Jumanji the next level - 2019

I liked it, it’s fun, entertaining :-) Of course I don’t like all the characters, just like last time, but all in all it was fun and enjoyable, and I wish they’ll do another one.

A word about the actors:

I liked Kevin Hart when he played Milo, and Dwayne Johnson was rather good at playing both Eddie and Spencer, but I wouldn’t have known who was Jack Black if they hadn’t said it aloud. Awkwaina was good, it was clear from the start what character was Ming at all times.

In a way this should be one of the most important aspects of this movie , and they should pay more attention to this, more care, and it was fun to see the actors playing different characters throughout the movie, I was even sorry to see them go back to what they were in the first, but only a little bit.

A word about the characters:

Grandfather Eddie was annoying, sorry but it’s true. I understand how he feels, but it also seems like he doesn’t think about what others feel. He misses the times when he had his own restaurant, until his friend Milo decided to retire and therefore made him retire as well. He just had hip surgery and yet his daughter and Spencer find him up a ladder changing a bulb… inside the game, he fights random people just because he’s stronger, causes their death more than once, but he never seems sorry about anything, nothing is ever his fault.

Fridge in the game was as annoying as always, although outside the game he was better. In the game, he was not only loud, but also stupid, a real idiot. The way he acts when he has Ruby as his avatar for a minute, then he has to start jumping and doing acrobatics, and loses it, but most of all the way he almost has himself and Bethany killed because he didn’t want to admit that his character was an eunuch… maybe it was funny for some people, I don’t know, I simply thought it was the stupidest thing of the entire movie.

Plot in details:

Months have passed since the end of the first movie (how long… I’m not sure, I guess a year, I don’t remember it being specified), and Spencer attends a university in New York. His relationship with Martha suffered from the distance, mostly because Spencer felt alone and thought that she was happy without him at her new school and sort of broke up with her.

(She thinks they’re taking a break, but he told his grandpa they broke up)

Bethany, Fridge and Martha meet at Nora’s restaurant in town, but Spencer doesn’t go, instead he goes downstairs where he kept the jumanji game and goes back in, to feel powerful again. 

When he doesn’t show up, they go to his house and when they see the game running they understand what happened and want to help, only for some strange reason the game doesn’t need them to touch the console on the controllers this time, no, it sucks in the people it wants, so Bethany is left out but Eddie and his old friend Milo (who were still upstairs) get trapped inside.

Only Martha is her old character Ruby Roundhouse, but the others are all different: Fridge this time is professor Oberon (although from the way Black acted I wouldn’t have known that); Eddie has Bravestone as his avatar, while Milo is Mouse - now these were funny, both of them, and I really appreciated that for once Hart had a different role, slow and poised and serious, it was great.

They are told that Jurgen the Brutal stole a precious, magical stone and they need to retrieve it to save Jumanji (same as last time, more or less, but this stone is red, not green). 

Outside Jumanji, Bethany doesn’t know what to do, she’s alone, so she goes to Alex for help.

The group starts out in a desert where they have to escape a herd of ostriches, very angry and aggressive.

They follow the clues and see Jurgen, and also Ming, a thief who stole the key to the box that supposedly holds the stone, but when Jurgen calls her a thief Eddie stops her and Jurgen kills her. (Really, Eddie? Helping the big bad guy whom you just listened to while he said how he killed someone? Really? Thief or no thief, how could you hand someone over to such a murderer?)

Martha realises that’s Spencer and they join him when he comes back, quite annoyed that he didn’t get to be Bravestone this time (it’s not known why, the game was supposed to only have five characters, didn’t it?).

Spencer and Milo steal some camels - Milo can talk to animals - while Eddie was supposed to keep an eye out for trouble but also to stay out of it, but when he realises how strong he is he starts beating up everyone, attracting lots of attention, so later they will all get killed by Switchblade with a rocket or something.

Ruby and Oberon go to take the Jumanji Berry, and there’s a sort of electric water that allows characters to switch players, so for a little time Fridge is Ruby and Martha is Oberon, but he’s so excited to have an athletic body again that he acts silly and they end up switching again.

Eddie keeps fighting with Milo, angry that he sold their diner, but honestly seeing how stubborn Eddie is he would have never allowed it and Milo was tired of working and wanted to retire…

Then they talk and it turns out that Milo doesn’t have much time left to live, and wanted to make peace with his old friend before the end, so they stop fighting. (What a nice character, this Eddie, it took his friend dying to convince him that maybe he should stop acting like an asshole).

Bethany and Alex show up to help, only Alex is his old character, while Bethany is another new one, a magical horse.

Finally they find a river with the same kind of green waters that Martha and Fridge saw before, so now they can all exchange avatars . Now Spencer is again Bravestone, Fridge is Mouse and Bethany is Oberon. Eddie becomes Ming and Milo becomes the horse, and the two of them get captured.

Eddie and Milo are taken to the Zhatmire Stronghold so they must rescue them. They split. Alexenters, Bethany and Fridge follow him but are mistaken for the Kababik brothers and welcomed in. Spencerand Martha climb the Ice Wall to get to the dungeon and Eddie. They all have just one life left. Spencer and Martha find Eddie and they try to find the jewel, but Jurgen the Brutal has it. Martha and Spencer rescue Fridge and Bethany but Jurgen is super strong too. So Martha saves them, and Spencer goes alone after him and the jewel. Alex frees horse-Milo, and it turns out it’s a flying horse, so Eddie rides him to save Spencer, but Spencer throws the jewel to him and they fly high to show it to the sun, and then they all shout Jumanji and they are all to safety, but still in Jumanji. It’s over, and they’re all ready ot go but Milo wants to stay. He won’t be able to get to the real world again, but here he can fly. So he stays.

They all go back to the real world, and their real bodies. Spercer and Martha are together again. They all go to the restaurant that was once Eddie and Milo’s, and is now Nora’s. Fridge can’t bear to eat cake anymore :-p Nora needs help at the restaurant, and Eddie offers to help, and she gladly accepts. The team is all friends, and they promise to stay so for life. 

At the end, a heater-repair-man enters Spencer’s house, mom shows him where the problem is and he is curious about the game and wants to touch it. The team sees the ostrychs running outside the restaurant.

The end.

I don’t know what that means exactly, but in the 90s movie it was like that, nobody else entered the jumanji world, but the jumanji characters, creatures and Alan came out in this world.

Milo is Danny Glover

Bravestone is Dwayne Johnson

Mouse is Kevin Hart

Oberon is Jack Black

Ruby is Karen Gillian

Ming is Awkwafina

Seaplane is Nick Jonas

Spencer is Alex Wolff

Martha is Morgan Turner

Bethany is Madison Iseman

Fridge is Ser’Darius Blain

Eddie is Danny deVito

Jurgen the Brutal is Rory McCann

Nora is Bebe Neuwirth

Heater repair man is LaMorne Morris

Columbo - Columbo likes the nightlife

 Not bad as a last episode, intriguing. 

The story is:

Justin wants to open a nightclub and everything’s almost ready, he only needs money but Tony assures him that he’ll haev the money in 36 hours.

Tony goes to see his ex-wife Vanessa, wannabe-actress, but she has a new man: Justin. Tony sees a picture of them and gets jealous and aggressive, she pushes him away, he falls down and… dies. Just like that, not really sure of what.

She freaks out because she knows that Tony is the son of a New York Mafia boss, so she calls Justin. 

Justin really wants that money, so he tells her to say nothing to anybody. Two days later he has the money on his account, so he goes to Tony’s hotel to make it look like he just left the room. It’d be all over, more or less, but someone saw it all, a tabloid journalist who was following Tony. He has pictures and blackmails them, but Justin doesn’t want to pay, so he kills him instead while Vanessa waits in the car.

This is the murder that brings Colombo to us. It was made to look like a suicide, but Colombo smells mouthwash on the man and checks his foot to confirm he had just cut hisnails, not things one does before haging oneself. 

Colombo finds Justin because of some fluo stuff on his car’s tire, then he finds Vanessa because a man left the deceased a message because the journalist promised him money to stay a few hours in his garden, which look directly at Vanesssa’s very stylish home, glass all around and therefore totally on display.

It’s Tony’s family that declares him missing and Colombo doesn’t know how it all went but he knows that Justin is his man, and Colombo isvery observant: there are three fish tanks in the ground, but one of them has fewer fish because it has less water, and that’s because Tony is buried there. Colombo finds this and can now arrest them both.

