The bounty hunter - 2010

Not bad, it was nice. It had two actors I like, though, not sure I’d have liked it otherwise. The plot is very very obvious, it has bits of fun and bits of “come on! move on please”. The movie is all about its two lead actors, it has nothing else. I mean, there were other actors, like Siobhan Fallon playing Teresa, and she’s always funny, she has an unforgettable face even for me, and there’s Christine Baranski playing Nicole’s mum, but they have like a couple of scenes and no more. I liked Dorian Missick playing Bobby, the cop who is a good friend of our couple, but he also has a very small role. There was no space for anything other than our lead characters and their cat&mouse/love relationship. On the other hand the character of Stuart was on for too long in my opinion. Was that supposed to be the funny sidekick? A loser stalking her? A guy she kissed one night when she was drunk, lonely and heartbroken, the most fragile moment of her life? A guy that can’t accept a no after the billions of times she’s said to him that there is nothing and never will be between them? 

I didn’t find it funny. I disliked every scene with him. 

The rest is a mix of lovers fight and action police work. Nicole (Jennifer Aniston) is a journalist working on a case. She also has a little problem with the State because she was arrested (I don’t know, maybe for fighting with an officer that contested her something) and was granted bail and now she has to appear in court, but that same morning her informant calls her with important informations, so she runs away to meet him and stays on the case when she can’t find him because he’s been abducted. 

Milo Boyd (Gerard Butler) is Nicole’s ex-husband, an ex-police officer, and now a bounty hunter whose next assignment is to catch Nicole and take her to jail. He thinks it’s Christmas!

The chase starts. He tracks her down and from that moment it’s all a sequence of ‘she runs away, he catches her, she runs away, he catches her’.. nothing original. A nice scene was when he first caught her, trying to run away in a taxi. He takes out his gun, she says you want to shoot me?, and he says no, but I’ll shoot the taxi driver, so of course every cabbie now locks his car and then he throws her over his shoulder first and then into the car-truck.

To make the movie longer there are two complications: Milo has a big gambling debt, so there are two men on his tail; second thing, Nicole’s informant gave out her name so she’s followed by a murderer/drug-dealer who wants to kill her. 

During all this they also find the time to talk about their marriage/divorce… everything pretty predictable of course. They’ll solve her case and also patch up things between them (the debt is still there though). 

The things I liked were Jennifer Aniston (her character was just ok) and the fact that at the end their cop friend was not corrupt at all. The sweetest scene was not the end (when he accepts that she’ll put her job first sometimes and says he’ll have to do the same sometimes, right before turning her in to the police to complete his own job, but then hits an unfriendly cop to get arrested and spend the night in a cell next to her for their anniversary); to me the sweetest scene was when she saw a poster-ad of the place where they spent their honeymoon in and starts crying and looking at her he understands this time she’s crying for real, because he can tell the difference, and becomes more soft. That little scene was the sweetest moment of the whole movie.

Milo was not very agreeable, to tell the truth. Gerard Butler is charming, but Milo isn’t. He’s an arrogant, a drunk with a gambling problem. 

ITA il cacciatore di ex 

Silver linings playbook - 2012

A good movie, probably not so easy for everyone to understand, but I liked it, and I also think this is one of Jennifer Lawrence best roles, if not the best I’ve seen so far. It’s a find-yourself movie, but also a love-story, with a bit of humour and some hard emotional scenes, because the character are deeply troubled to start with. Pat (Bradley Cooper) has been for eight months in a mental institution because he beat his wife’s lover very badly, but even before that he wasn’t exactly easy-going, but he didn’t know why. Once in the hospital he’s been diagnosed as having a bipolar disorder, which explains his drastic, frightening mood swings. Now his mother takes him out of the hospital against the doctor’s advice and brings him home. He’s still difficult, he refuses to take any medicine and can’t think of anything else other than getting his old job back and mostly of all his wife back. He keeps talking about Nikki, saying how much they love each other, even if there is a restraining order against him. He keeps saying that he’s doing well and wants to prove her that, so he starts reading the books that she teaches her students (and then waking up his parents in the middle of the night to complain about the story), and he says that he just needs to see the positive side of things and everything will go well… but it’s a very difficult situation in the house.  

His friend Ronnie invites him home for dinner and he goes because Ronnie’s wife Veronica (Julia Stiles) and Nikki are friends and he wants to show her he’s doing fine… Once there he meets Tiffany (Lawrence) who is rather messed up as well. After three years of marriage her husband died and she sort of lost it. She started sleeping around and acting out; she got fired but she survived. That same night he walks her home because she asked him too, and once there she offers him sex but he refuses. So young and so beautiful as she is, it’s easy to assume that nobody ever refused, and this I think was the best thing that anyone could do for her. She hugs him. And then slaps his face: a complicated girl, that's all. 

They meet again several times while he’s jogging (we later learn that his mom has been telling her when and where he’s jogging so she can meet him), and they start talking and going out.  He finds her crazy ( !! ) but his therapist tells him that maybe being kind to her will show Nikki the kind of sensitive person he has become (great move, doc!). Tiffany tells him that she can give a letter to Nikki if he wants to but he has to do something for her. She wants him to be her partner in a dance competition. He’s not excited about it but does it anyway because he wants to communicate with Nikki and this is the only way. They start practicing every day at her place. Somehow this gives him some kind of stability, because he has somewhere to go every day, something to do, he comes home too tired to get into trouble.. :-p

At first neither his father or her parents are too happy about this, because they think he’s just another one of all the guys who want to take advantage of her for easy sex, while he wants Pat to spend time with him during the Eagles games because he bets on them and he thinks that Pat brings him good luck, and because of this he sends Pat to the game with his brother Jake one Sunday. Pat tries to stay out of trouble, but when some other guys start hitting his brother he gets involved. Pat sr (Robert De Niro) is rather upset, but not as much as Tiffany is because she was home all day waiting for him. She bursts into his house yelling that he had a commitment with her, and when Pat sr starts saying that she ruined everything she manages to change his mind, because apparently she noticed that every time Pat was with her the Eagles won, and if he had been with her that Sunday too they would have won also. Instead, he lost a lot of money. After this conversation, he makes an even bolder bet (rather a dangerous one, I don’t like this kind of things); still, not only he places a bet with his ‘friend’ Randy that the Eagles will won the finale (as suggested by Tiffany because that day Pat will be with her at the dancing competition), he also adds a bet on them! Four judges give points from 1 to 10 to the dance couples, and he bets they’ll get at least a 5. Pat thinks this is all too crazy and wants to back out. At this point, while inside the house Tiffany tells his parents that the only way to make him dance is to tell him that Nikki will be there, outside Pat reads again the letter that she gave him telling him it was Nikki’s reply to his own letter: Pat recognizes in it the same words that Tiffany used when talking about the game and the signs and he finally understands that she wrote it, not Nikki. He doesn’t say anything and the movie moves slowly; we catch a glimpse of Christmas day (Pat and Tiffany with his family and her parents, all together, very nice) and we move on to December 28, the day of the dance competition. As they get there, Tiffany sees Veronica with Nikki!!! She goes out of her mind, tells Veronica that she wants to ruin it for her, then goes to the bar and starts drinking (and any woman drinking alone will be approached by a man in ten seconds max). He finally finds her and takes her to the dance floor where they do their number (not really good, but after all it wasn’t supposed to be) and they get something like 4.9 4.9 4.8 and 5.4 = 5.0!! The other dancers are like “sorry guys” but they start screaming because they did it!! The Eagles won too, they are all hugging and screaming when Pat sees Nikki and goes towards her. The expression on Tiffany’s face says it all, really! Pat says something in Nikki’s ear that we don’t hear but it’s not necessary. They’re getting closure, I suppose, and she won’t be scared of him anymore. After that he looks for Tiffany but she’s gone. His father tells him that she loves him and he shouldn’t mess it up this time. Pat runs out to meet Tiffany and gives her another letter; she thinks it’s for Nikki of course, since he never talked of anything else, but then it starts Dear Tiffany… and he wrote it a week before… :-) They kiss and we can all hope that they’ll live as happily ever after as they possibly can :-p

