Law and order Special Victims Unit XV

ep 1 - Surrender Benson. No Barba. A really tough episode, with poor Olivia in William Lewis' hands. He had her prisoner for days, made her watch while he did horrible things, tortured her... finally takes her to a beach home where she gets even more scared when a woman comes in with her little daughter. She manages to free herself, like a true hero she's now more worried for the little girl than she was for herself. She knocks him down than tells the woman to run away because she's illegal and if found there they might take her daughter away from her. Alone with Lewis, he's the one tied up now, he keeps torturing her with words. She tells him that her old partner would know what to do with him... oh Liv, you really like that macho attitude, don't you? When will this change and you will start looking for something more suited for you? Like Barba?
Anyway, he gets to her, and she beats him badly, crying out loud. Finally the team arrives to take her away, in the sort of scene we've often seen, only this time she's the victim taken away.
ep 2 - Imprisoned lives. Liv has a hard time adjusting to life again after what Lewis did to her, but of course she'll come through. It was very touching the scene when Barba went to talk to her and she barely looked at him, she was just so angry about the situation (having found a basement where girls and a kid were kept as prisoners) and the fact that the place was already surrounded by the press, and he couldn't talk to her, and only after she went back into the car again with the child he said "welcome back"...
ep 3 - American tragedy. A serial rapist terrorizes a neighborhood; the only description is very vague, like: tall young black guy :-/ so when Jolene Castille (Cybill Shepherd) sees a black guy following her she gets scared and shoots him dead. At first it seems legit, but when it comes out that he was not the rapist, just a young boy making his way home, and that she's kind of a racist, Barba indicts her for murder. He makes a strong case, stating that he had no weapon and never did anything bad but he didn't have to, he simply needed to be there... but the defense goes on about her right to defend herself, and the jury lets her go. I like the last scene, with the squad outside, with Liv asking 'what happened?' and Barba saying 'I'm sorry, I..' and Liv 'No..' and Fin saying it's not his fault, 'it's just how it is'.
ep 4 - Internal affairs. No Barba.  A Cassidy episode. He works undercover at a precinct where officers are rapists, corrupt. Cassidy finds himself in a very bad situation at the end after they find out he's undercover, and it was Tucker's fault. He revealed it to get proof that their commanding officer was corrupted as well.
ep 5 - Wonderland story. No Barba. Munch retires!!! :-(  A girl that was raped once already calls Liv saying she thinks she was raped again, by someone acting as a friend :-/ disgusting guy.
ep 6 - October surprise. Lots of Barba here :-D My fav ep of the season. Barba grew up in a poor neighborhood with Alex Muñoz and Eddie Garcia. Alex is now running to become the new Mayor of New York, and he's using Eddie as a bag man to pay off women he exchanges explicit images with on the internet. He did that with a 15 year-old girl too, but send someone else to pay her off because Eddie is a good man and would not have liked that. When Eddie is arrested on attempted rape Alex goes to Rafael for help. He talks to Liv to make sure they give him the benefit of the doubt and of course Amaro acts like a jerk. He's got a point though, in the elevator scene. I loved that whole scene,  specially the 'are we done?' line. Barba lets them investigate as much as they want, and he can't believe it at first but then he has to admit that Alex's conduct is not suited for a Mayor. Another complication, other than the fact that they are old friend, is Alex's wife: apparently Barba was in love with her :-/  Anyway, at the end he helps Eddie out, giving him immunity if he tells them everything, and leaves Alex's case to another prosecutor, of course. Love the ending scene, when Amaro leaves Barba and Benson alone at the bar and they talk :-) I love when they are together, because I love them both and I want them to be happy (Rafael and Olivia, that is, obviously. I love Raúl and Mariska too but she is married and I love her with Peter, so let's not confuse actors with characters. I want Rafael and Olivia together)
I loooove this episode because of all the great Barba scenes :-D
ep 7 - Dissonant voices. A sad episode about a man wrongly accused. Two girls plan for their former singing teacher to be accused of rape by their younger brothers, so he's ruined. All charges are dropped when the truth comes out but we know how these things are, and his career and his life will never be the same.
ep 8 - Military justice. So sad what happened to this poor girl. All svu cases are horrible and sad, but sometimes it's harder. This girl, an Admiral's daughter, always had a tough time at the Coast Guard base being a woman, but now she was brutally gang-raped. All scenes with her and Barba were amazing. I love when he tells her how tough the trial is gonna be, 'but he's gonna be right there, in her corner', and when he says "keep going?" I love how she nods her head in such a touching way, she appears so fragile and so strong all together. A good episode, and I really appreciated how her father supported her all the way.
ep 9 - Rapist anonymous. Rollins is attending meetings for her gambling problem, and also sleeping with her sponsor. One night a girl met at a meeting comes to her saying she was raped, but Barba won't prosecute the case. Later on the guy she accused dies, and Barba accuses her of deliberately accusing him to create a pattern of behaviour that would justify his murder. Amaro is on his side this time, and gives him vital information. Rollins is crushed when she hears at the trial that her guy also slept with Lena and that she played her. Barba and Rolling were great here (Raúl and Kelli Giddish were great here). So sorry that I did not like Lena at all, I didn't like how the actress played her, not at all. I loved every Barba scene, most of all his victorious scenes at the trial and when he went to apologize to Rolling, and was very sorry to see how Rollins reacted to this by falling again into gambling :-(
ep 10 - Psycho/therapist. It's William Lewis' trial. Loved all the Barba scenes. Raúl and Mariska were absolutely great here. It was a tough trial because Lewis represented himself so he got to interrogate Liv. It got to him when he learned how she had described her beating him as self-defence to subdue him. He was determined to have her admit that she beat him while he was defenseless. At the end he is found guilty of something, although not everything, and Liv thinks it's finally over, but we see at the end that he will escape.
ep 11 - Amaro's one-eighty. No Barba here. This was all Amaro, obviously. He helps two officers chasing down a black guy, and when they tell him the guy has a gun and he hears a shot, he shoots too killing what turns out to be a young innocent kid. They all go after him: the city, internal affairs, but Liv tries to help him.
ep 12 - Jersey Breakdown. I liked Barba's scenes, of course, but the episode in general is not one of my favourites, at all. This is the ep with young Claire who is svu's victim but gets arrested so they can't use her help, so Barba brings in the FBI, and it turns out powerful people were behind this whole thing.
ep 13 - Betrayal's climax. Same here. I appreciated Barba's scenes, but the ep was so-so. Avery gets raped by some gang members, and her boyfriend Manny is sort of part of that gang, and when he wants to help her he gets killed in prison, but the squad gets the gang leader anyway. He threatens Liv, but she refuses protection because she 'doesn't want to live like that'.
ep 14 - Wednesday's child. No Barba here. A poor child given to a couple who uses children for pornographic videos. They save him fortunately.
ep 15 - Comic perversion. I liked this episode. The beginning was rather upsetting because that comedian making rape-jokes was not funny at all and it is outrageous that he could be allowed to do that. I know Barba talked about free speech and blah blah blah, but maybe there should be limits. Jokes about rape are allowed because of free speech; would it be the same if the guy had done jokes about religious persecution? I mean, jokes suggesting that such horrors are funny, would that be free speech too? Or is it just because rape is not considered so important??
Anyway, moving on for now; we got to see Renée from Lessons Learned again, which was nice. She was almost raped because some guy had fun at this comedian's show and decided to have fun on their own. Liv insists they should prosecute this Galloway when a girl accuses him of rape. Barba accepts of course, because he can never say no to her, this is already quite clear. To me at least, if not to him or her. This was a difficult case and he would have lost but for Renée's help. Barba accuses Liv of choosing to go on with this case because of her ego "you want to show everyone there's no special treatment under Sergeant Benson's watch" and because she's had a very tough year, then he says "actually my judgement was impaired. I never should have let you convince me to take this case" . Right, so why was his judgement impaired??? Why couldn't he just say no to her?? Barson, that's why. And the way he said, at the end, "I want you to stay commanding officer" was melting!
ep 16 - Gridiron soldier. No Barba. Bad things go on with a college football team.
ep 17 - Gambler's fallacy. No Barba. This was a Rollins episode, and a tough one to watch because she was falling down badly. She was still gambling when she met Claire at a club and she ratted her out as a cop, so the manager took advantage of it blackmailing her. She was falling pretty low. Luckily for her she found and undercover cop there, Declan, who helped her giving her a second chance, and she came out ok.
ep 18 - Criminal stories. A Muslim girl is raped by a rich guy in his office. Her brother is working for him, so at first she lied saying she was raped in the park by some unknown guys. The trial is very difficult because of her lies and because a famous reporter keeps publishing articles that tend to destroy her. This journalist is played by Alec Baldwin :-) At the end Benson gets to him and he takes it all back writing a big article supporting their case. Problem is, the jury reads it so the judge is forced to call for a mistrial.
ep 19 - Downloaded child. One of my favourite episode. A terrible story, but with some great great scenes and an unbelievable, lovely happy ending. It starts when a little girl is found alone at home because her mom Jenny is in prison for shoplifting and nobody is guarding her. It turns out the baby's father is in jail, and Jenny won't let her husband alone with her daughter. Investigating, it turns out that Jenny was a victim of child rape, that her horrible mother's partner used her for pornographic videos where he did every sort of thing to her. Detectives called the child Lacey Unknown because the man called her Lacey in those videos. Liv and Rollins have to inform her of the whole thing, and it's very hard on her. She speaks about her story at a guy's hearing, and he's so touched, he feels so guilty about what happened to her that not only he gives her money in restitution, but he gives Barba a lot of names of pedophiles that shared her videos. Barba finds a millionaire in there and goes after him for the whole four millions, so that Jenny won't have to go through that torture ever again, and will be able to take care of her daughter. Good.
ep 20 - Beast's obsession. No Barba. This is all William Lewis and Olivia. He escapes, rapes and kills again, and takes a little girl hostage to lure Olivia to him. She goes, of course. He wants her to admit that she beat him and lied under oath, and she does that, then she goes to him. He has her hostage now, and his obsession goes to the extreme. He plays russian roulette with her, and at the end he shoots himself making it look like she killed him.
ep 21 - Post-mortem blues. No Barba. Why???? Anyway, Liv told the truth this time, about everything. She's now under the microscope and sort of accused of killing Lewis for a personal vendetta, and she is ready to resign but Declan saves her, lying to the grand jury, saying he ordered her to make that public confession, stating that she's a hero, convincing the jury.
ep 22 - Reasonable doubt. I liked Barba scenes, yes, but not much the story itself. A producer (played by Bradley Whitford) is accused of molesting his own little daughter. His wife is bitter because he left her for her younger sister, so it's not totally clear if he really did it or not. It would seem so when the wife's other sister confesses that he molested her too, but still it doesn't mean that he molested his own daughter. He's scumbag, that's clear anyway. At the end he escapes to France, avoiding justice. I loved the scene with the two lawyers in the judge's office, talking about it. I like judge Catano a lot, and I like this lawyer as well (Cohen, according to imdb, but I really don't remember anyone calling his name..), and I like their scenes together, and I love how Raúl says "that would be..wrong"  :-) love it. 
ep 23 - Thought criminal. A difficult case for Barba, because he wanted the guy put away but he also knew it was a stretch, and that maybe the other counsellor was not wrong after all. I mean, this guy never did anything criminal, but everybody is sure that he will sooner or later, he's escalating and won't resist the temptation much longer, and knowing what his fantasy is Barba and the others are scared of what he will do if let free, but the counsellor defending him (played by Nia Vardalos, always a pleasure) is not wrong in her defense: is it right to get put in jail for what's in our heads if we never actually did anything wrong??
ep 24 - Spring awakening. No Barba here. Amaro is arrested for assaulting the photographer from last episode, Munch comes to help him but at the end it's Rollins the one who saves him, although they probably have no idea. Benson finds baby Doe's mother Ellie.