P.s. How annoying it was that Justin kept telling Vanessa to calm down, every time, barely listening to her :-/

Columbo - A trace of murder

I liked it, it was nice, very easy and predictable, sure, to guess from start to finish, but also enjoyable to watch.

This time the murderer was one of those arrogant ‘I’m so intelligent’ type that think he did it all perfectly and thought of everything and, of course, that Colombo is stupid simply because he’s spontaneous, simple in the best way, not fake like most other people who watch how they act in front of others. This is also why he doesn’t wear fancy stuff, because he likes to be comfortable and at ease, and feels no need to impress people with fashion trends or silly things like that.

This episode starts showing us Clifford Calvert exchanging words with Howard Seltzer because Howard is sueing him. Clifford punches him in front of many people. Later that night we see Clifford telling his wife Cathleen that if he loses or if the tax people get their hands on him, he may lose everything and she’d be poor again. This is when it’s clear that she’ll kill one of these two men. Later we see her with her secreet lover Paatrick Kinsley. She brings out the topic of having Clifford disappear so they could spend all his money, but she’d be the first suspect of course, so she has an alternative: kill Howard and blame it on Clifford. Patrick agrees and they act their plan. They take Clifford’s gun and one of his cuban cigars. Cathleen waits for Clifford at one of her friend’s wedding. Patrick goes to Howard’s house - who believes his story that he needs to phone because his daughter had an accident, or something. Howard lets him in and answers all his questions: never been married or had children, no maids around the house… so once he’s sure nobody will appear, Patrick shoots him, then plants his ‘evidence’: he uses his own Swiss army kniffe to cut the bottom of the cigar and leave it in the ashtray than he uses a cordless avcuum cleaner to collect some of the cat’s fur and carpet fibers that he’ll leave for Cathleen to take and spread over Clifford’s jacket while dancing at the party. 

Patrick throws away the gun because he says it’d look too obvious and no cop would fall for it. He works in the police now, in the scientific department, and meets Colombo right away.

Patrick doesn’t find the piece of cigar and this worries him so much he goes back to search for it. Colombo orders a cop to look everwhere for Howard’s cat and he finally finds it, the same day Patrick was there. The cat brings them to the cigar, because of course it was the cat who moved it, there was nobody else. Now Patrick tells Colombo he’s come for this because he had seen it the night of the murder but was not among the evidence, and nobody will ever remark on this but it’s obvious he could not, because the cat moved it then escaped when the cop opened the door and found the body, and is found only now. No way he could have seen it that night.

Patrick joins “too much” the investigation, asking about suspects and stuff, he really does appeara to want Clifford arrested, and yet maybe at this point Colombo wonders if it’s just because he started this job only recently - I think he was a professor collaborating with the police before, now he’s part of it.

Colombo finds details, as he usually do: Clifford uses a special cutter for his cigars, making a totally different cut - and his wife never saw this? Wow, she never paid him any attention, did she?

Also, Clifford stopped at a supermarket for cough pills like ten minutes after the murder, which was in the opposite direction of when he was going - I mean, the wedding is in the opposite direction if you consider it from the victim’s house. 

That of course makes no sense, so Colombo starts suspecting the wife who, of course, had easy access to the gun and a good motive indeed. Patrick is still sure Clifford will be arrested when he presents the test results of the cat hair on his jacket, but Colombo doesn’t give up and makes various enlargements of two wedding pictures, one of Clifford’s back right after the ceremony and one while he was dancing with Cathleen. One shows a clean jacket, the other doesn’t.

This would free Clifford but not necessarily accuse the real guilty ones, but Colombo saw what I saw when he put them together at his favourite place. At a table with their coffees, Patrick took the sugar cubes  and pushed the sweetener towards her because he knew how she likes her coffee! Colombo noticed this and it was a shock, but now things started making a lot more sense. Colomb watches them to be sure, and indeed when she gets in teh car, Patrick opens the front door of the car showing that he knew she prefers the front seat. Neither Patrick or Cathleen noticed it, but Colombo did.

So, at the end Colombo shows them both, separately the pictures and he also takes Patrick’s swiss army knife to check for cigar traces. He makes them believe that the other wants to betray him/her, so they talk to the DA and start accusing each other. 

The end…

But Colombo must explain it to the audience, even though it was pretty clear, and it’s a long scene when they also use a wrong scene (the hand moves the milk but Patrick didn’t, he moved the sugar). I think it was unnecessary, at least they could have made it shorter, no need for the reenactment. 

The funny ending: Colombo cuts the cuban cigar Clifford gave him - he sort of made Clifford give him one - with the cutter Clifford gave him, but he does not like it and bites the tip off like he always did, and likes it much more :-)

Cathleen was played by Shera Danese, Peter Falk’s wife

ITA sulle tracce dell’assassino

Columbo - Colombo and the murder of a rock star

Not my favourite one for sure, this ending was worse than the chewing-gum one, it made absolutely no sense. 

Let’s proceed with order and the whole plot: Marcy Edwards lives with Hugh Creighton. She’s an ex rock star, he’s a famous lawyer who always wins. He has her followed: she sees her lover at their beach house for two hours  three days a week. They play at the beach, drink champagne, eat caviar, and have sex.

… every single time… always the same again and again… and not once did they fancy a pizza or whatever else, always champagne and caviar… :-/

So, Hugh ends it: she finds herself locked out of the house with her bags waiting for her, but she won’t go quietly, she wants lots of money even if they’re not married, or she’ll tell everyone that he’s corrupt - I’m not sure if it’s true, it probably is of course but it’s not really important because if people believe her his reputation could be ruined anyway. 

At this point he plans o kill her. He fakes reconciliation, gives her a pill so she won’t drink, puts something in the champagne so he’ll fall aslee and then he shows up dressed as the gardener and strangles her while she’s wide awake. Then he pushes the police to arrest that guy, who woke up next to a dead girl and fled because he has a record. 

Colombo keeps digging: Hugh took away the punctured cork and left one he brought with him, and looking at the two corks Colombo can see one is not right, because all Marcy’s bottles have one star, but one of the corks has two stars … and already this is weird, that she only bought the cheaper kind…

Hugh of course has plenty of two stars bottles.

Colombo openly accuses him but then it turns out he has an alibi, he got a speeding ticket elsewhere, so there’s a picture of him. It’s clearly his face but Colombo can see that the shadows are not right because it was someone else with a flat mask of his face, his assistant who then figures it out… but of course she did: he really told her to take his car, drive to Pasadena and wear a mask while speeding, so to get a ticket? A complete mask while driving is dangerous and yett she did it without knowing why, but did he really think she would not figure it out??? She worked with him! She’d have to be completely dumb to not realize it. Shewill agree to reveal nothing, demanding to be made a partner, but it was a huge risk. Someone could see her driving that car and suddenly wearing a mask… which I insist was insanely dangerous because she couldn’t see, you can’t tell me that there were holes for her eyes or Colombo would have seen right away that it was a mask!

And anyway, I can’t imagine that conversation: ‘you must drive my car to Pasadena and wear a mask with my face when the time is right so to get a speed ticket with my face on the picture’ - ‘of course Hugh, nothing else?’ … just an ordinary day task right?  :-/

Anyway, the first few minutes right until she threatens him, she really appeared to be a b… not a nice lady,  but then we see his plan, we understand he made sure she was sober and awake to know it was him and to feel him strangling her - well, breaking her neck is what killed her, and yet she had a peaceful, pretty face lying there afterwards… - and we see his over-the-top reactions to the ‘news’… and he’s really one of the worst. It doesn’t surprise me that his job was to make sure murderers got away free, he’s just that kind of soul less person. 

Also, the gloves marks on her neck match the marks on the gardener’s truck he used to get there… Colombo’s csi people were amazing…

Columbo - Grand deceptions

 This is the one with the toy soldiers annd the war books.

Famous general Padget’s name is enough for many people to donate millions to his “First foundation for American thought”, which consists in training camps for civilians and something else that is not really really clear, because I don’t think they do actual military operations, so… I don’t know…

Anyway, Colonel Frank Brailie is stealing from it, and also using its money for illegal operations like weapons smuggling and stuff. Padget asked Sgt Keegan to investigate the “special projects fund”, who knows why or how he got to know about it. Keegan found out everything about Brailie’s fund and also about his affair with Padget’s younger wife.

