The mysteries of Laura - season 2

1-The mystery of the taken boy

Captain Nancy Santiani (Callie Thorne) is the new boss. Frankie has been transferred back to CDIU or whatever that is, and five months have passed since Jake was shot. When Jake comes back he partners with Laura and Billy with Meredith. Laura fights a lot with Santiani, keeps calling her Santini, and wants Jake to use a secret they have on her to get his job back, but instead he says he never asked to be captain and he wants to keep working there as detective.

A man dies trying to save a kid from being kidnapped but he’s taken anyway. 

2-The mystery of the cure for loneliness

Jake acts all cool now about Laura and Tony, saying that she deserves to be happy, and also takes some medicines secretly.

A girl is found dead. Jake calls it a suicide, but Laura is strongly against it. Of course she’s right. This girl was so lonely that she started faking cancer to meet supportive people, and with another girl (who really has cancer) they started to collect money for sick kids. She wasn’t a bad person, she had no greed motivation here, she only wanted human company, but a guy was slowly robbing their charity account, sure that they’d die soon, but then he found out her secret: at first he helped her faking it better to raise more money, and then he killed her when she wanted to back out. 

3-The mystery of the locked box

Laura gets Jake to open up a little and he tells her that he has a ‘minor heart condition’ which is important but doesn’t explain why he forgets things. She’s worried but he asks her to keep it a secret because he’s afraid of losing his active job.

A very rich tech genius is killed with a drone with sharp blades. 

4-The mystery of the convict mentor

Laura’s old boss calls her and gives her a tip on where to find two bodies connected to an old case. Jake gets mad because he says they both let her down and yet she still can’t forgive Jake no matter how hard he tries to do well. Next day Dan Hauser escapes from prison with the man they think killed those two, and Laura thinks he did it to help her close their old case. 

Santiani puts her on desk duty because of all her lies, and honestly I don’t like the disrespectful way that Laura has been treating Santiani: she IS their captain! 

A female guard helped Hauser escape (why don’t they keep male guards for men prisons and female guards for women prisons? They separate the prisoners for a reason, they should separate the guards too, as far as possible, right?)

Hauser leaves Laura clues to follow, so she arrests again the Irish guy and retrieves the millions he hid. At the end, Hauser tells Laura he didn’t do it to get a deal, but because he regrets hurting and losing her. They hug before he goes back to jail, then Laura tells Jake that he was right, “you are there for me everyday, and I appreciate it, you” but fact is, she’s still working on forgiving him because it still hurts. Yep , that’s the problem, it’d be easy to say I forgive you, but how stop it from hurting??

Laura tells Meredith “I liked you both better before you were a couple”, but they still deny it. She gets pissed when he tries to protect her “remember this, I stand beside you, not behind you” :-D

5-The mystery of the watery grave

Isabel Van Doren appears to be dead when they find her car in the water after she called 911. Van Doren’s first wife Claire also died, apparently she drowned, but her brother tells them that her husband killed her, that he was abusive and beat her, and that he thinks he killed Isabel too.

Laura finds out Isabel is alive, she staged her death because terribly afraid of her husband. Van Doren complains to Santiani about Laura, but Santiani tells her “take him down”

Isabel is too afraid to testify because Van Doren is friends with the mayor and the chief commissioner, so Laura wants to prove he murdered his first wife. She finds Claire’s bones in Van Doren’s mother’s grave, so they arrest him :-)

Laura asks Santiani why she backed her up: “my ex hit me once and then I got the hell out” which proves how people care more when they are personally involved. 

Jake asks Laura for a second chance, a date, even if she can’t forgive him, and I liked the fact that the episode ended with the song “I’ll be needing stitches” in a female voice, kind of appropriate.

6-The mystery of the dead heat

Laura agrees to a date with Jake only if he sees another doctor to have a second opinion, and at the end of the episode Billy’s mom came to the precinct to see Meredith, and Laura sort of helped Santiani :-)

The ep’s victim is Matthew Burke, a good man who took good care of his wife diagnosed with MS. He was collateral damage; two people wanted his wife’s blueprints to break in the department evidence vault. Laura and Jake go there, she injures the man and he gets the woman. 

7-The mystery of the maternal instinct

At the beginning it appears that a woman (who does massages and promises Laura a 50%off) witnessed a crime: the body of a pregnant woman being dumped on the street. She was dead already but the baby wasn’t. They stumble on an organization smuggling uncut jewels using women from Nigeria; the victim was one of them but since she was pregnant she has started looking for a way out. She wanted to give the stones to a secret organization that provided care for pregnant women, but the ‘witness’ dumped the girl when she didn’t find the doctor. 

Jake shows Laura a note from the doctor so she agrees to a date.

8-The mystery of the ghost in the machine

A guy was driving a red Ferrari, with multiple gunshot wounds. Laura thinks he was a car thief until Billy finds out that he was an undercover cop, working for the same lieutenant Billy worked with. They find the shooter, but they keep looking for whoever leaked his picture and real identity, making him a target. Someone hacks the police system and Santiani orders to get off the internet right away. At that moment we see a letter from Jake’s doctor saying that they “detected a frontal lobe anomaly” and need to do more tests. Jake is worried that Santiani might learn that he hid his condition. Only the second precinct is targeted, because they’re the ones investigating the case. 

The victim’s sister had been bullied on the internet and he put a stop to it. Carl the bully took revenge, some kind of stupid pathetic kid, like all bullies. :-/ At the end Laura tells Santiani that she knows her secret (we know, from her first episode) and that she’ll never tell anyone because they’re a family, so she won’t take any action to separate Billy and Meredith.

9-The mystery of the triple threat

Tony tells Laura that he got a job offer, executive chef, his dream job, but it’s in Vegas, so he asks her if they have a future because he wants her more so if she tells him they have a future together he’ll stay…

Laura answers Jake’s phone when his doc calls and learns that Jake’s condition is more serious than he told her. She’s angry, tells him that she can’t trust him and never will, and goes home to Tony.

A secret online treasure hunt is going on, and one of the hunters is found killed, or so they think at first. Peter was in a three-way marriage, but that was not the reason either. Jealousy, sort of. 

10-The mystery of the downward spiral

I liked this two-part ep because I liked Jonathan.

Michael Dunham, perfume maker, is killed. His son Jonathan (Jerry O’Connell) is the primary suspect. They find a group of people angry at him because they want to protect animals, and also a man called ‘the nose’ who got attacked by someone who broke his nose. Laura fells bad for Johnny who lost his dad, found out he was not appointed new head of the firm, and now learns that his fiancée slept with his father (well, he knew, but now everybody knows he knows, so it’s out there). They find evidence against John, but when they go catch him the lab explodes, so they think he did it and ended it this way, dying. 

Next morning Laura finds John in her bedroom with a gun.

Santiani tells Laura that she’s very strong, spending so many hours together with her ex, “but just because you can doesn’t mean that you should” and tells her that if she wants a change of partner she’ll make it happen..