Law and order Special victims unit XIV

(eps follow below) I wasn't a fan, mainly because no character really got to me, and the fact that I disliked Stabler and was never fond of Amaro as well. The others were ok enough, but I didn't "feel" much. Sure, I loved Benson, I love her, she's the heart and soul of the show, but her character was rather..I don't have the right word, basically it seemed to me like she orbitated around Stabler  and I did not like that.
And then Rafael Barba came along (ps no beard, no uncle, no joke;  definitely not boring). I loved Barba since his first scene. Everything about him: his lines, his voice, his smirk, (well maybe not how he runs..) and how looks at people, with those deep eyes... there's only one little thing... sometimes he speaks so quickly it's hard to follow... anyway I usually get everything he says, if needed I just rewind it in my head while the others talk, so it's ok. Just never give him Italian lines please :-p we're not all godfathers here :-p
Before, I only watched the occasional rerun on tv when there was nothing else, now I found myself looking for these episodes, watching to see the actor's name (Raúl Esparza) to check if Barba will be on the show. I got almost emotional when I saw for the first time his name in the opening credits (in later seasons, and with a beautiful picture too). He's amazing. I love Barba. I went on youtube, watched a video of Esparza singing in Spanish... and I wonder, did they ever make an episode with Barba singing a little bit in Spanish? Because I tell you I would buy the season dvds just for that scene (if I could find them, that is). Not that Barba has a lot of reasons to be singing by himself, but they could give him a good reason for once... in English would be good too, I'm not picky. Or maybe a dance with Benson!! Yes, and you know what, maybe there is no music so he sings a little.. come on that would be awesome!! But I'm fantasizing, I know all this is not likely to happen on SVU,it's ok,  it's just that when I love a character I want to see good things happen to him :-) and Esparza is such a good, amazing actor any scene would be great. Anyway, as long as he'll be on the show, I think I'll keep watching this show looking for him.
Obviously I'm a Barson fan now. I want to see him in a romantic scene *dreamy-eyes*

