Ma - 2019

 This was not bad but also… not what I expected. It was more a psychological drama than a horror movie. There are a couple of horror scenes, nothing too much, and a little bit of thriller, just a little bit. The rest was character study, childhood trauma, and idiot teenage behaviour.

It’s so sad that this world keeps teaching kids that to be “an adult” they need to drink alcohol and have sex. Why all this rush to be adults, kids? This is your only chance to be a kid!

So, this film here is the story of a woman who could never forget the horrible humiliation of her high school, when Ben invited her to the janitor’s closet  and Mercedes told her how to suck him, and so she did it, in the dark, without even saying much at all I guess, or she would have noticed the voice ,because when it was over and they got out, she found out it was another boy in there with her, while Ben was now outside with the whole school laughing at her. Horrible, really. They were all cruel, but girl… I know very well everyone wants to fit in and have friends, but is it really worth it if you have to change yourself, or do whatever they tell you? Is that friendship? No. Often teenagers kid themselves into saying that they’re doing what they want, trying out new things… but if you never had any interest in drinking or smoking and only start  doing it because they convince you, isn’t that changing who you are to please others? 

Open your eyes, because adults spent their lives regretting that they’re not kids anymore, when yes they had someone telling them when to be home and had homework to do and could not drive (well, here they can’t, in the US they can), but they also had no responsibilities, had someone else take care of their laundry, cook their meals and bring money home… 

Back to the plot, Erica comes back to her hometown after her divorce with a 16 year old daughter, Maggie. At school she’s approached by Haley and invited in her group, so Maggie finds herself outside a liquor store asking people if they’ll go in and buy alcohol for them. She doesn’t drink or smoke, but she wants to be friends with them. Of course everybodys says no, until she asks Sue Ann. 

Sue Ann buys them what they want and then secretly sends the police after them - and they never suspect her… who else could know who they were and where they were?

So the next time sh buys alcohol for them, she tells them to hang out in her basement, so sh’ll check that they’re ok… and so they start hanging out there, going to her house for parties, to drink and smoke, and they call it fun.

When Maggie and Haley sneak upstairs to use her bathroom, Sue Ann - they call her Ma, one of them did it once and they kept doing it, for some reason… - she scares Maggie, who doesn’t want to go there anymore.

Still, she does and drinks something strange… she wakes up at home without her earrings. Now she really doesn’t want to hang out with Ma anymore, but Ma sends her and the others tons of messages, and then tells them that she has cancer and needs some friends… Andy’s mom died of cancer, and she apeals to their sympathy. Haley thinks Ma is stealing stuff from them because of the bracelet she was wearing, and Haley herself doesn’t have her grandma’s ring anymore. So Haley and Maggie sneak into the house to search, and only find Genie, a girl Maggie saw in school in a wheelchair, but now she’s standing. Ma is her mother, and is now keeping her home, giving her who knows what medicine saying that she’s sick; when Ma comes back, Genie urges tehm to get out.

They saw many pictures of them in Ma’s room, attached to the pictures of their parents. Maggie finds Ma at her own home talking to Erica about their dog - Sue Ann works at a dog clinic - and when she finds the dog bleeding she tells her mom not to call Sue Ann and explains what happened. Erica of course is very angry.

Maggie owuld be ok with her mom’s order to never go there again, but Ma shows her that Andy - who is now Maggie’s boyfriend - is there with lots of other kids, drinking and dancing, so Maggie sneaks out, takes her mom’s car and goes there to confront him. Ma locks them in and chains them with collars.

Maggie is the only one not drugged, so she tried to get out from upstairs… the door wasn’t locked so she sneaked upstairs looking for Genie and instead she found Ben’s body on a bed, looking all bleed out, and then Ma finds her. 

Ma also killed Mercedes, ran her over, but nobody seems to have noticed yet…

At 7am Erica wakes up and when she realises that Maggie is not home she freaks out calls Stu her friend from work, and I guess also the police. All the kids in the basement are chained by the collar - how come there’s so few of them? There was a big party… she let everybody else go and kept only the kids she wanted? I guess so, they’re all related to those that more wronged her back then.

Ma uses her hot iron on a boy’s belly, he must be really out on drugs nnot to feel it. Then Ma sews Haley’s lips together, after hitting Ashley in the head with her iron, because the girl screamed and tried to run away. She paints Darrel’s face white, and then Andy wakes up and tries to play her… when she frees him from the chain and hugs him, he tells her he loves her and kisses her, but she calls him a liar and stabs him. 

A cop knocks at her door. He hears some noise made by Maggie but sees Genie in the wheelchair and is about to go away but then he hears Maggie screaming, so Ma shoots him dead.

Ma blames Genie for it, and forces her to help her drag the body inside. Ma goes back downstairs, takes some pictures with them, then hangs Maggie who can’t breathe. Genie screams to get her upstairs and then hits her and knocks her down, accidentally causing a fire - she knocked a candle.

Genie runs to free them from the chain, and they scream and bang on the basement door. Stu opens it and they all go out, but Ma got Genie. 

Genie calls for help but Erica keeps Maggie back. Sue Ann calls her weak, Erica apologises for what happened back then, for not stopping it.

Genie cries for Maggie’s help, so she grabs a knife and runs to stab Ma, freeing her. The house is burning, they all get out but not Ma, she goes upstairs to lie next to Ben on the bed, and stays there.

We see the firefighters are on their way, but the house is really burning, and not likely she’ll make it out alive.

That’s the end.

I think it was a mistake saying it’s a horror movie, because it’s not… well, not what I think of horror movies. It’s a psychological trauma film. But I guess it has to be labelled a horror movie since there’s fear and torture and deaths…

Sue Ann is Octavia Spencer

Maggie is Diana Silvers

Dr Brown is Allison Janney

Ben is Luke Evans

Mercedes is Missi Pyle

Stu is Dominic Burgess

Young Mercedes is Nicole Carpenter

 

Money monster - 2016

 It’s a bitter movie, of course, what else could it be when there’s money, greed and poverty involved?

Lee Gates, host of tv show Money Monster, talks about money and investments and stuff. Apparently an investment app had a glitch and many people lost money. 

It’s a live show, and who they thought was a delivery guy enters th stage with a gun pointed at Lee and has him wear a bomb jacket. He yells that it’s all rigged to steal people’s money, he blames Lee because he said the Ibis investment was the safest, really a safe bet, and the guy lost 60.000$, a lot for him, everything.

Globally, he says that the glitch, whatever it means, cost 800 millions.

Diane Lester should have appeared on the show, but when she heard that the guy was complaining about Ibis, she ran. She’s with Ibis too, but the boss Walt is flying somewhere.

The poor guy is Kyle (Lee’s face :lol: he knew the name already because Patti had already told him since the directs the show from  inside the studio, but he said “you don’t have to tell me your real nname, just how I can call you” and the guy: “call me Kyle” …)

Lee sends Ron there and Diana talks to Kyle. Money’s not enough now, he wants answers, an explanation, but she doesn’t know what caused the glitch. They’re all angry and not satisfied by her answers, she’s just a CCO or something  like that, like a pr person, but now she goes to find the answers.

Lee and Patti know they’re watched everywhere now, millions of people, so he tells everyone to buy Ibis so that its value will rise.

But he said “what’s my life worth?” because by doing it, they’d save him, and the price goes down…

The police brings Kyle’s pregnant girlfriend to talk to him, she should calm him down, but instead Moll starts swearing and yelling and insulting him, because he lost all their money, because he can’t use a screwdriver at home and now he built a bomb…

Diane finds the Korean guy who designed the program, which is all Maths, and he says that “it means there is no way that this algorithm could lose 800 millions in one afternoon, it is literally a mathematical impossibility”.

Whatever happened, it was human. Of course.

Walt the Ibis boss, has landed, and he lied to Diane about where he was. Walt tells her he’ll have to make a statement, and Diane calls Patti, even lets her know he was not in Geneva but in South Africa.

Whe they realize the police wants to shoot Lee to deactivate the bomb (wow) she tells Lee to move, and then he takes Kyle and a cameraman and tells him they’re going to get answers. While they’re walking on the street, Kyle reveals that it’s just clay, not a bomb, he wanted attention, not to kill everyone.

Yes he had a real gun, but he shot in the air and that’s it.

Well, he injures poor Ron working for them, but he didn’t want to.

Kyle and Lee get to talk to Walt, reveal the games he was playing, trying to corrupt a good man in South Africa who refused, thus making him lose money. Somehow.

Anyway, Kyle has him admit that it was  wrong thing to do, and then he takes his finger off the detonator, and the police shoot him. He knew it could happen, and he died.