ITA il lato positivo

Flight 7500 - 2014

Well, I thought worse, it wasn’t all that bad, although I think that first time round it’s difficult to follow because I was expecting something else.. I mean: there are a few people on a plane, plus the flight attendants and the pilots. The plane is only half full. For a few minutes we get to know the characters: the hostess who’s having an affair with the married captain, another who has doubts about her engagement, two passengers on their honeymoon, a woman who may or may not be pregnant, a thief, a couple who love each other but have a troubled relationship, a man with a mysterious baggage, a goth girl fascinated by death… there are also an older woman, a mother with her child and maybe some more but they are not given any space and their stories are not important. Right after the first little turbulence, a man starts having trouble breathing, then coughs up blood and dies. They put the body upstairs and all the passengers stay together downstairs. The second turbulence is much worse, there’s a decompression in the cabin and those without belts float and fall, masks fall down but they’re not working well. We see a paramedic moving from seat to seat to help people put their masks on and breath. After that some of them starts seeing strange things, like the face of the dead man or a plane flying parallel to them. The thief goes to steal the dead man’s watch and then we see the body move and we see nothing more of the thief. The two couples think it’s all connected to the dead man, whose body is missing along with the thief, so they search his things and discover women’s hair with names (of which we’ll never have a clear explanation) and a shinigami doll. The goth girls explains to them that the shinigami is a sort of grim reaper who takes the soul away as soon as they’ve left behind them all the connection with their life. 

Now, while I was watching it I thought it was a case of zombies or contagion or spirits, so it didn’t make a lot of sense what was going on. A woman went to the bathroom to take the pregnancy test, praying for it to be negative, and then she saw hands coming at her from the ‘ground’; After the movie ended and I thought about it I think it was the shinigami coming to get her now that she had resolved her issue seeing that she was not pregnant. It happened to everyone. There was a scene I had not expected - maybe because I was thinking of a different kind of movie, I don’t know, still it was a switch for me: when they return to their seats the two couples find out that everyone on the plane is dead, they watch their own dead bodies seated there, where the masks had not worked for any of them. They watch the news : a plane was sent to look at them and ascertain that everyone was dead. The plane keeps moving on auto-pilot, and we’ve followed their ‘souls’ trying to make sense of it. The ‘hand’ took one hostess after she had broken up with the captain and the other after she had taken off her engagement ring. The goth girl sees herself standing before her and moves on to hugs her (herself), basically staying true to her words and embracing her death. Last scene concerns the snob girl on her honeymoon who had covered her eyes, and now opens them to find the plane empty and when she too sees a hand coming at her the movie ends.

The shinigami got them all. 

It wasn’t too bad, but I would have liked it to tie some loose ends, like: did the body really disappear? what happened to the other passengers or to the pilots? I mean I know they died, everybody died, but how did they get taken? Something like this. I would have liked less time spent on useless things and more time to complete the story. Still, it was better than I thought.

ITA volo 7500

The hangover - 2009

It’s fun, yes, it’s a funny crazy movie, but maybe it’s more fun for guys than for gals… come on, really? Is it really this what men dream of, what they consider having-fun? Drinking too much, a lot of strippers or whatnot, drugs… for real? This is so so sad, that they think the only way to have fun is to get drunk or use drugs - basically change or annul themselves - and pay for women’s company :-/

There’s Bradley Cooper in it, which somehow saves it I think. I don’t particularly like the man, no, but he’s good and very very handsome. 

The story: Doug (Justin Bartha) is about to get married to rich Tracy; his bachelor party is to be in Las Vegas with his soon-to-be brother-in-law Alan (Zach Galifianakis) and his friends Phil (Cooper) and Stu (Ed Helms). Alan is a complete idiot, and Stu plays the responsible, upright guy but he keeps lying to his girlfriend Melissa (Rachel Harris). She’s horrible to him, and has already cheated on him once, and yet he stays with her for no reasonable reason (he never speaks of love) and keeps lying to her to avoid a fight, and still plans to propose to her! Phil is a teacher and took the kids money for their trip to Vegas :-/

Phil keeps telling him that she’s a slut and he should get rid of her, but honestly he doesn’t act better with him, come on, he uses him shamelessly spending his money and treating him badly, saying to everyone that he’s not a real doctor because he’s only a dentist :-/

They get to Vegas and rent a suite that costs 4000$ a night (Stu pays for everybody of course), then they go to the roof and Alan proposes a toast (with a very embarrassing speech:-/)

Next morning they wake up in their room: it’s a real mess everywhere, there’s a girl sneaking out without waking them up, there’s a chicken, a tiger in the bathroom, Alan is naked (and Phil has to tell him three times to put some pants on), there’s a baby in the closet (and schoolteacher Phil suggests leaving him there since he’s not their child), and Stu is missing a tooth. From what Alan says I can only assume that he isn’t allowed near schools full of children because he once took one at a fast-food…

Doug is missing, they have no idea where’s Doug’s soon-to-be father-in-law’s mercedes is but they have a police car instead. They try retracing their steps to find out where Doug is because they can’t remember a single thing of the night before. They go to a hospital because there is a hospital band on Phil’s wrist, and the doctor tells them that they had just been to a wedding, and also that they had been drugged. They go to the chapel and find out that Stu got married! They go to Jade’s house and she’s the mother of the baby, and of course has Stu’s precious ring on her finger ( I think nothing explains Alan’s character like his line “I didn’t know they gave out rings at the Holocaust” because is shows how out of this world he is).

They almost get arrested for stealing a police car, but when Phil points out that they might be embarrassed by that too, they use them for a demonstration for children instead, encouraging the children to use a taser on them. They get their mercedes back and surprisingly enough it’s still in perfect conditions (not for long, anyway). For a moment they think that the noise coming from the trunk might be Doug but instead when they open it a naked Chinese man (Ken Jeong, always funny) jumps out and starts beating them up :lol: At this point Alan confesses that he put drugs into their drink when they were on the roof…

They go back to their room to find Mike Tyson in there, not too happy that they stole his tiger. He knocks Alan out and orders them to bring back the tiger. They put drugs in a steak (how much did he buy??) to get the tiger to sleep. They manage to bring her to the car but the tiger wakes up while they are still on the road, driving. It scratches Phil’s neck (still sexy) and they jump out of the car scared to death. They push the car all the way to Tyson’s house (while the tiger passes the time eating the car seats). While they notice that the car is rather ruined only on the inside, a car crashes theirs: The Chinese man Chow, now fully dressed and with two men to back him up says they played together at the casino but then they stole his 80.000$ and he says that they’ll never see their friend Doug if they don’t give it back. They search everywhere in the room but can’t find the money so they go to the casino. Alan can count the cards and Jade is there to help them: they win enough money to make the trade, only to find out that it’s not their Doug, it’s another Doug, the one that sold Alan the drugs (making a mistake because Alan wanted ecstasy). Only now, 5 hours away from the wedding, Phil calls Tracy to tell her the whole truth, but at that moment Stu solves the mystery. During the night they brought Doug to the roof on his mattress, and then forgot him there. The poor man has been up there for a full day and a night, and is all red but alive. 

