Enola Holmes - 2020

I liked it, it was nice and of course I love the feminist theme. The actors were all good, all of them, even the young ones, they were all good. Even Miss Hamilton, I mean, it’s a character I feel hard against but the actress is very good so I didn’t miss a moment of her scenes, luckily they weren’t drag out too long. 

As usual, I’d like it if at least once they made a movie where the hero wins because he’s smarter and more skilled, instead of just lucky, but I’m still waiting for that to happen. In real life, when the bad guy has the advantage of surprise and also a loaded gun in his hands, things would not be so easy, but in movies that always happens, and the bad guys always have bad aim or bad luck or both. 

Regarding Enola’s deductions, yes, they are often almost too much, and it would certainly be if not for her name. These are the Holmes we’re talking about, so if one watches their stories one must accept that they function like that. Otherwise don’t watch it.

Details: 

First, she introduces herself looking right into the camera. Both her brothers left home when she was very young, and she was raised by her mother alone. They were extremely close, and her mom was rather unconventional. They played tennis inside the house, no matter if they broke a few things here and there, they did reading, chess playing, fighting, always together. 

Then Enola turned sixteen, and soon her mother left. Without a word, she just wasn’t there anymore. 

At this point the Holmes brothers come back to look into it, and since Sherlock’s a genius she really hopes he’ll sort it out in no time, but all he can deduce is that she left on her own, nobody forced her, and that she’s not coming back.

Mycroft is very unpleasant since the first look we get of him, and he only gets worse; this is probably the most unpleasant Mycroft I’ve ever seen. He’s rude to Enola because she’s a bit of a wild thing, and he is angry that their mother kept asking for money, supposedly for house expenses and Enola’s education, but it turns out that they never had much servants (there’s only one woman who brings them tea) and Enola studied at home, alone with her mother and their library. Including books on women and feminism, which Mycroft take as an indication she was mad. Not a feminist that one.

Mycroft also thinks that Enola is too wild, and that she needs to be tamed (broken, he says) in order to become an elegant young lady who can fit into society and become a good wife and mother… you know how it is. He plans to send her off to a finishing school under headmistress Miss Hamilton, but she doesn’t want to. She finds clues left by her mom, very critic that one, but these people are Holmes so… anyway, Enola finds some money and decides to escape, run away to find her own future like her mom always wanted her to do.

She dresses as a boy using Sherlock’s old clothes and plans to go to London on a train.

This is where things start getting complicated. She gets into a compartment where a fugitive marquess is hiding in, and as far as she’d like to listen to her mother’s advice and leave him behind in order to value her safety, she can’t do that and she saves him from a man trying to kill him, but jumping off the train with him. Together they make it to London, but then she insists on going their own way. Luckily she got him to cut those hair he had at the beginning, he was a bit ridiculous, he looks much better later. Of course, it is quite stylish, and she did it using a knife…it’s always like this in movies, incredible :-p

In order to disguise herself now, she plans to act like an elegant young lady, therefore she buys a dress and a corset and rents a room. She starts looking for her mother, She pays a few papers to write her incripted message then she goes to meet a woman that uses to correspond with her mom. But mom doesn’t want to be found, she has work to do, she is fighting for ladies rights, votes to all people. Enola finds a place full with gunpowder and stuff, and she understands her brothers were right on something at least: mom is dangerous and she does have a plan, and is not coming back.

The bad man finds her here, almost drowns her because now she saw his face clearly even if she doesn’t know where the marquess is, and they fight, and after he tries to stab her (saved by the corset), she causes an explosion to escape.

While the amount of gunpowder there I expected a chain of explosion quite serious, but apparently that’s not the case… nothing is told on the matter though.

She realises now that the marquess is in serious danger, so she wants to help him. She dresses as a widow to meet his family and learn more, and says that she’s Sherlock’s assistant, but Lestrade is there and denies that, and they refuse to talk to her - his mother and her brother, that is. His grandmother finds her again later in the woods looking into the kid’s stuff. He appears to be ore intelligent that she gave him credit for.

Sherlock meets Edith as well, to ask about his mother, and gets a lecture on how he doesn’t know what it is to be without power, and how he is not interested in politics because he has no interest in changing a world that suits him so well. How the new riform bill is important.