ep 1 & 2 - Lost reputation and Above suspicion. When Cragen is under attack, accused of murdering a girl. Of course he did not, but he did see a prostitute occasionally because he wanted companionship and this seemed the easier way... still I think that for someone working at svu paying a prostitute should be unacceptable, because if there weren't so many men ready to pay for it there wouldn't be so much exploitation... Cragen, really?? - In these eps I was glad to see Paget Brewster, and I liked her scenes with Mariska, and was kind of sorry to see that her character was ultimately arrested. Very glad also to see Adam Baldwin here, replacing Cragen as squad commander: Captain Harris.
ep 3 - Twenty-five acts. Barba!!!!!! wow. I love this episode, and there was nothing I didn't like, all the actors were good and the characters interesting. Anna Chlumsky was Jocelyn Paley, and she was really good; Elizabeth Marvel is Rita Calhoun, and we'll see lots more of her in svu. The judges and the professor and the others were ok, and of course there is Captain Harris introducing Benson and Rollins to Barba :-D
Jocelyn is a young successful writer and she goes out with a tv-show host Cain, and they start to have sex when he becomes violent and hurts her and doesn't stop. SVU convinces her to press charges.
Harris suggested ADA Rafael Barba "he's got big brass...ego". Cain rapes her twice, and since she wrote a book on sex and bondage they investigate her past, and later they find out that it was her teacher who actually wrote the book; Jocelyn is distressed because if known her carrier would be ruined, she says. It was the teacher's idea, and part of the contract is that nobody must know, and she might now have to give all the money back. It's not going well so Barba tries to provoke Cain: "where was the buckle?" - "I don't know if I can be more specific, would you like me to show you?" - "well, actually.. *nodding*" and after the obvious objection he says "as a regular Joe, I am curious about how this belt-around-the-neck-thing is exciting, I am sure Your Honor, that the jury is curious as well" so he takes off his belt and puts it around his own neck and told him to show him and provoked him until he got angry and started pulling hard and for a second Barba was choking and then he has no marks on his neck and he shows the picture of Jocelyn's neck afterwards and it was all red and bruised... - Liv"SVU is the only unit where the victim's word isn't good enough, we have to prove that a crime was committed" Harris"that's true, they don't ask robbery victims if they wanted it" .
When it was all over, Barba tells Jocelyn that America "loves a comeback" and it's the end.
So funny, so good, so interesting, so intriguing, so sexy. I loved him immediately. I wonder if the writers were sort of planning a Barson future from the start, or maybe it's just my imagination I don't know, but didn't he gave Benson a special look? Anyway, of course Raúl Esparza is brilliant, and Barba absolutely amazing. This is obviously the ep where he takes off his belt and lets the defendant Cain almost choke him to prove how violent he was :-)
ep 4 - Acceptable loss. We see Eames again! (Kathryn Erbe) from Criminal Intent, I used to love that show, I loved Goren and Eames, but not the others, in later seasons. This ep anyway is not among my favourites. It was tough, with lots of poor girls mistreated and Eames asking them to do nothing in the interest of national security, to catch a terrorist. The svu squad will end up saving the girls anyway, and then catching the terrorist too, because this is a tv show and this things happen. I liked the scene with Eames and Benson at the end, talking about their former partners, and Eames saying how after so many years it sort of felt like they were married, and Benson saying "but you weren't", because she still misses Stabler... I was very happy when in later seasons she'll finally get over it.
It went like this: Liv"that's how you break them, getting them to tell their story" - "isn't that how you do it?" and Liv says that she doesn't normally do it with her head on one side, Eames laughs and says "yeah well I learned that from my partner at Major case, it's his way of keeping eye contact" - "a little eccentric" - "you have no idea" :-p and then "all that time together, the two of us, it was like we were married". Liv nods and says "but you weren't" and Eames nods...
ep 5 - Manhattan vigil. Another sad episode. A child is abducted and this reminds Benson of a child that was abducted in that area many years ago and never found, and now they finally find his dead body, and the poor mother's pain was so touching. Good actress.
ep 6 - Friending Emily. There's a bit of Barba here, but not much. Two sisters leave their friends to go to a party where everyone else is older, and the younger sister disappears. They'll find her and save her :-)
ep 7 - Vanity's bonfire. A young couple had adopted a little child who gets kidnapped by the biological mother who was tricked in giving it away. Only thing notable in this ep was that there was Scott Bakula in it, but he played the bad guy.
ep 8 - Lessons learned. Good episode, very sad but that's not so strange in this show. Barba and Benson try every way possible to get a school accountable for all the sexual abuses its professors committed years ago, but these teachers are all too old or already dead, and it all happened many years before. In the end they at least manage to get the school to issue public apologies. There's a scene where Barba says "as a kid growing up in the South Bronx going to Catholic school, I would've given anything to go here" Benson says "smart guy like you couldn't get a scholarship?" :-p and he "only kids they took from my neighborhood were the athletes" then he tries to tell her that "I'm a prosecutor not a healer" in perfect Bones-style, but when she argues that something criminal did happen, he yields immediately :lol: it started pretty early, I must say, but it'll go on for a long time :lol: he can never say no to her :-D
There was Elliott Gould in this ep, playing a good man who admitted sex but was not one of the bad guys, and never forced anyone.
ep 9 - Dreams deferred. Well, there was no Barba in here but it was a good episode nonetheless. I'm not a big fan of Patricia Arquette, but she was really good here, and her whole story was very touching and nice. She's an old prostitute who helps the team catch a murderer. She doesn't want to give up 'the life', so the squad tries to convince her because it's time she takes care of herself. I loved the scene when Fin goes to talk to her daughter who doesn't have a good relationship with her mom because she despises her lifestyle but Fin makes her think about how difficult life was for her mom, and how she started this life because she needed money for her, to raise her, and how she never needed anything because mom took care of her.
ep 10 - Presumed guilty. No Barba here, because apparently he's vacationing in Switzerland, in some place where all rich men go skiing :-p This ep was not my fav because it was in some way too tough, but all the squad's parts were very good. Fin's ex-brother-in-law is in trouble and they all help him. He did not beat up a priest, he actually tried to stop the assault. A sad story of priests abusing children come out of this. Benson and Fin and Rollins were all adorable here.
ep 11 - Beautiful frame. Lots of Barba here :-D and it would have been an even better episode but for the fact that I didn't like this Jessie at all. I didn't like the actress and I didn't like the character.
What I did like: Pam James was ok, and Judge Catano I liked very much, very happy that she'll appear again in later episodes. I liked all scenes with Barba, and I love every time Rollins gets to be the one that explains things and words to the other members of the squad :lol:
ep 12 - Criminal hatred. So many lovely Barba scenes here :-D This is the episode where a guy picks up gay men who can pass for straight and then assaults them and robs them. These men all had wives who never suspected anything (except one, the wife of the only man that died. I liked her, she played this awkward sad woman who knew everything about her husband's "secret" but loved him anyway, because in their own way husband and wife really did love each other). I didn't like Amaro here, he was such an idiot. The bad guy always acted cool but he actually hated himself for what he was and took it out on those men that could hide it and pass for straight. I love the scene when Barba introduces himself to a witness, walking with his hands in his pocket :-D and the scenes with opposing counsellor Nia Vardalos were very funny :lol: loved all of them :lol
ep 13 - Monster's legacy. No Barba here. Benson and counsellor Ellis work together to prove that a man in death row was not fairly represented during his trial because his history of abused child was ignored.
ep 14 - Secrets exhumed. No Barba. FBI agent Dana Lewis is back, and she tries very hard to pin a murder on a man who confessed to all the others but this one, and the team realizes that this one was actually committed by her.
ep 15 - Deadly ambition. No Barba. Amanda's sister plots to have her shoot her man, making her believe that he was about to rape her. Rollins gets in lots of trouble for this because Kim will deny the attempted rape to be able to cash the insurance money she took on him. Amaro helps her.
ep 16 - Funny Valentine. Great episode, this one, on how dangerous domestic violence can be, and how women endanger themselves when they refuse to accept reality and keep defending their man. Misha is a 19-year-old singer in love with fellow singer Caleb. When he beats her and sends her to the hospital the team gets involved, and Benson and Barba try their best to get her to testify against him. Every time she seems determined to do it, but then a word from Caleb is enough to change her mind and make her believe that he loves her and everything will be fine again between them. Of course it will not be fine, because there will be always something to "set him off", and ultimately he'll beat her to death, and they'll learn about it from tv news.
Jeffrey Tambor plays Barba's opposing counsellor, and their fights are always lots of fun :lol: Again, very glad we'll get to see this counsellor again in later episodes :-)
All the actors were good here, a very good episode. Lots of moments with Barba and Benson together, from the "have you ever been in love?" scene to the "come on Barba you can be very convincing when you want to be", to the moment when they first go to talk to Misha and he looks so proud of his badass Benson :lol:
ep 17 - Undercover blue. When we learn that Benson is having a relationship with Cassidy... and our reaction is not much different from Barba's. Come on, don't tell me he wasn't affected by this, I'm sure they are planning something for them. I hope too.
Cassidy should be the key witness in Barba's case against Ganzelle, but a girl accusing him of rape risks compromising everything and creates lots of trouble for him. It turns out that when Amaro was undercover he fell for a girl but had to leave her when the case finished, and never saw her again. Now Cassidy's lawyer brings her in with the news that they had a son together, and now Amaro wants to be a part of the boy's life, and Cassidy convinces him to work together to help each other.
ep 18 - Legitimate rape. A sad episode who makes you angry at that woman in the jury who let the rapist go free because she believed that a woman could not get pregnant unless it was consensual sex, which is stupid, and makes you (well it made me) dislike her almost more than I disliked the disgusting scum. A journalist was raped by her cameraman, and had to endure being interrogated by him when he chose to represent himself. For the first time we have an idea of how much time actually passes in this show between the charges and the trial, because she found out she was pregnant when talking to Benson and she had the child as soon as the trial ended. Of course this is a tv show, in real life that's utopian.
This is the:
"men: they're all rapists right?"
"objection. argumentative and ridiculous"
episode :lol:
I also liked the judge and the fact that it was so clear that she despised that man and was very disappointed by the jury's verdict.
ep 19 -Born psychopath. Mixed feelings about this.  (No Barba). It's about a 10-year-old boy who is a psychopath, totally insensible to other people's feeling, killing animals out of curiosity, hurting his little sister...  it was a very tough episode emotionally, but I couldn't help thinking that I wouldn't have liked my son to say and pretend those things...
ep 20 - Girl dishonored. This is one of those episodes that make you disgusted about this world. First episode about Hudson University, where the fraternity is a place where boys act like gods and do whatever they like and rape whoever they like and get covered by the school while the poor girls are shamed, not believed, rejected. Barba and Benson fight hard against the school and this time they win. I was disgusted by the story, hearing the headmaster saying that she let them say and wear whatever they liked because of free speech, because of freedom... there should be limits, I can't believe anything like that could ever happen, those shirts and blogs I hope would never be allowed in a real school!!
The actors were all good, a great episode.
ep 21 - Traumatic wound - Another good episode, I liked it a lot, although what happened to the girl was horrible. One of Amaro's good episode; it's only thanks to him if they find out the truth. A girl went to a club with three friends; when someone pulls down her top, she is assaulted by some of the drunk men present. She talks to svu, but at first she thought the security man had assaulted her too, only Amaro understands that Frank does have sort of blackouts, he has PTSD, and works with him to try and piece together the events of that night. Frank's memory comes in pieces, but he's able to tell them who pulled the girl's top, and also that her three friends were in on it, so Barba prepares his case. Very nice scenes in the courtroom, I loved it :lol: The opposing counsellor (same as in Funny Valentine, right? What's his name?) was great and he got Frank to remember another piece, and he said in the courtroom that there was someone filming the whole thing, so now they have to find the guy, fast, and of course they do: hurray, Barba wins :-) This counsellor is the first one to call Barba Rafaél, right? Mostly he's called Barba or Ràfael, only this lawyer and Barba's old friends call him Rafaél :-) loved hearing this. He gives him the book "all the king's men" :-p but got it back :-p
Can I say here how I like this show's style of filming? How the characters and the scenes are never static, they are always moving, coming and going, feels more real, like in this scene for example, when we follow them all coming out of the courtroom. We see Barba sit down while we follow Frank talking to the squad;we move left with them until we see that lawyer coming out and seeing Rafaél at which point we follow him, sitting down and talking to Barba. I love the movement, the sense of ensemble, the vitality of the scenes.
ep 22 - Poisoned motive. When Rollins gets shot by a sniper who has a grudge against Fin and goes after people connected to him. Obviously this was not the way to deal with it and it was not Fin's fault, but the breakdown was rather understandable, after all that happened.
ep 23 - Brief interlude. This is one of the eps that affected me more.. a Canadian woman takes a solitary trip to NY and will die there, leaving a husband and two children. The husband was such a good man, afraid of losing his younger wife he wanted to give her all the space she needed, letting her do this trip alone, and the poor woman meeting her death right when she was about to go back home, only because 'she was kind to the wrong person'; this ending was very sad.
ep 24 - Her negotiation. This one was one of the most peculiar, toughest episodes of all. It starts all quiet and nice, which should have worried me, thinking about it now. When do we ever see them doing normal stuff, being cheerful or simply living their lives? I should have known hell was about to break loose.
As I said, it starts off nicely, with all of them out of work for the weekend. Fin and Cragen going to a match, Rolling at the park with her dog... when she meets a young man who just exposed himself to two tourists. He burned his fingers so he has no fingerprints, and Amanda has a bad feeling about him so she calls back everyone, even Barba :-p and it was funny because as I saw him I thought 'was he on a boat?' and then Benson asked "where were you, on your yatcht?" :lol: this alone was funny, but his face when he said "not my yatcht" ... one of the most memorable Barba scenes :lol: and also the "he is crazy like a fox" scene was something :lol:  this was quite an episode, starting with lots of nice moments, funny lines, and then quickly escalating towards hell.
This William Lewis has a young lawyer so infatuated that she fights for him as hard as she can. The squad pieces together his violent past but fails to put him away. He goes free for exposing himself then he assaults the old woman that witnessed that, but again goes free because the woman dies and they have nothing. It ends with Lewis showing up at Benson's apartment, holding her hostage (and Cassidy did not show up, even sent a message saying he wouldn't come, so Lewis knew nobody would come to save her). A very tough cliffhanger, I'm glad I didn't see this in America back then, where and when I would have had to wait months to know the rest..

The unlikely pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce

I liked it. It's a bizarre story, here and there very touching indeed. It's not funny but it's profound and at times heartbreaking, and also written very well, which is its best part. It's never boring. It gets you, and you just can't stop reading. It's not enough to jump pages to see how it ends, here what matters is the journey, not the arrival. I wanted to read and feel every second, every word.
Warning to future me: it is a very good book, but be careful because it's second half will make you cry, so be warned if you want to re-read it.
The story in general: Harold Fry is an old man, retired, living alone with his wife Maureen. One day he receives a letter from an old friend. He hasn't seen Queenie in twenty years, and now she's writing to say goodbye to him: she's got cancer and there's nothing more anyone can do. He thinks of writing her a reply, but words seem so hollow. He writes a little note and goes to post it, but he just can't do it. She was a friend, she did something for him all that time ago and somehow he let her down, and two words on a card don't seem enough. He meets a girl who tells him her aunt had cancer too, but 'you have to keep positive, though', and she got to him. 'And she got better? Because you believe she could?' - 'She said it gave her hope when everything else had gone..' then she's called back to work so she didn't know the effect her words had on him. He decides that this time he won't let her down, he phones the hospice and tells a woman to tell Queenie that he'll walk (yes, walk) all the way to Berwick-upon-tweed from Kingsbridge and for those like me who have no idea how distant that is there is a comment on that that gives a pretty good idea: 'he pictured Queenie dozing at one end of England and himself in a phone box at the other' ... pretty far indeed. So, this is the story, he's gonna walk through all England to save her life, because she will wait for him and she'll live, that's his idea.
He phones Maureen and writes letters and postcards: to her , to Queenie and even to that girl who gave him the idea in the first place.
During his walk he meets lots of people: someone helps him with food or medication (like Martina, the Slovakian doctor who can only find cleaning work now) and with others he exchanges stories. When a man takes his pictures the madness starts because he goes on the news and suddenly everybody talks about his journey, and some people join him, almost ruining the whole thing because people are like that. A group of people wants to follow him but in fact they slow him down and he feels he can't leave them since they decided to join his cause. They bring only trouble in fact, until one of them acts like the boss and convinces the others to leave Harold behind because he's too slow and old! They go ahead without him, with all the cameras on them, and when they arrive they have their pictures taken and their faces all other the news as if they did something heroic when they did nothing, but that's tv for you.
Harold will finish his walk alone, but he'll get there.