The wedding is now 3 1/2 hours away: Jade gives the ring back to Stu (telling him he pulled out his own tooth for a bet, to prove he could do it) and he asks her out for the next week, and they drive home; a tuxedo-rent company ( “the tux shop”) throws two packages from their van without stopping the car, so they get dressed in the car. They arrive very late but they get there and Doug gets married! Phil reunites with his wife and son, Stu dumps Melissa, and Alan finds their camera with a lot of pictures from that night. During the credits we see the pictures: a lot of scenes with girls mostly, and their various adventures (with the tiger, with Chow..). Still no clue as to why Phil ended up in a hospital or why there was a chicken in their room though. 

ITA una notte da leoni ( mattina coglioni, never so true as in this case here….)

Knocked up - 2007

Well, it wasn’t too bad but… I’ve watched it, and once is enough. Main characters are: Allison (Katherine Heigl), who has a job in television and lives with her sister and her family, and Ben (Seth Rogen) who has no job, spends his time living with a bunch of friends, smoking pot, and watching movies to spot every nude scene to write on his website the time they appear….

One night they meet at a club, have fun together, drink a lot together, then go to her place to have sex. Next morning they have breakfast together and then go their separate ways, probably thinking they’ll never see each other again. Eight weeks later she finds out she’s pregnant, so she gets in touch with him to tell him. They start spending some time together, to talk about the baby, to get through it together, but it’s not easy because they’re very different and because he’s a total loser, we might say. Still, eventually he’ll get it together and find a place for himself and start acting a bit more mature and he’ll be there for her when she needs him, and they end up in love with each other. They have a daughter.

Other characters: Allison’s sister Debbie (Leslie Mann) who , I don’t know why, always acts rather bitch-y towards her husband Pete (Paul Rudd). Pete is a nice guy who gets along quite well with Ben, but also tells Debbie a lot of lies to be able to spend some time alone or with his friends without her… (has he ever tried telling her that he’d like to meet with his friends? no, he just lied thinking it easier I suppose). They have already two daughters. 

When Debbie fights with Pete and Allison fights with Ben, Debbie feels sad because she’s scared of getting old, and Pete goes with Ben to Las Vegas and what do they do?? They go to clubs to have strippers shove it in their faces and take drugs… wow, is this the big life they want, the wonderful life they think they were missing out on because of their women??? So sad…

ITA molto incinta (terrible title, but not too easy to translate anyway…)

Rizzoli and Isles - season 2

1-We don’t need another hero

It starts three months later, and I wonder if for a moment they wanted us to believe that Jane died… come on!  Jane receives a medal although she doesn’t feel heroic (obviously, that’s how real heroes are). She even has to make a little speech. She also meets her old boyfriend Casey.

She still hurts from the wound. Jane and Casey get together but in the morning Angela barges in to clean the place and he has to go. She says they ‘almost’ had sex, and now he has to go back to Afghanistan. 

A bomb on a car kills the young soldier who received the other medal. The bullet in soldier Abigail’s shoulder turns out to be American, not Taliban. There’s another bomb but Abigail’s fellow soldier survives. Lt Forman dies too (before the bomb). He was in a relationship with Abigail. Soldier Campbell was her ex, he shot her in Afghanistan and killed the two of them here: that’s people for you :-/ 

Apparently Maura is always advising Jane to have sex… 

Angela cries because her husband asked for a divorce! I loved this scene: when she started crying Jane looked for a pen saying “when she gets very emotional and she can’t talk we have her write it down” OMG that’s so like me! Well, I don’t have anyone understand that so I usually just stay silent because I can’t talk…  :’(  Dad moved out already, Tommy is in prison and Angela has lost her house so Maura offer her her guest house. Maura had started dating Jane’s surgeon but stops it quickly when they talk about Jane’s condition and he says to her “you’re only a pathologist”…

Apparently Jane is a “not girly, crabby, social deviant” :-p Her wound doesn’t hurt anymore. 

Love the ending, with Jane teasing Maura: “Dr Isles guessed, Dr Isles gue-essed” :lol:

2-Living proof

Maura and Jane are having a clay-bath: Maura claims it’s good, Jane is very bored :-p when a man barges in with a pregnant woman that was just stabbed. She’s already dead, but Maura and Jane manage to save the baby. It turns out that she was a surrogate mother, and two couples come to claim the baby. A woman at the fertility clinic couldn’t have children, no procedure worked on her, so she wanted Tracy’s baby but she wouldn’t give it to her. They stop her when she tries again.

The Tolliver couple gets the baby because tests reveal that he’s the biological father.

Now that she’s getting a divorce, Angela is driving her kids crazy. She wants to repaint Jane’s apartment, but Jane hates pink :-p or begonia as well :-p

At the end, Maura and Jane are back at having their clay-bath, talking and joking :-p

3-Sailor man

Angela’s car breaks down and their mechanic Giovanni lends them a AlfaRomeo Giulietta, his red car :-D  Jane is very much against the idea of Maura dating Giovanni, or even just sleeping with him, and when he comes to the station with flowers she just assumes they’re for her :-p

Maura invites Giovanni to her house because she wanted to sleep with him..if only he didn’t talk :-p or lick *gosh* so now she wants to get rid of him, but not even seeing her with a saw about to dissect a body convinces him to leave :-p Finally Maura and Jane pretend to be lovers to get rid of him “we are more than bff, we are llbff, life-long-bff” :-p and eventually he got the message :-p

Frost and his father don’t get along at all; once he took his wife and son to Japan then went away on a ship and stayed away for so long that after two years his wife just gave up and moved back to Boston. 

A girl was raped and strangled, presumably by a sailor. Frost’s dad is in the navy, an Admiral. He bails a suspect out of jail and another girl is raped and ‘almost’ killed - she’ll die later at the hospital. The first suspect was locked in the brick though. Eventually they get the rapist, he was not in the Navy after all. 

4-Brown eyed girl

A little boy witnesses his sister being abducted: she’s the daughter of Jane’s ex-partner Dan. It was an emotional scene when a body is found and Jane can’t tell if it’s her because she hasn’t seen her in 7 or 8 years, so the father comes forward and cries and then says “it’s not her” and keeps crying along with Jane, and it’s good news because his daughter might still be alive, but there’s still the body of a young girl right there and it’s so sad… that poor girl has been kept prisoner for three to five years, and raped, and it’s all heartbreaking. Someone pretending to be Mandy’s best friend chatted with her, and the dead girl Sophie maybe died protecting Mandy. Sophie’s father is proud to hear that… the fact that this time there’s a witness of course helps :) they find the woman, who thinks her man is a ‘prophet’ and they arrest her, then they find the man and when he goes at them with an hatchet Jane Korzak and Frost shoot him dead and save Mandy. 

After this case Jane tells Maura: “I’m never getting married or having children” - “you think that will protect you?” - “no”

5-Don’t hate the player

Jane still has the little doggie :-) and her name is Joe Friday :-p Korzak gave her that name.

Tommy comes back home, Jane’s brother, and Maura lets him stay. Later he fights with the vet who says that Joe Friday is depressed and for that charges him 300$ ! Korzak will solve the mystery of the dog: she’s allergic to poultry :-p

When Maura’s place is burglarized Jane and Frankie suspect Tommy but it turns out it was someone else so Jane has to apologize. 