Laura tells Meredith that she told the twins about Tony being her boyfriend; Meredith tells Billy and Billy tells Jake. 

11-The mystery of the unwelcome houseguest

John made a bomb and brought it with him. He went to her house and she found him hidden in her room. He asks her “why did you frame me?” and he wants to record her confession. At the precinct, they knew that she was going to have a crazy week because of the boys taekwondo tournament, and Alicia texts Jake that Laura’s sick. John keeps telling her that he didn’t kill his father and that she ruined his life. Meredith thinks John might be alive, so they start thinking about where he could be. They start suspecting Brenda the lawyer, but alas she didn’t kill anyone. When Laura doesn’t answer even Max calls, Jake knows she’s in trouble, so he goes there with Billy and help her. Laura puts the bomb in the washing machine..

The assistant found out that years ago a drunk John hit her family’s car killing her parents and that his father covered it up paying off the cops, so she killed him. After such a day Laura realizes she didn’t think of Tony the whole day “makes you realize what’s important”, obviously thinking of Jake, again. Poor Tony :-/ 

12-The mystery of the morning jog

Billy’s rent went up, a lot. He wants to move in with Meredith and at the end she agrees to it.

Jake has two tickets for a game and everybody at the precincts wants them, but he gives them to Tony :-) nice :-)

Laura’s dad watches Blindspot on tv and keeps telling her he knows, he can see she still loves Jake. At the end she breaks up with Tony, tells him to go to Vegas, and that she’s still in love with Jake (with a nod, not in so many words, but still). 

A guy is kicked in front of a bus and killed. He was a doctor and he got offered a job from FIFA that would mean relocating to Europe with his family. They find Aidan’s stepson’s biological father Kurt at a “Mens renaissance meeting” where ‘men’ rant against women :-/ Later Kurt kills his pal George’s wife because George told him that he had killed Aidan for him, but he didn’t. Ellen, the child’s grandmother, killed Aidan so that he wouldn’t take her grandson away to Europe. (But if she was alone, surely she could have gone to Europe with them right? She was already living with them wasn’t she?!?!)

13-The mystery of the dark heart

Valentine’s day. The murder of a man reminds them of an old serial killer. It’s the same MO, so they think of a copycat- he killed the man right away, took away the woman and if they don’t catch him in time she’ll be dead by midnight. Jake has Hauser brought in to help. “serial murderabilia .com” posted pictures and lots of stuff on serial killers. As Meredith said twice, people suck. A man obsessed with the valentine killer thinks they caught the wrong guy back then. Laura says the valentine killer Glenn Baker had a partner, who now is killing again 22 years later. Glenn killed the men, the other only cared about the women. They catch him and save the girl (who had a very beautiful wedding dress on, very pretty!!) Hauser goes back to jail. 

Meredith always said she doesn’t like Valentine’s Day, but after a whole day seeing people getting flowers or exchanging gifts, she has a change of heart. When she confronts him, he shows her the romantic date he had planned, right there in the precinct.

Jake reaches to his friend DA for help on the case. Laura considers going out with Jake but doesn’t tell him because she finds him with Jennifer, his friend at the DA’s office, and they already planned to have dinner together.

14-The mystery of the political operation

A cuban politician’s life is in danger. His wife and her lover tried to kill him during heart surgery, after killing his guard before, and she stops them, but they have diplomatic immunity. Still, they’ll be sent back to Cuba and tried there… 

Jennifer is ok, nice and smart, so Laura invites her to celebrate with them at their bar, and tells Jake “I think you’re perfect for each other”

15-The mystery of the unknown caller

A man calls Laura before being shot to death. He was her sister’s boyfriend. Lucy’s actually her half-sister, from her cheating father. Laura tracks her down; Lucy didn’t even know that Ian was dead. Ian was involved in counterfeited meds. Santiani puts Laura on desk duty, while Jake goes out with Harris from another precinct to work the case. Lucy hid 50.000$ in her dad’s house, and Laura tells her she’ll go to jail but Lucy walks free because Laura handcuffed her without reading her her rights. For once Laura admits to Santiani that she messed up. They have Lucy help them contact Jimmy Chang the dealer/murderer. Laura goes to meet him as his big buyer. Santiani tells her she’ll track her, like she does her son “in parenting as in police work, you hope for the best but you plan for the worst” and uses a FindYourFriend app… “I guess this makes us friends” - “I guess it does”. When they arrest Jimmy, he threatens Laura’s life. Laura tells Santiani “thanks for finding me… friend”. Lucy asks Laura if she can come live with her and the boys :-) During a press conference, when there’s a gunshot that took down “a female officer”, Jake rushes there to find Laura alive but Santiani dead

16-The mystery of the end of watch

Laura notifies Santiani’s son Justin. The tragedy makes Jake and Jennifer get serious faster. When they tell Laura she may have been the target, of course she thinks of Jimmy. He escaped prison and they find him with his newborn child, but he says someone else put a hit on the captain, not on Laura. When they go to the wake, they find Justin has disappeared. (Santiani mother is played by Mercedes Ruehl, aka Lucia Barba, and Justin’s father is played by Scott Cohen, aka Max Medina).

In the morning Laura finds Lucy and her well-behaved  boys and thanks her for her help. Jake buys a ring for Jen. 

When they find Justin he tells them his dad didn’t kidnap him, he was trying to save him. He was into something dangerous, owed a lot of money to bad people, so they killed his wife so he’d be the beneficiary of her insurance money. They catch the guys with his help.

Max tried very hard all the time to keep it together to help. Billy tells Laura that Jake bought a ring and plans to propose to Jen. At home she cries, and Lucy hugs her: “you said it yourself, you pushed him away” - “I make a mistake” - “then fix it” - “how?” - “stop him”

and Laura drives to the place where Jake is having dinner with Jen, and she tells him that she still loves him “now you tell me??”, and “your timing sucks”. They kiss, and then Jen comes to see what is going on and Laura can see she already has the ring on her finger, so I guess he didn’t wait till dessert to propose, which is nice actually, but bad news for Laura.

I think this is the end, they didn’t make a third series, but it doesn’t matter, it’s not a big loss and anyway who cares about Laura and Jake getting together, it was always obvious from ep one.

The blind side - 2009

I like it very much. A beautiful story, well done everyone, a really good movie. I happens from time to time. And Sandra Bullock was amazing. Plus they say it’s a true story, and the credits at the end show pictures of the real people that inspired this story, and if it’s really real then it’s even more beautiful. My heart to the real protagonists of this story, all of them, the whole family for the love they gave him and to him for accepting it and repaying it. 
I wonder if that could happen now.. if the internet shows anything is that somehow the world got a lot nastier since the orange one came on the stage... anyway, the movie:

It starts with a man, Tony, asking a high school coach to admit his son Steven and his friend Big Mike, who’s currently living in their house and sleeping on a couch. Steven’s grades are enough to admit him, but for Mike the coach has to fight and remind them that it’s a christian school and this is the right thing to do… surprisingly that’s enough and he gets a shot in the school. At his first day there is an assessment test for everybody, and he leaves it blank… not a good start, but one teacher who doesn’t give up on him finds out that with a bit of encouragement, asking the questions orally, he knows some of the stuff, he does pay attention in class, even if he’s really behind. 

