bring trouble. She’s of the dark. Ridley is Lena’s cousin, and Larkin’s brother. Nobody seems happy to see Ridley, she was not invited. She was claimed by the dark. She speaks of a curse Lena knows nothing about. Lena says Ridley wasn’t so bad before she turned sixteen, they were like sisters, then she was claimed by the dark and became what she is, she’s like a siren, and we see she caused a guy’s death.

Lena and Ethan touch the locket again, and they see a Genevieve in love with an Ethan, but he was shot and she was desperate so she used magic to revive him, then she turned dark and killed him, and went on killing, and Saraphine, her mother, says that they are all dark because they are Genevieve’s descendants. It was a forbidden spell. There’s no love in the darkness.

Macon says that they can’t love mortals, and that Lena must leave Ethan, but he’s afraid for her (he says that he knows her like he knows himself… kids…)

Seraphine possesses Mrs Lincoln to go after Ethan, and he’s finally had enough. He barges into Lena’s house saying that nobody will keep him away, he’ll stay with her, and thus he breaks the spell her family used to protect her, and he’s now the one who protects her. 

They go to Amma for help on the curse. For weeks they go to the magical library to read an ancient powerful book, and she gets bitter and afraid, she starts changing, but he doesn’t leave and stays with her.

She finds that in order to break the curse, the one she loves must die. She tells Amma she’ll never hurt him, but there are many ways to ‘die’. 

She takes the memories of her away from him, and he wakes up thinking that he barely knows her, that she’s nothing to him.

Seraphine and Ridley are still plotting against them. There’s a war re-enactment and Ridley charmed Ethan’s friend Link so that when they shoot each other, Link shoots him for real.

Only it wasn’t really Ethan, it was Macon with a glamour, his idea to protect them both and break the curse nonetheless, because ‘someone she loves has to die’, so Macon dies.

Lena confronts her mother and cousin. Ridley says it wasn’t her idea and begs for her forgiveness, and thanks her when she tells her to go, and she flees. Seraphine keeps wanting her on the dark side, but she battles her, and forces her out of that body and… turns her into dead wood? Not clear here, is Seraphine dead now or simply gone from here?

Anyway, six months later, Ethan still doesn’t remember anything, and he’s leaving, a tour around colleges, maybe New York University, and he stops to talk to her after saying goodbye to Amma.

He drives away with Link at the wheel, but as soon as they pass the town border, we see the car stopping and he yells Lena’s name. The end.

Oh, and we see that she has one normal eye, and one coloured like her mother, which means she’s half-light, half-dark.

Macon- Jeremy Irons

Lena- Alice Englert

Ethan- Alden Ehrenreich

Amma- Viola Davis

Ridley- Emmy Rossum

Mrs Lincoln/Sarafine- Emma Thompson

Gilmore Girls: A year in the life

Well, very nostalgic, that's the most important thing it has going for it. You watch it and you feel nostalgic, seeing again everything and everyone. That's the other point, really everyone. What I liked the most was the town, of course, the beauty of Stars Hollow, especially at the start of the first episode, it's so beautiful.

About plot... well, of course I know this is supposed to be a year of their lives after so long, so it's not like there's a simple plot for each episode, but still... everything felt a bit forced, and Lorelai seemed very sad, even at the end when they tell her she looks happy, she doesn't really. The first scene is the only one when she looks happy.

What I didn't like is, well, Rory. The character, of course. She's supposed to be this perfect little angel, everyone treats her like she's precious, and she was indeed a sweet little girl once, but now... think about it, how she is with Paul, and Logan, and even Lorelai, the one and only time Lorelai says no to her she's in a fit about how it's so so important for her and mum doesn't understand, and of course the angel wins, only in this series she's no angel at all.