When Jane has to meet a player at a chic place, Maura has her exchange their clothes :-p lovely :)

Maura gives her her dress and shoes, after cutting off the point: “tiptoes! :-D” and Maura is lovely and sexy in Jane’s clothes, with the too-long pants and barefoot :-) dressed like that, she’ll say she’s been hitting on twice, by women :-p

Maura tries to get prints from a pair of latex gloves and tells Jane “this is not CSI Boston” :-p

A body is found at the Pilgrim’s stadium, in the showers. Jane is a Red Sox fan apparently, but likes to watch all baseball games.

The detective they meet at the scene wants to declare it an accident, but Maura is suspicious so Jane takes over as “homicide detective”. The guy had been hired as a special coach to the team star player who has a drinking problem. This Manny Vega drives a Ferrari and is arrogant af.

Manny dies in a car accident, but he had been slowly drugged. The murderer is the same player that took Jane out to dinner. When she arrests him she smiles and says “I’ve got to admit you’ve got balls taking a cop to dinner. You thought you could charm me too?”

6-Rebel without a pause

Maura’s mom is coming, the first time in her house. She’s very very nervous about dinner; her mom is in Boston for an opening and she has booked at the Ritz to she won’t be staying with Maura. I found her so snob she came out utterly rude, like when Jane offered her ‘cannoli’ and as a reply, to decline, she told her she was tired, in French! The next day she cancels her dinner with Maura! Jane goes with her to her mother’s art gallery and is upset when Maura’s name is not on the list! They get in anyway after Jane flashes her badge. She can’t let it go and as soon as they are alone she tells Maura’s mother about the list thing, and also that she’s protective and doesn’t want to see her best friend hurt. Mom doesn’t seem to understand so she explains “not staying with her, canceling dinner, forgetting to put her on the list, yeah I think that hurts her” and as a reply she gets “I was never good at being a mother”. 

Korzak speaks of his difficulty in breathing to Maura. He starts eating differently, but later Maura tells him that he had no heart attack, it’s his crackers giving him gas.

The bird that Korzak picked up and gave to Angela to care for dies, so Maura gave her a new one, without explaining it to her, so Angela thinks he’s ok “you can not believe how healthy Starsky is (the bird)” :-p

During a historical reenactment a guy is shot dead for real. His girlfriend says all the others were angry at him because his jacket and his buttons were not historically accurate. A modern bullet was used, and he wasn’t even the designated target, only ‘collateral damage’ . 

Maura climbs a tree to collect evidence :-p

There’s another shooting, they miss but the victim dies of a cardiac arrest. Maura Jane Korzak and Frost all dress in historical clothes to enter the historical society, and Jane’s so pretty when she runs after the shooter lifting her long skirt :-p The suspect was a woman, Kathleen Dunn, that had claimed rape (18 years ago by one of the reenactors, professor Kraviz) but her rape kit was never even tested! (I guess that explains how this world cares about rape…). She confesses the murder but when Maura says that the DNA was male they understand she was covering for her son, the rapist’s son. Having found out the truth, he wanted to kill the monster and tries again in class. When they stop him he begs them “please let me shoot him”.

END: Maura’s mom joins them at the bar, and it’s a lovely scene, Maura and Jane with their mothers :-)

7-Bloodlines

Angela makes a bunny pancake at work :-) Maura has solar panels on the roof of her car.  Frankie’s ex Teresa stops by: she left Frankie to pay for her car loan years ago. Jane doesn’t like her and talks about it to him in front of Frost, so Frankie tells him of a certain Steve “she was nuts about him, she started wearing dresses…” :-p Maura and Jane spy on them, but he notices. Teresa told him that he has a daughter, a pretty little girl :-) They have a family dinner with Teresa and little Lily, and Jane takes Lily’s glass and gives it to Maura to test. It turns out that Lily is Not Frankie’s daughter, and he feels sorry about that.

CASE: a girl, Helen, is burned alive. At her apartment Korzak finds her black cat. Frost has to bust open two doors with his shoulder :p They find out that two girls and a guy were Helen’s witch family. Maura Jane Korzak and Frost attend their seance to contact Helen. The youngest witch Sabrina got attacked but is alive, while the guy is killed. Truth is Sabrina is schizophrenic and she killed the other two but they stop her before she kills the third one. 

8-My own worst enemy

A guy, Ian, shows up at Maura’s place and she jumps on him and they start kissing right away. After that Maura will show up late at the crime scene and with two different shoes, one black and one blue :-p Maura keeps Ian a secret from Jane as long as she can :p (This Ian’s voice/accent is lovely!) Angela of course figured it out and she tells Jane who fakes (badly) knowing about it. 

Maura says he’s “just an old friend”. Ian is Australian but lives in Africa. Maura and Ian were once together in Ethiopia. Angela spies on him and then tells Jane that he is a spy because he has different passports with different names. Jane checks him out and tells Maura: “Ian is wanted by Interpol for stealing drugs” but she knows. She cries while talking about him because he’s gone again, and she tells Jane that Ian is the love of her life and that’s why she can’t talk about him, because it makes her sad because she loves him but can’t be with him. He went back to Africa: “his crime is risking his life to bring drugs and basic supplies in places nobody cares about and I helped him so go ahead and arrest me”. No arrest here of course. 

Jane keeps limping so Maura takes a look at her foot. When Jane will show up at her place because of her aching foot, Ian is there and is more qualified than her for the job :p !!

Maura tells Jane that Angela reorganized her entire kitchen ‘alphabetically’, “so now the corkscrew is near the chopsticks” :-p Jane replies “I’m so sorry” about her mom and she means it :-p

At the end it appears that Angela also threw away Maura’s shoe boxes (!!!) and she says “can you arrest your mother?” - “ok” and they hug :-) lovely. 

Jane gives a lot of money to that man that calls her Vanilla, but it doesn’t seem to me like he’s actually giving much information…

The case starts with a dead man and his injured son. He smuggled heroine and now the son’s family has been taken. They save the family.

9-Gone daddy gone

Tommy spent the night at Maura’s place playing chess. Jane tells her “don’t sleep with my brother!” :-p Maura likes playing with him, and at the end Jane reveals she knows how to play chess too. “who do you think taught him? Tommy’s not the only Rizzoli with a beautiful mind” :-p

Jane’s annoyed because she has to go to “sensitivity training”, mandatory for everyone. 

Maura has a gift for “not lying” :-p

The body of a girl, killed with an icepick, is found. Her father got badly injured at the docks and she went there to investigate. 

Doyle breaks into Maura’s house because he’s injured, he got shot, and his man has a gun at Tommy’s head to convince her to treat him. He says he did NOT kill that girl. “I don’t kill children or women or anyone who doesn’t deserve it. I’m being framed”. Jane doesn’t believe it but Tommy does and he’s serious: “He lives by a code that’s why he has respect. He has a heart Jane. You didn’t see the way he looked at her. He may be a bad guy but he loves his daughter”. 

One of Doyle’s men turns up dead. The autopsy on the girl is performed by a Dr Pike, very arrogant guy, and Maura has to pull rank and be bossy because he didn’t do an accurate job. 

The girl’s murderer is killed by Doyle, and he almost kills the guy who ordered it. He goes away when they come to arrest that guy. 