Lenny the cameraman is interviewd like a hero, Patti and Lee are alive and still working together, and there will be “an investigation” on Ibis… and we know how those things usually go, right?

Rich people never really lose.

Lee Gates is George Clooney

Patty Fenn is Julia Roberts

Kyle Budwell is Jack O’Connell

Walt Camby is Dominic West

Diane Lester is Caitriona Balfe

Captain Powell is Giancarlo Esposito

Lenny is Lenny Venito

Molly is Emily Meade

ITA L’altra faccia del denaro

John Wick chapter 4 - 2023

I’ve seen and liked all the Wick movies, although the first was my fav, of course. This one wants to leave us with a bang, and the ending left me rather bitter for a moment… until I thought of John Wick and then I could see that this was the only freedom he could get, the only way he can be free and at peace. And he won. Which matters.

John wants his ring, his freedom. The Marquis has received by the 12 members of the Table full power to close Winston’s hotel. Meaning, the hotel is evacuated, then blown up. The Marquis says Winston has failed so he’s now excommunicated. And he kills his concierge Charon right in front of him. 

All this after John went to kill the Elder. Now John goes to the Osaka Continental because the Director is a friend. Koji and his daugter Akira run it. He puts friendship and his rules above the Table, and his hotel is excommunicated as well. He fights them, but a lot more of them arrive. All the hotel staff joins the fight, including Akira and John. They’re looking for him.

There’s also Caine, a blind assassin who tried to refuse but he has a daughter, Mia, so e accepts to protect her. He was friends with John once, but now they have to fight.

John escapes but Caine kills Koji. Now Mr Nobody and his dog are hired as well to kill John. Winston tells John about the Marquis and John wants to kill him,  but Winston says the right way is to challenge him officially and force him to free him. To be able to challenge him, he needs to be a part of a family again. Pyotr waas killed too because of what John did, so now John has to kill the man that killed Pyotr first. This big man is very hard to kill but once it’s done he’s again part of his Belarus family. 

As his second, Winston delivers the challenge to the Marquis. John and the Marquis meet to talk about it, about the rules. At dawn, with duel guns, to the death.

The Marquis names Caine to fight for him, threatening his daughter quite clearly. He also raises the reward for John’shead to 26 millions, if they kill him before dawn.

So, before dawn, he gets run over something like 4 times, he crashes his car, he’s hit and he jumps off a window, he’s shot at…  and of course he kills quite a lot of them. 

Mr Nobody raises his price to 40 millions, and so does the reward. 

Whey they get inside a building it starts looking like a videogame, clear one room then the next… and I was waiting for one scene and I got it. He fought Mr Nobody and was about to kill him but he saw that the Marquis’ man was about to kill the dog (Nobody’s dog), so instead John shot the man to save the dog and went away. Leaving Mr Nobody there with wide eyes.

The last two minutes, Caine helps him, and Mr Nobody too, briefly. At dawn, all three are there. John and Caine shoot twice, injuring each other, then the third shot. Caine shoots, John doesn’t, but he falls down. Badly hurt but alive, so the Marquis wants to finish him off. John has yet to shoot though, so he shoots the Marquis in the head. The Member of the Table that is present states that John is now free, that both Caine and his daughter are free, and Winston is good again and will have his hotel back.

John tellls Caine “you owe me one” and then he asks Winston “will  you take me home?”.

He’s really too badly hurt this time. After a few steps, he stops, sits, thinks of his wife and falls down.

The next scene, Winston is in front of his grave, the Bowery King is there with his dog (John’s dog). 

“Never thtought I’d see the day” he says.

John is buried next to his wife, with the words “loving husband” that he himself had chosen and told them both so.

John Wick is Keanu Reeves

the Bowerey King is Laurence Fishburne

Charon is Lance Reddick

Winston is Ian McShane

The Marquis is Bill Skarsgard

Caine is Donnie Yen

After the credits, Caine is finally going to his daughter, who he’s now finally free to approach, but Akira is walking towards him to kill him, since John didn’t. 

We don’t know how it goes… (but seeing things like this, she’ll kill him and walk away)

It also says: “in memory of Lance Reddick

The Thursday murder club - 2025

I liked this a lot, even if it was rather sad at times. The characters were all interesting, as was the story. The ending felt rather abrupt, a bit disconnected, rushed, but all in all it was a good film, and I’d watch more if they have the same cast. Very British. I liked it.

I must say that the solutions were a bit rushed, not really satisfying, but I liked that is starts with one but there are actually four murders with four different culprits.

I also didn’t appreciate Joyce’s vehement and rather rude phone call to her daughter to enlist her help. 

Basically they meet in the ‘puzzle room’ to work on cold cases… for fun, Id say, since they’re all old and retired. Elizabeth starts mysterious but it’s clear she worked in the spy business, and it turns out she was MI6. Ron was a Union leader, Ibrahim was a psychiatrist, and they live in this rich village for retired rich people. The three of them try to solve a cold case a week. They start on the case of poor Angela who was killed in the 70s, when cop Penny was young. All the male cops believed Angela’s boyfriend but Penny didn’t, and yet she always refused to work on that case while she was part of the club. She isn’t anymore because she’s in a coma.

They ask Joyce’s help, because she was once a nurse and can therefore provide medical knowledge.

This case will be sort of put on hold, though, because other two murders happen.

Short version: Ian and Tony owns the property. Ian now wants to send them all away and make apartments for rich people to make money. Tony doesn’t agree because his aunt resides there too.

Tonny is found dead in his own home, Joyce is thrilled to have a new case, to be actually involved in an ongoing investigation, so they manage to have their friend Donna, a cop they recently met, very much bored here because she used to work in London but here they have her fetch their coffee and nothing more. Elizabeth plots with her friends to have her working the case. 

At first the obvious suspect is Ian, because without Tony he could push forward his project, but Ron’s son is also a suspect for a little while. Ex boxer and now tv celebrity, Jason figured in a pictured with the victim but he has an alibi, he was with Ian’s wife and has pictures on his phone to prove it.

When Ian comes to confront the residents’ protest, he’s killed with an injection. 

Elizabeth talks to Bogdan, a man who would do almost anything to be able to send money to his old mother in Poland, and they’re quite friendly.

They also find out that Bobby Tanner, the third owner of the property and famous criminal, is still alive.

Bogdan calls Elizabeth when he finds a body on a grave… it clearly shouldn’t have been there, and it will be IDed as Angela’s boyfriend. 

Elizabeth and Donna find out that Tony and Bobby were together in their crimes: human trafficking, they bring immigrants in but then they take their passport away to own them in their power. 

It’s now clear that Bogdan killed Tony, and the first to know this is Stephen, Elizabeth’s husband who is slowly losing his mind, but still has good days, or good moments, and while alone with Bogdan he reveals that he knows, and Bogdan confesses that he did it, but accidentally, he never wanted to kill anyone, he only wanted to go back home because his mother is ill. 

Elizabeth runs home with her heart in her throat, terrified that Bogdan might kill Stephen too, but no, Bogdan didn’t put anything in his glass (or cup, whatever). He is arrested because Stephen always records everything, hehas a recorder with him and she knows it but Bogdan didn’t.

And now, Elizabeth walks into Penny’s room to talk to her husband because now she knows: Penny knew that Angela had been killed by her boyfriend, and also knew that he would get away with it, so she killed him. Her husband can’t do anything for her now that she’s in a coma, but he could try to protect her, so he wanted to stop Ian because Ian wanted to destroy the graveyard (there’s got to be a better word but I can’t think of what it is now) and the body would have come up. He didn’t know that Ian had told Bogdan to start working by himself while he kept the residents occupied in their protest, so that he could later say that the project had indeed started.

Now the poor man feels very down because he feels he failed at protect her, and it is clear that there’s only one remaining way to protect Penny. Elizabeth undestands but leaves, allowing him to inject both Penny and himself with the same thing he used on Ian.

The film ends wih the three friendds officially welcoming Joyce into their club by giving her the TMC necklace that used to be Penny’s. Then they suggests to Joyce’s daughter that she might buy the property so that nobody will be able to send them away, ever.

Helen Mirren is Elizabeth

Pierce Brosnan is Ron

Ben Kingsley is Ibrahim

Celia Imre is Joyce

David Tennant is Ian

Jonathan Pryce is Stephen

Richard E. Grant is Bobby Tanner

Naomi Ackie is Donna

ITA il club dei delitti del giovedì

Spectral - 2016

A sort of soldiers vs bad ghosts movie, made like a war movie,, and with a scientific explanation for everything happening and likewise scientific method to deal with it.

Not a bad film, but I didn’t care much for the finale. As it often happens with this kind of movies, the ending was a bit disappointing. 