Brailie worked hard on a huge diorama representing Gettysburg, saying he received the books in the morning - a box labeled books arrived - and the toy soldiers only that night, so that while Keegan was murdered he was apparently very very busy putting every soldier at their right place. Colombo will prove that he did not, that he’s got no alibi, because there’s no possible was all those books fit in the box labeled books, because it’s too small… and this is ok, I get it, but I still have two problems: 1, the obvious, is why did they send him the soldiers in a box labeled books and the books in a box labeled soldiers? Aren’t they two separate shops? How did he manage that? And even if it was the same shop on war stuff, did they make a delivery like this under his explicit request? Colombo didn’t check? How long was it since he planned the murder?

Furthermore, we see him open a soldiers box: it contained five of them… judging by that, I do NOT think it even remotely possible that all those soldiers could fit in that small box… if you throw them in without their little fancy boxes, yes, otherwise: no!

I don’t like this episode because Brailie is boring and arrogant and this foundation looks to me like a waste of money. Even the comic scene at the funeral was too silly, Colombo and an officer changing seats over and over to talk privately… thus managing to be very, evry noticeable… Bah.

P.S. I want a Colombo-toy soldier like we see at the end! 

Columbo - Identity crisis

Not my favourite episode, but the scene with the belly dancer was important. 

Leslie Nielsen plays only the first few minutes then his character dies. The murderer is played by Patrick McGoohan, who was also in “By dawn’ early light”, the one obsessed with finding the apple cider. 

What I don’t like is that I don’t really understand why there was a murder at all. They seemed to be talking amiably before, and his death accomplished nothing… I mean, Geronimo (Nielsen) did say they did a job together before, they’re spies, but Brenner kept his share of money, and also that he knows Brenner is a double agent, but then Brenner killed him without knowing what proof he has? Or if this proof might turn up anyway after his death? And also, Geronimo knew he was a double agent who conned him once already and still accepted this job? When his only contact was Brenner himself? That seems very silly to me…

Plot, so to understand:

Brenner is a CIA operator, and meets with Geronimo Herderson. Geronimo is also a spy but he’s not Cia, and Geronimo is not his real name of course, he uses it now in LA. They arrange to meet at a Luna Park, they walk and talk. Brenner tells himthere’s a man, Steinmetz, who has something they want… I don’t remember what… so he gives Geronimo the job to meet with Steinmetz’ man and make a deal. Geronimo goes and meeets a black man, M something, I don’t remember the name (I know I know, but if I don’t write it down immediately, my ADHD does this a lot), and it all goes well between them, the deal is ok enough, M goes away but before Geronimo can go as well Brenner appears and hits him…twice and he’s dead… before the 90s nobody died hard, they got hit on the head or stabbed once in the back with a kitchen knife and they were dead in one second, not even the time to say Ah!

Colombo is different in this episode, from the start. He’s never rude but he’s not his usual nice self. He tells the police people working on the body to move away. Also it’s night but he’s not sleepy like the times he was called in the early mornings, he does not ask for coffee. 

Geronimo was at the bar/night club at 11pm, Colombo saw his body around 1am. There’s a belly dancer at the club who is still dancing when Colombo arrives. Colombo keeps watching her, from the moment he got in, he says she’s interesting, than he asks his sergeant if he noticed her eyes, and then he exclaims: “She’s shy!”, an interesting scene indeed that was totally ruined in the Italian version: “ma hai visto che occhi, che occhi! And “Peccato che sia timido!”. The American scene explained that he noticed something strange about her which made her interesting, and that unlike every other man around he did look at her eyes until he figured her out, that despite dancing (for hours, poor girl lol) in a club she’s actually a shy girl. The second one means that he likes her, finds her eyes beautiful and if he wasn’t shy he’d approach her, which is awful and nonsense. 

The sergeant finds out the victim is Henderson, recently in town, but his company says that man is not Henderson! Since Geronimo asked for directions they know he was at an amusement park; Colombo sees the photographer and looks at her unsold pictures. Of course Brenner went and bought the pictures of him, but Colombo watches all the unsold ones and finds the victim behind a “fat lady”, both him and the girl call her that, I guess they were not overly concerned with politically correct back then, or with being careful not to hurt anyone’s feelings… He probably doesn’t mean anything by it, he said once he likes women with curves, but the girl does for sure.

You can clearly see him in the picture, and yet the girl didn’t because she looked superficially, just at the picture’s main subject and not behind them… :-/  And she’s young, does she really need a magnifying glass to see him? This scene shows, as Colombo calls it, his perseverance, but also how superficial everyone else is.

Someone can identify Brenner so Columbo goes to him and of course never leaves him. The Cia puts Colombo under observation, the boss doesn’t like local police ot know about their operations. Colombo admits he suspects him and not that M guy, so Brenner gives him another suspect. Steinmetz almost kills M with a bomb, so M gives the police an identikit of this ‘old man’. We’re not told yet but with the voice and what we can see it’s easy enough to know Steinmetz is actually Brenner.

And may I say it: what identikit they make, it’s basically a portrait, what talent they have, how many people are really able to describe a man’s face that well??? For real?? 

 

The Cia approach Colombo so he meets the boss and is finally told about Brenner being an operator. The bugs in Colombo’s house are removed :-p Colombo sees the games in Brenner’s house: poker, backgammon, mahjong… “do you like to gamble sir?” - “what else is there?”, an answer that defines this character, combined with his “I find it dull” talking about his own life.

Colombo has a warrant and checks out his alibi: he notices that in a picture of a younger Brernner the man had a receding hairline because now he uses a hairpiece so he thoughtof having a new sketch made, and Brenner looks just like Steinmetz, also the speech he said he recorded at the time of the crime was done in the morning because he closed the blinds because of the sun butt most importantly he talked about China staying out of the Olympics and it was not yet official until the morning, China pulled out of the Olympics at 6am. Busted!

But how did Colombo get a warrant without a motive? And he never talks about motive, he doesn’t know it.

Also, the victim had no coat on, Brenner had to take it off to take away the gun so not to know right away he was an agent or something.

승리호 Seungniho Space sweepers - 2021

I liked it enough, it was a rather unique thing, that is best appreciateed if watched in its original language with subtitles because there’s not just one language but lots of it, because this is sciencefiction in a distopic future and there’s lots of people coexisting and using a universal translator, so everyone in this movie speaks their own language. I heard Korean and English of course and also Spanish and French and a few I didn’t recognize or didn’t notice in the confusion, but Google says they were German, Russian, Chinese, Nigerian Pidgin, and Tagalog spoken in the Philippines, not sure if I’m forgetting something. 

No Italian, though  :’(

The protagonists are four people in a starship called Victory that go around cleaning space from all the garbage and then selling it for money, but if they break stuff or something they are fined so they’re always in debt.

-The first we meet is Kim Tae-ho who was once a soldier, brought into the UTS Genius program by Sullivan himself. One day he saw a baby and decided to keep it and raised the little thing as his own daughter, and he loved her very much. He called her Su-ni, but having a little girl changed him and he couldn’t shoot and hurt like he did before and was fired. No more nice house, he had to live on the streets of Earth. One day he tried to make money gambling or something and told Su-ni to entertain herself because he was busy or something like that, and she died in a bad space accident that killed many people. He knows that she’s dead but since that day he’s trying to find enough money to pay for a search, for her body to be found, it’s possible inside a three years span until the body will go out of orbit or something. 

-Captain Jang leads them; she’s tough and very determined. Jang Hyun-sook, adopted by UTS as a child and raised to be an engineer and very good at it, until she abandoned that colony and started working against them. She’s already attempted once on Sullivan’s life.  

-Bubs is some kind of android with a peculilar personality, who wants to gain enough money for a skin operation, he wants a complete body reconstruction to look like a real person.

-Tiger Park is the fourth crerwmember. 

 Earth is barely livable so the elite and rich live in space, in the residential districts of UTS, founded by James Sullivan, the richest man in the world, who is also 152 years old apparently although it’s not clear to me how can that be, and he sure doesn’t look it. His people call him the Saviour of humanity, but actually 95% of human population is still on Earth, in hell, but he doesn’t care about them. He has his own ideas of creating a better world after a traumatic childhood, he will say that all the people in his heaven are better people, not just the rich, and to prove this point he offers the man who protested about humans condition to have that paradise handed to him and his family if he shoots a man already condemned to death; the man does it and is horrified by it, but he still did it and Sullivan then kills him saying that he’s bad like everyone down there. Sullivan’s new project is Mars.