Below I wrote my comments on each episode while I watched them for the first time, but this introduction is written after I've seen it all. I liked it for its nostalgic value, but Rory annoyed me no end. She behaves very badly towards Paul, and she has an affair with Logan who knows for how long, maybe they've had this arrangement to sleep together whenever they are in the same city for the last ten years, since they broke up? Anyway, it seemed like she was destined for a brilliant career when we left her, and now she's nowhere, a lost girl like many others only she's got lots of people behind her to help her.

The point is, I think, that everyone seems less nice, the girls especially. They used to be funny and so so nice, but here they are... not really nice to others, they think of themselves and that's it, the way Rory cheats and helps cheat, the way Lorelai fires people like it's nothing, the way they talk about fat people... they are not nice here, these two girls were lovely, Rory was so sweet and good, and Lorelai was funny and nice and heartbreaking and positive and I loved her, but here they are rude and selfish.

ep1  Winter

The first bit was very nice: the town beautifully covered in snow, people going their own merry way while we move in search of Lorelai. Then we see her and immediately Rory arrives, and it’s nicely nostalgic - maybe just a little forced, but in a way that’s ok because it’s no more their every-day either, Rory just got off a plane, she lived in Brooklyn but is often in London… and for a little while it’s very nice, then it starts getting a bit confusing, sometimes annoying, and sad…

So, basically Rory had a horrible apartment in Brooklyn but she had to leave it and now is without a home at 32 years old (which is an interesting age, the same age Lorelai was when the series started ^_^). So, ten years have passed. She wrote an article for the New York Times (I think, it was the NYT right?) and Luke is very very proud of her, but we don’t know what else she managed to do in ten years. She seemed determined to have a great career last we saw her, and now she only has one article going for her?

Being without a house of her own, she sent all her stuff… to everyone she knows apparently. Two boxes at Lorelai’s, two boxes at Lane’s, two boxes at Emily’s… maybe more, I think she even sent stuff to Paris’ house, not sure, it’s very very confusing and kind of absurd really. Ok, they were always bizarre, but this looks like madness. She wants one special dress and she goes house to house in search of it :-/

She has a boyfriend of two years, Paul, and this whole thing is probably supposed to be funny but I found it extremely annoying because he appears to be sweet and caring but nobody can remember him, not even Rory, and she keeps saying throughout the episode that she has to break up with him but she keeps forgetting about it. It’s rather cruel if you ask me, they’re playing with his feelings without the smallest consideration for him, and we see that Rory has even the occasional ‘meeting’ with her old blond (what was his name? I was never fond of him, but he should be the one she left when she refused to marry him). So she’s a cheater too, technically. She doesn’t care for Paul at all!

She finally has a meeting with a woman in London (River Song, people!) who offers her to write together her life story, but it seems very suspicious to me. She says herself that ‘things taste better when they are stolen’ or something of that meaning, and I think she might want to steal Rory’s work as well, but we’ll see, I haven’t see the next episodes yet.

We see Lane, who has the same life, still married to Zach and still playing in the band, but I think they have two children and he’s upset because he got a promotion and now has to wear a tie at work.

The rest of the episode is sad and upsetting. Four months ago Richard died, Rory came to the funeral then had to go catch a plane, but Lorelai stayed until late - which seemed to please Emily a lot, but then Emily insisted everyone still present shared a memory of Richard, and when it came to her, Lorelai didn’t know what to say. She had a lot to drink and just woke up, and she can’t think of anything nice, so she says the first thing that comes to mind, that when she was a child they were playing but then Richard left, sort of forgetting about her, and another story even more embarrassing of him catching her having sex with a boy while she was supposed to be playing the host part at a party, and it’s a disaster. She tries later to apologise multiple times but Emily is beyond upset. They fight again, and it’s sad because it’s the same old story that Lorelai can do nothing about but Emily can’t accept. Only now Lorelai tells this story to Rory, who says she could have said that Richard loved books… which is sad in itself, if your only good memory of your father is something as impersonal as ‘he loved books’. 