Enola looks for him, to warn him, tells him they must work to find out more about it. It is incredible that after the man on the train tried to kill him, he’s still reluctant to believe that someone wants to kill him…  she takes him to her room, but the woman she paid for the dress and the room sold her out for the reward and now Lestrade is on her. She holds him off the time necessary to let the boy escape, but then Lestrade catches her and delivers her to Mycroft who sends her right off to the dreadful finishing school.

She receives a visit from Sherlock, who honestly acts horribly. He had traced her own steps, he found the gunpowder and the bombs, which means despite everything it didn’t blow up. Nice words on how he cares for her, how their mother thought she was extraordinary, and mostly how the choice is always hers, how society can’t control her… yeah yeah, very nice, and yet he leaves her there. She got lucky she had a bit of money and the marquess comes to help her, and she has luck on her side, otherwise what could she possibly do? A regular girl, what could have done here? How to make her own choice and not let society control her when she was locked in a dreadful school, locked into her own room, punished if she didn’t conform, what could she have done alone? He just left her!!!

Anyway, she thinks a lot and comes to the conclusion that the family wants the marquess dead because he’s a lord, and he has a right to vote on the new riform bill, where every single vote counts. So after he helps her break out, they go to his house to find it empty, save for the murderer with a rifle.

He shoots at them many times, and again the heroes get away because of luck more than skill, since he doesn’t manage to hit any of them until they are ready.

She insists on the same old move while fighting with him, the same one she never managed before, but now when it counts she does it right and he falls smashing his head in a bad way, and dies shortly after. It turns out he wasn’t his uncle but his grandmother, an old lady who didn’t want England to change one bit, and so she shoots him, but he had time to prepare, meaning he pulled a McFly on the woman and hid a plate under his shirt before he was shot, hence his survival.

Sherlock goes to Lestrade with the solution to the marquess case, only to learn that she got there first. He goes out looking rather proud, the best scene of his in the whole movie.

The riform bill is passed, by one vote. His vote was decisive.

Finally Enola receives a visitor, her mom is in her room, and they finally meet again and hug a lot.

She couldn’t say where she was going because it wasn’t safe, and she left for her because ‘she couldn’t bare to have this world be her future, so she had to fight’, and ‘you have to make some noise if you want to be heard’. She tells Enola that she’s the one who actually helped change the world, with the marquess. 

They separate again, and she tells us now that she has found her own path, she lives alone but is not lonely, and she is ‘a detective, a decipherer, and a finder of lost souls’. 

‘Her life is her own and her future is up to her’.

Enola- Milly Bobby Brown

Sherlock- Henry Cavill

Eudoria (mom)- Helena Bonham Carter

The Killer (He has a name but personally I never caught it in the movie)- Burn Gorman

Miss Harrison- Fiona Shaw

Pride & prejudice - 2005

I didn’t like it from the start, honestly, because we know Mrs Bennet was eager at the news that a Mr Bingley had taken a house in town and was wealthy, but that all the girls started giggling was annoying. Lydia and Kitty, ok, but all of them? 

At the ball, then, the sea of people parted and the music stopped when the party of three arrived - Bingley, his sister, and Darcy. As if they were royalty. And they walked on as if they were too.

Three sisters are immediately introduced, and Bingley dances with Jane. Hidden, Lizzie hears Darcy say that she’s not handsome enough to tempt him. Good, at this point, since so far he looked like he had a stick up… well, he didn’t look serious and uptight, he looked disgusted to be there.

Lydia and Kitty of course are excited with the news that the regiment will stop there for a while.

Jane is invited by the Bingley sister, and her mom makes her go on horseback so that after the rain she’ll have to stay there. After a letter saying that she’s ill, Lizzie goes to visit her. There is the famous ‘walk around the room’, then the mom arrives with three other daughters.

Mr Collins pays them a visit, he’s the one that will inherit everything once Mr Bennet dies.

He asks for Jane, but her mother says she’ll soon be engaged and suggests Lizzie, and he agrees.

Lydia, with Kitty, Jane and Lizzie meet Mr Wickam who buys the young girl a ribbon and she keeps giggling. Lizzie talks to him and he says that he grew up with Darcy like a brother, but when Darcy’s father died and left something to Wickham, Darcy was so jealous of him that did not respect his father’s wishes and gave it to someone else. Jane can’t believe it, but Lizzie does.