I also didn’t much care for the female lead character, well, she was the only female unless you count the young girl they meet. It strongly feels like she’s in the movie only because they needed their female quota and nothing else, she doesn’t do anything really, what she says could be said by anyone… and of course she gets stuck with them even if she’s not a field agent or whatever, so she’s always there… well, she’s useful because she seems to be the only one who can understand the local language, there’s that at least.

There’s also the fact that it’s so simple for them to make whatever they need on the spot, like McGiver or the A-Team, but on a much bigger scale.  It really felt like too much.

So, there’s soldiers in some European Country, I think Moldova or Chech Republic or something (did they say it clearly? I don’t remember it), and some of them start dying in a weird way, and their special high-tech glasses show what appears to be ghost-like entities that attack the soldiers living him dead instantly, half frozen and half melted like with acid, or something like that.

The engineer who designed the glasses is Mark, and he’s called on the field to explain what it is. He can only see that they have human-like shapes, but to know more he has to do more research, mounting a camera on a tank - or whatever it was - and studying them more.

What the girl Fran says appears immediately to be absurd. Not sure on what ground she’s there, but anyway, she says the enemy is wearing some high-tech camouflage armory and she wants to retrieve one of those, which is nonesense if the men have died as they say they did.

Mark goes with a team. Only the soldiers go actually out, Mark stays in the car/tank/what-was-it as does Fran and a few others. Almost all the soldiers are killed by the almost-ghosts while Fran insists they should retrieve the new technology… one man survived the almost-ghosts the first time by hiding under a bathtub, but they take him away and he won’t survive the next attack.

The soldiers insist on shooting at those entities, but it’s clear it’s not doing anything, and so most of the soldiers die, and the remaining ones run to hide in a factory where they find two refugees, two children who are still alive because their father warded the place against the almost-ghosts using iron that they can’t trespass. 

They make huge bullets/bombs filled with iron to stop the almost-ghosts, and together they all walk out to reach a point where they might be rescued, but the base where they come from has been compromised so they go to another place, a safe-bunker or something, and join other soldiers and survivors there.

Some of their group die before getting there, included one of the two children, the young boy.

Mark had already modified his big high-tech camera so that everyone could see these entities without wearing glasses, so they could fight back, and then he talks to the young girl and asks her about his father, who had to know something if he knew about iron stopping them.

He figures out the science behind these things, something about the Bose-Einstein theory, so they all go towards the power plant that Mark is sure is at the head of everything that is happening. 

Now it’s the A-Team moment: somehow they have everything they need, how fortunate, and Mark is able to make them all big weapons designed against these spectrals. Really, in no time at all he has everything ready, just like that. 

They move and when they get to the power plant, there’s many many more spectrals there, and while the soldiers try to stop them, Mark and Fran go inside to look around and find out what happened.

They do find it, the big lab where scientists were creating these spectrals. They were studying some people (a lot of people) making perfect replicas of these people only in that ‘spectral substance’ , and they also linked these spectral so some part of those people… I mean, it ought to be the brain, but when Mark sconnects the machine, itjust goes poof, like a colored dust… 

Mark and Fran see that there are many more spectrals there that never got loose (they shouldn’t have been out and about, they were because some ‘cells’ were broken) and there is the very real threat that they might be soon, so they study a way to stop it, and quite conveniently Fran tells him what he needs to do, quite easily… 

Anyway, as soon as Mark manages to switch them all off, they all stop immediately, it’s over. Fran thinks for a moment that it might be interesting to study all that, but when Mark sees what remained of those people he had no doubt and proceeded to stop those machines right away - well, we see only a few, but we can guess that he moved along and deactivated every single one. Although there’s little doubt that they’ll want to study it all, but not Mark, he’s done with it all.

As soon as possible, he takes his stuff and goes back home.

General Orland - Bruce Greenwood

Mark - James Badge Dale

Fran - Emily Mortimer

 

I know what you did last summer - 1997

It’s not bad, if you take it for what it is, one of those movies where car windows are easily broken and pieces of glass don’t hurt, but most importantly where the villain can teleport, he can go everywhere and never be seen, he can enter female dorms, carry dead bodies around, walk around armed, deliver messages by hand, and nobody ever sees him or hears him.

That kind of story.

Plot:

Helen is elected Croaker Queen, they go the the beach to party. Helen plans to go to New York and become an actress and then marry Barry and live happily ever after. Julie will go to college in Boston, but hopes her relationship with Ray will survive the distance. Barry drinks a lot, he’s totally drunk so they don’t let him drive.Ray does, but Barry just can’t stop being an idiot and starts moving, being obnoxious, and he drops his bottle of whiskey making Ray lose his focus on the road. When they hit something, they stop and find a man covered in blood. Ray checks his pulse and thinks he’s dead, so Barry yells and yells until they stop talking about calling the police and start agreeing with his plan to get rid of the body so nobody will know and their lives will not be ruined. The boys carry him but Ray can’t bring himself to throw him into the water so Helen helps Barry. The man now moves and grabs Helen’s crown/tiara so Barry swims to get it back, and sees the man open his eyes. Still, he goes out, says nothing, and they act like the man’s dead and promise never to speak about it again. 

One year later, things are not as they had hoped before the ‘accident’. Helen is working in her family’s shop, run by her sister Elsa. Julie is at College but not doing well and Ray is a fisherman. Julie comes home to find a hand-delivered letter: “I know what you did last summer”.

She hurries to talk to Helen, and together they go to Barry’s house. He’s not any better than he ever was, no. Barry thinks it must be Max because that night he drove that way and saw them there. So Barry confronts him and leaves. The Fisherman with the hook kills Max (for whatever reason…) then he enters Helen’s house and cuts her hair during the night. And yet in the morning (after telling the other guys about it) she appears at the Parade with a new haircut, perfect as always.

Julie finds Max’s body and lots of alive crabs in the trunk of her car, but it’s all gone when Barry and Helen come to see. 

He was very quick in cleaning it all up…

Next, Barry is killed and Helen starts screaming because she saw it, but since there’s no body when the cop takes a look (no big body, no, but he didn’t notice the dripping blood… what a brilliant cop…) he does not believe her. He puts her in the police car and drives away, but stops for a man who appears to have trouble with his car. It’s the Fisherman, of course, and he kills the cop. 

Helen breaks the window with her feet, exits the car and runs. She reaches her shop and Elsa lets her in, but they’re very slow in closeing the back door, so he’s already inside and he kills Elsa. There’s a bit of escaping and running, but eventually he kills her too.

Julie at first thought that the Fisherman was David Egan, so she talked to his sister to find out if someone connected to him might be seeking revenge, but when she goes back to talk to Melissa, she realises that she was wrong. The Fisherman is Susie’s father. 

She died in a car accident and David felt responsible. Melissa thinks he killed himself because of it, but it’s almost certain that he was killed by Susie’s father too.

Now Julie tries to warn the others, but can’t find helen (of course not) so she goes to Ray. 

Ray never told them that he had gone to meet Melissa months ago, and now when Julie discovers it she gets the stupid idea that it’s all Ray’s doing, so she runs away and Ray goes after her. A man stops him and  tells her to go on his boat… and she does!!! 

Can you believe that???

She does!!!

And of course she finds pictures and newspaper bits that prove he’s the Fisherman. The boat is moving an it’s dark, yes, but she can see Ray and she has a murderer on the same boat, wouldn’t it be better to jump off the boat and swim away, as much underwater as possible, since she’s still close?

No, she stays on the boat, and Ray will join her, and it’s a long long battle. She also finds Barry and Helen’s bodies in the ice. But at the end Ray and Julie come out of it alive, talk to each other and resume their relationship, much lighter now that they know they never killed anybody (… still… oh well)

The police searches the boat but can only find his severed hand and the hook, but no bodies. So it’s no surprise that a year later she finds a message on her shower: “I still know” and then ‘someone’ attacks her.

It ends there, no more details, so it’s a very open ending, it could mean anything. 

Maybe he entered the girls dorm unnoticed or maybe she’s allucinating after such a traumatic experience, especially since the letter had already brought it all back… who knows…

Well, if you’ve watched the next movie, you know :-p

Characters - actors

Julie James is Jennifer Love Hewitt

Helen Shivers is Sarah Michelle Gellar

Barry Cox is Ryan Philippe

Ray Bronson is Freddie Prinze Jr

Max is Johnny Galecki

Benjmin Willis/Fisherman is Muse Watson

Elsa Shivers is Bridgette Wilson

Melissa Egan is Anne Heche

ITA So cosa hai fatto

Secret window - 2004

 First, I haven’t read the book, so I’ve no idea how it compares. Having sad that, the movie was not bad, the acting was good, but it lacked something…The revelation was too sudden, it was forced, in a way. I’ll explain better at the end.