Tony’s wife is tired of having Big Mike (Quinton Aaron) in their home, so he goes away. We see sometimes bits of his past, few images but enough to understand that he was taken away from his family by social services (yet, where are they now?). Mike has no place to live so he plans to sleep in the school gym because it’s warmer there. Leigh Anne (Sandra Bullock) sees him one night, alone under the rain; she stops to ask him where he’s going, and why, and if he has a place to stay, and I love how she says to him that he must not lie to her, when he’s about to nod. When she raised her voice telling him not to lie she looked like a mother to her child :-)

She brings him home for the night, sure that it was the right thing to do, only a little bit worried that he might steal from them, because after all she doesn’t know him yet, but he doesn’t. Next morning, he put everything in order and went out. She runs after him and asks him if he has plans for Thanksgiving… so he comes back to spend it with them :-) He never speaks but he’s very polite :-) Before buying new clothes for him she drives him to his mother’s house but she was evicted, so Leigh Anne buys him something new - his father who left home many years before has died very recently, and his mother was a drug addict so he was taken away. 

Leigh Anne’s friends are very snob and don’t understand what she’s doing, still their words make her go home and have a talk with her teenage daughter Collins (Lily Collins); she asks her if it’s a problem for her, because if it was she could find a way to help him having him staying somewhere else, but Collins doesn’t mind him at all, it’s just that her friends don’t understand either, but she also doesn’t care, and shows it clearly when she sits with him at the school library. It was a lovely scene when she said something like ‘what? we always study together at home’ :-) because it was so normal, that’s what was so special about it, about how the family acted, not as if they were doing some big gesture but as if it was the normal thing to do. Very nice. That’s the right way.

The only thing that Michael asked for was to get a driver license - yes, I think it was the only thing, because after all he never asked to be called Michael, he only replied that he didn’t like to be called Big Mike after she told him to tell her something, anything about him.

To apply for a driver license he needs to show documents but they can’t find his name anywhere, so Leigh Anne starts the procedure to have legal guardianship, more or less adopting him, I think. They tell her that they don’t need any real parent’s signature because Michael is under the State’s care (care?) but she goes anyway to talk to his mother, tell her her intentions and ask for the boy’s real name: Michael Williams apparently, but he keeps his name Michael Oher. I don’t know if she ever told him that she talked to her. When they all ask him, Leigh Anne, Sean, Collins and Sean Junior, if he wants to become a member of the family, he replies that he thought he was already :-) Indeed :-)

He gets his driver license and Sean gives him a pickup. When SJ wants to buy a new videogame and she can’t take him to the shop, Michael drives him there and they sing in the car, he gets distracted and they have an accident. When called, Leigh Anne rushes there: Michael is sitting saying I’m sorry while SJ is with the paramedics, but seems to be fine. They tell her that it’s incredible how little he was hurt, and when she sees Michael’s arm she understands that he protected the child keeping him back with his big arm :-) She’s worried but not angry :-)

Since he’s a big guy he starts playing football, but doesn’t seem to understand what he has to do, so she tells him to protect his teammates as if he was protecting her or SJ, and SJ trains him and explains to him everything he has to do in the game. Michael improves very quickly, he becomes a good player, and of course that could get him into a college, but his grades are too low for that so they hire a private teacher: Miss Sue (Kathy Bates) tutors him patiently and his grades go up enough.

Their first real game it’s not going so well at first, but when coach Cotton (Ray McKinnon) rages against the referee that he’s one of his boys Michael wants to protect him too :-) and starts playing very well. SJ tapes it all and sends a video to every college. After seeing that video, every school wants him. A man from every state comes to talk to him, trying to make him choose his school, and we can say the same for Miss Sue who tells him a sinister story about the Tennessee football field, because she went to the Ole Miss as did Leigh Anne and Sean.

After Michael chooses to go there, a woman speaks to him, investigating the reasons for his choice, insinuating that Leigh Anne’s family took him in, payed for his education and clothes and everything so that he would go to the school that they support financially… he never even considered that eventuality and is shocked: runs out and asks Leigh Anne about it, not really waiting for a full reply, then goes back to his old neighbourhood looking for his mother without finding her. He meets some guys he knows instead and they offer him a beer and start talking to him. The gang boss makes offensive remarks about Leigh Anne and Collins, because that’s what a certain kind of people always do, and he gets mad and fights them, and goes aways. Leigh Anne looks for him everywhere and when she gets there that guy tells her what happened (more or less, I think he left out the reason why Michael snapped..,) and threatens him, and now she gets mad and tells him that he threatened her family, and lets him know that if he tries anything she’ll be armed and ready. When Michael finally calls her she meets him and tells him that it is entirely his decision what school he wants to go to, it’s his life and they’ll support his decision regardless. 

Michael is now happy and tells the investigating woman that she kept wondering why everybody else did this or that but never asked him what he wanted or why he chose that school, and he tells her that he wants to go there because that’s where his family went :-D

It ends with them taking him to college and saying their goodbyes. 

ITA the blind side

Monk season 7

1-Mr. Monk buys a house

Suddenly there is no more Dr Kroger, they tell us he had a heart attack 

:(  Monk is going crazy, he says he hears too much noise coming from the neighbouring house, owned by a piano teacher. 

He’s so bored and overwhelmed that he insists on getting a case and with the Captain and Randy they check the house where an old man fell down the stairs. Well, they think so but we know otherwise, we saw his nurse pushing him down the stairs.. while surveying the house, Monk makes up his mind that he wants to buy it, and he does.

Monk has discarded a lot of therapist, until Natalie takes him to see Dr Neven (a palindrome) Bell (Hector Elizondo), who opens the door at the exact second, has Kroger’s painting on his wall, and is very good. 

The piano playing that upsets him so much started a year ago, but he’s been bothered by it only these last five weeks, since Kroger died. Monk won’t accept that explanation, he’s very stubborn. He moves into the new house and already calls a handyman - Jake - for something a little off centered, but the man breaks everything down, destroying the house. 

Monk figures out that the old man was killed, and surprise surprise (not really) Jake is an accomplice and kills her now that she’s being suspected. 

Monk already regrets buying the new house because of all the work, and tells the Captain that they should have warned him and stopped him “what’s good having a gun if you don’t shoot your friend in the leg when he’s about to buy an old house?” *rollingeyes*

Many years ago four million dollars were stolen and hidden in that house. When Monk understands that, Jake chains him and Natalie, finds the money, kills his other partner and stupidly gets knocked out by them in the silliest of ways, and Natalie makes smoke signals and the Captain arrives right on time to save them. 

Monk goes back to Dr Bell :) and also to his old house, not bothered by the music anymore, and has a picture of Kroger in the house.