At the ball thrown by Bingley, Lizzie looks for Wickam but instead finds Collins who wants to dance.After that she tries to avoid him. She has one dance with Darcy, but they butt heads regarding Wickam. Charlotte tells her that Jane should show her love more, because to those who don’t know her it looks like she’s not at all enchanted.

Collins proposes to Lizzie in the morning. Since Lady Catherine told him he should get a wife, he thought that since he’s to inherit everything, marrying one of the Bennet sisters would put things right for everyone. She refuses him and Lydia and Kitty laugh themselves off.

Meanwhile Jane receives a letter, Bingley leaves the house, basically leaving her for good, but Lizzie insists he loves her and wants her to go to London to some relatives, and sends her off.

Charlotte tells her she’s now engaged to Collins and Lizzie hastily judges her (even though Charlotte is right, unmarried at 27 with no money…)

Once Charlotte is married, Lizzie pays her a visit and they are invited by Lady Catherine with her daughter and Darcy is there too. Lady Catherine openly disapproves of Lizzie and forces her to play the piano. Next scene we know, he breaks into her room at Charlotte’s house but says nothing at all and runs away. She learns that it was Darcy who separated Bingley and Jane and she runs under the rain, only to meet Darcy himself, and what do you know, it’s the proposal scene, right there under the rain, when Darcy proposes in his famous ‘charming’ way. 

She of course rejects him, strongly, and it’s her best scene in the whole movie, where her passion shows, and her aggression and accusation is for once justified.

He comes later to give her a letter (I say, it was improper apparently for Collins to go and introduce himself at the ball, but it is ok for him to enter Collins house unseen and uninvited and leave her a letter that late…)

He writes the true story, of how his father left Wickam a living, but not wanting to settle there he asked for money instead, and then lost it all gambling. He asked for more but Darcy refused, so he professed his love for Darcy’s sister, but left her when Darcy made clear he would not touch a penny of her inheritance, leaving her heartbroken at 15 years old only.

Jane is back from London, and Lizzie is back as well, and they learn that Lydia has been invited to go with a Colonel for a while. Lizzie tries to convince her father to not let her go, but he does to have some peace. Lizzie visits Pemberley with an unspecified couple (probably because we are supposed to know them? Having read the book and all? But shouldn’t they say it anyway, to make it clear in case someone hasn’t read it, or like me doesn’t remember? Some kind of relatives I think, aunt and uncle I think, the agreeable relatives.)

Instead of paintings there are statues. Lizzie wanders around and when she hears music she sees Darcy with his sister and runs away. He goes after her but they exchange very few words. Later he speaks with her aunt and invites them all to dine with him to meet Georgiana, his sister, who is rather adorable. Later she gets a letter from Jane and after reading it she’s in tears, and tells them that Lydia ran away with Wickam. I don’t like it how she says it all looking straight at him. I know that she thinks things like he will not want to have anything to do with her now that her family is disgraced, and stuff like that, but her face says otherwise, she looks accusing, as she almost always does.

Her uncle writes that they found Wickam and he agreed to marry her for a minimum sum a year, to which of course her father agrees, well knowing that much more must have been paid to him already to accept that.

The stupid mother, who was crying her eyes out a moment before, is suddenly all happy that Lydia will be married. (Here both women are right, the mother in saying that she’ll understand when she’ll have five daughters and Lizzie thinking that she doesn’t know what Wickam is like, because she hasn’t told anybody and really the woman has no idea).

Wickam and Lydia come back, and Lydia is the smug one she should be by book-rights. Lydia lets it slip that it was Darcy who found them and paid for the wedding. She’s like 15, isn’t she? 

A man in the street tells Mrs Bennet that Bingley is returning, and he appears at their house with Darcy, for a rather awkward visit when they say nothing of consequence at all and go out, but to be fair nobody invited them to sit anywhere. Bingley comes back after a few minutes speaking with Darcy, and asks to speak to Jane alone, and he finally proposes to her, and she adorably accepts.

Lady Catherine barges into their house quite late, they are all in their nightgowns, and she insists she stays away from Darcy. She says he is engaged from birth to her daughter, and yet she asks Lizzie if she is engaged to him, and then asks her to promise she never will be, and of course she refuses and asks her to leave her house. She can’t sleep, now suffering for her lost chance with him; at dawn she walks out alone, and there he is, walking towards her (quite a long walk, we have to witness it all). The words we know, he says his feelings have not changed, then goes on to tell her how he loves her, and she kisses his hands, and next scene he’s talking to her father who then asks her what she wants, because he still thinks she hates him, but she says she loves him, she tells him what he’s done, and that they all misjudged him, and that the two of them are very similar, and he’s happy that she’s happy.