The plot, so it’s clear what I mean:

We meet writer Mort Raney. Six months ago he caught his wife in a motel room with another man, Ted. Now they’re in the middle of a divorce. It’s not over yet only because he hasn’t signed the papers yet. 

He livesin an isolated house, and a man named Shooter comes to accuse him of having stolen his story, but changing the ending. The manuscript he leaves actually is pretty much word for word as his story Secret Window, about a man killing his wife who didn’t love him. Mort talks to the sheriff, then he hires Ken to investigate the matter. He’s scared of this man, and rightly so. Shooter killed his dog after all. Mort is sure he wrote that story and published it first, in a magazine, but to prove it he’d have to get the magazine from Amy’s house (where they used to live together). He drives there and we see that Amy’s going out and doesn’t see him. Next, he’s at home and Amy calls him to tell him that the house has been burned down. Mort now thinks that it’s all Ted’s plan against him, that he probably hired Shooter to harass him. So when Ted goes to him to demand that he signs the divorce papers, he refuses. 

Shooter wants to meet, but once there Mort sees that both Ken and Tom, a local man who saw  him talking to Shooter, have been killed. Mort faints, and then wakes up to Shooter saying that he did it with Mort’s screwdriver, so Mort gets rid of the bodies by pushing the car into the water. 

Now that the copy of the magazine at his old house has been destroyed, he has a new one delivered to him. He goes in town to get it, avoiding the sheriff, but at home he sees that his own story, and only his, has been ripped off the magazine. He thinks Shooter did it, but then he wonders how could he have done it, and he starts talking to himself, actually seeing himself, and then even Shooter appears out of thin air, saying that Mort created him. Now Mort remembers a time when he bough that hat and imagined a man from Mississippi wearing it. 

Tired of waitiing for him to sign those papers, Amy drives to his house to confront him, but when she arrives the house is a mess, and there’s the word Shooter everywhere, even carved on the walls, and then Mort reveals himself behind a door and she reads ‘shoot her’ behind him. He’s wearing that hat, and speaks like Shooter, and tells her that Mort is not here, he took the coward way out. Amy is scared now, he tries to grab her by the hair, and when she tries to run he stabs her leg.

Ted followed her, and now arrives in time to be killed by Mort under Amy’s eyes. She’s next.

Some time passes, and the sheriff pays him a visit to say that they all know what he did but can’t prove it, and he should at least stop going into town because people are not comfortable with him around…

We see thata the little ‘secret garden’ outside his ‘secret window’ there is now a small corn field - which explains all the cobs he has in his house now, eating it all the time. The camera starts to go under it so we can be sure that Amy and Ted’s bodies are buried there.

Mort now appears calmer and healthier than he was before, and replies that this ending is perfect.

Because of that ‘Mort is not here’ line we understand that Shooter is another personality of Mort, the one that deals with the killiings (the dog, Ken, Tom who of course saw Mort talking alone since Shooter was not real, plus Amy and Ted). 

The last line in Shooter’s book, saying that in time the wife’s death will be a mystery even to him, probably means that his mind will deal with it, maybe remove it from his consciousness. 

Intriguing story, yes.

The problem is how he found out, that scene of him talkiing to himself was boring, it should have been more involving, like: Mort2 trying to force him to accept the truth and Mort1 desperately denying it until Shooter’s arrival to confirm it all. That would have made the whole thing better.

From Secret window, secret garden by Stephen King

Mort Raney - Johnny Depp

Shooter - John Turturro

Amy - Maria Bello

Ted - Timothy Hutton

Ken - Charles S. Dutton

Sherriff Dave - Len Cariou

Advantageous - 2015

 This was weird. And the ending credits caught me by surprise, it didn’t seem finished at all… although after a bit I made peace with the surprise because yeah, it was over alright. What follows is normal everyday life, them trying to move on…

What I didn’t get was the emphasis they put on the ‘truth’ of the procedure… well, let’s start from the beginning.

Basically it’s a futuristic world, a city with huge skyscrapers, but also a lot of desperate women. Gwen does marketing for a company, but gets fired now because too old. Gwen has a daughter, Jules, and is desperate to get her a good chance in a world that doesn’t have jobs for women, especially after a certain age. So desperate she calls her mom for help but she refuses to ask her father, her mom asks him anyway, and he says no. So desperate, that after 13 years of distance she goes to her cousin Lily’s restaurant. She once slept with Han, Lily’s husband, and that’s why she stayed away all this time, but now she asks for help. Of course it’s such a bomb they need to think about it for a little while.

With no long-term prospects, needing money not only to live and eat but also for Jules’ education, she approaches her old company offering herself as human test. The last project she was working on: instead of invasive plastic surgery, the idea is to transfer her brain into another, younger body. With electrodes and stuff, not by opening the head as in Nightmare before Christmas. 

It’s never been done on a person, and Dave who cares for her tells her the truth, in a place where they can’t be overheard. The reality of this procedure is that it is not transferred, it is copied into another, empty brain, and once that’s done, the young brain will recover from the shock, the older brain won’t. Gwen will die, Gwen 2.0 will be just a copy. 

Still, she feels she has no choice since she can’t find a job. She warns Jules and does it. Gwen 2.0 has a lot of pain, as they said, and has to inject herself with medicine every day. She resumes her marketing job and secures a school for Jules, but she is not the Gwen she once was, and Jules can feel that. 

Gwen 2.0 doesn’t remember talking to Dave and doesn’t know about Gwen’s death until Dave explains it to her; this because Gwen 2.0 was about to distance herself from Jules, feeling like  Jules hated her, and Dave didn’t want it to be all in vain.

What Gwen did, all for Jules.

Jules guesses about Gwen’s deatah by herself, and they talk, and Gwen 2.0 also explains it to Lily and Han, who want to help. Lily cries for her cousin, but then decide they’ll be a part of their lilfe from now on. And that’s how it ends, with Lily, Han and their whole family - they have three boys - meeting Jules and Gwen 2.0 in a park. Gwen 2.0 goes on living because it’s what she can do, what she has to do, this is her life now. Jules lives with her because she’s the closest thing to her dear mother, a copy of her but it’s all that’s left, and it was Gwen’s choice, so Gwen 2.0 has no fault.

There’s talk of attacks from people protesting against this ‘progress’, we see like bombs in the distance, but it never gets more than that.

This life is making women sterile, and it’s also moving towards leaving all women at home, not working. 

The movie moves very slowly, because it’s not about actions, it’s about the women Jules hears crying, both the one in the apartment upstairs and the one downstairs, and eventually the one in her own home.

I want to note that Dave asked Gwen not to do it, that’s why he explained the truth to her, but she saw no other choice.

I liked the fact that Lily never hated Gwen. Gwen thought she would, because she slept with her husband, but Lily replies that he slept with her, meaning she’s not the only one to blame, not the only one at fault, and even if neither Lily or Han knew about the daughter, Lily knew about the two of them, and if her love could forgive Han, it could also forgive Gwen. I loved this bit because too often women are set against one another, but when there is an affair, it always involves two people, not just one.

Well, I understand that a copy is not the same as a transfer, because it’s like she’s not ‘all there’, a copy can miss something, but the fact that Gwen would die, that was pretty obvious, no revelation at all, of course she would if they put her brain elsewhere, that was obvious. Still, a copy not a tranfer, so what doesn’t get copied well is lost. 

I’d say Gwen’s daetah is more surprising because of the copy detail. A transfer would leave the first body with nothing, but a copy… why exactly does Gwen die? What is that her brain can’t cope with, since it’s all still there? Well, not really important. It’d be more important to know where does the young body come from. But I don’t know if they ever answer this…

Jacqueline Kim is Gwen Koh

Freya Adams is Gwen 2.0

Ken Yeong is Han

Jennifer Ehle is Isa Cryer

Jennifer Ikeda is Lily

James Urbaniak is Fisher

Last holiday - 2005

It’s a nice movie, although totally absurd an unrealistic, whre not only everything goes right but everybody loves her because she’s such a good person, so so true, and everyone is charmed by her… well, I see it as absurd now that I’ve known people and stuff, but I would have loved it when I was a teen and still thought everything was possible and that people were mostly nice and that good always wins and all that stuff.

It’s still nice after all, because she’s not just beautiful but her character is lovely. 

Georgia works in a store owned by a Mr Kragen, selling cookware; she’s in love with Sean who works there as well but doesn’t have the courage to tell him so she keeps buying stuff to talk to him. 