The story in detail , with SPOILERS all round. Be warned in case you've forgotten how it ends. I'm going into details here.
Maureen is home with no idea about his project. They've lived almost as strangers for many years now, barely talking to each other. Their neighbor Rex is a good man who lost his wife; she had a brain tumour and he can't let go of the fact that when they found out there was nothing they could do and she was dying they both gave up, and he didn't rage. Maybe it's because of this that he sort of understands how important what Harold is doing is for him. He helps Maureen get through it.
Harold's story: 'his father had returned from the war an alcoholic prone to depression', and his mother was not the motherly type. They had never wanted kids and didn't know what to do with him. One day she packed a bag and left and he started seeing other women. When Harold was 16 his father kicked him out. He didn't have an education but he worked hard, fell madly in love with Maureen and they had a son and they loved David very much but Harold didn't know what to do, how to be a good parent, he was always afraid. He feels he let him down, let everybody down.
Thing is, David died twenty years ago, suicide. Maureen couldn't cope with it and started blaming Harold. They fought at first and then they barely talked to each other, living together but not really together. This finally explained it to me. I couldn't understand what happened to them. When she lost her parents and desperately missed them she found comfort in him, they loved each other so much, that I couldn't see what set them so far apart. Finally I could see it. It can happen sometimes that when someone can't cope with a pain too great, they take it out on  someone else. It may not be right but it's very human, and also destructive.
When David died Harold started drinking, until it was too much. One night he was completely drunk and he broke into his company and broke a collection of things his boss was so fond of because they were his mother's. He was a thug and who knows what he would have done to him had he known the truth, but Queenie took the blame. She said she did it by mistake while cleaning. She worked in finances though, she wasn't a cleaning lady, yet she said it herself and was fired on the spot. After that she disappeared and Harold never saw her again. Still he thinks she saved her life because he stopped drinking after that, and he never got to say thank you.
During his walk Harold has lots of time to think about his parents, his wife, his son; Maureen has also  lots of time to think about it, how she said to him bad things that he didn't deserve, how she misses him, how she loved him and wanted to be everything for him against her parents ideas.
At the end Harold gets there and can see Queenie. One visit, and then she'll die. The cancer was really terrible and she couldn't speak. The girl who gave him the idea goes to see Maureen after a letter from him. She says she's sorry she gave him the wrong idea, because her aunt died. She did not save her, how could she? They talk and Maureen goes to Harold. They attend together Queenie's funeral and they finally talk and they find each other again.
I thought it was just right that the writer didn't tell us what it was that she told him the first time they met, because to us it would have meant nothing, but as Harold put it, they laughed so much because they were young and happy, and no other reason. Now they think about it together and they hold hands and go back home together.

A thing I liked about this book was also that the main characters were all good in their own way. I mean, Rex helped her as an understanding friend, with no second motive. Harold wanted to save Queenie because she had been a good person and a good friend, with no second motive.
The pilgrims were all about second motives, of course, they didn't care about Harold and Queenie, not really, but that's 'people' for you.

A beautiful book, I'm so glad I read it. Can you believe it that I found it, in English, in a small town library in Italy? Amazing. When I have the chance I think I will buy it and keep it.

Collision Earth - 2011

A tv-movie, but that's no excuse. The movie was terrible, awful really. Boring and with bad acting almost all around. The story was terrible too, but not as bas as the acting. I mean, most b-movies have scripts or special effects or lines ridiculous to the point of actually being funny, but such acting threw me totally off. I might save only the women and the man (don't remember the character's name) that was in charge of launching the missiles, the one who got his badge stolen by James, and the guards who fought James. I liked him and Jennifer enough, but the worst of them all was the main lead. Terrible.
The story is this: for a second the sun becomes a magnetar, spreading an incredible electomagnetic wave that causes biiiig trouble: Mercury goes out of its orbit, and so does a spaceship out to explore it. This comes totally unexpected of course, because in this kind of movies it's always the same thing: one second Earth is a paradise perfectly safe and the next moment it's a death trap about to be destroyed forever.
This thing causes little peaces of Mercury to fall on Earth causing little holes in the ground, and the electromagnetic field goes wild causing cars to fly... but it sometimes moves slowly enough that someone might run to avoid it... and of course the hero ( :-/ ) is so lucky as to avoid it always.
Anyway, Mercury itself will destroy Earth if they don't do something, and those in charge (at a place called Spread...) think of launching missiles against it but of course that doesn't work.
In the spaceship they all die except Victoria, the wife of our hero, of course, and she repairs the radio but can only contact a guy who build himself a super-powerful radio... her husband James tells her she's their only hope, and that she has to activate a Project7 that was abandoned in space because it didn't work but now he's going to upload an update and it will save Earth...
She's not a pilot but she manages a perfect Picard maneuver and completes the mission, and her ship still has power and energy enough to bring her home...
Many people have died, people we knew and presumably many many others since we saw so many cars flying and crashing and burning, but at the end James uses the radio to call Victoria... no answer so he goes 'Vicky it's James' because you know, if she didn't answer it's because she didn't know who was calling :-/ some more silence to create suspense ( :-/ come on, really? ) and there she replies saying she's coming home, just like that, alone. Despite being no pilot and with a ship who got through a lot, she's coming down without the help of anyone from Earth...
One of the worst movies I've ever seen, and this James was really terrible, how did he manage to get the leading role in a movie is beyond me.



ITA missione Mercurio

Romeo killer: the Chris Porco story - 2013

I didn't like it one bit. I know nothing of the real story, I have no idea of what the real story is except what I saw in the movie, so my comments are entirely on the movie, and it's terrible.
It's a story of a spoiled kid that killed his father and almost killed his mother to collect their life insurance prize. He used an ax and was always the only suspect, but although the detective was sure he was guilty many other people in town believed his story of innocence.
The movie is filmed like a documentary with bits of re-inactions.
Christopher Porco is played by Matt Barr, but I didn't like it, I didn't know what to make of him; he was supposed I think to look like a charming, evil sociopath, but I didn't feel any of it.
Well, basically I didn't like any of it. I don't know if the movie is loyal to the real story or not, but what I saw was this: character detective Sullivan (Eric Mccormack) asking a severely injured woman, who almost died after being hit more than once with an ax, if she knew her attacker and if it was her son Chris, and he deduced by her movements that she said Chris did it, which seems to me a pretty lame start, since he had nothing to go on at first and he didn't pursue any other line of investigation.
Second thing, this Chris is supposed to have charmed everyone; his college brotherhood is one: all those boys thought he came from a very rich family and that he was a sort of Rockfeller kid while he didn't have all that money and he used trick after trick to make it seem so; all the females he met: all the young ones in love with him and the older ones loving him like a son. Why were all these girls in love with him? Because he told them 'you're my girl'? and they melt like ice in the Sahara? This character Chris was not all that charming, and it's unbelievable that every single girl, every single one was mad about him.
Only character I liked was the mother, Joan Porco played by Lolita Davidovich, who defended her son all the way. Of course, he's her son, and as he said at the beginning she would do anything for him.
With another name I would have never suspected this was based on a true story, but of course who would ever make up the name Porco?
Of course moving on with the movie and the investigation they come up with other things , like the fact that some time before he broke in his parents’ house and stole computers and then sold them for money, and also that that night he was not where he said he was, and that he had cheated many times, and not only on girls. He faked his grades to please his mother, he forged his dad's signature to get more money, and stuff like that. At the trial things came out like the fact that he used to forget his keys in the door like they were found after the murder, but I would have liked to hear that story before, it should have been a strong, a real reason to suspect him.
The jury finds him guilty, and sure many things point that way, but I didn't like that the movie doesn't show us any kind of investigation at all, specially at the beginning. I didn't like that everything started and was based on the detective's question to that dying woman, I mean did she even understand the questions in those conditions?
Speaking about the movie and the movie only, as I said before, I think the investigation was very poor and the guy was more disagreeable than charming.
One more thing I didn't like, the last scene when they show us the mother that night smiling before the attack, to make us sure that she recognized her beloved son and smiled to him, when she kept on defending him. Was that based on some fact or was that to give us a feeling of closure?