10-Remember me

A man, in prison for a misdemeanor, is about to go out, but gets killed. When they go to investigate,  Hoyt is in the infirmary, apparently being treated for cancer - Maura confirms it. The dead guy had swallowed a little bag with four teeth of children. Jane goes in the basement to look at cold cases ( and makes a mess opening lots of boxes; did she put everything back in order before going out?? It’s a bit annoying that big detectives in the movies always make a mess but never put the papers and pictures back where they were, but if they find a file not perfect they get all judgmental on whoever did it… :-/ )

Jane finds the case of a missing family, parents and two daughters. Thinking of the few words Hoyt told her, Jane finds the bodies of the Wilson family. When a guard calls her saying that Hoyt is dying and wants to tell her more, she goes with Maura. The guard is on Hoyt’s side, though, and when they get there Hoyt takes Jane by the throat while the guard ties Maura up. The guard is the one that killed that poor guy. When the guard holds Jane down and Hoyt starts hurting Maura, Jane finds it in her to free herself and fight and kill Hoyt. Korzak comes in in time to shoot the guard and Jane cries in his arms. 

Maura tells Frankie that he’s getting fat :-p He thinks he failed his detective test. 

Jane’s birthday is coming up but she hates it, because it never turns out the way she imagined it. When the case is finally over, they go to the bar but there is nobody there, no party… because the surprise is at her house, a birthday party for her: Frankie passed the test with 96% :-D and Jane loves Maura’s gift: racing lessons :-) Jane’s happy :-) good :-)

11-Can I get a witness?

When the media cover the story of the trial of a murderer, we see Jane on TV. Her witness gets killed right outside his hotel. Without this witness the case will be dismissed unless Korzak can produce his CI but he keeps saying he doesn’t know how to find him. They tell him that he must find him or give back his badge. He surrenders the badge…

Jane can’t let it go of course and finds out who this CI is: he wanted to protect Relita, the young mother of Dante’s baby. It turns out that the counsellor herself killed Dante because she had had a deal with that Little T boss for a long time.

When the counsellor’s car has a flat tyre, Maura changes it for her: she just needs to change her shoes and wear gloves because she’s wearing a pretty dress :-p 

Maura takes Angela to a famous journalist’s book signing event and Angela gives him Jane’s phone number :-p

12-He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother

Tommy has found an apartment so he moves out. He gives Maura a bottle of good wine and makes a move on her, but she pulls back. 

There’s a bank robbery, a man died, the Feds get involved. The Feds had been watching a van for like an hour, but then Jane comes, looks at it for five minutes top and notices some blood coming out of it :-/ Inside there’s the body of one of the robbers. 

The task force leader is the woman Frost was engaged to before “she married her job instead of me”.

Maura learns that Tommy is suspected to be involved in the robbery as their driver because his fingerprints are on the van, but she can’t talk about it to anyone. When Tommy comes to her to apologize (for trying to kiss her I guess) some agents take him away. Jane is very angry at her.

Jane asks Tommy “why?” and he says he had nothing to do with the robbery, he simply borrowed the van to move! Jane believes him and works to free him. Maura tells her that she likes Tommy but she loves her , and hates it when she hates her, and doesn’t want to compromise their friendship, and Jane says something like “good, because I hate it when I have to hate you” :-)

13-Seventeen ain’t so sweet

Casey is supposed to come back and go with Jane to her school reunion, but he’s called back (soldier in Afghanistan) so Maura goes with her instead. When they meet Giovanni they tell him that they are still a couple :-p Jane meets her former bff  Emily and all the mean girls and guys that she didn’t like. A man, Steve, asks for her phone number saying he needs to talk to her, but he gets killed before he has a chance. Debby is next, also from her school. “I’ve got another dead classmate” when Maria dies of a heart attack, because a ‘valve failed’: it was made by Rory’s company, where Steve worked. Steve knew they were making defective valves, so Rory’s wife killed Steve and Debbie, and when Jane arrests her for their murders she also arrests Rory for Maria’s death. Good. Disgusting people. 

14-Don’t stop dancing, girl

Jane giving boxing lessons to Maura :-) Jane went to ballet lessons for four years :-p

Apparently Jane was kind of jealous of Emily because she was the one with the big boobs… and Korzak’s third ex-wife Melanie comes back after five years. 

Melanie’s son (therefore Korzak’s stepson) Josh has been arrested for shooting a cop. The kid believes that Korzak abandoned him and wants nothing to do with him; that because when his mom left Korzak she told Josh that he was in love with his job, not them.He doesn’t give up and finally gets thru to him and they talk. The cop regains consciousness so Josh is safe and will testify against his ex-friends who actually shot the cop.

To get Maura to answer a simple question, poor exasperated Jane goes “yes or no. Practive with me= yes! no! “ :-p

Frost says that dancers and ice-skaters are not athletes! :-/ but golfers and racers are :-/ such silly thinking from usually nice Frost is unnerving :-/

 A woman walks on stage with a pair of scissors into her chest. The young ballerina’s real father is a drug dealer who killed the girl’s mother and her sister and tried to take his daughter away, but failed. The new dad comes to help and is injured, but the dealer dies. Good.  

15-Burning down the house

Agent Dean brings Jane flowers :-) he tells her that he came back for her and they sleep together. Jane tells him that Doyle’s back in town but also that she doesn’t want him to do anything, and he agrees… Jane is worried that Maura might be in serious trouble and in that case Doyle might be of help, he would protect her. 

Maura’s mom is back :-) they had a nice dinner together but then a car runs her mom over after she pushed Maura aside to save her. Jane was supposed to dine with Sean but of course she runs to Maura’s side. Doyle comes too but she doesn’t listen to him and sends him away. Doyle comes back, watching over her mother and showing her more pictures he has in his wallet. Maura’s birthmother was only eighteen. When her mother wakes up she tells Maura that “someone was here telling me I must live for my daughter” and Maura smiles, then her mom adds “was it Patrick?” (!!!) 

Frost doesn’t know the Blues Brothers! Come on, that’s unbelievable, he’s young but that’s a classic! I love that he always keeps his ‘action figure’ on his desk though :-)

A fireman dies in a fire. Whoever tried to kill Maura also started the fire, wanted that fireman dead. They set a trap, the murderer goes to kill Maura but Doyle shoots him first, then Dean and Jane shoot him. Maura shouts “No!” then runs to his side. Jane runs there too trying to help , but Maura yells at her “don’t touch him, I mean it, don’t you dare touch him!” and the look on their faces! Such an intense, emotional scene. Wow, both of them. 

Rizzoli and Isles - season 1

I like it enough, but the best part of it is of course the lovely friendship between Jane and Maura, it’s a beautiful and precious relationship, I love it. 

I hate that, in movies, females always have to wear heels!! It’s really stupid to have Jane wear heels! They’re loud and not practical at all. That’s so not-Jane!!!  I find this very annoying.

1-See one, do one, teach one

It starts with Jane and Frankie playing basketball together. Jane:”I will beat you someday” - F”you beat me in everything, let me be better at something, ok?” Their mom is upset when she sees her nose bleeding after the game :-p At the crime scene later, Maura fixes her nose bones :p

The murder scene MO is the same as another killer in jail: Hoyt, so Jane thinks he had an apprentice. She goes to see him in prison but she gets nothing out of him. 

There are two serial-killers working together; they go after women and kill them, and they also go after Jane. The senior one almost killed Jane some time before, but Korzak came in time to save her. He takes her again, with the help of his apprentice, and this time she manages to save herself.