2-Mr. Monk and the genius

Monk doesn’t give Natalie all the money he owes her, the cheap :/

A woman comes in saying that her husband wants to kill her, that he’s a chess master, very intelligent, so much that nobody can stop him, she’s sure she’ll die, and pays Monk to catch him after her death. She was right, she dies very soon, that same day. Monk figures out how he poisoned her, but he anticipated that and had her cremated before they could test for it. Monk is so obsessed with this case that he tries to plant evidence in his house, and again he was waiting for him. The man’s first wife died too, and she also had a huge insurance policy. Monk has her body exhumed but there’s no poison in the body, because the man switched the bodies in the graves, so Monk solves it. 

End: Monk doesn’t want to cash the woman’s check, but Natalie tricks him into it so he can pay her 

:-p

3-Mr. Monk gets lotto fever

The lottery girl is killed, and Natalie is asked to pick the numbers on TV in her place and Monk has a hard time ‘permitting it’ but he does eventually. The first time she’s nervous and when it’s time to say goodbye to the audience she says to keep playing the lottery “you’ll thank me later”. The TV people ask her to keep doing it, and now her face is everywhere and of course she gets pretty quickly all full of herself (not so much as to not feel bad when a guy is fired because of her, but still). Monk is very upset and talks about it to Dr Bell. People ask Natalie for her autograph and take pictures with her, and Monk makes her choose between her two jobs so she quits working for him and runs away. 

The Captain thinks he won the lottery, 200 million dollars and more, and even if it turns out that there were two winners it’d still be a lot! Of course he’ll not get paid because he’s worked with Natalie and there’s suspicions that they cheated. They find proof that the game was rigged and she asks Monk’s help. The guy that was fired had rigged the show and also killed two people. 

There’s a new lottery girl now, and she’s back working for Monk.

4-Mr. Monk takes a punch

Monk has to pass a fitness test if he wants to keep working as a consultant for the police. He thinks he’ll never pass, and wants to quit his job, just like that, instead of trying more and exercise because it hurts. 

A poor man is killed at a gym but the intended victim was a boxer, Ray. Monk finds out that the boxer five years ago sold his fight to help his trainer’s daughter with the money she needed, her only hope of getting better and live. She died anyway, and Monk understands and doesn’t report him.  Ray is so grateful he’s determined to help him pass his test and starts training him. 

The night of Ray’s fight he asks Monk to be his ‘corner man’, not imagining what he was getting :-p Monk tries to stop the hitman by himself, but luckily the Captain arrives too :) Monk solves the case and also passes his fitness test, and is all excited :p

5-Mr. Monk is underwater

Steven, an old friend of Natalie’s Mitch, asks Monk’s help. It is believed that his friend Jason committed suicide but he doesn’t believe it. What he called ‘the boat’ turns out to be a submarine… Monk is not happy to go in there, and even less when there is an emergency drill and he can’t get out, three men have to stop him… To get thru this, Monk talks to the hallucination of Dr Bell. He talks to him the whole time, while working the case. He finds out that the commander killed Jason, and he also tries to kill him and Natalie - Monk says that he can’t swim but he’s been in the ocean before: does he forget of it’s just stubbornness due to panic?

When he solves the case he says “I’ll let Dr Bell explain” and both Natalie and Steven shout No! :-p The commander attached a firecracker to a lighted cigarette, a bullet-proof plan… 

6-Mr. Monk falls in love

A man is murdered and Monk likes the suspect Leyla :-) so he keeps saying that she didn’t do it :p and yet when somebody mentions that he has a crush he gets angry because he says that he’s a married man.. and also says “I’m just not used to being around attractive girls” :-p He actually dances with her, really dances, in a pretty scene :-) and he’s at her place when they come with a search warrant, and she confesses! But Monk finds out the truth, that she confessed when she saw all the evidence and realized that her mother had killed the war criminal that killed her family. Now that he put her mother in jail, I doubt she’ll see Monk again. She tells him to go back to his wife… or life, or both…

7-Mr. Monk’s 100th case

James Novak (Eric McCormack) is the host of the InFocus show, and is doing a show on Monk’s 100 case. They are all at his place to watch it. Randy is there with his girlfriend Gillian. 

The crew has been following the investigation and interviewing people from his life: the Captain, Natalie, Randy, but also Ambrose and Marci (apparently she’s a fan again) and Harold, and an ex-teacher who spoke about how it all changed for Adrian after his father left, and his old babysitter who says how remarkable he was, changing his own diapers and then crawling to throw it away… and also the flight attendant who is now afraid of flying after hours with Monk on a plane.. and even some of the people that he sent to prison; obviously Trudy’s death of 11 years ago is mentioned too.  Some part-time actresses are strangled; the photographer who took all their pictures is the first suspect but when they ‘catch’ him he’s already killed himself. Case over, and so the show, but Monk’s not happy, something’s wrong, he thinks the photographer killed the first three girls but not the last one. James killed her, because she was his mistress. 

Monk wanted to quit at 100 but Natalie points out that with James he went to 101, so now he can’t quit anymore :-p Maybe at 200 :p

8-Mr. Monk gets hypnotized

Actress Sally Larkin disappears. She turns up alive saying that her husband had kept her prisoner until she managed to kill him and escape.

Harold seems all cured, he looks happy, because now he has a new doctor, a hypnotist. Monk wants to get better too and thinks about calling him, so Natalie has him promise not to do it before talking to Dr Bell, and yet he calls him nonetheless. The guy hypnotizes him, bringing him back, ‘way back’, to a happy place, and the next day Monk acts like a six-year-old child. He acts like that for a while, until he figures out how Sally planned 

it all, and staged it and killed her husband for his money. Finally he comes back to himself, to realize that he had been chewing a gum made by Randy, spit by the Captain and then taken from the bottom of Sally’s shoe

for five hours…

9-Mr. Monk and the miracle

Three homeless guys come to Monk’s house to hire him because a friend of them died. He freaks out, won’t let them touch anything and won’t even get out of the car at the ‘crime scene’. The Captain is unwell so Randy is in charge. The Captain was in a lot of pain until he drank from a sacred fountain and joined a monastery. Monk and Natalie find out the truth (well, after a woman told them everything…): a pharmacist had planned it all because he had buried his partner under the fountain and making it a sacred place he made sure that it would never be dig up. 

It was rather weird to see Randy with mustaches and specially the Captain without it.. he was looking good though!

10-Mr. Monk’s other brother

A man escaped from prison: Joe. He goes to Monk’s house and tells him that he’s Jack Junior, his half-brother who is a con-man and busted out of prison, yes, but he did not kill the woman they say he killed. Monk doesn’t want him around but Joe is a conman and a good talker, and is able to convince him. A guard killed the girl, and there’s a shooting at his place when he understand that he just got found out. Now, come on, a guard with an automatic rifle of the roof of his house aiming at three people walking slowly, not yet suspecting a thing, and he misses!! It’s even full daylight and everything! :-/

Anyway, Adrian finds the real killer and Jack doesn’t run away but turns himself in, and makes peace with his brother (still, he’s probably thinking of escaping again, but at least he kept his promise to Monk!)