ITA Romeo killer: sospetti in famiglia

The ref - 1994

70 % fun, 10% boring, 20% drama. I liked it. Well, it has Kevin Spacey in it, and I love him and he was great here too. We can feel the atmosphere right from the start, when we see Caroline and Lloyd talking to marriage counsellor Wong (BD Wong :-D nice ) and they constantly quarrel, it appears they are always bickering and just can't stop. On their way home they stop to buy something, and a robber on the run gets her to force them to drive him away, and not knowing where to go he goes to their house. At first they are alone, but soon their son arrives. He comes from a military academy where he blackmails his superior with some compromising pictures.
Gus thought he would just gain some time to get his accomplice to find a way for him to escape, but he couldn't imagine a house like this. After the son other people arrive: two cops visiting (and they answer the phone when the accomplice calls), a drunk man dressed as Santa Claus, and their relatives here to spend Christmas Eve together.
It turns out that Lloyd's mother Rose has been trying to control their lives: Lloyd lives in her house and has to pay her rent, plus she gave them money to open a restaurant (that they closed after a terrible review) and he has to pay it back with 18% interests. Caroline blames him for it and for everything that goes wrong in their lives and says he wants a divorce but the fault is actually more hers than his: she never made a single decision, leaving everything on his shoulders. They moved because she was not happy in their little apartment in New York, he didn't want to accept his mother's money but she was not sure that was wise, and it was always like that for everything.
To go through the evening more easily Gus pretends to be doctor Wong to the family's eyes, leaving the son tied up upstairs to ensure their collaboration. One more surprise comes from the son's superior Siskel who comes home to reveal everything to the parents; he wants this thing to stop.
Drunk George also comes to their house to mess things up even more, then the police starts searching every house, so the family decides to help Gus escaping. In a way he helped them get it all out and sort of make peace, so they have him dress with George's Santa costume and the son leads him away while they lie to the police. It works, when someone sees Gus they think he's George and let him go: it's a little Connecticut town and they all know him.
Husband and wife of course make peace, and everything seems to be well again :-)



Gus the robber - Denis Leary
Caroline - Judy Davis
Lloyd - Kevin Spacey
Rose the mother - Glynis Johns
Connie - Christine Baranski
Siskel - J.K. Simmons

ITA c'eravamo tanto odiati

It takes two - 1995

The Olsen little girls were really cute, and this movie is all about them and for those who liked them, because there isn't much else. The story is very simple: two children casually meet and realize they are identical and also in a period of crisis in their young life: Amanda is an orphan and she's about to be adopted by an horrible family, while Alyssa is a very rich girl but her father, a widow convinced she needs a mom, is about to marry Miss Kensington (Jane Sibbet), a woman who doesn't like her and is only waiting after the wedding to send her away. The girls switch places to throw off those plans, and they also arrange something else. They have Alyssa's father Roger Callaway (Steve Guttenberg) meet Amanda's social worker and wanna-be-mom Diane (Kirstie Alley) and they fall in love, but this doesn't change a thing. Alyssa (posing as Amanda) is sent away to be adopted by a couple who already adopted other kids in order to make them work, and Amanda (posing as Alyssa) is about to witness Roger's wedding. Clarice Kensington saw him laughing with Diane but said nothing, instead she convinced him to speed up the wedding plans.
Diane rescues Alyssa and they run to the church where Roger does not say I do because he confesses he loves Diane. Happy ending for everybody, I'll say, because it will not be difficult now for Diane to get custody of Amanda if she marries millionaire  Roger.
Well, Jane Sibbet was fun :-) but the story lacks heart. The girls are fun and pretty, but the love story lacks everything. They fall in love with no reason at all, and he was getting married for the wrong, absurd reason in the first place. It seems by his words that he thought Alyssa needed a mother, but he seriously thought that Miss Kensington was a suitable mother? Come on, why didn't he try to find someone more like his beloved wife, meaning someone sweet and good? Besides, I don't like the scenes where one of them (bride or groom) says 'I can't' right there at the altar; I mean, do they have to wait until the very last second??? They come to church, they stand there, they wait for the priest to say what he has to say, then instead of I do they say I can't ... I don't like it, he shouldn't have been standing there in the first place!!!
That's what he likes in Diane I guess, that she's more down-to-earth and fun, how much time did they spend together? Two hours maybe? Is that enough to be called love?
Well, as I said, it's a nice enough movie if you like 9-year-old Mary-Kate and Ashley. Otherwise it doesn't have much to offer.


ITA matrimonio a quattro mani

What lies beneath - 2000

It's a thriller and not a bad one; unfortunately it's very slow. Being a bit slow is sometimes good for a certain kind of thriller movies, but in my opinion here a few scenes are too slow. I know it's not an action movie, and I like all the scenes with Michelle Pfeiffer walking around, building her suspicions. That's how some thriller movies work right? There's  a lot of calm then all of a sudden boom and you jump off your seat. Well, no boom here, because right before it there was too much calm, like they were whispering 'wait, hold your breath..' I mean, if you know when the boom is coming you don't jump off your seat!! I like it mostly because of the actors, I'll say. I'm uncertain about the supernatural side of it. They were not sure on the way to follow, maybe, because it is partially supernatural and partially psychological.
The story is: Claire (Pfeiffer) moves in a new house with her new husband Norman (Harrison Ford) who is a famous professor/scientist, and she spends her days alone since her only daughter just left for college. It's one year since she had a bad car accident, so everybody is concerned for her mental health now that she's all alone.
She hears a neighbour crying and meets Mary, but she's upset and doesn't explain why she's crying. One night she sees Mary's husband carrying a suspiciously looking package in the car trunk, and not seeing Mary anymore she convinces herself that he killed her, she even gets her friend Jody to try and contact Mary's spirit with a seance. She grows more and more sure of it to the point when she publicly comes up to him accusing him of having killed her: he's bewildered, but he has the best help he can get: his wife Mary comes to him after hearing her shout, clearing to her and everybody else that she's not dead! (Apparently that day she was crying, thinking to be all alone with no one hearing her, because she was rather emotional and found it difficult to be away from her beloved husband even for a while...)
Anyway, maybe the seance did contact a spirit, because she saw a message on the bathroom mirror and then the spirit of a girl apparently took over her body when Norman came home one day, finding her trying to seduce him like another girl did once. When Claire comes to her senses she finds she now remembers everything about her car accident: she couldn't before, but now she remembers storming out after seeing him with a girl, a student he was cheating on her with. That girl later on disappeared. Jody knew about the cheating husband, but didn't tell her because after the accident she was scared it might be too much for her fragile state.
Claire talks to Norman about it, and he admits he made a mistake, and also that the girl became obsessive and even came to his house where he found her, dead, and he panicked and put her body in a car and throw it in the lake. He calls the police to confess, but he was fooling nobody. I didn't believe it for an instant, and it took very little for Claire to doubt it too because she tried the redial and discovers he had not called the police after all!
He catches her before she can do anything, drugs her with something paralyzing and puts her into the bathtub, trying to stage her suicide. Norman sees in her the face of the girl he killed and scared falls and hits his head, giving Claire time to try and save herself: she manages to get out and into the car, but it turns out he got in it too. They fight and the car falls in the lake. Claire tries to get out when he grabs her, but the ghost of the girl comes again to her rescue against him, holding him down while she saves herself.
What I didn't like is that they seemed not sure if they wanted it supernatural or not. He saw the girl's necklace and then he saw her face instead of Claire's: was it a ghost or his guilty imagination?
He saw her ghost in the lake, but after his death we see her decomposed body floating in the water: was it really her ghost or was he imagining it when he was touched by the corpse?
Either way, supernatural or psychological, could have been ok in a thriller movie, I just wish they were more clear about it, one way or the other.



ITA le verità nascoste

Stonados - 2013

It's a b-movie, that's pretty obvious from the title. No sane person could ever watch a film called Stonados and expect award-winning material. That's what sort of saves it. It doesn't pretend to be what it's not. Anyway, it's obviously nothing "good", but sometimes b-movies can be what one wants, for a movie night with lots of friends for example.
The good thing about this one is that it starts directly with the tornado and it never slows down too much. A rather peculiar detail about Stonados in that there is no blood at all, not even a finger cut, no red whatsoever, and no gruesome deaths either. I mean, lots of people die her, sure, more than a thousand, but we only see people hit and people falling. A lot of falling.
I could almost hear the 'action' before people started throwing themselves everywhere.
The characters are not many, as it always happens in this kind of movies. There's our hero Joe (Paul Johansson) , a single dad, widow, and his two kids: Megan (Jessica McLeod) and her younger brother Jackson (Dylan Schmid). I liked the kids enough, and Joe was exactly what you could expect from this kind of movies. There were also his friend Lee (the local weather-man who invents the title)and Joe's sister, cop Mandy. Personally I could have done without them and their boring romance.
Lee only served for one scene: when a stupid woman instead of running away comes up to him accusing him of being a bad weather-man before being hit and smashed into a wall.
So, the story is: tornadoes come out of nowhere on the water, and throw frozen stones everywhere.
I liked a scene when Megan's friend Julie (Grace Wolf or Vukovic, not clear to me) and a boy she just met hide behind a little table, a plastic one maybe. She wants to run away, and he doesn't agree, he's scared and he feels safe behind that silly little object. She runs away alone and he's hit.
I was very sorry when later on Julie gets killed too :-( come on, why?!?
There's also the man at the lighthouse played by William B. Davis, the unforgettable smoking-man from X-files, only here he actually has a name, Ben, and of course he gets killed too. Only our heroes survive. At the end Joe puts a bomb in a car and lets it move along without him until the wind catches it and takes it up in the tornado. The plan is: the explosion will irradiate heat enough to warm the sky and put the ozone level back as it was, or something like that, and magically, in like a second, the sky is again blue and quiet.
Of course there were many 'mistakes', many things that didn't quite add up, but honestly who cares too much about that in a b-movie.
Why do some people fly away and others don't? The tornados seemed all as strong and as near as the first one that took away the poor, nice guide girl.
How come some stones explode and others don't? Who cares, the funniest mistake was that at the end, while the heroes seemed to be battling against the wind, the trees seemed painted, not a leaf moving :-p