The ‘black foxes’ is considered a terrorists group, and it’s on the news that they ‘stole’ an android looking like a small innocent child while it’s in fact a very dangerous bomb. The victory finds her hidden in one of the things they salvage, and they’re absolutely terrified when they realised it’s the same child-looking bomb. Dorothy/Kot-nim is her name, and she also has a cell  phone that she used to repeatedly call just one person: Kang Hyeo-nu. Even if they believe her a dangerous bomb they think of all the money they could do if they sell it to the Black Foxes constantly searching for her; they arrange a meeting but are attacked by soldiers. Kot-nim makes a dead plant on the ship bloom and grow tomatoes, real ones that nobody has eaten in a long time so Tae-ho can at least sell those. 

Park gets rather attached to Kot-nim who calls them uncles and draws pictures of them and basically is just a little girl. When they finally meet with the Red Foxes, Jang has already understood that Kot-nim is a human child because robots don’t poop, which is of course perfect logic, they don’t and never will, unless there’s some weird, disturbed engineer out there. She’s actually Kang Kot-nim, Hyeo-nu’s daughter. He was one of the scientists working with nanobots on the Mars terraforming project. Kot-nim was born with a rare disease that was killing her, so eventually he injected her with the nanobots; she recovered, started walking again and everything, but it didn’t stop there. We all know about nanobots, they started communicating with each other and basically it got was out of control in the best way possible, she can make any dead plant flourish. Because of this she’s Earth’s only hope, but instead Sullivan took her to Mars, and once it was enough to go on without her, every data and those who worked on it got eliminated; Kot-nim escaped before being killed herself, because it’s not that easy with all the nanobots inside her. The only way to kill her is to kill them too, which can only be done at 200million °C, a real powerful bomb. Sullivan’s plan is to make the bomb explode near her, and it will cause fractures on Earth and millions of deaths.

The Black Foxes are actually ambientalists with a very simple, logical question: if it is possible to transform the hostile environment on Mars into a green land, why not Earth? So they ally wiht our crew, to protect Kot-nim. They are all very fond of her now after all.

Kot-nim is very happy to hug her father again, and she tells him how the captain gave her good spicy food, Bubs did her make up, uncle Tiger washed her hair and uncle Tae-ho and her gained 23 dollars.

Unfortunately, once again they are found out and attacked by the Guards, and all the Foxes, Karum and dad are killed.

Tae-ho and the crew save Kot-nim and take her away on their ship, but the situation is not good, it’s very bad indeed when suddenly the ship detects a nanobot infestation, they surround the ship and release it only once it’s safe. She collapses but she’s ok in the end. 

They’re on the news now, called members of the terrorists Black Foxes, blaming them for everything that happened when the Guards attacked them. 

They are again found by the Guards guided by Sullivan himself, who tells Tae-ho about his plan and then tells him he’ll pay him for Kot-nim. He gives him 4 millions and Tae-ho takes the money, that he’ll share with his crew and use his part to find Su-ni’s body. He’s lived the last three years for this.

Sullivan tells him that that’s the price of Kot-nim’s life and that Tae-ho will never be a good man.

In case there was anyone who had not yet figured out Sullivan’s personality, we see him appear to the people in the residential area as a gigantic hologram where they can look at him as if in the sky, while he shows them the new Mars.

The crew does not want Sullivan’s money; Park is set on going to rescue Kot-nim, whatever the cost. The captain agrees but she also knows about Su-ni so she tells him to go do what he has to do and that they’ll do the same. He does, he gives the office all his part of the money, 400.000, and sits to wait, looking at Su-ni’s stuff and the last words she wrote the day she died, when he was so ‘busy’ that didn’t even look at it, and cries reading how she wrote that she loved him and wanted to be as good as him. 

Tae-ho comes back to join the others and pilot the ship,and the fights begins. Missiles are launched at them: Bubs walks out on top of the ship and takes out as many as he can with his harpoon, and they reach the sphere with the bomb and Kot-nim. 

Proble is: Jang looks at it and tells them the bomb cannot be disabled,and Kot-nim can only survive the explosion if she’s 5 million or 5000 km away from it (well, the subtitles first said 5 million and later on said 5000, so one or the other; the monitor will read 5132 but it doesn’t say what, so I’m still not 100% sure). So they agree on a plan and take her away.

There’s a tough battle with one Guard that I think is a machine but Tiger Park manages to kill it/her. No, if it’s warm it must be a human hand…

98 war drones head towards them so they call for help. They tell all the other sweepers of what is going to happen so that they can escape or fight.

Pierre, the French guy in love with Jang comes right away, ready to do anything to help her. The other sweepers also fight the drones.

A shocking audio reaches the news, from the space sweepers, and it’s what Sullivan told Tae-ho, so that everybody can hear it. At least every resident seems to be in shock.

Sullivan reaches the Victory himself, to get his hands on Kot-nim. The crew does everything they can and they finally reach enough distance. They sort of say their goodbyes: Tae-ho sas he was happy with them, Bubs that he loves them and Park thanks them for everything. 

This was the best plan, of course. Had they taken Kot-nim away they would have saved only her - if that- but by taking away the bomb they also save a billion lives on Earth, it’s certainly something they’re ready to die for. So they took the bomb away and left Kot-nim behind, to be taken in by Pierre who was rushing to help Jang in any possible way.

As soon as the monitor tells them that they’re far enough, they let the bomb explode killing Sullivan. Both Kot-nim and the Earth are safe, and everybody thinks the Victory is gone until a huge mass of indestructible nanobots brings it back. They’re for sure the ones that ‘infested’ the ship before saving it, and maybe they evolved into soemthing that the bomb could not destroy… I guess… does that mean that Kot-nim would not have died?

Anyway, it changes nothing because this way they saved Earth.

Bubs has been cut in half and the captain gets hold of the top part. The others are ok.

Now that everyone knows the Truth, UTS without Sullivan promises to do much more to help Earth, and the Sweepers that saved it are promised by Uts that they’ll pay them back for whatever loss they had, so Bubs gets a new shining body of a girl with perfect skin, although he still has his voice for now.

Kot-nim now lives with them and they’re a family. From time to time she goes on Earth to ‘make trees’ , the Captain stopped drinking, Bubs is a real girl, Tiger deleted all this tattooes so he will not scare away her friends and Tae-ho bought ten pairs of shoes since he never had shoes before (he even sold his boots in his search for Su-ni, checking on every body that was found).

The movie ends with Bubs reading Rainer Maria Rilke’s Life and Songs. She’s serious about educating herself, it seems, and since she doesn’t need papers that prove it to others she also does not need a school to educate herself. Good. 

Song Joong-ki is Tae-ho

Kim Tae-ri is Captain Jang

Richard Armitage is James Sullivan

Park Ye-rin is Kot-nim also called Dorothy

愛の、がっこう. Ai no gakkou Learning to love

I liked it a lot, too much since it was not well made, unfortunately not, but the character of Kaoru was very touching and well played, the actor that played him did very well, I had never seen him before and I liked him a lot. Now I’ve learned he’s a pop idol in a group called Snow Man, but I’m afraid I’m over the age limit for that stuff. I also learned that he’s a model, which is very understandable and perfect for him, but for me it has the same results, so I’ll simply gladly wait to see him in another movie.

He is called Raul (Raul Maito Murakami).

This show is all about learning to love, not only Manami and Kaoru but also all the others. Kawahara apparently had really fallen for her, alhtough I did not feel that until it was said at the end, and because he had real feelings for her he helped her with Kaoru and let her go, and of course Manami’s father was a tyrant… who apparently becomes another person when she threatens to leave him… Kaoru and Manami learn together to love each other but also themselves.

It’s also a story about prejudice of course, and stuff like that, but most of all is a story about accepting each other and learning to love both each other and oneselves.

For the record, I think in the story he’s 23 and she’s 35.