11-Mr. Monk on wheels

A guy stole a doctor’s bicycle. Natalie and Monk visits his lab and he’s all excited about a square tomato that the doctor’s staff gave him since he was so enthusiastic about it. Natalie feels guilty for unknowingly helping the thief, and insists that Monk helps her find it: “it can count as my birthday gift” - “I didn’t plan on buying you a birthday gift” but still she convinces him. Monk feels embarrassed to be working on something as little as that (yeah right, only killings matter, while normal people with normal lives who are deeply affected by little things like their stuff being stolen… that’s not important). Natalie and Monk go to the guy that stole it and Monk gets shot in the leg and Natalie feels so guilty “good” he says :-/

Now the Captain cares about the case too, and questions the guy’s cousin (played by Sung Kang :-D ) but he doesn’t know where he is, then the thief is found murdered. 

Monk behaves like a jerk, much worse than ever I mean :-/  He blames Natalie for everything. She’s stayed with him three whole days, not sleeping, not seeing July, pushing his wheelchair around, doing everything for him, and finally the Captain tells him that he can’t take it all out on her or he’ll lose her, saying he knows this “because you’re acting like me”: aww

Monk keeps slaving her of course, simply saying that the captain doesn’t understand their relationship. Natalie even paid for the wheelchair herself!

She has a breakdown and he falls down, so they take a motorized wheelchair, and he’s still blaming everything on her, every mess he makes. Only when the doctor notices how unwell she is he realizes how bad he has been, and finally pays attention and solves the case: the doctor’s assistant paid a guy (and then killed him) to steal the bike with the lock with the same combination as his safe, so she could break into it and steal his research. Natalie then accidentally shoots Monk in the other leg… I’m not sure if I should say poor Monk or poor Natalie here…

12-Mr. Monk and the lady next door

An old woman helps Monk cross the street, and he promises her to help her with her neighbour making loud noises all day long, two weeks now already. No surprise, the neighbour is the same guy we saw murdering a man. 

Monk eats at her place.. he forgot to wash his hands and eats mixed vegetables.. and much more! He likes her a lot, she’s like a mom to him, and she loves him… that’s when he starts wondering what is she after: “how could anybody love me unconditionally?” and “there’s always a catch”. He starts accusing her, he hurts her with bad words. She’s actually totally innocent here, the murderer used her to provide him an alibi. 

End: Marge leaves to go stay with her sister, but makes peace with Monk and gives him a scarf, and hugs him. :-)

13-Mr. Monk makes the playoffs

Monk has free tickets for a press box at the stadium because he knows Bob Costas, and Natalie tells him to take the Captain with him because he really likes football. While there, he sees that a guy’s hand is badly burned by accident, and he starts investigating, so they miss the beginning of the game… when they also find a player dead, Monk wants to keep investigating, while the Captain wants to see the match :-p he tries to remind Monk of the time he was funny, when the two of them and Trudy had fun together. Monk’s only replies is “Trudy died”. Captain points out that he’s still alive and he only says “alive is a funny word”. I honestly think Trudy would be so sad :-( I mean, it’s very romantic and touching how much he loved her (loves her, really), but he should remember how she lived more than how she died. 

He solves the case, of course, it was all about selling the team playbook. 

The captain went inside without Monk but then he felt bad about it and went out looking for him, in time to help him and catch the guys.

14-Mr. Monk and the bully

A guy wants to hire Monk, saying that they’re old school friends, but this Roderick used to put Monk’s head into the toilet :-/ these things always happen in American movies, always full of bullies :-/ 

Monk is afraid of him, and the jerk talks about it as the ‘good times’ :-/

Monk tells him how he hurt him reading a note, but to Roderick that’s just stuff kids do :-/ 

The guy’s afraid that his wife might be cheating on him and Monk accepts the case, all happy that he’ll have to tell him, hurt him and even get paid for it. They find Marilyn with another man, but Roderick won’t believe Monk, he tells him to quit and pays him, but Monk wants to keep following her, and then the alleged lover is found killed.

Monk is even happier now, believing Roderick killed him and will go to prison…. unfortunately for him Roderick is innocent, and Monk helps him. Marilyn didn’t do it either, but her secret twin sister did, grown apart because adopted. The sister tries to kill Marilyn but the captain and Randy stop her, and poor Monk doesn’t have his revenge.

15-Mr. Monk and the magician

Kevin gets a job as a magician: he’s terrible at it, really, he only got the job because he found out a secret about the real magician Torrini.

After the show Kevin is killed :’( and this is so sad, I liked Kevin, he was funny and a good guy :(  At his funeral, his relatives and friends all talk too  much as he did. 

Monk is sure that Torrini killed him, but he seems to have a very solid alibi. The captain tells Monk “you want me to dig, I’ll grab a shovel, I’ll dig for you, but you gotta tell me what to look for”. 

Torrini’s secret: he was using the secret compartments in his magician equipment to bring heroine in the States. During a show he makes Monk disappear and plans on killing him, but his assistant has a change of heart and tries to give him the handcuff’s key with a kiss but she doesn’t know who she’s dealing with. When she finally manages that, he spits it out!! Luckily the captain finds them and rescues him (and her too, I’d say at this point). At the end, Monk and Natalie watch Kevin’s video-will, which of course is very long because he kept on digressing as he always did.. Natalie asks him if he wants her to fast-forward the video, but he says no, they’ll watch all of it, remembering and missing Kevin… 

16-Mr. Monk fights City Hall

The parking lot where Trudy was killed is about to be torn down, so Monk chains himself there to stop them. A councilwoman comes, listens to him and agrees with him, for now. Natalie can’t believe it “you did it, you just stopped a children playground from being built and saved a parking garage”… four days later two German tourists are killed. 

The council should vote again on the parking lot subject, and the councilwoman Eileen Hill disappears. Monk wants to find her before there’s another vote because without her support he’ll lose. Dr Bell asks him if he really believes that there’s evidence there to be found, and he admits that there isn’t. He just can’t live without the place. Dr Bell tries to tell him to let it go…

Monk tries to flirt with Hill’s married and pregnant receptionist Maria, to get her to vote in his favour. Miss Hill is found dead.

Monk only cares about the parking lot, but after he wins the vote he solves the murder case, and while he explains why and how the married journalist killed Eileen and also the two tourists because they could have seen him, he keeps insulting Maria, calling her idiot, moron, not caring at all about her feelings. Maria is so insulted that she changes her vote. Good.

Still, they’ll build the “Trudy Monk memorial playground”, for some reasons..

Red dawn - 2012

I don’t think I’ve ever watched anything this stupid before, it’s almost insulting how stupid and bad   this thing is. Sure, there is Chris Hemsworth who is very very nice to look at, but to do that you can buy a poster and save yourself from watching this terrible movie. And I mean, really terrible, because this is not a B-movie, one of those that are so bad they become actually enjoyable in a funny way, because you can laugh at those. No, this sounds like it takes itself very seriously, for no reason at all, because there’s nothing reasonable in it. Everything is bad, the story, the directing, the shooting, the acting.. I mean, maybe the lights were ok, but you know what I mean.