ITA l'urlo della terra

Wanderlust - 2012

Not too bad, a few laughs but not many; stereotype characters but that's the usual thing in this kind of comedies; some annoying scenes and the inevitable happy ending. I watched it mainly because it has Jennifer Aniston in it, and it was nice but I was glad I saw it on tv and didn't pay for it.
It starts with a couple living in New York. George (Paul Rudd) loses his job and Linda (Aniston) fails to find one. She doesn't know what to do with her life and is constantly trying out new things, and the last one is a depressing documentary on penguins, a really terrible thing.
They can't afford their apartment anymore so they leave to go to George's brother Rick (Ken Marino) who promised to help. On their way there they stumble into a strange community: they see a naked man on the road and when he moves towards them they crash the car trying to escape too quickly. They are forced to stop and rest at the strange place that those people call Elysium. They meet many strange people there: the naked man, Wayne, wants to be a writer. Carvin (Alan Alda) the old owner of the place; Seth (Justin Theroux) the man everyone sort of looks up to as the leader they don't have, and other hippie men and women. It's a very strange and colorful place, very different from what they are used to, and they feel well there. After they all help with the car, George and Linda resume their journey: unfortunately Rick is an obnoxious, idiot jerk, so George can't stand him and he takes Linda back to Elysium. She doesn't want to stay there, she likes things like doors and privacy, but he insists so she gives him two weeks before deciding if they want to stay or not, but things turn out not the way George imagined. Seth is clearly trying to overpower him and he finds it hard to adjust to their way of life, while Linda seems to have found her place.
Some people want to build a casino on that land and only Linda's intervention in front of cameras slows the proceedings. She jumps in front of them undressing herself, and a topless girl sure gets coverage by the media. She's a hero at Elysium now, and she likes it, and she totally adjusts to their way of life. She's welcomed in the community more easily than George and day after day she thinks she has found herself and feels like one of them. When beautiful Eva asks George to have sex with her, he's troubled and Linda doesn't take well to it either,but after the two weeks she's sure she wants to stay, while he longs to go away. He tries to convince her reminding her of the 'open-love-philosophy' they share, but she wants to belong to the place so much she accepts it and tells him so, then she's vexed to learn that he did not sleep with Eva like she thought while she had slept with Seth. She tells him to do it and get even, and we get the most annoying, unpleasant scene of the movie, when George talks to himself in the mirror trying to prepare himself for the sexual encounter. I don't know what got into them: does anyone seriously find that scene funny? I hate it, just for that I would never buy this movie.
He tries to do it but he's so weird that Eva changes her mind.
Shortly after that he reaches his limit and can't stand the place a minute longer.
The pregnant girl who had her baby in front of him on the porch and now walks around with the ombelical cord still attached because she wants everything to happen naturally, and her man saying that they are planning to eat the placenta, is too much, and also Wayne with his boring book is too much. He tells them all that he thinks , getting it all out.
Linda still wants to stay so he goes away alone, and on foot because a man of the community left his car in the lake.
He goes back to his brother's house where he can witness his sister-in-law's outburst: she wants a divorce because she can't stand her husband and his affairs anymore. George comes back to his senses and realizes what he has done, leaving his wife in that place, and he goes back for her.
Linda stays in the community, but misses her husband.
Seth finds and sells to the casino-men the document that proves that Carvin owns the place, for the money to get a house for him and Linda in a nice place, since he wants to go away with her and doesn't care about the others. When George comes back Seth attacks him because he wants Linda for himself, and nobody tries to separate them because they are all against violence, until Linda sees them and rushes to help George. They make peace and Seth's treachery is revealed. George congratulates Wayne on the new version of his book, which is now brilliant after he accepted the criticism and corrected it somehow, and everyone now has a smile for George.
The movie ends with:
 the other owners of Elysium coming with their documents, so Elysium is untouchable now; Linda and George publishing Wayne's book who has a huge success, and finding their way.
Happy ending for everyone!
I didn't like the various nude scenes, and I've said this before so it's not depending on who's the naked person; I believe nude scenes to be useless in movies, put there only to attract attention and get talked about.
The hippie community was weird and full of stereotypes, and none of the characters were developed outside the characteristic that mattered to the comedy and was pertinent to the stereotype.
I found the scene when George is in the bathroom and people come to talk to him too long and excessive. The scene I like the most is in the credits at the end, one of the movie bloopers: when Linda and Seth are exercising in the woods and Theroux accidentally hits Aniston hurting her hand, or her arm, whatever. :-p
It was ok to watch the movie once, but I have no intention of ever watching it again, honestly.


ITA nudi e felici

Darkman - 1990

I had never seen this movie before and knew nothing about it. I wasn't expecting much and everything about it looked old (actually it looked even older than simply 1990) and a few special effects were now boring ( I mean his visions, not at all a correct term but I don't know how to describe it). And yet it wasn't bad. It had its own charm, and I liked the make-up! Darkman was something after all. The ending was good, which is always so very important. The last line is good "I'm everyone and no one, everywhere and nowhere. Call me... Darkman" before he disappears in the crowd. He's like Diabolik but on the good side :-p Sort of. He doesn't leave the bad guys to be arrested like Batman does, he kills them!
Now the story: Peyton Westlake (Liam Neeson) is a scientist working to create synthetic skin, and he's halfway there. The skin is perfect for 99 minutes then it starts decaying until it melts altogether. He finds out that it can last longer in the dark, but that's not good enough for him. Obviously.
He has a girlfriend, Julie (Frances McDormand) and as all career women back in the days she was totally focused on her career and thought to be untouchable. Silly girl, she finds a document proving a very rich and powerful man 'might be' corrupt, and she goes to him to give him the benefit of the doubt. Silly silly girl. This man Strack (Colin Friels) sends Robert Durant (Larry Drake) to retrieve it. Here is the part that left me confused. Did Peyton live in his lab? Why did he have the document with him while working? Anyway, they kill his assistant and blow up the lab. He was in really bad condition already before the explosion, so of course they believe him dead. After the funeral Julie starts going out with Strack, believing him kind and comforting. She had no suspicions whatsoever!
But Peyton didn't die, he was found and cured at a hospital. He can no more feel pain, and because of this he's much stronger than he was and also incapable of properly controlling his emotions.
He runs away from the hospital and goes to his old lab. His hands are ruined and he looks like the face of Death. Very little skin has survived on his face. He hopes to make his synthetic skin work, but in the meantime he works on his revenge. He kills Durant's men by wearing their own faces to trick them and eventually him too. The final showdown will be between him and Strack.
In his lab he recreates his old face to spend time with Julie, happy to find him alive but knowing nothing of his real condition. When he wins a prize for her at a carnival and the man there refuses to give it to him, he becomes furious and loses control; also his skin is deteriorating so eventually he apologizes to Julie and runs away, but she runs after him. She discovers his secret but doesn't run away from him. The emotion of having him back is too great to give him up easily, she loves him too.
She breaks up with Strack and tells him that Peyton is alive (!!) but soon after that she discovers that he's the bad guy responsible of everything when she sees that he has the incriminating document and she (unknowingly, of course, silly girl) leads his men to him. Peyton has created masks with their faces and he's able to confuse them and kill them. Strack took Julie, so Peyton wears Durant's face to meet him but is found out easily. They fight and when Strack is about to fall down and Peyton is holding him by one leg (or ankle, whatever) Strack is still arrogant and confident and tells him that he knows him and knows that he won't let him die. Peyton says "I'm learning to live with a lot of things" and lets him fall. Now Julie is safe, and she had a good look at what remains of Peyton's face, and she says "you'll perfect the skin, you'll make it work, it doesn't matter" because she wants to stay with him, but Peyton tells her that he once believed that himself but he simply has changed now, not only his appearance, and he's not the man he used to be, so he leaves her. Again she runs after him but this time he has put on a mask, a face she doesn't know, so when he hides in the crowd she can't find him.
Cool ending, I liked it.

You again - 2010

It wasn't bad, funny at moments and very excessive in others but all in all a nice watch. Marni (Kristen Bell) is now a beautiful woman who successfully works in public relations, but she can't forget what nightmare her high-school years were. She just got a big promotion and she's going back home because her beloved brother is getting married: everything's great until she learns that Joanna (Odette Annable) her future sister-in-law, is the same JJ that tormented her in high school, the bully that made her every day a nightmare. She can't say a word because all her family loves her, but she can't get it out of her head. Joanna seems not to have recognized her, but it'll soon be clear that she did.
 When finally Marni confronts her Joanna refuses to apologize, she only threatens her to keep her silent: 'who will they believe, me or you?' (more or less) so it's war between them.
Not just that, Marni has parents: dad Mark (Victor Garber) but most of all mom (Jamie Lee Curtis) who was popular and happy in high school,  but at the prom her friendship with her best friend ended and she never understood why (come on!! seriously?!?). Joanna doesn't have parents, they died years ago, her only family is her aunt Ramona (Sigourney Weaver) who.. surprise! is Gail's ex-best friend, and they appear to be very competitive.
Again, nobody else knows about it, the competition is rather subtle, or rather Gail appears to be the competitive one, actually, and Ramona appears to come out 'the winner' every time.
There's also Betty White playing the funny grandma, and Marni is jealous of her as she is of her dog, she feels like Joanna has taken her place.
I didn't like at all the Georgia-scenes (Kristin Chenoweth), they were excessive and I don't like that.
Will (James Wolk) is Marni's brother, and he's just the usual perfect guy found only in certain movies. He's cute and nice, such a good man and with a good job (he's a lawyer, which should contradict what I said above, but not in this movie). His friend Charlie is nice and cute, but with very little space because Marni's attention is all on Joanna, and romance will have to wait.
Tim (Kyle Bornheimer) is Joanna's ex-boyfriend who will give such an awkward speech at their party before the wedding that he made me forget Marni's plan. I don't like that kind of long, awkward speeches.
Marni had retrieved the 'time capsule' of her school, and now she shows that video at the party. Hell breaks loose. Everyone sees teenage Joanna speak and act like the bully she was and Will can't believe she lied to him like she did. At the final showdown, Marni has a fight with her while Gail has a conciliation with Ramona. It appears that Ramona was 'the good one' here. At school all the glory and attention were for Gail but they were best friends anyway, until Gail won once too much. She went to the prom with the boy that Ramona liked, and I agree with her: IF Gail knew that she liked him, the answer 'he asked me' is not good. She should have said no, she didn't care for him and she betrayed her friend. Anyway, they make peace.
Marni will only make peace with Joanna that night, when she'll find her in her kitchen wearing her wedding dress and eating out of desperation. I'm not decided if I find the whole scene 'Joanna don't do it, put down that cheese' is funny or stupid, probably both :-p but Joanna saying there's no more reason for her to be pretty since she'll never get married is both understandable (she's desperate because she's lost the man she really loves) and sad (a girl should be pretty to her own eyes for herself, not for men). Of course it'll all go well. They make peace and Joanna truly apologizes for what she was in high school, and Marni talks to his brother so he goes back to Joanna.
Unfortunately there's a little accident when they fall down from the house on the tree and they end up in a hospital with an arm (Joanna) and a leg (Will) broken. They should postpone the wedding, and they really should have, instead they get married anyway in the hospital (organizing everything in a few hours! did they find a magic wand or what?!?)
I didn't like the wedding nor I liked the ball afterwards. I understand that the important is for them to be together, not the fancy party, blah blah blah, but it's also true that there was no rush, it's not like they had a deadline or 'if we miss this Sunday we'll have to wait a year' kind of thing, no, why the rush?
I also didn't like the scene in Ramona's hotel, when Gail appears (to make peace or something??) but in the bathroom she makes a mess. She almost loses one of Ramona's precious earrings and ends up tearing her dress apart, and I didn't like their showing up at the party with the same dress (coincidence or not? how could Ramona know what dress had Gail chosen?) Also it was not the right dress for Gail.
I liked that Marni never backed down, because things like that when you're a teenager deeply hurt and can't be forgotten easily.
A scene I despised was when Gail makes Ramona meet Richie, they boy who took her to the prom. Point one: she just learned about that and to make amends she rushed to call him? Point two:they were in high school and now they are adults, many years went by and things/people change, what was she thinking of accomplishing? It's an embarrassing scene. Should I believe that she's twice divorced because she didn't go to the prom with Richie and now they'll be happy together? That's stupid. Possible, yes, everything's possible, but to assume it will be necessarily so is stupid.
I must admit I liked this Odette Annable, I didn't know her at all but she was alright. Not only she looked stunningly beautiful (not an uncommon thing for a young actress) but she played well both the bully and the saint (truth is in the middle, as it so often is).
A scene I loved, my favourite scene actually, is the one on the plane, when Marni has just learned Joanna's identity and goes crazy so security has to restrain her and the security man is played by Dwayne Johnson who is very funny, and they sit together (because he has to keep her under control) so he listens with interest to all her story :lol: That was definitely my favourite scene, I loved it :lol: :p