Or, well, maybe I just watched it during an emotional time so it resonated something in my soul, but whatever… I still thought that it should be watched at least twice, to better appreciate it because first time I didn’t get everything because I didn’t really know Kaoru, like when he told Manami they could go to a hotel, as if that was an acceptable thing to say, but once I understood the character fully, it does make sense. That’s how he sees himself, the world and women. He believes he’s stupid and worth nothing outside the host club, he only knows women/people who think/say he’s stupid or those who like him for how he acts in the club, and women who like him are always met at the club, where he acts, pretends to be what they want, and that is the only way he thinks women can want him. It touched him when she said he’s not stupid, and the “reward” was to be with her like he never is with other clients. He’s so confused when she gets offended, and when she walks away he thinks it’s the end, but he doesn’t want that and calls her back about their lessons… even his voice changes now, no more as confident and more childish.. he is a good actor and a striking figure. Tsubasa is prettier but he is unforgettable. It’s not everyday you feel so much someone’s emotions, charming man one second and vulnerable kid the next… I’m curious to see him in another movie, to verify if it was him or it was jusst the right moment for me to feel that way…

The last episode was hurried, not the plot I’d have liked but I can see it being Kaoru’s insecurities making him do this, to make sure she still wants him. I didn’t like that he was dancing when she sees him, why? Not worried at all she might not want him anymore? … His lack  of self-worth should make him doubt. They know each other, like, four months now? 

He can’t act with her, so I didn’t like how it was written, but I do like the last image, how when he kisses her the word love is all around them.

This show is not well done, I said it before, the abrupt fade-to-black moments were unacceptable, I don’t do that even in my home-made videos (and you can check, I posted a couple on youtube a few years ago on Wang Duo I quite like - another actor I like really a lot, he really is good). In a film, or miniseries or whatever it is which shows up internationally it’s unthinkable. At the beach it’s the worst, two abrupt ones that made me think they forgot to include the scene when they sit down, so they added it later in a very unprofessional way…

This show talks about host clubs: night clubs where charming young men pretend to love you to make you spend your money in drinks and stuff… I mean they only talk about champagne or such, but there might be the occasional snack to eat… and it’s their official job, they’re there as hosts, so you kinda know what’s what beforehand.

 

This is a miniseries:

1-

Manami is a teacher in a catholic school - well, there’s a nun so I suppose that’s what it is - and shi only has girls in class, but they don’t respect her. Manami doesn’t do anything to make them, she just takes it.

She meets her ‘new fiancée’ Kawahara because their fathers know each other and arranged the marriage. 

When a rich mother complains to the school that her daughter is spending lots of money at a host club, the school orders Manami and her teacher aide Sakura to retrieve her, so she goes. 

Young Natsuki was with Kaoru, one of the host - with this I mean they were sitting at a table talking. His job as host is to talk to women and get them to buy more drinks and spend a lot of money.

Manami insists th girl should leave, Kaoru mocks her a bit for her strict, no fun attitude, and the girl tries to stay but the club owner stops her from entering again .

When Manami sees her at school the next morning, Natsuki is sad because nobody seems to care about her.

The girl’s mother insists on having a letter from Kaoru, a promise that he won’t see the girl again, and Manami won’t stop until she gets it. She tries at the club of course, and star host Tsubasa tells her that he is well educated while Kaoru is not, which does not interest her at all because she’s only there for the letter. When he keeps saying ‘later’ and refuses to write it there, she waits and then follows him home.

When she refuses to enter his apartment, because it’s not appropriate, he thinks she might have a wrong idea about him and tells her that he never slept with the underage girl, whatever Natsuki might have said to appear like an adult (indeed, that’s what Natsuki had told her).

Still, since Manami won’t enter they go talk on the roof and he manages to write the letter for her, but it seems written by a child, so he admits that he only had the first two or three years of school and no more, that he has no father and his mother is a parasite (yeah, she is, constantly asking him money and otherwise leaving him on his own). That they had no money and he just never learned, he can’t even write his name in Kanji. She stops him from walking away and insists on teaching him how to do it, and you can see in his posture how he feels lost and embarrassed, but he applies himself and she really enjoys teaching him, and he gets frustrated when he makes mistakes but sticks to it and learns how to write his name. 

I so relate to Manami’s emotions here about this lesson because it’s wonderful to teach someone who wants to learn, so rewarding, it’s like winning together :-) :-) 

When he sees how she writes her own name his reaction is adorable, he likes her surname because Ogawa is so easy to write, he says :lol: 

At work, he tells his boss that he can make her fall in love and come to the club.

Kawahara is seeing a married woman and only wants to marry Manami because it’ll help his career. Manami told him about her past right away: she once had a serious relationship but when her fiancée left her she lost it, she kept calling him crying, following him, leaving him gifts. A stalker indeed so he called the police on her and she had to leave the company. She also tried to kill herself, but it’s not easy to let oneself drown, she didn’t choose well. She does not tell him about the attempt, though.

Her father found her this teaching job.

2-

Natsuki runs away from school so Manami asks Kaoru if he saw her and he finds Natsuki for her. Kaoru told her that his love is on sale, can only be bought, so she should keep studying, go to university, get a good job and make a lot of money, so she’ll be able to buy his love… how  nice of him :) Her mom always speaks of her unconditional love, and when Natsuki asks Manami which one is better, that or bought love, Manami’s answer surprises her: “we’ll never know” is not what the girl expected, and Manami can see a change immediately in her attitude, so when Manami drops a chip she picks it up and eats it like Kaoru did, earning herself a smile from the girl. 

3-

Kawahara still wants to marry Manami and they meet her parents together. Her best friend the journalist is the one Manami’s man left her for, but she dumped him and now she cares about Manami a lot. Manami has told both about her past, but not about the suicide attempt.

Tsubasa ‘gives’ Kaoru his best client, a very rich woman, very demanding, and she’s buying jewellery for him when Manami comes in and Kawahara buys the rings for them. Honestly, Manami looks the leasts interested in the rings, and Kaoru looks embarrassed to be shown off like a pretty thing. They all take a room, but Manami changes her mind and leaves. Kaoru is very hesitant, not used to this kind of things, but  of course he won’t say he’s never done it; the woman gets offended thinking he doesn’t like her that way because she’s older (well, she’s a woman, he’s little more than a kid… not sure how old she is but she’s probably over forty, although she’s stunning … actually according to Google she was 50 in this… wow woman, us mortals can only wish…) so she throws wine at him. When he has to sign the hotel receipt or something, he thinks back to his ‘lesson’ and then he calls Manami. He doesn’t want to ask directly, so he congratulates her on her engagement and talks of how much he loved to look at trains as a child, but he never had a choice on what to do because of his ignorance, so Manami is the one to offer, she insists he can do it even if he has a learning disability. She gives him a book/magazine on trains to practise, and she laughs when she’s with him. Manami even asks for advice from her teacher aide, so she buys a pencil for Kaoru so he can erase mistakes. At their next appointment, he plays the fool and she goes away. Everyone told him he was stupid as a child, now he said it about himself and she didn’t contradict him, she just went.

Kawahara follows her, spies on her and learns the name Kaoru when she goes to the club to talk about his ‘homework’… and what a difficult scene that was. Rich Akina does still name him for the number one spot in the club, and he probably thinks they’re alright for a moment, but I could feel something was wrong, that she wanted to humiliate him. I had to pause for a while, it was hard to watch.

Akira tells him in front of everyone that he’s stupid, and not him or anybody eles can say a thing because, as the boss says, in a host club women have fun and can do whatever they want. Manami stands to leave but Akina stops her because they saw each other at that… jewellery store, hotel? Anyway, Manami simply says that Kaoru is not stupid and goes out. Kaoru runs after her and hugs her.

Natsuki treats her better now.

4-

Kaoru hugs her from behind in a very manga-like scene, adorable, but being so uptight and proper she fights the contact. :-/ Kaoru offers Manami to go to a hotel and she feels insulted, but he wants to continue their lessons, promises to do his homework and she accepts to teach him. He told her she lied, that he’s been told he’s stupid his entire life, but Manami protests telling him that he isn’t! It means a lot.

At school, Sakura gives her a book on teaching people with learning disabilities and teaches her some things. 

When his mom calls Kaoru doesn’t answer. Good. She was calling for her partner that wants money :-/

Kawahara asks Momoko about the club, and she says that it’s because of a student, then Momoko talks to Manami about it. When Momoko warns her to stay away from hosts, they have a fight, but they’re still friends.

Kaoru is all set on becoming number one now; Manami spent time preparing his lesson, with colors and everything, but he doesn’t show up and doesn’t answer her calls, so she eventually goes to the club to check on him, and Tsubasa tells her that’s Kaoru’s usual strategy with women, to make them come to the club, and he also tells her that it was Kaoru’s plan from the start ot make her fall for him so she’d spend her money for him, that he wanted to take advantage of her… she knows he’s trying to make Kaoru look bad, and… she says she’ll order everything Kaoru wants… that night Tsubasa is named number one, Kaoru is the second… and then it turns out he made her spend more than 500.000 yen… she gives him the lesson she had prepared already and goes out.