Lorelai then ends up suggesting her mother should go into therapy - really, her house full of her maid’s family is unnerving, she doesn’t understand a word they are saying but she has her house full of Berta’s family and relatives. Anyway, Emily actually finds a therapist and thanks Lorelai for her advice, and Lorelai is so shocked and moved by this that accepts to meet this new therapist, only later realising that she just accepted to have therapy with her mother.

About the rest… Michel got married and is now worried his new partner might want a child. Sookie left work a year ago and Lorelai can’t find a replacement because nobody is good enough. Luke still works at his diner but gives out fake wifi-passwords because he doesn’t want people staying there the whole day (as Taylor angrily explains). Paris is divorcing Doyle and quite bitter about it, no surprise. She now runs a surrogate-business. If someone wants a child she finds a surrogate for them, she has a whole catalogue of women, and it’s all very upsetting. I was quite relieved when Luke stormed out refusing it. A very upsetting thing really.

Taylor wants to improve the town’s health by introducing a sewer system, and he sort of had the best bit of the whole episode, his outburst of him loving this city was quite good.

There was a mysterious man at Richard’s funeral that talked to Lorelai as if they knew each other well but I have no idea who he is.

We see Miss Patty only in passing, and Kirk is his usual bizarre self, only more forced, trying a uber-like service for a little while.

That’s it.

ep 2  Spring

It was full on winter when Emily talked about therapy, and it’s full on spring when they actually go, even their first visit, since Emily says Lorelai is there to meet Claudia. How time flies, right?

We see Mr Kim ( ! ) and Mrs Kim with a few young Korean guys who sing in the most depressing and terrified way. 

Rory keeps seeing Logan whenever she’s around (I looked his name up), even if she has a boyfriend and he has a girlfriend. She also keeps it a secret from her mom, who thinks she stays with female friend Didi when in London. She accepts Logan’s father’s help for Conde Naste. 

Rory keeps going mad about that book with the Naomi crazy woman, while there’s a new internet site that strongly wants her, but she keeps saying no because it’s not big enough :-/

She still has boxes everywhere and has not yet found her lucky dress :-/

Oh, she wrote that article for the New Yorker!

Rory and Paris go to the Chilton school to give embarrassing speeches to the kids. Paris is all angry as usual, she has kids that she leaves to the nanny, and goes frantic when she sees Tristin there. Rory is offered a teacher position, if she ever gets a master. 

The town council was boring and annoying: asking neighbouring towns to lend them some gays for the parade, complaining that only b-level actors are staying at the Dragonfly Inn while the big ones are over in Woodbury… Michel’s rant was depressingly annoying. Lorelai is worried he might want to leave because their Inn is too small and not successful, and Lorelai fires yet another chef.

During therapy, Lorelai and Emily keeps either fighting or staying silent, until one Tuesday Emily doesn’t show up, she quits. And now she finally talks.

Emily wants Luke to start a franchising with the money Richard left him for that purpose, so they spend a Tuesday together and Luke learns that Emily quit therapy, while Lorelai keeps telling him they are both still going.

Rory’s book project with Naomi goes off, the woman’s crazy, and she tries to write an article about queues, (they call them lines in New York?), and Lorelai goes with her, and Rory has a one-night stand with a guy and has a life crisis and tells Lorelai about Logan. Yeah, engaged-Logan.

Lorelai tells her to say yes to the website, but she’s very snob about it. She goes there without anything prepared, expecting them to drool over her, instead she doesn’t get the job and fights with the woman there, and goes back to mummy.

ep3  Summer 

Lorelai and Rory spend some time by the pool, bodyshaming people, and for some unknown reason having two little boys hold their umbrellas to shield them from the sun. 

Rory keeps yelling that she’s not ‘back’, is horrified by the suggestion that she should join a group of people in their thirties who sort of came back and started hang out together, and she wants to be with Logan but now Odette, his fiancee, has moved in with him, so she would have to stay at a hotel - they are very light about this, none of them having the littlest guilt about this, since they both have someone else???