She loves cooking but then she gives all the stuff she makes to her kid neighbour. One day she hits her head at work, really badly, so Sean carries her unconscious body to the doctor who insists on a scan. The result is that she has a very rare tumor in her brain, and three weeks to live, four if lucky.

Of course she cries and despairs, thinks of all the things she denied herself, all the things she never did, and then she makes a choice. She quits her job, takes all her money and flies to a rich hotel where chef Didier works; she takes the Presidential Suite, like 3 or 4000 a night, buys  new clothes to fit in - of course, otherwise it wouldn’t work, nobody would talk to her, would even look at her if she looked poor.

And then, without effort, she attracts people to her: first she saw the senator in the lobby and understands now why he didn’t show at their church as he was supposed to. This generates a rumour that she knows him. Then she orders everything on the menu to miss nothing of what Didier created for the night. This makes him like her immediately. 

She defends the woman doing massages from the harsh words of Kragen’s lady friend, which makes all  the workers like her.

Incredibly, the girl doesn’t resent her for saying that her neck pain is due to her servicing Kragen, instead she starts talking and pouring her soul out, and of course Georgia has to point out that the man will  not leave his wife, because greedy men never do, they just want everything for themselves.

Georgia enjoys the luxuries, tries all kinds of massages, throws herself off the dam, chats with Didier like old friends, and everybody loves her.

They all went out gambling together, and she won a lot of money, like 100.000 or more, whatever, by playing the same number 17 again and again. So at the end she will still have money… then there’s Sean back home that forces Dr Gumpta to tell him about her, and then Georgia’s kid neighbour shows him her ‘book of possibilities’ which included their marriage, so he takes a plane and hurries to her.

Not even the snow blocking his taxi stops him, he keeps going on foot. 

Hard-hearetd Gunther accepts Kragen’s money to find out who she really is, so she looks through all her stuff, but when she finds Georgia’s farewell letter and realises she’s dying, she melts and is all for her now. She even gives Kragen his money back. Although I think she does mention that she works for him, so he makes inquiries on his own and finds out the truth.

He stands up during a dinner when they’re all together and says it in front of everybody. Of course she admits it, but she never intended to trick anyone, and also reveals the dying bit, explaining everything, so they’re all on her side and leave him alone at his table. 

Even his girl leaves him. 

But when she hears that he’s outside the window drinking, maybe thinking of jumping off, she goes to him, to talk.

During all this, Dr Gumpta happened to make more scans with that machine, and they came out all alike, so he realized that the machine wasn’ woking, it’s broken. He asked the kid where she might be and he tells him… in this case it’s a good thing, but this ki has no filter, he goes on telling everybody whatever they ask about her, and even what they don’t ask, like when he showed Sean the book.

The doctor sends a fax to the hotel explaining the truth.

Georgia talks to Kragen and then Sean arrives with a love speech, and then Gunther arrives with the fax, making everyone happy with the news that she’ll live.

Of course Sean and Georogia are together now, but after this experience she goes after her dream and opens a restaurant, and at the opening lots of people are there, including a tv chef she wanted to meet, and Didier and the senator, and her sister with her family, and they’re all there to cheer for her and support her.

During the credits, we see what happens to some of the characters, like: the doctor and Kragen both become monks, meditating. Her old boss dies in a car accident or something.

Georgia will marry Sean and they will parachute out a plane in their wedding outfits, or something like that. 

All in all a nice film, as unreal as a Disney movie, but pleasant to watch, just like a Disney movie.

Queen Latifah isGeorgia Byrd

LL Cool J is Sean Matthews

Timothy Hutton is Mattew Kragen

Gincarlo Esposito is Senator Dillings

Alicia Witt is Ms Burns

Gérard Depardieu is Chef Didier

Susan Kellerman is Ms Gunther

Ranjit Chowdhry is Dr Gumpta

ITA L’ultima vacanza

Colombo - Murder, smoke and shadows

One of the episodes I like less, it’s rather boring and I don’t like Alex at all. Of course he’s the murderer, the bad guy, but he’s also very much not interesting and unpleasant.

Alex is a director famous for his special effects. His old friend Leonard comes to meet him with a tape: their other friend who died gave it to him. It shows Leonard’s sister right before her death. Leonard knew she fell from a motorbike and died alone, but the tape shows that she was actually doing a stunt for Alex when she fell, Alex went to her and saw the blood on her head, told his friend to stop recording and we can guess that they got the hell out of there without calling for help. 

Why?

I mean, it was an accident, how could an accident ruin his career, ruin his chances?

Leonard now wants to ruin him and show the tape to everybody - and yet he informed Alex that nobody else had seen it yet because he wanted to confront Alex first… not a smart move…

So Alex quickly forms a plan: he tells Leonard the tape has been forged, that he wasn’t really there with her, andthen he tells his people to wet a whole street of his set, and he attaches some cables to an iron gate, so when he takes Leonard there, he scares him until he backs up and touches the gate; Leonard gets electrocuted and dies. Alex puts his body in his car and dumps it at a beach or something. He took away all documents and smashed his face - we don’t see it of course, this show is never splatter - so that it would be impossible to identify him.

He’s quite surprised when Colombo shows up at his place. Fact is, when he dumped the body, Alx’s book with his phone number fell out of his pocket or something, and Colombo found it. He’s even more surprised when Colombo comes back saying they IDed the body, because his belt has a hidden compartment where he kept a cheque.

Colombo hears Alex’s secretary complain about some people charging them with the water truck to wet the street, which nobody told her anything about, and it also makes no sense to her because the weather was bad already.

When Colombo tells him the victim was Leonard, Alex calls him a dear friend, that he hasn’t seen in three years. He cries recalling the girl’s death: Jenny. Alex goes to sleep while Colombo whistles and makes himself an ice-cream soda - like Alex made for Leonard - and takes a chance to snoop while drinking it. 

Colombo goes to talk to him while he works, and asks him about the wet street. He looks around and finds the cable and then the gate. Colombo keeps coming back to him of course, even if he’s working. Alex talks a lot, and his speeches of shadows and stuff are quite boring.

One of the body’s shoes is missing its heel, and Colombo found it near the iron gate. 

A taxi driver says he drove Leonard to the studios. 

Alex has some actors talk near Colombo to make him believe that Leonard was here to buy cocaine or something. Rose the secretary knows Leonard called, and uses it to keep her job and get a bonus cruise… but it was another staged scene, this time Colombo’s idea. The fact that he bribed Rose is a kind of admission, and everyone working at the restaurant during their lunch had a part in it, so they can testify. 

Colombo arrests him with great pleasure.

He got in contact with the police from Albany where Leonard lived, and got the original tape. He shows it to Alex, and that’s a motive. There’s also the weather report Rose always  gets for him, and the shoe heel… but most of all there’s Leonard’s ticket to the studio tour used as a bookmark inside a book in Alex’s house. Proof he was there.

Fisher Stevens as Alex Brady

Molly Hagan as Ruth Jernigan

Sweeney Todd: The demon barber of Fleet Street - 2007

Good, I liked it. I didn’t know the story before this film, so it was all new to me and can’t make comparisons, I can only say that I liked this one. Alan Rickman, Helena Bonham-Carter and Johnny Depp, they were all good, both acting and singing. I also loved the lights, meaning how it was all ‘dark’ as in giving the right atmosphere. The scene was so full of light and yellow when he was happy with his family, but now throughout the film everything is dark, grey, giving the impression of being dirty even if it’s not.

It’s a musical, most of the story is in songs. 

I was never a big fan of SBC who plays Pirelli here, but it’s ok. I was just relieved when it turned out that his character was only pretending to be Italian, so that terrible accent becomes perfectly ok, because of course someone not Italian would think that simply putting an ‘a’ at the end of most words is the right way to fake Italian…but it would not be ok if he were supposed to really be Italian. 

The story is a cruel one, honestly, and I’m a bit miffed that Rickman plays such a disgusting character.

Details now:

This is the story of Benjamin Barker, who once lived happily in London, working as a barber. He had a wife and a baby girl. A beautiful wife, Lucy, so beautiful that one day Judge Turpin saw her and dcided he had to have her, so he took Benjamin out of the picture by sending him away, imprisonedon false charges for 15 years (I think it should have been more, he thanks young sailor Anthony for saving him when he found him at sea, so I guess he escaped? Because surely Turpin had no desire to see him back…)

Once alone, Lucy did not yield, so the judge faked contrition so she’d go to him, and there was a big masquerade party, and he took her against her will and nobody helped her.

Now Barker is back in London, under the name Sweeney Todd. He goes to Fleet Street and Mrs Lovett recognizes him because she never forgot him. She’s always been in love with him, and now she tells him that Lucy poisoned herself and Turpin took the baby in and raised her as his ward. Mrs Lovett gives him his old room where he used to work, and also his old silver razors that he was so skilled with. Quite valuable, and yet she never sold them and kept them for him. 