School’s over for now, summer starts. Sakura comes clean with her so she won’t believe he had any romantic feelings, and tells her that he’s not interested in women, and only wants to be a good friend (and isn’t it sad that in this society, whatever place you live in, this is necessary? Because indeed if a man helps a woman, volunteers help, it’s because he wants to bed her, isn’t it?). Kaoru’s boss tells him that a good host must make the women happy, for them to have fun, not to make them regret the money they spent; he looked at Manami’s bill. After this scolding, and looking at what she prepared for him, Kaoru feels bad.

Manami comes home to find Kawahara with her father. She can’t even let him kiss her, but she keeps the engagement because she can’t say no to her father. 

Kaoru goes to tell his mom’s partner to stop sending her to ask him for money. When he calls Manami, she does go to meet him, and he gives her back the money she spent, and then he says to put a stop to it, because he doesn’t deserve her kindness…

I mean, here he says that it’s getting too hard… really? What?, since he’s not really studying all that hard yet? Barely, almost nothing one might say. The feelings are getting harder, he kept saying he’d never fall for a girl adn now he can’t keep up with all these feelings, and when it’s Manami who calls him back he can’t understand why she does it, what’s in it for her. He thinks she’s in love with him and admits he feels the same, he sort of accuses her of falling for him, like she shouldn’t have, because to him it makes no sense at all, but we can see how Manami is different with him, those are the only times that she laughs, and when she jokes with him like a kid it feels like she’s living her ‘kid phase’ for the first time and that’s why he’s good for her too.

5-

Kaoru starts having feelings, tells her so, but she says to stop saying such things and focus on their lessons, and gives him back the money. Kaoru admits to his roommate and only friend at the club that he can’t write, so the other now understands why Kaoru never posts on social medias. 

This episode shows Kaoru admitting it willingly to someone - sure, his roommate is his friend, a good person, but this is the first time anyway, Kaoru never wanted anyone to know before. His face always shows the hurt, the embarrassement, when he wants to hurtt or to escape.. it touches the heart.

Kawahara tells Manami that he had kept seeing another woman but it’s over now. So she tells him the truth about teaching Kaoru. And Kawahara tells her dad about Kaoru!

Kaoru keeps doing his homework, but she shows up with Sakura to help so an annoyed Kaoru drags her to a library to buy something. The book is for Kaoru’s little stepbrother, and it’s all great as long as she’s the one reading the book to the child, ut when the child wants him to read, it’s so difficult he gives up after one sentence.

Manami’s mom goes to the club, ordered by her husband, to tell Kaoru to never see her again. She gives him money and tells him to leave her in peace, and she gets drunk to get through with it.

Natsuki’s mom was against the idea of her going abroad to study, but Manami sticks to it, wanting to help the girl, and she does. But, Natsuki forgot her phone at school and so she sees Kaoru come to talk to Manami through th closed gate, and sees him taking her hand…

This episode ends with him facing his feelings and going to her… his ‘I hate you’ is complex (the subtitles were correct, I checked, he says kirai), but it’s clear what they mean, basically they just admitted to being in love with each other.

6-

Manami and Kaoru go to the beach on a train, I think he asked for one day together or something and then they’d stop it. At the gate, he says  he’s starting to hate her, and she says the same, but he asks for a day with her, like a school trip, a goodbye trip. He took a day off for this. They joke and talk, he tells her of how much he would have wanted to go to school and she… she tells him of the suicide attempt… and there was no need for her narrating voice to point out she’d never told anyone, I had noticed she didn’t even tell Momoko. He makes her feel lighter.

They play games, run, have fun, talk about themselves and then they kiss on the beach… the day ends though, and they agreed it was to be the end of it.

She switches the phone on and finds lots of calls, because Natsuki told on her, the jealous child.

Also, Kaoru is confronted by Kawahara, who punches him making him fall down the stairs.

7-

The guy actually broke his own hand punching Kaoru. The police asks questions, wondering if the incident is related to the host assassinated. Tsubasa goes to visit Kaoru then tells Momoko that he’s in a hospital, and she tells Manami. Kawahara had just revealed that he saw her with Kaoru so she’ll probably add 2 and 2 together and realize the truth… maybe…

Manami finally decides to leave her parents’ home and go live alone. When she goes to visit Kaoru it’s already after hours and she can’t enter, and when she calls him he lies about being at a club surrounded by women, but then he sees her outside. 

Tsubasa doesn’t want to work with Akina anymore - we guessed, since he gave her to Kaoru, but now she comes to the club with a knife to hurt him. The boss and his men help and he is unarmed, but Kaoru’s friend got injured in his arm. 

Kaoru’s mom asks him again for money for her man, 3 millions… I mean, the face of that woman!!!

8-

Kawahara tells Manami her dad is home because at his company people complained about him for abuse of power. He keeps insisting they marry as quickly as possible.

Akina confesses she used all her money for the host Jin and when she had no more he became cold, she threatened to kill herself and accidentally killed him. She tried again and became addicted to Tsubasa - who suspected her already because he knew Jin and knew he had trouble with her… but still had her as his best client for quite a while to get money anyway, it seems… - and then Akina decided to make them pay, these men who use women (… well… not sure I feel for her as Momoko does, who accuses Tsubasa of ruining her life… I’m conflicted, it’s not like he courted her for her money, she came to him and it’s an official job she knew about, she knew he was working… but of course girls and desperate women can lose themselves in these places because they want to believe the lie as long as it lasts…).

When she heard of the incident at the club, Manami rushed there worried for Kaoru, then she fainted so Momoko left him to care for her.

The boss tells Kaoru that he’s been in prison for killing a man in a fight, years ago, but Kaoru is grateful to him for sort of saving him, he had nothing before the man stopped three guys beating him up and gave him food to eat and a job. He offers to do anything to help, and Boss just tells him to clear the place up, ruffling his hair… :-) it was adorable.I’d like to know the actor’s name.

It happened  years ago, just Kaoru’s age, and the man said he wanted to stop being a host because he had fallen in love)

The clulb opens one last night, but Boss has decided to close it after this incident. Manami asks Momoko to stay at her place until she finds her own, but dad locks her in her room… he yells that she can’t do anything and he had to find her jobs for her, which she knows about and that’s why she wants to be more independent, and mom hits him and lets her run away. Good :-p

Kawahara apologises to Kaoru and asks him why he didn’t tell on him. 

9-

Manami makes it to Momoko’s place.

The police questions all the hosts, but when they tell Kaoru to read carefully before signing, it is very difficult for him. Momoko and everyone is telling Manami to stay away, but Sakura is worried for Kaoru’s dislexia. Manami goes to the police to tell them about it. Everyone’s released. Kaoru’s boss thanks Manami, while his mom is just annoying, poor guy.

Manami signs for a place of her own. Kawahara tells her to break the engament, comes clean about punching Kaoru, and tells her that Kaoru loves her more than he does, and when she says Kaoru doesn’t want to be with her he doesn’t think she should give up.

Kawahara then goes to Kaoru’s place to give him Manami’s new address. Kaoru goes, they talk and eat together then he falls asleep.

10-

Manami asks if he wants to live with her but he’s worried about her school and what will happen to her for living with a host, so he tells her he’ll look for a different job.

Manami tells the school about wanting a relationship with Kaoru, and she’s fired. She also tells her mom. Momoko tells Kaoru to not hurt her or she’ll kill him :-) but then her dad comes to yell at him to leave her alone, and other horrible things, but when Kaoru takes it without reaction, dad seems satisfied that he can control himself, and tells him to study something and get a job and be a respectable man.

11-

Manami helps him prepare for interviews, and he tells her he cut contacts with his mom, told her to stop calling him, that he won’t give her money anymore. 

The students insist on talking to Manami and know why she’s leaving them (as if she resigned willingly…).

Kaoru applies hard to entry a hair styling school. Kawahara tells Manami he’ll go to New York to work there. Kaoru refuses to asks for special treatment in reading the questions so of course he fails the exam, so he thinks he’s not good enough for her and leaves her… I mean, talk about on-again-off-again relationship… they make my head spin…

Manami’s mom loses it and asks for a divorce. Kaoru thinks for a bit to go back to being a host because that’s the only thin he can do but it’s not what he wants. He asks Boss if he’s his dad by any chance but no, he says no, just to be clear.