ITA ancora tu

Mr Beaver - 2011

A strange movie, that's for sure. I liked some aspects of it but was not convinced by others. Still, not as bad as I feared.
It's a story of a very troubled man, Walter (Mel Gibson). He had a business company, a loving wife, two sons, but in the last years he suffered from some sort of deep depression that made him lose everything. Meredith (Jodie Foster) left him despite loving him very much, not able to cope with the situation any more and not wanting her sons to witness it.
Left alone, he tries to kill himself. Honestly, when he tried to hang himself in the bathroom it should have been a dramatic scene I suppose but it just looked silly; how could he think that thing could bear his weight? On the other hand, maybe something inside him didn't really want to die, so: moving on. He had previously seen a stuffed beaver puppet in a garbage bin and he had picked it up (I really hope he washed it at least, yeuch). Now that beaver starts 'talking' to him, getting the suicide-idea out of his head, telling him he'll help him, that everybody needs a friend. At least I'm glad there was no pretence that the beaver actually spoke, Gibson speaks clearly with no attempt at hiding it, using only some kind of southern accent when impersonating the beaver. It's like a mask, in a way. It's like, not being able to cope with the world on your own, so deciding to hide behind someone or something else. With the beaver to speak for him, he manages to live again. From now on, every scene with Gibson, sorry, with Walter features his left hand inside the beaver puppet (thinking about it, wasn't the right hand when he was in bed with Meredith?)
Each and every scene: at home, at work, on television, at the police station, wherever he goes, the beaver speaks for him. I must give it to them, Foster and Gibson did a good job, because after what I told you I'll add that I did not go 'come on, that's stupid' every five seconds.
I have no idea if this plausible or realistic, but this (I'll call it transfert, but I'm not a psychologist) seems anyway possible to me, because Walter's head clearly needed to escape, to run away from himself. That's what I think this is about. His brain struggled for a way to survive his suffocating emotions, but it wasn't a single episode it could try to forget, it was his own life, his being.
The beaver said clearly that the past was gone, that the man he was was gone.
Anyway, through the beaver (called Mr Beaver of course) and referring to himself as Walter, in the third person, he manages to get back into 'normal' life. Back to his wife, and to his work.
The youngest son is but a child, so he obviously has no problem with it. His wife doubts his sanity at first, but he tells her it's a new form of therapy, so she tries to be patient and supportive, and it cannot have been easy, the beaver was there 24/7, even in bed, even while making love.
At work, hard to believe as it might be, they all gave him (well, him and the beaver) a chance. Maybe because they had nothing to lose, they were facing failure, who knows.
He got an idea from his son. The child was happy when they made wood things together, and he liked when his dad talked to him (maybe because of the beaver's funny accent or maybe because he simply liked to spend time with his father, that's the thing children need the most) so his company's new toy will be: tools and a beaver. He even gives tv interviews with the puppet.
Sidestory: his son Porter (Anton Yelchin) is a teenager and his specialty is writing papers for others, mimicking their own style. Norah (Jennifer Lawrence) asks for his help. She's successful at school, class valedictorian, but she's not satisfied with her attempts to write her final speech. This story is nice because they're both troubled: she lost her beloved brother and has not been able to deal with his death, while he hides himself behind other people's styles instead of finding his own. Yet their story lacked something, didn't really get to me like it should have. It had no soul, only an attempt at it.
Back to Walter, the next phase is quite intense: he can't face anything without the beaver. At their anniversary dinner, Meredith refuses to sit in a fancy restaurant talking to a beaver puppet, and demands to speak to him. It was great acting. She tried her best to bring her husband back to her, while Walter was evidently in pain, he didn't know what to say or what to do, it was too much for him, and when she showed him old pictures, the beaver took over to protect him, yelling at her, saying that Walter will never again be what he once was, asking her if she wanted him dead, making a scene until Walter ran out of the restaurant leaving her there. You know, like : 'you made him commit suicide but I saved his file' kind of thing.
Meredith takes her two sons and leaves him again. He loves his family, doesn't want to lose them, but the beaver has control over him now. We see how serious it is when he says to a woman at work (his secretary? his 'number one' in the company? don't know) that the beaver is actually alive, and her expression is priceless, and also our own: fear he has lost it.
The beaver won't even let him talk to Meredith, and they even have a big physical fight! The beaver says he'll never leave Walter because it loves him more than anyone else and maybe that made Walter realize that he loved his family more than he needed/wanted the beaver. Anyway, he wanted to get rid of it, so he took extreme measures, exactly the one I thought. Not able to bring himself to take his arm out of the puppet, he built a little wooden coffin then cut off his own arm to kill the beaver. Porter found him and called for help (we didn't see anything bloody, appreciate that, it had nothing to do with the movie). Now he's free of the beaver and he allows the doctor to help him.
Norah gives a speech about how 'everything will be fine' is nothing but a lie, and about how she and many others feel, saying we don't have to bear it alone. The very last scene shows images of how things will be: better. Porter with Norah and Walter back to his family.
One thing I'm not sure about: all the beaver-tools that we seen in the garbage or much discounted mean that his idea didn't sell?

There was a lot of talk when this movie came out, because Gibson was in some kind of trouble, I don't know what it was with him, but he said out loud things he shouldn't have and it seemed like Jodie Foster was giving him the chance to make peace with the public. Personally I was never a big fan or a big antagonist, plus I watched the movie five years later so I was not biased by any personal feeling in advance.

Lightning strikes - 2009

A tv-movie and a b-movie, let's start with that. It's not a great movie, that's obvious, but it's not all that bad. It's actually very average. No burst of enthusiasm but no disgust either. It's not funny but it's not too boring. The story has that little detail that keeps you awake. The characters are all stereotype: the mayor who wants his 'pumpkin festival' to be a success and won't allow the sheriff to do his job and evacuate the city before it's too late is such a clichè in disaster movies. There's everything you expect. It starts with a nice mother&son moment then the lightnings start, it seem they might get away from it but these are not common lightnings, these ones are stubborn and keep trying to hit them, until one cuts their car in half, but both appear safe (it was a precise half, between the two seats). They try to escape but there's a creature in the lightning and it won't give up. It strikes them both and they both see it, but it kills only the kid, the mother is left alive. The sheriff (Kevin Sorbo) comes to investigate and finds her. What happened is a mystery to him, but not to the newcomer in town: Donovan (David Schofield) comes to town chasing the monster in the lightning because some time before it had killed his son and now he wants vengeance. More newcomers chasing the lightning: a professor and his assistants Angel and Jerry, chasing the lightning to find a scientific explanation. The sheriff has a son but not a wife, she died a year before and he has to raise a teenage boy alone. I'm very glad they didn't put any romance in it, as it's often the case although totally out of place. Nancy (Annabel Wright) is a single mom who has just lost her son, it would have been totally inappropriate but this doesn't seem to stop so many moviemakers.
There's a lot of talking in the middle but not too much: trying to put some sense into the mayor's head, trying to keep his son Billy out of trouble, explaining to the sheriff what that thing is... which is not much because basically Donovan saw what we saw so he doesn't have big explanations to give.
He only says that there's a monster there and he wants to be hit by the lightning to go to its place and kill it. Simple!
We don't know what it was at all. Is the monster IN the lightning or maybe he IS the lightning? Why does it come here to kill? Why sometimes it kills instantly and sometimes it doesn't? Why is it that sometimes it hits nothing at all (a road, a roof..) it it can aim?
But never mind, this is light entertainment, nothing to be taken seriously, only a way to spend 90 minutes, possibly with friends like any b-movie should be watched. The comments are the fun-part
:-p So, we are finally towards the end. Billy and Jerry want to help Donovan build his big thing that will draw the lightning on him. The sheriff tries to evacuate the place anyway but it's too late, so he goes with Nancy to find Billy. The lightning strikes, again and again, killing and destroying, but mostly killing, until Donovan succeeds and we see him fighting the monster. We don't see him winning (at least I didn't) but when it all stops maybe we can assume that he won? What happened to him? Nobody knows.
The funniest part (company will make it fun) is betting on 'when will the mayor die?' :-p
The best scene is when Donovan explains to Nancy his plan, his story. She could-not/would-not explain what she saw, but he helps her telling what he saw, and she's totally for him and his plan to kill the monster. The actress played it right, I liked that look of comprehension and vengeance on her face.
The worst scene was when the lightning strikes Billy. First time Nancy protects him and it's fine; second time it strikes him directly but he doesn't die like all the others. Donovan tells the sheriff to help him if he wants to save Billy so he does and Donovan goes to fight the monster. In that time before Donovan's arrival, why didn't Billy die? Everyone else did, if taken separately.
Nancy survived because, like Donovan, she had been taken with her son and the lightning only takes one. Billy should have died but he survives to give the emotional scene 'please don't die' to the sheriff, but I didn't like it at all.
The very ending was nice and quiet. No more lightning, all the survivors gather in the open, and the sheriff properly introduces himself to Nancy, which I liked :-) Nice scene :-)
There was no time before but now it's such a normal thing to do it's pleasant and gives a sensation of peace that's quite nice.
p.s. many die, including the professor, Jerry, Doc, the mayor..