And that’s it, the last scene is the man laughing, we don’t see anything else.

Elizabeth- Keira Knightley

Mary- Talulah Riley

Jane- Rosamund Pike

Lydia- Jena Malone

Kitty- Carey Mulligan

Mr Bennet- Donald Sutherland

Mrs Bennet- Brenda Blethyn

Charalotte- Claudie Blakley

Bingley- Simon Woods

Caroline- Kelly Reilly

Darcy- Matthew MacFadyen

Wickam- Rupert Friend

Collins- Tom Hollander

Lady Catherine- Judi Dench

Mrs Gardiner- Penelope Wilton

Georgiana- Tamzin Merchant

ITA orgoglio e pregiudizio

A babysitter's guide to monster hunting - 2020

It was... a nice movie. For kids, yes, but not necessarily only for them. Almost all the characters are kids though, so it's that kind of thing. Well done though. The Grand Guignol was entertaining, I liked him a lot, and the actors were good. Maybe Liz seemed a bit forced, like she tried too much to play the tough girl card, but maybe it's not bad acting, maybe it's the character that tries too much, so it's ok, I accept that. 

All in all a nice, well done family movie. I can't really say if I would have found it scary at all as a little child, but certainly not too much. I don't think it is even supposed to be scary, not when the bad guy is so fascinating and brings stuff toys and hot milk to try get the boy to fall asleep. 

Details:

Kelly is beautiful and super smart (despite her horrible taste in trousers), but she made the mistake of telling that she was attacked by a monster when she was five, so now at her school they all mock her calling her ‘monster girl’.

A senior is throwing a big Halloween party and she wanted to go but her mom volunteered her to babysit her boss’s son, Jacob.

The boy is really scared of his nightmares, but she convinces him to go to sleep.

His fears come true when a man looking a lot like Beetlejuice, like a lot, but more elegant in his moves, a bit as if dancing, tells the child that all his nightmares will come true or something. When Kelly checks on him, she finds three little monsters are kidnapping the child. The police don’t believe her of course, but a girl arrives on a motorbike, says she’s a babysitter and has a baby strapped to her back. She has a book from generations of babysitters: ‘a babysitter's guide to monster hunting’, and helps her get the child back. At first Kelly needs help herself, though.

They capture a todie, drop off the baby to her mom, then go to the ‘International Order of Babysitters’ , a super secret organisation all other the world.

The bad man wants the boy to sleep at his place so that all his nightmares will become real and be unleashed on the world. This boy has the gift of dreams, like Kelly, which is why he came for her too, but her mom fought him. Kelly now remembers that song, the lullaby he uses to put kids to sleep, and they discover that he’s the Grand Guignol, the Stealer of Dreams, the Bringer of Nightmares. 

All the kids there have been attacked by some monster or another, and they now want to stop them from doing it to other kids.

They release the captured toadie after putting a tracker on it, but it finds it and leads them astray after talking to the GG. It leads them to her school party, where Liz tells her Monster Girl is a cool nickname. Liz knows it’s a trap when they’re cornered by a Shadow Monster.

GG meanwhile tries everything to make the boy go to sleep. It's funny really.

Liz and Kelly meet GG while trying to get the Cat Lady’s amulet, a pendant that will finally put the boy to sleep, but he gets it and takes Liz with him.

Kelly escapes the cats and tries to find GG with the info from the Order. She finds him and fights him with Liz and another girl come to bring the Angel Fire or something, and Kelly defeats him.

Then they get the child free and not scared anymore, so the nightmares go away.

They get home safe and he goes to sleep after she promises she’ll babysit him again. His mom runs home after she felt something, a sixth sense maybe when he called out to her while having those nightmares, and since Kelly didn’t reply to her messages she rushed home, but now sees him sleeping like an angel and calms down.

Liz tells her she might get accepted as babysitter in training and gives her the guide to study.

She reads all about the GG’s sister, the spider queen.

Maybe for the next movie where they'll find Liz's brother, taken when they were little? We'll see.

ITA guida per babysitter a caccia di mostri

Kelly- Tamara Smart

Liz- Oona Laurence

Grand Guignol- Tom Felton

Jacob’s mother- Tamsen McDonough