Some days later - well, he gave the exam when school started for the girls, and now it’s September 27th - she goes to the same beach they once visited, where they said they’d go together to see the firecrackers show, and she finds Kaoru there, who has finally understood that he doesn’t want to live a lie anymore pretend to be who he’s not. He tells her that he’ll try again to enter the school and they get back together. Once again, they kiss on the beach. 

The last scene shows up Manami’s mom going out to work and dad staying home and putting on an apron… not sure they’ll divorce now… I think they’ll live like this. Her plants are new and growing again.

Manami has a new job at another school.

Kaoru/Taiga Takamori is Raul

Manami is Fumino Kimura

Tsubasa is Keishi Arai

Akina is Michiko Kichise

Momoko is Minami Tanaka

Sakura is Ryosuke Mikata

ซ้ำวัน กับ (Same day With someone) - 2025

 I liked it, it was cute, and even movingg at the end, but with the perfect happy ending and some funny moments. Of course it’s the usual fairytale, like any ‘repeat the same day in a loop until it goes well’ story, but that’s the premise of this story so if you watch it it means that you have accepted said premise and are okay with it. 

I am okay with it, because it makes for funny stories sometimes, although a small part of me is indeed bothered by the all: why would this person get all these chances while others barely have one… but that should be accepted to before starting the movie, so I don’t dwell on it too much.

I must say though that this particular film was rather nice in that regard too.

Plot in details now:

Mesa is a rich girl, so she’s not weird she’s just eccentric and showing her personality. Since she was little she wanted to open a museum, I think it was the huge villa of her grandfather, not sure where all the pieces inside come from. Anyway, that was her dream so she prayed to her Goddess; Mesa finished her studies and I think she actually worked hard to get there, but we don’t see any of that.

We find her grown up and with the museum about to open; she also prayed to find love and we see her engaged.

At least I think it’s its first official opening, although I think Ben was working there already, but maybe he was working on it but it wasn’t open to the public… not totally sure. Actually she watched people around so maybe it was already open and has been for a while but only now they finally got the chance to have the precious stone that looks like cooked bacon. Probably.

Now we come to the important day, the eighth of August, and she wakes up happy and ready for another fabulous day, but things do not go well. A spoiled kid from hell threatens the safety of the precious pieces inside and also the travelling case of two guys leet loose… it all results in the ancient stone of Chilin, the priceless, precious artifact falling down and breaking in two, damaging diplomatic relations and ruining the museum’s opening. As if it wasn’t enough for Mesa, her fiancee comes to break up with her. Also, her shoe’s heel breaks. What a day. 

So, what do people do when things go to hell? She drinks, she gets very drunk and she goes to yell at her Goddess in front of her statue. Ben tries to stop her but she won’t have it, she’s got frustrations to yell. Being drunk and unstable on her feet, she pushes Ben away, she falls down and causes the statue to fall too, right next to her, in perfect range for when her being drunk catches up with her and she throws up on its face.

The next morning, Mesa sees that it still says 8 on her phone calendar and is all happy that it was just a dream, but during her morning run she sees the same things and at the museum people say the same things… so she understands she already lived through the whole of it.

Loop has started. She tries staying awake until the next day starts but sooner or later during the night she falls asleep and it starts again. She tries saying sorry to her Goddess for how she disrespected her statue.

After a week of trying by herself she’s already losing her mind so she starts asking Ben’s help. Ben was her mentor and he left the museum to her because he’s about to leave for… somewhere, maybe France, I don’t know, and it’s apparently a great opportunity. 

Ben starts helping her, but nothing works. Every day Ben believes her and helps her. 

They try everything to protect the precious stone and to keep her fiancee, with the same results: no matter how big a gesture or how far she hides he will find her and leave her anyway. 

To protect the stone they try throwing out the family with the brat, securing the case right away, nothing works. There will be a stone kicked by the brat or even a mouse or squirrel making the chandelier fall on the stone. This was bad, on the same day that she went to her fiancee determined to change whatever it was in her that made him leave her only to find another woman in his room.

She gets drunk again and again she starts yelling: at Ben for complicating things and mostly at her Goddess for choosing a bad man for her and getting her in his nightmare, and when she starts throwing thinks at the sacred statue Ben tries to stop her, she pushes him and they both fall down, and the statue falls on Ben…

Next day of the loop, Ben is trapped in it too, he remembers everything but he reacts quite differently: he will now have time to read and watch everything he wants, and he proposes using that time to do whatever they’ve ever wanted.

They visit Japan and India and other places not too far away (for obvious reasons), she practices hard until she learns to play sepak takraw, basically volleyball with feet instead of hands, she can eat a lot without getting fat, they get tattooes, rebel hairstyles (so cute though, they both look better with shorter hair)… he looked very handsome with the suit and the well cut hair (just free your forehead :D ), but I got annoyed when she took away his glasses, can we stop saying that people look bad in glasses? He needs to see, you know. 

(Of course the show friends was an exception, everybody would look bad with those glasses not just Chandler, the were 19th century psycho doctor glasses)

They ride a bike, play golf and much much more and now she says she has learned to value little things and special moments, she listens to his doubts about going abroad and then they kiss.

She thinks this is what the Goddess wanted for her, to realize her true love was always right in front of her,  and since they’re in love and they’re still stuck in the loop, maybe they haven’t loved each other enough, so sh decides to add passion and they sleep together. 

She’s so sure it’ll work that when she wakes up alone still inside the loop she goes all crazy, smashing the Goddess statue, the museum pieces and the stone herself. She yelled at her mom and then cried while talking to her on the phone.

Next morning, for the first time, she takes a look at the “assembly instructions” of the “art display cabinet), and talks to Ning, one of the girls that works at the museum, and notices bad signs on her skin, clear signs of an abusive man. She stays with him because of the usual excuses and also because she feels like she’s got only him. 

Ning notices that the cabinet was not assembled properly, and then Mesa sees the name that she heard several times on the radio as the identity of the girl found dead, written on a package. Lalita Patnon turns out to be Ning’s full name. 

Realization time. Mesa sees now that it’s not her having the worst day, it’s not her second chance, it’s not her that needs saving, and a stone is not the only thing that can be broken.

First time Mesa tries to save Ning from jumping in the river at night, they fall together. Still that day the cabinet was repaired and the stone was not broken, so they see that things can be prevented after all.

Next time Mesa tries to save ning from jumping and they both fall, there’s somone ready to save them both, alerted by Ben. 

Loop broken, she wakes up next to Ben and the phone says it’s finally saturday. 

Ben leaves to go abroad but they plan of seeing each other soon (she’s rich after all); Ning has left the bastard, and the Goddess herself appears in front of Mesa. Now she’s been granted everything and there’s nothing else the Goddess can do for her.

Jarinporn Joonkiat is Mesa

Warintorn Panhakarn is Ben

Charlette Wasita Hermenau is Ning

Trisanu Soranun is Tul (the fiancee)

크로스 (Mission cross) - 2024

It wasn’t bad but to be honest I didn’t like it all that much, it should have had more of them together; like this it was just a spy story, sort of. Not bad, no, but not something that leaves a mark or I’d like to watch again.

Plot in details:

Kang Mi-seon is a fierce cop, tough and determined. Her team call her Crocodile because they say she has 90% of success. Her husband is Park Kang-moo who is very attentive and caring, does the housework and worries for her health, because she doesn’t and she works too much; cop Lee calls him her wife because when they go to her house to celebrate solving a case he takes care of everything.

She is very tough and grumpy, so even if she knows she’s lucky to have such a good husband, she also sort of looks down on him.

What she doesn’t know is that in the past, in the life he left behind, he was a secret agent.

The story now follows two separate lines, which stay separate for almost the entirety of the film, too long in my opinion, they come together only towards the end so that they can fight together, it should have happened earlier

Mi-seon : their next case is a shooting, but the woman didn’t die because she was wearing a bulletproof vest. This Baek Seon-u is in a coma for a while. Her cops see her husband talking to Hee-ju and in their mind it appears a clear affair, and they talk about it where she can hear them. They keep seeing them together, even going into a hotel together. Cop Lee is sure that he loves her, but the evidence is also clear to them… so she clones his cell phone to spy on him. When the girl wakes up she tells them of how they used the account to try and get General Park to come out in the open. Mi-seon sees in a  video the ‘mistress’ face among her suspects. She also learns Jung-san’s address so she goes there to investigate, and right in time to fight Park’s men come to get the usb key with the account. Mi-seon destroys the usb after sending it to Kang-moo’s phone, so she’s taken prisoner.