Fight club - 1999

I watched this movie for the second time, and I understood it better but am still unsure about the ending. It's a cool movie, and it has a strange charm. It's very well done. Not my usual kind of film, plotwise, but it was very well done and I enjoyed it. It's narrated by the protagonist, and this is the clever detail that, first time I watched it, made me overlook the fact that we didn't know the name of the leading character! It's a story of mental disorder, solitude, isolation, social values, consumerism, rebellion, 'growing-up', etc etc. There's more to it than just men fighting. It's a liiiittle bit a case like 91/2weeks, which had characters and a story but all people remember (and saw) is Kim Basinger's striptease, and people who haven't seen it are now convinced it was an adult movie. I mean, it was for adults, but not in that way. It was a drama, not a porn. Fight Club too has many sides to it (many more actually) and many people only remember the first rule making it look like, to those who haven't watched it, nothing more than a soul-less macho movie. There's a lot to say about it. Edward Norton plays (greatly) the narrator-with-no-name  (so I'll refer to him as EN). He has a job he doesn't like, in an office he doesn't like, with people he doesn't care for. He seems to be alone in the world, and he surely lives alone adn tries to 'fill the void' by filling his house with Ikea stuff to give an appearance of the perfect place where satisfied dynamic people live their happy lives. He has insonnia and never sleeps, and of course without sleep everything is not only more difficult but also plainer and tasteless. He asks a doctor for help, something to help him sleep, but this unsympathetic doctor doesn't take him seriously, doesn't believe he really has a problem. Maybe he thinks that EN is one of those people that takes pills for everything, he surely doesn't believe he has a real problem and simply suggests exercising more. He doesn't believe he's in pain and tells him to go see the testicular cancer victims reunited at a support group meeting to see what real suffering is.
This is the first thing that calls for anger, in a way, because he doesn't even try to understand. Two days without sleep and I'm a zombie; EN never sleeps. That's a kind of torture, definitely not good for the body and even less for the mind.
EN goes to the meeting and at first you think he's criticizing or mocking the people there, then you realize he's not, he's enjoying the 'support' part of the meeting, and when this man Bob (Meat Loaf) hugs him and tells him to cry and get it all out, because he believes him to have cancer too, EN finds himself crying in his warm embrace. Obviously that night he is finally able to sleep: a good cry does this for you. He becomes addicted to it because it's the only thing that works for him. Every night he has a different meeting, a different nametag; he never actually says to be ill, I think, it's just that since he attends the meeting and keeps quiet, people assume he has a sad story inside. Every night the meeting helps him, until he notices Marla Singer (Helena Bonham Carter). He has seen her many times so he knows she's not ill, and this disturbs him. It ruins it for him, because she's like him and in a way she has no place there as he hasn't. He confronts her and his speech is quite something because every word applies to him too, he's also a fake, and she says so: 'you expose me and I'll expose you'
It's not clear why she goes to the meetings, but she's also troubled: the way she walked across that road was something, not caring at all about all the cars that could hit her, she showed a sad indifference. They talk and make a deal to attend different meetings and exchange numbers. Unfortunately the whole blessed thing has been spoiled for him and his insonnia claims him back.
He has to travel a lot for work, and all that traveling is depressing, until he meets Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) who makes and sell soap and is so very different from him.
EN is , or was, uptight, a slave of convention and society and consumerism, but Tyler is free, he doesn't care, he says what he wants to say and how he wants to say it.
When EN finally gets home, he finds his apartment has been destroyed by an explosion and he has lost everything. For a moment he thought of calling Marla, but then he called Tyler; they went for a beer together, and Tyler made his first speech about how society has made us slave of useless, insignificant things. It was a very true, meaningful speech, it's a shame that Pitt's now so so famous I couldn't avoid thinking of his huge collection of motorbikes, fact that kind of ruined the whole thing.
Anyway, Tyler can't believe that after three beers En still can't ask for his help, meaning a place to stay, and so he makes him ask. It seems like the two of them are already friends. Tyler has the attitude of a man who is always comfortable, anywhere, who doesn't care about things or rules, someone who does whatever crosses his mind. Tyler asks him to hit him, and after he insists for a while they do indeed fight, and afterwards they feel better and share a beer. From now on his whole life changes. What happens is: they are always together and they often fight for fun, until they are seen and other men ask to join in, then they find a place where they can meet and fight without being seen. They create the Fight Club, and it slowly attracts more and more men. Tyler sets the rules and becomes a sort of God/leader.
One night Marla calls saying she took too many pills in an attempt of suicide, EN seems not to care but Tyler goes to her and in the morning she's in their home. EN is annoyed, he's all 'what are you doing here? this is my house, go away' and first time I watched it her reaction didn't make much sense, but I guess one accepted it on the account that she was weird. He said 'what are you doing here?' and she was surprised/angry when she replied 'what?!?'  and the first time I saw it I thought his question was kind of legitimate but when you realize the truth you understand her.
I admit that the first time I watched it I was totally surprised at the switch, and had not even noticed that he appeared to sleep regularly now.
EN seems jealous of Tyler now, and also unable to control him. EN has changed and can't cope with his office job anymore. He's more and more sloppy and uncaring, day after day, until he talks to his boss blackmailing him with what he knows of their job in order to get his money without having to go to work. If anyone had any doubt that EN was out of his mind, here is the proof: when his boss calls security, EN starts hitting himself hard (and the narrator voice says that 'somehow' that reminded him of his first fight with Tyler: very true, since it was exactly the same thing); when the security men arrive, he's on his knees, his face a mess, all bloody, saying 'don't hit me anymore' so he gets what he wanted!  Tyler starts recruiting people, and these men are completely devoted to him, following their leader whatever he asks of them, obeying every rules and completing every task he gives them.
EN seems often surprised, in the morning, seeing what kind of enterprise he put together. They do a lot of work in the house, and also various acts of sabotage as planned by Tyler. During one of these actions the men are caught by the police and Bob, slower than the others, is shot and killed. EN takes it very badly. . After that he's scared of that whole thing and wants to stop it but can't. He tries to find out what Tyler is up to and when he can't find him he travels around to every place Tyler has been, and finds out that there are fight clubs in all those places, and also that people know him. When he confronts a man about it, we are told as well as he is that he is Tyler Durden. that he created the clubs.  A call to Marla right before Tyler magically appears in his hotel room reveals to him the unbelievable truth that he himself is Tyler, and the one played by Pitt is but a projection of his mind. He's the one who's been sleeping with Marla and planning sabotages. When EN thought he was sleeping, 'Tyler' would take over! Afraid that she might be an obstacle to their plans he sends Marla away then goes to the police, but the men there are part of the organization too and follow his rules to the letter so he has to escape!! He tries to disarm the bombs but 'Tyler fights him' to stop him, and finds himself in a room, at a higher floor, with Tyler pointing a gun at him until he realizes that since they are the same person he's actually the one holding the gun, so to get rid of Tyler he puts the gun in his mouth and shoots, and we see a hole in Tyler's head when he 'dies', but EN is not dead, he only has a hole through the (left I think) cheek but he's alive, and when a bunch of members bring Marla in, he apologizes to her saying she met him in a strange-messy period (unfortunately I don't remember the words) then they hold hands and watch all the buildings around them collapse one after the other, and the movie ends.
Not clear to me where he is: will his building collapse too? Probably not, since there's a lot of members there and they know he's there too, so this means that 'Tyler' transported him to another building, not just to a upper floor, because the building he had tried to enter was one of those set to explode, right?
There were scenes where EN took actively the role of narrator and the actor turned to the camera to explain what was going on, like in the restaurant to tell us how these men do things like peeing in the soup and more.
I like the movie mostly because it is very well done: well written, well directed, well played. Everything works.
There were disgusting scenes like EN and Tyler going to retrieve human fat, wastes of liposuction operations, to make the soap. Disgusting, I had to close my eyes.
Amazing the revelation that it was all EN, all along, everything was him: he created the clubs, founded the Project Mayhem, planned the whole thing. The only detail that leaves me sort of confused is the real birth of the club itself. At first it was believed that people saw these two friends having fun fighting each other and asked to join in, but now it's clear that he was fighting himself, he was alone there, so these men asked to join in after seeing him punching himself hardly on the face?? They didn't think: this one's nuts, better stay away, no, they felt attracted to him! Well, anyway, the best detail of the 'revelation' is that he regarded himself, and showed it to us, as a kind of 'loser' when compared to Tyler, and then it turns out that he had the girl, he had the devotion, the ideas, the 'control', although he didn't know that.
'Tyler' had destroyed his apartment, meaning that he had destroyed his own, to force himself to change his life.
There's a lot of anarchic speeches, against this age that wants us as mindless-careless consumers, only interested in consuming and accumulating, but there's a lot of good speeches and messages in movies, and yet the world keeps going on the same way, where people try to save money on many things like food but then there's a big queue when a new i-phone comes out. Things they often don't need, but they want it simply to have it, to show that they have it, because there's always a lot of talk about being rebels or different or transgressive but in the end they try to be the same as everyone else, buying/wearing the expensive things that will make them cool and so conforming to the rest. Sometimes it seems to me the only way to be transgressive nowadays is not having a tattoo, or stuff like that...