Hemsworth plays Jed the hero (give Thor a rifle and take away the humour, et voilà=Jed). Josh Peck was his brother Matt ( a double no), Josh Hutcherson was Robert, Adrianne Palicki was Toni and Isabel Lucas was Erica, Connor Cruise was Daryl the mayor’s son, and someone more. Nothing to say about them really. The only one I knew other than Thor was Brett Cullen playing Sergeant Tom, Jed’s father, but he gets himself killed very soon for nothing. 

THE STORY, so if future me gets curious, reading this will be enough to stay away from it forever.

Jed is a soldier and Matt a high-school football player. Suddenly there’s a blackout and soon the sky fills with plains and parachutes. North Korea is invading America! Just like that, apparently. No word on how they got so close and so many without raising the slightest alarm, or on how they took hold of such a big firepower, of the tanks and vehicles they used… they fall from the sky and take over the small town Jed lives in (why are they even bothering with it?  There are so many big important cities,  much more crucial if anyone wants to get the power…). Jed, Matt and a few others escape, and no one else. They get to some kind of cabin in the woods, and obviously Jed takes the lead. One of the kids, Pete, is the usual moron/bully that’s all ‘who put you in charge?’ and very soon he betrays them, leading Korean Cho (Will Yun Lee) to their cabin, but luckily they’re out. They look from a distance as the enemies search the place, and then have the mayor and Tom call for them to come forward and surrender. The mayor does just that, and maybe it’s not simple cowardice, maybe he saw that those who tried to run were killed but those who stayed quiet survived, so he thought he’d liked his son alive, we’ll never know because the movie doesn’t care about him. When it’s Tom’s turn, he tells them to fight against those s.o.b.s, and obviously gets shot right away, under his sons eyes. Wow, did he think he was being brave? Not stupid at all? Did he think that his sons actions depended only on his words? Did he think it a good idea to have them look at him executed? If so, applause applause. Stupid :-/ He should have tried to stay alive to help them in some way :-/ instead he left them alone.

Apparently they think he was a hero and the mayor a traitor, a collaborator, only because he’s still alive… they never tried to talk to him.

Jed tells the kids that they are the only ones who can fight against the enemy, so they must prepare themselves… he trains them, we don’t know for how long but they become expert guerrilleros ! And to think that Full Metal Jacket made it look so hard, how about that!

They start doing acts of sabotage here and there: they kill some soldiers to take their weapons, blow up places and cars… they come and go as they please, it would seem, and are able very easily to place any bomb they like wherever they want, no surveillance at all… plus they seem eager to kill Cho, and yet they insist on doing it with bombs. They have good rifles, they seem to be like good enough sniper rifles since they are not far at all, just across the street, and yet they never try to shoot him… 

Matt can only think of his girl Erica that was taken, and leaves them to rescue her, and doesn’t even notice that a member of his group died trying to help him (don’t know what he proposed to do by running on the street like that, but still, good intention). 

All of a sudden they reunite in their hideout and talk quietly as if never was happening in the world.. Toni reminds Jed of the time he kissed a girl during camping and she was jealous and tried to be noticed by him at school but he didn’t, and it’s so annoying how she insults the other girl without any reason at all, and he agrees with her that she was just a cow or something, and this is disgusting, and even more so since this is supposed to be their romance scene…

Jed and Matt talk about their life, of how Jed was away for years when their mother died leaving brother and father alone… 

two quick scenes and they can say that they gave the characters a background and a soul… Seriously??? Bleah.

They are attacked, the woods burned down, and yet only two die. There’s been no word on the army throughout the movie, and now they find three Marines (yes, 3!!!) looking for them, to ask their help (…no words, really) who say that the American Defense has been neutralized (just like that? Is it so easy then?) because of the blackout the enemy caused or something, and they need to retrieve a device that allows the enemy to communicate, or something. Anyway,  they simply enter the enemy headquarters and try to steal it. They need to shoot someone here and there, until Jed is face to face with Cho, who seems to be winning but it’s Tom’s office so Jed takes his hidden gun and kills him. They probably think it’s all over but they are found and Jed gets shot and the others run away, and Matt is the new leader, but by now nothing’s a problem anymore to me, it’s so terrible, Matt can be the leader why not… Robert realizes somehow that Daryl was not shot but they implanted a sort of tracking device in him so they can follow him everywhere, so he stays behind while they go away. 

Now that they have the device the Marines go away ‘to the land of the free’ but Matt and his friends stay here because they will fight and save their Country, of course… it’ll be easy now… sure, why not? Of course. And they do, too. 

Jed’s group is called “The Wolverines”… and this alone is sad enough. 

It’s said that Russia helped North Korea, but only one Russian man is shown, like twice or something, and he never did anything else that stare ahead…

The great American Army, any part of it, is non existent, it was apparently neutralized with a click of fingers, and yet the North Korean Army seems full of incompetents: they have no surveillance at all, they can’t shoot their targets, they are complete inept.. while a bunch of high-school kids defeats them all. 

There are really no words for how bad this film is. And the ending, with Matt’s speech on how they’ll keep on fighting, with music and atmosphere of a hero-movie… incredible. 

Nothing can be saved. The action scenes were bad or non-existent, the car-chasing scenes were annoying (please keep that camera still, I don’t want to jump with the cars, thank you), the dialogs were pitiful, the romance useless and badly done anyway, nothing can be saved really, not the characters, not the acting, not any part of this work. 

ITA red dawn - alba rossa

An American in Paris - 1951

Well, it’s very famous, well done, with good shots, good photography, good actors and many musical numbers… but I don’t like it much because of the story and the characters. Gene Kelly is good, nothing to say against that, but his character is not likable.

The beginning is nice, when three men introduce themselves to us. Jerry Mulligan (Kelly) is a painter with no money, Adam (Oscar Levant) is a pianist and Henri (Georges Guétary) is a singer. Right after that Jerry shows how unpleasant he is when he's very rude to a girl watching his paintings. He sends her away not very kindly because he says she’s only an American art student who doesn’t have the competence to criticize his work… then he meets rich and lonely Milo (Nina Foch) who buys two of his paintings and takes an interest in him. At first he comments on her dress, as if she was half naked only because her dress leaves one bare shoulder, but that’s 1951, and then he makes a scene, offended because he’s not a gigolo, but she says she believes in his art and wants to help him. One of her friends warns her that she should stop helping these artists because if they succeed they all leave her…  The first time Jerry and Milo go out, he sees a girl, Lise (Leslie Caron) and it’s love at first sight, and he acts very rudely. He keeps staring at Lise completely ignoring Milo.