Kang-moo: he meets Hee-ju after a long time, and she says she’s married to Jung-san but he’s now disappeared. They both worked with him as secret agents once. It’s been six years since their last mission together, I think he was the team leader, and worried there might be a spy among them. The mission didn’t go well and it also was an unauthorized mission, so he’s out.

He thinks men were after her, that enemies took Jung-san and wants to help her. She says her house isn’t safe so she lives at Jung-san’s safe house. They are contacted by a mysterious man and meet him at a hotel, and he tells them that the Minister of Defence announced a big contract as a cover for a load of money, like 3,5 trillions of won. It’s General Park’s plan, but nobody knows Park’s identity, only the name. Jung-san put together a new team to investigate Park he’s losing all its members. Jung-san found Parrk’s account and sort of encripted it to make Park come out to retrieve it. The man tells them where Jung.san is kept prisoner and they free him; this is when we see that Hee-ju is Park, and she used this elaboratae story because she knew that once Jung-san thought himself safe he would reveal to those he trusted what he didn’t tell the enemy even under torture, Kang-mu takes Jung-san to be healed, and before he can go away Jung-san tells him to keep the account safe, and tells him where it is, and since it was all her plan and she knew where they would be, there’s a hidden microphone and she hears it all. 

When the man instead of healing him tries to kill him, Jung-san knocks him out and calls Kang-mu to learn more, and tells him Hee-ju is not his wife, she disappeared at the same time Kang-mu was dispensed with. Unfortunately he’s killed because the guy didn’t stay knocked out for long and shot him. A car crashes into Kang-mu’s car.

At this point, they tell Mi-seon they’ll kill Kang-mu so she reveals about the account and they get it from his phone while he’s still out from the crash, but then he comes to and fights them before they kill him. Mi-seon heard the order to kill him, but won’t have to live with that for long because he storms inside and when he sees her tied up of course he frees her and takes her away with him. 

A very sweet scene at this point: Mi-seon asks him who he really is, and he admits that in another life he was a secret agent. She’s upset that he kept it a secret from her, that for years he kept from her such an imporant part of him. When he says he was worried how she would have reacted, she says ‘who else could understand if not me? When the world is against you, I am with you. This is marriage’ and she also tells him how stupid he was to let himself by used by that crazy woman. Now they work together to stop her. Before going into action he weakly tries to tell her that maybe she should stay behind because they’ll have to deal with mercemaries protecting Park, but of course she won’t have it, he’s not alone in his fight anymore. She helps a lot, in fact, becausse she’s a better shooter than he is, she won a silver medal for it.

Asia’s n.2. 

Now there’s a bit I didn’t understand: they were looking at the computer telling Park the account was two minutes from being… what? How were they… what were they doing? Money laundry, somehow? Where was the money? How come she has a case now that supposedly contains the 3,5 trillions? Maybe it means that she herself had the money already but needed to make it look clean money to fullly enjoy it? And when the money laundry was interrupted by our couple storming in and cutting the power, she decided she’d keep the money even if it was dirty? 

And how small is Korean’s money that 3,5 trillions can fit in such a small case? Google says they have a banknote of50.000 but one still needs 70 millions of them to make 3,5 trillions, or di I go wrrong somewhere? That case is fara too small and way far too ligght to contain all that physical money…  or maybe I didn’t see it and it simply contains a small computer that can be used to access the money? It’d make sense of course, it’s just that when Mi-seon takes the case, the scene feels like she retrieved the money, but if it’s all digital she didn’t really, she only stopped her from having it.

Well, it doesn’t matter all that much. 

Wife and husband fight fiercely side by side then dress up like two of the mercenaries so Hee-ju follows them into a car. Mi-seon gets angry when the woman insults her husband :) then Hee-ju tries to escape but Mi-seon stops her and wins. 

They come out of it leaving Hee-ju alive and find lots of soldiers ready, and her cops waiting, who now also learns who Kang-mu is. 

The end. Well, almost, we see that six months later they’re working together… google says it’ s a scene to wink at fans because it alludes to another of the actor’s films, but I wouldn’t know about that, and therefore I didn’t appreciate this scene at all. I would have liked to know how they’re working together now, is he an agent again and she works in his team? She wouldn’t leave being a cop, would she? Is she still a cop and he helps her with it? He wouldn’t be allowed, as a civilian…

So, this is why I didn’t enjoy the ending, and I would have appreciated if they came together sooner, with more action together.

Hwang Jung-min is Park Kang-moo

Yum Juna-ah is Kang Mi-seon

Jeon Hye-jin is Jang Hee-joo

Jung Man-sik is Lee Sang-eung  (the cop I liked in Minamdang, here in a similar role)

Colombo - Ashes to ashes

 Well, not one of those that merit countless reruns, but not too bad. It’s only a bit boring at times, but i was nice to see the same face that portrayed Mr Finch in Agenda for Murder :)

My main problem with his one is that I don’t understand the logic of why he did what he did, other than it was necessary otherwise Colombo would not have been able to catch him…

What I liked though was seeing Colombo taking to the taxi-drivers and then making up some story about a cousin when talking to Prince; he’s always done that, but it was never so openly like this. I’ve always known that he lies constantly to his suspects, but it’s finally in the open :)

The story:

Verity Chandler is a tv journalist and is working on a new piece on a funeral home, but she also wants to confront Eric Prince personally. He’s the owner, and they’ve been lovers in the past, I think. She’s uncovered a very dirty secret on how he made so much money: years ago, when famous actress Dorothy Page died, he stole her very precious diamond necklace. She appears during the funeral of a war veteran and even kisses him leaving evident traces of lipstick so the woman working there (Prince’s assistant) uses her handkerchief to wipe it out, and then Verity confronts Prince with a photo of a house, Dorothy Page’s house, and tells him she will expose him in a few days time, so he kills her right there and then. After the funeral, he exchanges the bodies in the coffin, burning Verity and keeping the veteran frozen. He gives the ashes to the veteran’s rich widow who throws them over the Hollywood sign, even if it’s forbidden. Prince then puts Verity’s shoes and earrings in her house, near a desk with a glass smeared with lipstick, and then he writes something on her computer changing the date, to make it look like she was home in the evening.

It’s Verity’s secretary that insists the police must investigate because she’d never stay so many hours without answering her phone or contacting him, especially after he left her three messages.

I did not like this guy, this secretary was so annoying and so patronising towards Colombo; in a way he was right, something serious had really happened, but he was annoying nonetheless.

At first it does look like she had been home and then someone entered by force and kidnapped her, but then they discover that Verity’s puppy had been left alone for hours without food or water and he gets angry, and sure that nobody would have bought a puppy and then left him alone to starve like that.

The secretary knew Verity was going to the veteran’s funeral, so Colombo has a place to start. Prince says that he sometimes called her, when it was someone famous’ funeral, because it was all publicity for him, he even says that he called her to come for the veteran’s funeral. And yet, he mentions having another famous man’s funeral to organize but he did not call her for this. 

The assistant tells Colombo that Verity came in a taxi and gives him the handkerchief she used to wipe off the lipstick, so Colombo can see that it is not the same shade on the glass on her desk, clearly put there to make people think that she had been home.

Prince has another cremation, of a short man that died in an explosion, so there’s a small body in a sack, and Prince puts this Lerby together with the veteran’s body and burns them together, and puts all the ashes in the same urn. 

Talking to the taxi driver, Colombo realises that the picture is of a house in Sunset Boulevard that now belongs to a sheik, but it once belonged to actress Dorothy Page, and Colombo learns of the case of the missing diamond necklace. 

This is how it went: when Page died, she was sent to the funeral home with the necklace on her; somebody called right away, Prince denied having seen it and a search found nothing - because diamonds don’t burn, so he shoved them down her throat and took them after cremating her. He used the taxi driver’s help to sell it.

Colombo now has a problem, because there’s no body and no way to prove there ever was a murder. His only chance is to prove that there was a switch in bodies, that he burned Verity before the veteran… and he can do this because the war veteran had a metal plaque in him of a metal that won’t burn, so he gets hold of that urn and shakes it, and we clearly hear a noise, and Colombo shows us that there is a piece of metal inside, proving that the veteran’s ashes are in Lerby’s urn.

…It was important for the plot, of course, the only way… but it’s still silly to me that there was a switch ata all, he should havec burned both bodies at the same time, and kept only part of the ashes… it’s all a bit of nonsense in my opinion. 

This story is set in 1997, October I think. 

 

ITA scandali a Hollywood