Anthony sees young Johanna at her window and falls for her, and is right away threatened by the judge and beaten by his thug. 

A public challenge to Pirelli makes him known, but a short while later Pirelli goes to him. Pirelli once worked for him for a while, enough to recognize his silver razors and realize who he is, so he wants to blackmail him. Todd kills him. As soon as he explains about the blackmail, Mrs Lovett is okay with it, but she refuses to let him kill the kid that worked for the man. The poor kid had been taken from the orphanage from Pirelli who used to make him work and beat him and treat him cruelly. Mrs Lovett feels for the kid and takes him in, to work with her at her shop. She seels meat pies, but she was failing because good meat is too expensive, but now that they need to get rid of Pirelli’s body, she thinks that it’s a waste to bury him somewhere, when there’s such a demand for meat… so she makes meat pies out of him. 

Turpin kept Johanna locked in the house, probably in her room, at all times, and used to spy on her. Now that she’s grown enough, he wants to marry her, so he goes to Todd to improve his looks… and Todd would have had his revenge right then but Anthony chose that moment to barge in with his plan to run away with Johanna. Turpin hears of course, and storms out in a rage. He orders to lock her up in an asylum because of it, as punishment.

Todd is furious that he was denied his revenge, possibly forever since Turpin said he’ll never come back there. He’s thirsty for blood, so from then on he kills the lonely men who come for a shave (but not the one with a wife and child waiting for him). Mrs Lovett’s business thrives with all the meat he provides. The kid Toby now works for her, is never beaten and can eat whenever he wants. His life is good now, a huge improvement on how it was with that demon Pirelli, but Toby suspects Todd and wants to protect her, because she’s important to him, she saved him and gave him this new, great life. So he sings that ‘nothing’s gonna harm you, not while I’m around’, but Mrs Lovett knows of course, and in turn she wishes she could protect him but knows that she can’t now that he’s learned everything. He saw her taking money from Pirelli’s coin purse, so she takes him downstairs where she bakes her pies. There’s nothing to see at the moment, but she locks him inside, and will later go there with Todd, but without finding him. Toby discovered by himself the truth, seeing what the meat is made of, and hid from them.

For now, upon learning where Johanna is, Todd suggests to Anthony how he can free her and take her away, and then he writes a letter to Turpin, explaining the couple’s plans and inviting him to his shop to wait for them. Once Turpin arrives, Todd finally kills him, while they sing Pretty Women together.

A beggar woman who keeps telling everyone that evil things are happening here, enters Todd’s shop moments before Turpin, so he has no time to waste on her when his chance at revenge is so close. He kills her without a thought.

After killing Turpin, Todd notices that Johanna is in there, hidden, and therefore she probably witnessed everything. She’s there because Anthony took her there to hide while he arranges for their escape, and she decided to hide when he heard someone coming.

At first he plans to kill her - he does not know who she is, since she was just a baby the last time he saw her, and she is now disguised as a boy quite effectively. She’s no more than 16, so she looks like just a kid, so it’s normal that there’s no evidence of beard whatsoever. 

Still, when he hears Mrs Lovett’s scream, he simply lets her go after telling her to forget everything. It’s not clear to me why he didn’t kill her, but maybe now that his revenge has been accomplished, his thirst for blood is not as it was…

Mrs Lovett screamed because Turpin grabbed her, but when Todd joins her in the basement he’s dead, not moving anymore. Todd sees the body of the beggar woman, looks at her and finally discovers that it’s Lucy: he thought she was dead, but Mrs Lovett never said that, she only wanted him to think that so he’d forget his wife and start a new life with her. Lucy did poison herself, but did not die. It made her a bit crazy though. Now that he knows the truth, he throws Mrs Lovett into the huge bake oven to burn to death. 

Toby was hidden , bu now he comes out to sneak behind Todd and kill him for what he did. 

I guess we’re supposed to think that Anthony will come for Johanna and they will escape together… but why should they? She knows that Turpin is dead, and it wouldn’t take long to discover that the Beadle is dead as well… so why should they run away? She wanted to escape Turpin, but now what reason does she have? She could stay here, nobody is looking for her… and the man at the asylum who kept her prisoner and saw Anthony’s face is probably dead too, since he locked him inside the room with all the other prisoners who launched at him…

I’d say she should stay around and get to know Anthony before doing anything… 

Johnny Depp as Sweeney Todd

Helena Bonham Carter as Mrs Lovett

Alan Richman as Judge Turpin

Timothy Spall as Beadle

Sacha Baron Cohen as Pirelli

Edward Sanders as Toby

Laura Michelle Kelly as Lucy/beggar woman

Jayne Wisener as Johanna

ITA Sweeney Todd - il diabolico barbiere di Fleet Street

Wikipedia lists Anthony Head as ‘gentleman in street’ but he’s not in the ending credits… I also thought I saw him there, and find it strange that his name was not in the credits…

In English they say slasher film, not splatter.

Nonnas - 2025

It was a nice film but I’m sorry to say that to me it was brought down by Vaughn’s expression, in the way that he had just one, the ‘impassive way’. I liked all the others though.

It’s based on a true story apparently, and this restaurant is still open, they say, so basically this movie is just a huge commercial…

It starts showing Joe as a kid, with his Italian mom and grandma cooking (although they have American coffee and not moka…)

Now Joe is an adult, and has to deal wiht the death of his mom. They don’t really talk about it, but I think she was the last one he had, other than friends. He was very close to her and took care of her, and now it hurts, of course.

His best friend Bruno and his wife Stella urge him to do something, go out and find a hobby, something, other staying at home mourning.

He makes a trip to Staten Island, remembering his time there with his mom, and meets Olivia again, a girl he knew in school, but that now has a wedding ring on her finger

Then he sees a sign, of a restaurant up for sale, and buys it. Bruno is not equally excited, because he can clearly see all the difficulties, and he’s right, he’s being realistic, but Joe has alreadybought it so Bruno helps him with all the renovations, and there’s a lot to do. Without telling Joe, Bruno sells his beloved car that belonged to his father when he was a kid. 

He does it to be able to help, to pay the men working on this renovations. 

For the food, Joe personally asks Roberta, who was his mother’s best friend, and also asks Gia, who was his mother’s hairdresser, but also a friend. Gia is really good with cassate and cannoli, generally desserts.

Olivia wants Antonella to join, and forces her a little, a friendly push, thinking it will be good for her, and indeed one of the nicest scenes is when Olivia comes back to get her at the end of her first day there, but before opening the door she looks through the window and she sees Antonella laughing, that’s touching.

Olivia said she’d do anything for Antonella and we soon learn why: Olivia lost her husband, he died, and Antonella was a great help for her, she didn’t leave her alone, she was a huge huge help. 

Now, what makes the difference between succeeding or failing? Talent, working hard, yes yes, all these things are important and necessary, but the key factor in this world is the same everywhere: Luck. And money and connections, but luch is first. The man doing the inspection fails the restaurant, and with no permit they can’t open, and the man says that it’ll take up to a year before he can make another inspection. it seems like the end, desperation leads Joe and Bruno to a bad fight. As a last resort, Joe asks for Olivia’s help, she’s becoming a lawyer or something, and she finds out that the man has a habit of failing his inspections so that people will pay him to have another one soon. To appease Olivia, the man comes back and gives Joe his permit, so now he can open. 

The first night there is a big storm, but the following nights are the same: nobody comes. Antonella is quite angry with a man at the market when she learns that he’s sabotaging the restaurant, in the way that he’s been telling people not to go there because for years it was a local man’s restaurant and they don’t like the idea of someone else, especially one not from Staten Island, taking his place.

The women talk and get to know each other, and they also urge Joe not to give up before he’s tried everything. So he personally shows up at a food critic’s office, it’s quite late and he finds all doors open for him and not one soul to stop him, how lucky.

This critic Durant won’t go to Enoteca Maria because he only goes to fancy restaurants. Joe brought the food to him though, and leaves it there after he’s said his piece, and Durant will try it and send a woman to review the place.

Joe has one last night, a party, to use all the food stored in the kitchen before closing the restaurant, not knowing about the critic of course. 

It’s a wonderful surprise when Bruno and Stella show him a paper with an excelent review, and of course after that he won’t close. 

The place is a huge success, so he can buy Bruno’s old car back for him. 

Olivia is now ready to move on and starts a relationship with Joe.

There’s  also Teresa, a retired nun from the Bronx who wanted a chance at another life, and she got it.

The end.