He calls Lise at work asking her out and when she says no he shows up at her work-place. We know already that she’s the girl Henri is in love with, but Jerry doesn’t. He makes her laugh and she agrees to go out with him. They keep seeing each other from time to time, but neither of them tells much about their lives, specially not about Henri or Milo. 

They fall in love, and the funniest scene about the whole movie is when Jerry talks about Lise to Adam and even tells him her name. Henri comes join them, and they start talking about their loves, and Adam is the only one that knows they are talking of the same girl. Still, Adam is not much more likable than Jerry, because he’s very rude to Milo too, telling her that she’s something of an invasive meddler, as she’d done anything bad. It’s Jerry that after he learned from Lise that she’s engaged to Henri got to her room and asked her out on a date. That was mean. He took her to a party and then told her that he loves Lise, leaving her like that. Mean.

Of course it ends well for him, because Henri learns of their love for each other and we can guess that he didn’t want her to marry him for gratitude only and not for love (she felt obligated because he saved her during the war and raised her before falling in love with her: she’s a lot younger than them both) so he drives her back to him and they kiss and it’s the end. Well, after a very, very long musical number that goes on forever. Nobody cares about Milo or Henri’s hearts broken, as long as Jerry and Lise are happy together..

ITA un americano a Parigi

The imitation game - 2014

Beautiful acting, interesting story, a great Benedict, I wish I wished to see it again but I don’t, I can’t, it hurts. It’s so utterly unbelievable that in 1951 England would ruin a man simply because he liked men instead of women. How was that any of the f-ing Government’s business? That’s sick.

Benedict Cumberbatch was amazing as Alan Turing, though, absolutely brilliant.

The film: (the title refers to one of Turing's thesis or something, if a machine can think like a man or not, how it can imitate humans or something like that)

It goes back and forth from 1951, 1939 and something like 1928, I think, not sure about the year he was in school. Anyway, the present is 1951, when he refuses to admit to the police that he’s been robbed; he acts very arrogantly and offensive and a detective finds it suspicious, becomes curious thinking he might be a spy or maybe hiding some big secret, and starts investigating him. When he’s brought in, Turing tells him his story.

In 1939 he joined a secret group of people under Commander Denniston (Charles Dance). He was 27 years old, and a genius. He didn’t know a word of German, but he loved solving puzzles and Enigma was the most difficult mystery of the era. He thought he would work alone at first, but instead he is put into a group of four or five people, I’m not sure. He doesn’t know how to work with people, and nobody likes him. 

We see also flashbacks of his time at school, I think in 1928, where he was bullied because he was different (they show a scene when he separated all his food in the plate, a very classic OCD scene in movies, and as it always happens in movies the kid got bullied because of it. I never understood why that is, what do people care if he likes to eat his food separately? He wasn’t touching other kid’s food, just his own! Anyway, he was bullied because he was different and learned how people liked violence, but he also found a friend, one kid, Christopher, who helped him and spent time with him and told him that he would do great things and also introduced him to cryptography… but it didn’t last very long because after a break he didn’t come back to school, and he was told that he had died, that he had been sick for a while and died during the break. 

Remembering his years in school Alan says that people like violence because it feels good… but I say that violence doesn’t feel good if you’re not a pathetic shadow of a man who needs it to feel superior in the only way he can. 

In 1939 Alan and the others are told that they had only a few hours to decrypt the messages, because the next day the code would be different and they would have to start from scratch. Alan wants to build a machine to do it for them, because there are millions of combinations possible, but the other men are against him,  and his machine would cost a lot. Denniston doesn’t like him either and says no, but Alan writes to Churchill himself. We don’t know what he wrote but the result was that he was put in charge. As soon as that was established, he fired two of those men. Now understaffed, he published a crossword-puzzle on a paper saying that whoever can finish it in less than ten minutes will have a job opportunity! Many men report for a final exam, plus a girl, Joan Clark (Keira Knightley). It was so annoying when the man at the door kept saying the secretaries are upstairs, and even asked her if she did it by herself or if she was helped… stupid man.

Alan lets her take the test, saying them that they have six minutes but saying to a man that he himself needs 8. She finished in five and a half. Hired. But then she didn’t show up for work, so he went to her house to talk to her. Basically her parents wouldn’t allow it because she was an unmarried girl, and it was not a decent thing to work alone with men, so he told her (because her parents were listening) that she would work with girls, and live with girls, so they let her go. She did too, but Alan could talk to her during breaks and also sneak into her room at night if he needed to discuss anything. He wants everyone to work on his machine, and Joan explains to him that they won’t help him if they don’t like him, (so he brings them apples and tells a joke, also explaining what Joan said :-p ). They start understanding him a bit, accepting him a bit, and they all work together. They build a big machine and finally test it, but it is still too slow. Too many possibilities even for it (Alan calls the machine Christopher … ) and it keeps working for hours but never stops in time. At this point Denniston breaks in and switches it off by force, and also fire him. Surprisingly, Hugh (Matthew Goode) defends him and his machine, saying he’ll go away too if Alan is fired, then John (Allen Leech) says the same, and then the others follow. At this point Denniston must yield so they can continue working on it. 

Suddenly Joan says that her parents want her home, because she’s already 25 and still single, but Alan doesn’t want to lose her so he tells her that the logical thing to do is to get married, so she’ll be able to stay. They get engaged. Alan confesses to John that he’s homosexual, and John tells him to keep it a secret, not tell anyone, not even Joan. By chance, talking with Hugh and a friend of Joan, he has an idea. There are some words that are always the same, they are like fixed points, so the variables are much less, and now the machine works much faster and they are finally able to break the code, and use the enigma machine to decrypt the messages. They find that a civilian ship will be attacked soon, with Peter’s brother on it, but Alan stops them from interfering. He says they must let it be attacked, or the Germans will understand that they did it. Peter never forgave him, I guess. 

Alan and Joan met with the MI6 guy explaining that they’ll use statistics to decide which messages are more important to win the war, and he’ll have to come up with a cover story for how they came to know about them. One day Alan finds him in his house: he lies to him saying that Joan has been arrested for being a spy, and Alan tells him that he knows that the (Soviet, not German) spy is John (even after John told him that if he told his secret he would reveal his own), but surprise surprise the MI6 guy (what was his name?!? can’t remember :-/) tells him he always knew, even before they started working together. Alan is afraid for Joan and tells her to go away but she doesn’t want to leave her job and him, so he confesses to be gay and she told him that she suspected it but also that it didn’t matter, not to her, because they do care for each other and understand each other and like each other’s company… but he’s so afraid for her that he tells her he never cared for her :-(

They win the war with Alan’s project called Ultra, and they are told that they need to burn everything and keep the secret and never see each other again.

In 1951, the cops that keep poking around into Alan’s business follow him and learn from a man that Alan is gay, so they arrest him. The detective is upset, that’s not what he wanted, so he talks with him before they take him away, and Alan tells him his story, asking him what he think he is, a hero or a monster, but he can’t tell, of course. 