Jane takes care of the stray dog that Korzak picked up after he was wounded. 

There’s a cute FBI guy that both Jane and Maura like :-) Agent Dean. Jane put lipstick on before meeting him at another crime scene :-p Maura has a big tortoise at home called Bass (sorry to say there will be no more reference to Bass in further episode, or at least very little)

Maura and Jane lay on the bed together talking, and Jane tells her “I’ve never been so scared in all my life”. She wouldn’t say that to just anyone…

2-Boston strangler redux

The Boston strangler was arrested and died in prison, but now that women with the same names as the Strangler’s victims  are being strangled, Korzak starts wondering if the real strangler might still be out there. Jane and Korzak asks an ex-cop who worked the Boston strangler case for his help, and he points them in one direction. It turns out that he was obsessed with this case, and lost his mind. He himself killed three girls to frame the scumbag he thinks was the original killer.  He takes Maura hostage, but together with Jane they win :-) Of course :-)

It starts with a baseball game: homicide vs drugs division, interrupted by a corpse falling down (because the guy wanted to attract their attention, that was the whole point). A guy asks Maura out and seems to like her, even her non-stop chatting about science doesn’t put him off, until she diagnoses him having some kind of syndrome, and then he runs off (well, at the end at least he’ll call her to thank her :-D ). 

There’s a new lieutenant as chief of the squad, and Jane knows him since they were kids and she doesn’t like him. 

Angela wants Frankie to go work with his father, but dad knows it’s not what he wants to do. 

3-Sympathy for the devil

Jane has the little doggy at her home :-) Angela arranges a blind date for Jane, inviting home her Lt. It’s an awkward evening for a few minutes, then she leaves! :-p 

At the end, the Lt comes to tell her goodbye because he’s going away, and he tells her that he always liked her. He tries to kiss her, but she kisses him on the cheek, says goodnight and goes inside her home. 

Fun scene:

Jane: Maybe ghosts are real. Maybe I’m losing my mind

Maura: I could do a brain scan if you like

and it’s funny because she means it for real :lol: she’s not joking :-p 

Case: A 15 y.o. kid is found dead. There was no gang involved, and the boy’s mother talks about evil, so Maura suspects an exorcism. After many test they still don’t know the exact cause of death, until Jane has a dream and following it they find the right plant. It’s a plant they already saw at Matt’s dad’s house. He’s now living with another woman but he’s always said very clearly that he doesn’t want to have children with her because he already has a son; so, his new partner got rid of the boy in order to start a new family and have kids of her own. The strange voodoo church had nothing to do with it after all. 

4-She works hard for the money

Angela trades her car for a used old wreck and Jane has to intervene :-p and what a surprise, Maura seems to be an expert on cars too :-p I don’t see how it is possible though that she doesn’t know that sport teams have “attackers”, there are words that everybody knows, who listens to the news :-/

Jane tells Maura she regrets never going to college, and that she got admitted but gave it up because it was too expensive for her dad, and she never told him of course. She’s always had a big heart :-) and a strong character too :-D

Case: student Danielle is murdered at her University. Raphael Sbarge plays her father. Her scholarship got revoked because she couldn’t play in her soccer team anymore because of a serious injury, so she started to work as an escort to pay for her education, actually working for her school advisor :-/and it was him who killed her probably because she wanted to quit. 

At the end Jane says that she talked the school into giving a scholarship to Danielle’s best friend who had followed her same path and she also was hurt by the murderer when Jane wanted to arrest him (she ended up shooting him, and I think he died).

5-Money for nothing

Maura went out with Garrett Fairfield when she was 20. Now Adam Fairfield is found dead in the water. They are extremely rich, and Jane is hurt because Maura doesn’t back her up when she tries to interrogate the family. They have a fight; Jane complains that she didn’t support her, and Maura says “their brother just died, I’m sorry I couldn’t stand and just let you badger his family” which obviously hurt Jane. “badger? Is that how you describe how I do my job?” by the way, she didn’t in this particular case, she just asked a few  questions, nothing badger-y 

“The Fairfields helped build the city” ; Jane”my grandfather was an iron worker. He helped build the city”  and Maura“Are you mad at me for who my friends are?” and then “I’ll tell you if there is a case or not!” Come on Maura!!! :-/ 

Korzak tells Maura: “when you grow up like Jane you’re gonna have an attitude about people who… who are entitled” and Maura thinks it’s just prejudice :-/ Korzak also tells her “where people like me and Jane come from, we didn’t have a lot, but we had each other’s backs. Sounds to me like all Jane wants to know is: do you have hers or not?” Right! It seemed like she sided with them against her :-/

but of course she’ll come around and help her, because they’re too important to each other :-)

Maura even buys her a dress to go to the memorial :-) It’s really sad for her to find out that Garrett killed Adam, who was only a half-brother. 

At the end, Maura and Jane drink a beer together, Maura’s first beer ever :-p

6-I kissed a girl

Maura and Jane are doing Yoga together at the gym :-p 

Maura takes Jane on a double date and tries to get Jane to sleep with the guy, to have fun since Jane says she likes him , but Jane says “no, I didn’t shave my legs” and Maura”nice try” and she has a shaving kit in her bag :lol: she’s impossibly weird like that; Jane”what kind of person are you?” :lol: but I side with Jane on this one, because fun it’s not determined on how much sex you have, what a stupid concept, plus sex is much more fun if you actually really want to do it so Maura shouldn’t try to force her :-/ and as it turns out, talking a bit more he’s not exactly her type :-p

That Jorge guy kept sending Jane flowers and emails and chocolates and Jane told Maura to get rid of him, and somehow she let him assume that Jane was gay :p probably the only thing that could work with guys like that :p

When Frost stops a really big guy by himself Jane is surprised “wow you’ve been holding out on me Bruce Lee” :lol: 

A woman is killed, and she was married to another woman. Frost explains what LGBT means for those who don’t know (lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgender community). Not that hard to figure out. In Massachusetts same sex marriages are legal, but of course there are pathetic thugs who like the excuse to feel all superior and powerful and hate them, I guess they have nothing else going on for them ‘look at me look at me I’m a woman with a husband and children, I’m so much better than you are because of this; of course if it wasn’t for this I’d probably be more stupid more useless and more pathetic, but I have a husband and children so I’m the master and you’re the slave who should live as I The Almighty say you should’- kind of thing. 

 During the investigation, Jane goes undercover and they put her picture on a gay-dating-website and Maura tries to give her her clothes but Jane refuses :p and she goes to the bar with her everyday clothes… :-p Maura is there too posing as a waitress to collect the women’s glasses for their fingerprints (like in that Pacino movie). 

It turned out it was the same old story: the woman was killed by her spouse for the money (and probably the cheating) and also had a girl help her: she told her she loved her, calling her baby… same old story really 

7-Born to run

Maura and Jane are running the Massachusetts Marathon together, when they find a man who’s been shot dead. Maura is very stubborn and Jane has to insist a lot to stop her from creating a problem. Jane wants to pretend the guy was not at all shot and not dead either to avoid mass panicking, therefore she doesn’t stop the marathon. Maura has to do the autopsy right there under a tent. Mom and dad Rizzoli were there to cheer for Jane but they keep fighting all the time because she’s enjoying herself and having a good time while he’s not. 