The Hollow Gazette would close because the old editor has left, so Rory volunteers for the job. There’s only two other people working there, an old man and a woman. 

Michel officially quits, and Lorelai asks Luke’s help to cook hamburgers at the Dragonfly, leaving his own diner. Rory calls her mum to help her deliver the gazette, and of course now everyone is complaining because the gazette is different with her.

She keeps at it, but she’s not happy, she feels like a loser and completely lost, and once again it’s Jess that comes to her aid. He speaks to her, and tells her to write about what she knows, which is about her life and Lorelai’s. She starts immediately, and is pretty excited, but when she shares her idea with mum, she gets a no and they fight because Rory is all ‘I have to do this!’, but I get Lorelai’s side, it’s her life, and it’s been difficult. 

Lorelai feels lost too. She has a little fight with Luke because he didn’t tell her about the frandchising hunt but she didn’t tell him about the therapy, so at the end of the episode she says she’ll go away for a few weeks, (to go for a long walk in the wild???) simply because it’s now or never.

ep 4  Fall 

Lorelai did go, to take that excursion like in ‘Wild’, the book not the movie because she’s a purist, but she doesn’t enjoy herself much, and she ends up not doing it at all, but she clears her head anyway when she sees a wonderful landscape and remembers a nice episode with her father and she calls Emily immediately to tell her what it was - personally I found it a bit sad that her best birthday was the day her father met her outside school after a boy left her and was cruel to her and she was crying her heart out, and her dad bought her a pretzel and took her to the movies and back home without a word to her mom.

Anyway, after that she goes home, and Luke is sure she’s going to leave him and starts ranting on how they can overcome anything, how he’s not unhappy like she seems to think he is, and how he’ll never let her go, but she wasn’t going to leave him, she actually tells him that they must get married, and it’s all settled already. 

Rory meets Logan and his three friends, and this whole thing was very bizarre, I thought she was dreaming at first, what was that? The office in the dark, the crow calling to her, it was pretty strange. Anyway, they take her away in a crazy trip somewhere, she sleeps with Logan, he says he’s really going to marry Odette as per dynasty duty, or something, and she leaves him. He wanted to give her a house where she could write but she refuses because she goes to her grandpa study to write.

Rory gives the first three chapters to Lorelai to read, but of course nobody can ever deny anything to Rory so she doesn’t even read them, she just tells her to go on writing it. It will be called ‘Gilmore girls’.

Rory tells Jess about her book coming along while Luke is present, and then Luke asks him about it. It does seem like Jess is not completely over Rory, because who could ever be, right? *rollingeyes

And yet it’s a bit annoying, it’s been more than ten years since the two went out together, so Jess shouldn’t have to say it, that he’s over it, true or not. And if he isn't, he could always try again, right? Instead of watching her from afar, she's available after all.

Rory meets Dean while shopping and they talk a bit, just a nostalgic scene, they also show Sookie back at the Inn to present lots of wedding cakes for Lorelai, there’s even a shot with Richard at his desk when Rory goes to his study to write. To close the nostalgic trip showing everyone. Personally, I always liked Dean much more than Jess the rebel or Logan the spoiled brat.

They hadn’t talked about Paul at all, then Rory receives a text and it’s him breaking up with her because they never see each other. Usually it would be a terrible thing to break up with a text, but in this case it was more than she deserved, she already acted like she didn’t have a boyfriend, completely forgetting his existence, but of course the only thing Lorelai tells her perfect daughter is that he wasn’t the right one. As if it was his fault…

Rory even goes to meet Christopher, who now has a job and lots of money, and asks him how he felt, about her growing up with only her mother, and apparently it was how it had to be, and the last image is of Rory telling her mother that she’s pregnant… the end. Will she tell Logan? Or will she say nothing, knowing that he has his life planned without her?Will we ever know? Not sure I care, honestly. 

ITA Una mamma per amica: di nuovo insieme