I liked how they didn’t say anything esplicitly about their relationship, but they showed Olivia’s hand without her wedding ring, the clear signal that she was now ready to move on.

Vince Vaughn as Joe

Linda Cardellini as Olivia

Lorraine Bracco as Roberta

Susan Sarandon as Gia

Talia Shire as Teresa

Brenda Vaccaro as Antonella

Joe Manganiello as Bruno

Drea de Matteo as Stella

Transformers: The Last Knight - 2017

In the Dark Ages, Merlin was a liar, not a true wizard, but he knew the Autobots and asked their help to help King Arthur and was given a dragon-bot.

1600 years later, after the fourth movie: Optimus left to find his makers. Megatron vanished too. Without them, it’s humans vs bots, now declared ‘illegal on Earth’. They’re free in Cuba only.

Good for Cuba.

Cade lives in hiding with Bee and other autobots ; Optimus finds the Maker, and her touch is like Mind Control; she orders him to bring her back her staff that was stolen from her, she says (the one that was given to Merlin).

Cade is given an object by a dying bot, which gets later attached to his arm, and a c3po-like bot, Cogman, comes to tell him that he’s been chosen and takes him to England.

Count Burton tells him that Bumblebee fought the Nazis under another name. That 12 bots fought with King Arthur, 12 bots and 12 men. “Legend held that one last night would someday be chosen and the struggle to save the world would begin”.

Cade is that last knight. Viviane is the last descendant from Merlin and the only one who can get the staff. 

Simmons finds a legendary book and the solution to a big question, about where these alien things appear and Stonehenge at its center.

Cade and Vivian have their mission: they use a submarine to find a lost ship.

Cybertron the planet is coming here, they see what looks like two moons, and quite soon will come to Earth causing million of deaths.

They find Merlin’s tomb and what looks like a stick, but when she touches it it becomes the staff.

Lennox and other men come for it, but then ‘Optimus’ is there adn they’re forced to give it to him, although it’s clear he’s not himself. He’s Nemesis now.

He fights Bee but then suddenly BumbleBee finds his voice, his own real voice, to remind him of who he is and of their friendship or something, and Prime is Optimus again. He stops.

Megatron comes to take the staff, saying that Optimu failed to save Cybertron and kill Unicron (Earth) and flies away with the staff.

The 12 (I think) bot-knights come to attack Optimus, and Optimus is about to get killed when Cade’s metal thing becomes a sword that can stop him, and now all the bots there hail him as the last knight.

The Guardian Knights call the Maker: Quintessa the Great Deceiver.

Burton dies against Megatron, at the Stonehenge portal.

It seems like in a momeny they stopped Megatron.

Then the plan is to stop Quintessa, so Viviane must take the staff back.

There’s a big fight, the little blue bot Squeaks helps, Optimus and Bee defeat Quintessa and Megatron, Viviane takes the staff and Optimus saves them. 

It’s the end, time for Optimus Prime’s speech about repairing both our worlds, and there’s more to Earth than it seems, and it’s time for Autobots to go back home… whatever that means… and in the last scene there’s a strange woman in the desert saying that she knows how to kill Unicron… again, whatever that means, lots of ways to kill the Earth, since they live so long they could just wait until humans do the work…

Mark Wahlberg as Cade Yeager

Anthony Hopkiins as Sir Edmond Burton

Josh Duhamel as Colonel William Lennox

Laura Haddock as Vivian Wembly

Stanley Tucci as Merlin

John Turturro as Agent Simmons

P.s. well, the sword scene was really cool, heroic, such a pity he sort of had only that one scene to show he was The Last Knight of the Legend… other than that, he was just another brave fighter like there’s one in all transformers movies.

The soldiers scenes back and forth felt a bit useless, I mean I understand they couldn’t just… do nothing, they had to show the soldiers fighting as well,but still, many long scenes pretty useless…

It’s nice that they didn’t just forget that Cade had a daughter, she was just away for her safety, and he couldn’t talk to her to avoid someone tracking her or him, but he could call her and hear her voice telling him she was fine and safe.

Cogman.. yes I did like him a lot, he was great in every scene, maybe the best thing in the movie, maybe, for sure one of the best.

ITA Transformers L’ultimo Cavaliere 

Fast X - 2023

Well, this is ok, there’s the whole lot of characters, which is nice, I like it when they’re all together, only here they’re present in the story, yes, but not really together, not really doing much, it is still mostly Dom vs Dante… bu still, I appreciate that they’re all here. Problem is, this one is a lot of noise, like a lot, but not much heart, so I’m waiting for the next movie to put it all back together.

This is not one I’d watch again, but if they do it the right way, the next one might be.

Ten years ago in Rio De Janeiro, Dom and Brian stole a whole safe, and while escaping Dom causes the death of a man, drug boss Hernan Reyes, and injures his psycho son Dante. Now, the son wants to make him suffer. He steals men and technology from Cipher, turning her men against her blackmailing them with their families.

She sort of wins against them all but is badly injured; she gets to Dom’s house to tell him all. 

Han has gone to Rome with Tej, Roman and Ramsey for a mission but it’s not a real one, it’s a trap. Dom and Letty go there to help, and avoid a big bomb destroying the whole city by pushing it into the river Tevere… (how could that be enough… wel, it’s not like sense means a lot in these movies, so let’s ignore it). Now the six of them are called terrorists, with Dom as their leader. 

Hobbs, Mr Nobody, and all those at thet Agency who were their friends are not in charge anymore, and this new guy Aimes believes them to be criminals; Mr Nobody’s daughter Tess doesn’t. 

I Carabinieri got Letty so now the Agency has her. 

Aimes goes after Mia and Little Brian (his life consists in his father teaching him how to drive and win… he’s just a little child…ok…). Queenie warned Dom so he called his brother Jacob to help, then Mia goes to Brian while the kid goes with Jacob to meet Dom. 

Tess meets with Dom, she stole God’s Eye from the Agency and tracked him; she tells him about Dante, but he wants Letty out first. Tess manages to free her… sort of. Gives her a way to escape…

Dom goes to Rio, meets Dante at those street races, and they race. It’s four cars, not just them, and Dante put bombs in their cars. Dom can’t save both of the others, he manages to save the girl, but his friend Diogo dies. She turns out to be Elena’s sister. 

In London, the four friends have nothing so Han knocks at Shaw’s door; they fight a bit then stand together against all the men coming to kill them.

Aimes gets Dom.

Letty meets Cipher and they get out together, sort of. They’re in Antarctica. 

All those who helped Dom are targets, so even Queenie, Shaw’s mom. 

Dante attacks Aimes and all his men so now he listens to Dom…

Dante got sis though, but Tess helps him so it should be Dante vs Dom, but he’s got snipers on a helicopter. Tess is shot but she’ll live.

Dante got God’s Eye so now he can track where little Brian is. 

Now Aimes says he wants to help, to make amends…

Jacob is really good but eventually Dante takes little B so he blows himself up to stop many cars and help Dom save his son.

The guys arrive on a plane but Dante shoots it down.

Little B jumps from one car to the other so he’s with Dom now.

We see that Aimes is actually with Dante, has been for ten years.

Only two scenes before the end: Dom is about to die with little B, drowned I think, while in Antarctica a girl comes to help Cipher, wiht a submarine emerging from the ice.

The end.

Mid-credits we see that it was Hobbs who shot and definitely killed Reyes, so Dante wants him to suffer too.

The end for real this time… but not really because the story isn’t finished…

We don’t know the fate of anyone, and Dante is still very much alive and free, and so is Aimes.

Wait…

Wikipedia says that the girl coming to get Cipher is Gisele… I didn’t recognize her if it’s the same WW actress, but it would certainly be nice if it’s her… since I don’t believe for one moment that th guys are all dead, it would be a very sh**ty way to end the saga, wouldn’t it?

I will certainly wait for the next movie, hoping to see Han and Gisele reunited… and also to learn how the hell can she be alive, and without a word to anyone… did she lose her memory like Letty did?

Vin Diesel as Dominic

Michelle Rodriguez as Letty

Jason Statham as Shaw

Jordana Brewster as Mia

Tyrese Gibson as Roman

Chris ‘Ludacris’ Bridges as Tej

Nathalie Emmanuel as Ramsey

Charlize Theron as Cipher

John Cena as Jacob

Sung Kang as Han

Helen Mirren as Queenie

Brie Larson as Tess

Jason Momoa as Dante

Alan Ritchson as Aimes

Scott Eastwood as Little Nobody

…

Where was Little Nobody in this film? I didn’t see him… I remember him from previous Fast movies but really, where was he in this one?