When a second man is shot dead, they find out that those two 15 years ago had raped an underage girl along with a third man, a rich guy, so rich the thing never went to trial. Her family was ruined because of it, she committed suicide, and now her sister is out for revenge. They find him and stop her before she can kill him too (I suppose that was the right thing to do…) but arrest him for the rape… what good can it do now to arrest him? 15 years, girl dead, him a rich guy… it’ll never go anywhere :-/

At the end, Maura and Jane run the marathon alone, with Frankie following them to help them with the light of his bike, and mom and dad are there holding the finishing line :-) it was nice :)

8-I’m your boogie man

Hoyt is in prison but they are all afraid he might still be a danger. The hot Fbi guy comes back when they find the body of a man that Hoyt probably killed two years ago and froze it, and that somehow turned up now on a bench. Jane is off the case, but she finally talks to Korzak about the whole Hoyt business. He feels guilty for not being there, for making it hard for her to ask his help; she tells him he saved her life, and when he asks her why then they’re not partners anymore, she tells him that she can’t be his partner after he saw her like that, how could he trust her to have his back after seeing her broken…. aww poor Jane, she was never broken, only hurt and scared as anyone in her position would have been, but she’ll never be broken.

Frankie has a new love interest: he starts seeing and dating Lola, so when Jane is under protection, they are both allowed in the house. Unfortunately Lola points a gun at them once there. She was an abused wife, Hoyt killed her husband and kept her prisoner and abused her too, and after a while she was completely under his power. She holds Frankie and Jane prisoners; Jane tries to talk to her to make her realize that Hoyt doesn’t care about her, then Frankie manages to take her gun and shoot her. At the end Jane is finally having dinner with FBI Dean but she says to him “I’m not ready for someone like you” and he goes away…

9-The beast in me

A very smart identity thief is killed with an icepick. After a Dna test Maura learns that the dead man was her half-brother. She was adopted, we knew that from the last episode. The dead guy was the son of a mob boss, Patrick Doyle. When Doyle goes to identify his son, using a false name, Maura knows she’s looking at her biological father. She offers him a glass of water, he says “I’ll make it easier for you if that’s what you want”, and then he cuts his own hand with a knife without even flinching and gives her the handkerchief with his blood. “Goodbye Maura” he says and leaves.

Maura’s shocked when she learns who he is. He introduced himself to her as Mr Selsi, which is Isles backwards “he was toeing with me from the start, while he was staring at his murdered son”. Jane:”come on, he came to say a final goodbye to Colin and he knew that you wanted a dna sample so he gave you some of his blood, this is a guy with balls” - Maura”you’re defending a stone cold killer” - Jane”No I’m… yes I am and I’m gonna stop now”

Patrick has his people abduct Maura so he can talk to her. He tells her that her mother is alive : “you have her intensity and intelligence and class. She gave you up to keep you safe, we both did” and “I need to keep her safe too, she has a right to live her own life, but know she was heartbroken and never forgave me” - “for giving me up?” - “for who I am”

Colin was raised by his mother and only learned about him when she died: “the FBI couldn’t find me, my enemies couldn’t find me, but my 15 year-old son did”

He also tells her “I’ve always kept an eye on you” and he shows her pictures of her school, her graduation… he wants to protect her now, and he gives her a phone, he wants to know who killed Colin so he can keep her alive by sending a message. Maura tells Jane”he had a gentleness I wasn’t expecting” - “if he wants to protect you maybe we should just let him handle it” but Maura says no. When they trace Colin’s killer’s name to Tommy O’Rourke, Jane wants to make that call, but Maura doesn’t. Jane takes the phone with her anyway, with an excuse, and later they’ll find O’Rourke’s body with a picture of baby Maura on him. 

Jane:”it was Doyle” - Maura”who tipped him off?” - Jane”not me, you said not to. I think the message’s pretty clear though” - Frost”don’t mess with my family” - Korzak”you do what you need to do to protect family” good scene :-) I guess the thing here is that one of them made the call to protect Maura, but maybe not Jane herself so she wouldn’t have to lie; I mean, she didn’t say “I don’t know”, maybe she does know, and Frost and Korzak said nothing so maybe they did it.  

Frankie helped his father with a job :-p When Frankie called Jane, Maura went with her and they worked all together, having some family-time :-p Last scene is Maura and Jane throwing peanuts or something at Frankie joke-fighting with his dad. 

Nice scene: Maura”it’s a shame that they penetrated his temporal lobe, that would have been an excellent brain to study” ; Jane looking at her “yeah. bummer” :lol: it was funny :p

10-When the gun goes bang, bang, bang

A cop, Danny, is shot dead, then the bad guys assault the police station; they shoot two cops (one is Frankie) in their search for some piece of evidence. When Jane sees Frankie has been shot she brings him to Maura. He had the vest on but he was so close he got wounded badly anyway, and he’s got internal bleeding. Maura must operate on him , something she’s never done before but Jane insists. She helps him momentarily but he needs a hospital and surgery. 

Danny’s partner Bobby killed him, and when he’s found out he takes Jane hostage. They can’t shoot him because they’re too close so she gets hold of his hand and shoots him through her body! They all see them fall down together!

That was a great hero-moment to end it, episode and season. 

Jane is with Maura at the gym and feels  rather embarrassed when Maura compliments a guy on his muscles :lol: 

Rizzoli mom and dad are throwing a surprise party for their other son Tommy “he’s getting out early for good behaviour”. Angela is always fighting with her husband, and there’s probably something behind that because there’s rarely a good reason; this time it’s “I wanted the blue cups” :-/

Arrival - 2016

I liked it. A lot. There is basically no action, it’s very slow, not even many words, but I liked it. it’s a complex story about feeling, understanding, communicating, and it left me with something. I kept thinking: I understand him, but I also understand her. Would I have done the same? Probably, yes.

The story: we meet Louise (Amy Adams) who has a child, raises her, and then loses her maybe to cancer. Then we learn that some aliens have arrived on Earth; well, twelve starships, just hovering in twelve different parts of the planet (USA of course, then Australia, China, Japan, Russia, UK, and also I think Venezuela, Sudan and… oh I can’t remember now :-/ )

A colonel (Forest Whitaker) comes to get her because he needs her help. She’s an expert linguistic, and he wants her to help them understand what they are saying. There she meets Ian (Jeremy Renner) who is a scientist, a theorist (like Sheldon, only nice, so make it Leonard). 

They are part of the team that will go inside the ship to meet with the aliens and try to establish communications. The same is happening in all the other Countries where the ships have arrived. 

Inside the ship, gravity is rather peculiar and they interact with two gigantic sort of octopus-like creature (octopus=octopods, so they call this race heptapods because they don’t have eight but seven ‘tentacles’) who don’t use words but sounds, as easy as talking to a whale, so Louise tries a different approach. She writes, to see if they have any kind of written language, and they do. They write by spreading ink from their tentacles into their thick air, where it draws a circle-sign that is their entire phrase. They don’t have a linear language but a circular one, no beginning and no end, but Louise and Ian work at it for months with the help of computers and slowly figure bits of it out. 

Thinking about their ‘non-linear ortography’, Ian wonders if that’s how they think too! 

He tells Louise that he’s been reading about “this idea that if you immerse yourself into a foreign language, that you can actually rewire your brain” - “the language you speak determines how you think and….” - “it affects how you see everything” then he adds “I’m curious, are you dreaming in their language?”.