ITA Fast & Furious X

Birds of prey and the fantabulous emancipation of one Harley Quinn - 2019

Ok to have watched it once, not really one I want to watch again, and I’m not even sure why. She was fun, but there were too many things, it was a bit of a mess. 

Absurdly, one of the scenes I liked more was when Zsazs spoke with Roman like he wanted to protect him… but the film doesn’t really show why, he simply appeared to be one of the thugs, one of many on Roman’s payroll, until that scene lets you think they have a special bond. But I didn’t get anywhere that they were anything at all, not even his confidante, not even his most trusted thug… 

Also, the Montoya character was a bit boring in a movie like this, and even Black Canary and the Huntress were not given the right atmosphere… I don’t know how to say it, but in a Batman movie he doesn’t just enter a room, no hero just enters a room, they have a hero entrance, even if they just appear and do nothing, the camera and the lights and the music, everything works to give you a du-dun effect, to make you go WOW the hero just arrived… and I know that these girls were not heroes like Batman, we didn’t know any of them, but they should have had something, just something to make their entrance cool and to tell us that they’re going to be heroes or at least important on the heroes side…

Yeah, I think that’s what was missing here.

It starts with a brokenhearted Harley, she broke up with the Joker for good. Before, when they were together, she sort of had immunity because everyone was scared of him, but then when the old “Ace Chemicals” goes up in flames because of her, everybody learns the truth, and now they all want her head. 

Roman is the big baddie, Dinah Lance is the singer in his club, but she becomes his driver after he sees her fighting. That’s because a drunk out of her mind Harley was about to get carried inside a van by two guys, so Dinah saved her.

Cassandra is a young thief, with a history of really bad foster parents, and she lives in the same building as Lance. She’s really good at pickpocketing, and she takes a small box with a diamond inside from Czas’ pocket.

The Huntress is the only survivor of the Petrinelli or Bertinelli family, a name like that, and she hunted and killed all those who had a part in her family’ s deaths. Czas is the last one now, the fifth. 

Montoya is a cop but she has really bad people-skills; she’s really good at investigating but she has no friends and nobody likes her. Her boss takes all the credit for her work, that’s actually how he became her boss, and then he suspends her because she keeps breaking the rules to follow her leads. 

She even acts surprised but truthfully she has a bad attitude, especially with her ex. Montoya even acts like the wounded party when her ex warns her boss of what she did (which is why she got suspended) but really, she keeps using her ex without ever asking beforehand, and never apologising afterwards. She does what she wants because she thinks she’s in the right, working for the greater good, so rules should not count for her…

Csazs is Roman’s man, they’re very close, Zsazs behaves like Roman is his love to protect and make happy. 

Everyone is hunting Harley, even Montoya who makes her drop her beloved breakfast egg sandwich. 

Harley adopts a hyena that she calls Bruce like Bruce Wayne, and when the guy wants to be paid in nature, she has the hyena eat him.

When Roman catches her, she offers to find the diamond for him if he lets her live, and to this end she breaks into the police station because she knows Cass has been arrested. She takes Cass away, to her home.

Harley rather likes Cass and they talk a lot at her place. She lives above Doc’s diner, or whatever, and talks about him like he’s the only one who cares about her for real, and that’s why she’s hurt when he sells her out. That’s how the baddies find her, because they offered him lots and lots of money to tell them where she was, so he did and now he leaves.

Now Harley decides she’ll give Cass to Roman in exchange for him stopping everyone else from hunting her, for them to leave her alone.

Montoya approaches Lance because her mother was an informant - and she died because of it.

Lance starts helping her when Cass enters the picture, because she wants to help the girl. So now she warns her of an impending meeting/trap between Roman and Harley. All Roman wants is the diamond, he cares nothing about their lives.

There’s some kind of abandoned amusement park, Lance and Zsasz go there and he sees one of her message and phones Roman to tell him that she is the spy. Roman wants to go in person, wants to make her pay, and he wears his black mask… just because he likes it, I guess, it doesn’t seem to have any power at all. 

Harley meets with Montoya, Lance and Helena, who kills Zsaszs and she’s like ‘my job is doen, I’m sorry’ but Montoya stops her to tell her that it’s not done, that Roman gave the orders, or the money, whatever, to kill her family. 

Roman and a lot of men are here for them, so Harley suggests they work together to get out alive. They fight all the men who came inside, but outside there’s to many of them. Roman gets Cass and drives away, and Lance has to use her superpower: her supersonic voice, to knock everyone out, herself included (exhaustion maybe). Harley and Helena go after Roman and Cass, take out everyone else, then Cass tells her that she took her ring - meaning a hand granade that she activated, so Harley kicks him off the bridge and he goes up in pieces. 

Now victorious, the three women get the diamond which held the secret codes of Helena’s family’s money, and they fight crime together. Harley is by herself, and with Cass, and they go away together. With Bruce, still alive.

At the end, she says “they call themselves the Birds of Prey, I call them dorky little do-gooders”, and also “I made the kid my apprentice. Call me a softy. I dare ya”.

P.s. when they were fighting, Lance had her hair all over her face, like it would happen if it were real, so Harley gave her a hair tie for it. Not sure why it’s relevant but it was nice.

Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn

Rosie Perez as Renee Montoya

Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Helena Bertinelli

Jurnee Smollett-Bell as Dinah Lance/Black Canary

Ewan McGregor as Roman Sionis

Ella Jay Basco as Cassandra Cain

Chris Messina as Victor Zsazs

Ali Wong as Montoya’s ex girlfriend (Ellen, I think)

ITA Birds of Prey e la fantasmagorica rinascita di Harley Quinn

Scream - 1996

 I quite liked the beginning the first time I saw it, it was a nice switch and it was a little scary for a while, but the thrill didn’t last long.

The rest of the movie isn’t really scary at all, honestly, and it won’t be in the next movies either. I mean, things like seeing the mask reflected in a market while they’re shopping, or whatever things like this, they’re such silly things, not really scary at all. 

I liked the scene of the principal’s murder, because he was scaring himself, it was funny, and then he gets murdered, not funny, and it was a cool scene.

Details:

The girl is home alone when there’s a phone call, and twice she thinks that the guy called the wrong number, but he calls again while she’s making popcorn and about to watch a scary movie… then he asks her name because “I wanna know who I’m looking at”. She gets reasonably worried.

Twice she hangs up and he calls her again, and now he becomes threatening and she locks the house (really though,why wasn’t it locked before, especially knowing she’s home alone all night? It’s not like it’s so hard to do, it’s just a click, after all…)

She mentions her boyfriend, he shows her Steve is tied up in her garden. She answers trivia about scary movies, one wrong answer and Steve is dead. “What door am I at?” Is the third and last question… she runs, is caught and stabbed. Casey is dead and left hanging outside for her mom to find her. 

She was 17, Steve was 18.

Sidney’s been with her boyfriend Billy for two years, but they never had sex. Since her dad’s away, she goes to stay at Tatum’s. Sid gets a call and then is attacked but escapes, then Billy appears. He has a cell and Linus found a mask, so she runs away from him and he’s arrested.

A year ago her mom was raped and killed. Since it was proven that a certain Cotton had sex with her mother, sid accused him of it all, but Gale is sure she got the wrong man arrested.

There are many kids ‘joking’ by wearing a Ghostface costume…

Next one killed is the principal, the town closes early for curfew.

Linus/Dewey kisses Gale. 

The kids have a party at Stu Baker’s house. Tatum is killed and nobody notices. 

Sid and Billy have sex and then Ghostface stabs Billy. 

The police thinks it might be Sid’s mother. Cameraman Kenny is stabbed next while he tries to kill Sid, Linus is stabbed too. 

Billy is alive and Sid gives him her gun - not sure where she got it.

Billy shoots Randy then Sid sees that Billy and Stu are doing it together, Billy even framed Cotton.

Stu doesn’t really have a motive, butfor Billy, we’ree told that he found out that Sid’s mother had an affair with his father,and that’s why his mother left. 

Sid’s father is there, prisoner, all tied up. They want to frame him.

Gale appears to take the gun from him, but it’s got the safety on - they thought she had died… really?when? Why?

Gale and Linus are on the ground, Sid’s hiding, then she attacks Billy with an umbrella and Stu with a tv on his face. Billy is still alive, Gale shoots him. 

Randy, Sid’s dad and Linus are all alive.

By Wes Craven

Neve Campbell is Sidney

Skeet Ulrich is Billy

Courtney Cox is Gale Weathers

Drew Barrymore is Casey

Rose McGowan is Tatum

David Arquette is Deputy Dewey

Matthew Lillard is Stuart

Jamie kennedy is Randy

And Henry Winkler as the principal, although not in the ending credits.