At one point she says they gave her a message that she roughly translates as offering ‘weapon’, and it all goes crazy. She tries to explain that it may mean something different, that they need to ask them what they meant, but instead they start thinking that the aliens might be trying to offer weapons to turn them against each other; China understood the message as “use weapon” so they say they don’t trust these aliens that are “trying to divide us” and call for a UN meeting. They all cease communications, and every Country is left on its own. At least a couple of soldiers went crazy stupid and tried to blow the ship up using explosive, and I’m convinced that the aliens knew about it, and still talked to Louise and Ian (who went there to seek a clarification, knowing nothing about it) and at the last few seconds they tried to warn them of the danger and ultimately saved them by somehow pushing them back out (they got injured, but not too seriously). One left earlier, the other stayed to leave a big message for them and then to help. 

China gives the aliens an ultimatum, leave or be destroyed. Studying the last message, Ian finds out it’s only a part of a bigger message, 1/12, so each Country should put together their messages.

A Russian expert gets shot for divulging his message “there is no time, many become one”, and Louise insists they should stay and communicate with other, but they’ve been ordered to evacuate because after the bomb they fear the aliens might retaliate, but instead she goes to their ship and they send a pod for her. 

During all this, she seemed to me to act a bit strange; I mean, she made a big deal the first time she went through the experience, and I was like: after all you went through, you get scared for a couple of aliens? If I had lost my daughter I’d be like ‘I’ve been through the worst already, nothing scares me now’  and from time to time we saw bits of her life with Hannah, her daughter, as if remembering those moments or conversations could help her now.. but somehow it felt off and I didn’t see why at first. I can’t remember exactly when I understood about the child, but things started to make sense. 

While inside their ship, in their own atmosphere, with only one of them, Louise learn that the other is dying, and she asks him to give a message to the others. He tells her that she already has the weapon. He writes “we help humanity, in 3000 years we need humanity help”. Not yet able to understand, she asks him “who is this child?”, the little girl she keeps seeing - “Louise sees future”, and “weapon opens time”, and she finally understands. By learning their non linear language she started thinking their way, their non-linear way, and seeing bits of her future. She understands the image of the little girl’s drawing “mom and daddy talk to animals” with her and a man and a bird in a cage, like the one she always had during her visits to the aliens (like miners, of course, that’s why she stopped wearing those big things, the bird breathed fine).

We see it all with her: the book she’ll write on universal language about translating heptapod , when she’ll explain to her daughter that her father left because she told her something about the future, telling her that she made the wrong choice (because she knows the girl will die of some rare, unstoppable disease. When she gets back to the others, she realizes that now she can read their language, she understands that she sees time as they do, and she sees a celebration: 18 months from now, she’ll meet there General Shang and he’ll tell her that she changed his mind when she reached him on his private number; she says she doesn’t know it and she shows it to her, and also tells her what she told him on the phone, his wife’s dying words, so she now knows what she has to do. While the others prepare to evacuate she takes a satellite phone and calls that number and speaks to him in Chinese, repeating the words he said/will say to her. Shortly after that, every news channel reports that China is standing down and wants to share their information with the others. Now the aliens leave. Mission accomplished, Earth is on its way to unification (honestly, it’s easier to believe their chats with the aliens than this). 

We finally see that Hannah’s father will be Ian, but that’s no surprise at this point. In the present she hugs him saying “I forgot how good it felt to be held by you”, and we see that they’ll have a relationship, that she’ll say yes to his idea of having children, that they’ll be happy for a while, but we already know that he’ll leave when she’ll tell him what’s about to happen to the child. 

“Despite knowing the journey and where it leads, I embrace it and I welcome every moment of it”.

To the viewers to decide if they agree with him or with her. I understand his pain and how it might be hard to accept but I also understand her decision. She didn’t tell him sooner because she wanted the baby, and she wanted the baby anyway for all the moments she had with her and for all the love they shared. I can’t know, of course, but I don’t think that any parent who lost a child ever wished to have never had that child. 

About the movie, I also liked the fact that all the other Countries had their own experts and they all made progress. 

Wonder woman - 2017

Not bad, I liked it enough, it had a great start and some lovely scenes, but it wasn’t what I had hoped, but I guess it’s useless hoping for something knowing that in our times I’ll never get it. So, I loved the beginning, enjoyed the middle, was rather disappointed by the end. 

The beginning was beautiful, I liked a lot the child playing Diana, and then all the Amazons together. Diana is their Queen Ippolita’s daughter; she’s told that she was born from clay, that Zeus created her. Ippolita tells her that Zeus created humanity good , that Ares got jealous and tried to corrupt mankind, that in the following war Ares killed all the Gods until he was injured and forced to retreat. The Amazons train to be prepared for his return, but Ippolita’s wish is not to find him and kill him but to hide her daughter as long as she can. 

When Diana sees a plain crashing she saves the life of the pilot, Steve (Chris Pine), and learns that there is a big war going on and millions of people dying. 

When the Nazis find Steve on the island, they attack. The amazons fight and win but many of them die because they don’t have firearms like the others. To protect Diana’s life Antiope (Robin Wright) puts herself in front of her and dies. I had big tears in my eyes when she got shot. She was the best.

Diana is sure that it’s all Ares’ doing and that it is their duty to find him and stop him. Ippolita refuses to get involved in the men’s war, but Diana goes anyway. (Bit on a nonsense though. She most of all wished to keep her safe, and then she let her go alone? Not telling her the truth - not a big revelation but still - because that would make it easier for him to find her, when it’s Diana herself that is determined to find him?? I think all the amazons should have joined her fight)

Diana and Steve go to London, and she sees a world that is strange to her. Women wearing long dresses that she finds very unsuitable for combat, and men more worried about a woman entering their room than about soldiers dying because ‘that’s what soldiers are for’. She shouts that a general should lead his warriors and that he should be ashamed of himself. Good.

She follows Steve and three other men on their way to find a dangerous man, General Ludendorff, to stop him from releasing a deadly gas. She helps to free a village, because her armor protects her against bullets and she’s much stronger than men. 

Knowing where they’ll be able to find Ludendorff, Diana steals a woman’s dress to infiltrate the party (nice scene when she walked in front of the woman to see that they were of the same height, and stood at her side to check that they were of the same built :-p).

She’d want to kill Ludendorff right there but Steve stops her saying that they need to find the gas first. Unfortunately right after that, the general releases the gas in the village she had saved and everybody dies. She’s very upset, she tells Steve that Ares corrupted him too, and she goes alone to stop him. 

She finds Ludendorff and fights him and kills him with her ‘Godkiller’ sword, but nothing changes. She then meets the real Ares, revealing himself for what he really is. Sir Patrick who helped them in London wanted her to see what humanity really is, that the war is actually men’s fault.  She doesn’t side with him of course, and fights him. Ares tells her that she is the daughter of Zeus (how can that be shocking? Only because Dad left her? Not unsual, specially in this case, that’s actually what Zeus did, constantly). Her sword breaks against him, and he tells her that she’s the Godkiller herself, as the daughter of Zeus and Ippolita. 

She’s desperate when Steve dies. He couldn’t beat Ares of course, but he could save lots and lots of lives by getting rid of the gas, and he did, sacrificing himself. Ares tries to direct her pain towards humans but in Steve she saw that there are good men, and she chooses love and fights Ares off and wins. 

The battle scenes were very cool and I liked her remarks on generals and dresses, but all that kind of clashes with the heels she wears in combat :-/  

And of course I could have done without the love story honestly. Why was it necessary to have her fall in love and sleep with the first man she ever saw in her entire life? What’s all this about fighting for love? She used to fight to save lives, to help people, to do the right thing… now it seems she only keeps doing it because she fell in love???