Being gay is against the law - unbelievable what men do, thinking they’re big important men they made laws to get people like Turing and Wilde in prison :-/  - so he’s convicted and given a choice: two years (I think) in prison or drugs. Joan comes back to him,now engaged and about to have a normal life, telling him that she would have testified, that she wanted to help him, but he says there was nothing she could do, and that he couldn’t bear the idea of being separated from Christopher - :-‘(   -  and therefore that he had already started taking the drugs, and it’s so sad to see not only his hands shaking, but his difficulty in doing a simple crosswords in the paper. 

Joan is touched as well, and tries to comfort him by telling him how he saved millions of lives by winning the war, and how he could do it because he was different.

The film ends there, but there are written words that explain how Alan killed himself after a year of those drugs, only 41 years old, and also how thousands of men were convicted by law for being gay, and that very recently the Queen pardoned him (wow, he can spend it now.. but I guess it’s somehow an important gesture anyway).

There wasn’t really any need but it also reads that the Turing Machine is what we now call computer. 

I knew about Turing being the one that broke the Enigma code, but that’s about all I knew about him. I heard from someone or read somewhere, I can’t remember, that Knightley was not plain enough to be like the real Joan, but watching the film I appreciated this. I’m not a big Knightley fan, but here she was good, appropriate, and I liked the fact that she was a pretty girl, but was valued for being intelligent. 

Best thing of all was Benedict, he was very very good, so so touching, the ending broke my heart. 

ITA the imitation game

Columbus Circle - 2012

It was sort of ok, I guess, not very good but not too bad either, but I didn’t like the ending at all. The title refers to where she lives, I think, and it starts when an old woman named Hillary dies. It appears like she fell down the stairs, but the police have to ask around and so a detective (Giovanni Ribisi) knocks on Abigail’s door (Selma Blair) because she’s the front-door neighbour. She’s forced to open the door, but is very uncomfortable and says that she never goes out and never sees anyone. 

A couple rents poor Hillary’s apartment, and very soon she witnesses a fight between them. He beats her, and Abigail helps her, lets her inside her house. Charlie is a violent man but she says that she loves him and what could she do without him, she’d be alone in the world… Abigail is affected because her father was a violent man too. So Abigail helps Lillian (Amy Smart), thinking that she’s making a friend, but we see that they’re actually a couple of con-artists, it’s all a scam to steal all her money - she’s very rich. They are working with some help, to know how to get to her: her only friend in the world, the only person that she trusts and that knows who she really is, Ray (Beau Bridges). When the police ask him some questions about Hillary, he complains to Charlie that he should have made it look like an accident, and Lillian seems shocked because she didn’t know about any murder. Ray tries to call it off now that the police got involved, but Charlie disagrees: he kills him instead. Still, Lillian stays with Charlie and they move on with their plan: Lillian asks for Abigail’s help, enters her apartment, then Charlie enters too and they fight and Lillian shoots him, and thinking he won’t stop until she’s dead, Abigail ‘saves her’ by stabbing him several times until he’s dead. Lillian is shocked, but thinks that her only way out is to take the money and disappear, but then Abigail looks at Charlie’s body and sees Ray’s wallet, and then the fake blood and the blanks in the gun; she now knows it was all a scam, so she quickly transfers all her money on another account, and then she calls the journalists to tell them that Justine Waters is at the bank. Apparently Justine (meaning Abigail) disappeared  17 years ago, when something happened, I’m not sure if she simply ran away or if she killed her violent father, or what, I don’t remember. 

Anyway, the jounalists now think that Lillian is Justine and Abigail can walk free. The detective sees her and probably knows everything by now, and he lets her go , and she’s finally free and the world is her oyster, or something, which was rather unsatisfying….

I mean, the whole time she was terrified of stepping foot outside her door, two meters outside and she was already feeling sick with terror, 17 years hiding from her past (of which  we don’t have a full, clear story, only hints here and there) and then all of a sudden she feels free to travel the world! It makes no sense at all. If she was only frightened of being recognized as Justine, why so terrified of being one meter outside her door, still in her apartment building’s last floor? And if she was scared of the world, how come she’s no more? And how can she be so sure that it’s all over? What if Lillian convinces them that she’s not Justine? She’d have to reveal that she was a thief (maybe trying to hide that she was also a murderer’s accomplice), but she might want to do it, depends of what being Justine entails…

No,I didn’t like the ending. 

ITA columbus circle

Angels & Demons - 2009

I liked it enough, more as an action movie than a mystery novel, maybe, because it’s hard to get caught in the mystery of it all when you just need to wait for next scene to have the legendary professor pull something new out of his hat and explain everything to you. 

And, it had good points, like Ewan McGregor that I think was very good in this film, and the Italian Favino :-p

The beginning makes you roll your eyes already, because there is this lab, at the CERN, where they manage to collect a bit of anti-matter, and nobody can be surprised when it is stolen… Of course it is. Messengers from the Vatican go to Harvard to ask Professor Robert Langdon’s help (Tom Hanks), after he’s been asking access to their archives for years.. He accepts obviously, otherwise no movie.

He goes to the Vatican and works with one of the scientists at that lab, and when they are let into the archives to consult some kind of book, she rips off a page because they’re in a hurry!!! Inspector Olivetti (Pierfrancesco Favino) is shocked at him: you stole a document? - it was her!! :-p

Maybe Langdon’s nicest moment :-p 

They have a video of the anti-matter container but had no idea where it is, so the Camerlengo (McGregor) suggest switching off the lights sector by sector to see if they spot any change in the live video, but they do it so slowly it’s unbearable, it’s like ‘i’m switching off lights in sector 2 - ok proceed - doing it….. see any changes? - no, I’m switching lights back on, now moving on to sector…’ come on seriously?? They know that the battery is about to run out and then it’s be a very big explosion, and they go so slowly?? Unbearable, really.

Then they keep following the signals, because apparently the Illuminati abducted the Cardinals with the better chance to become the next Pope, and at the first place they run to they find a Cardinal dead, with the word Earth branded on his skin. Second place, piazza S. Pietro, another one dead with Air branded on him. 

The scientist woman is reading her dead collegue’s diary but leaves it on a table’s drawer, unlocked, when she goes with the Camerlengo to see the Pope’s body to see if he was poisoned, and she think he was. Of course the diary is stolen, by head of Vatican gendarmerie commander Richter (Stellan Skarsgard). 

 Third place, they get into the church while a Cardinal is still burning alive, with branded the word ‘fire’, of course, and the bad guy is still there and he kills them all!! Poor Olivetti :-( Langdon saves himself by hiding under the church.

The killer is part of the Vatican gendarmerie, that’s how he surprises the police. 

Fourth place, water, so a fountain at piazza Navona, I think, where the guy kills two carabinieri and throws the fourth cardinal into a fountain to drown with branded the word ‘water’. The poor man is still alive and Langdon tries to save him but it’s very heavy, but finally people understand that it’s for real and not a joke and they help him, and they save him, so the cardinal can tell him where they were kept prisoners: Castel Sant’Angelo. A secret passage links it to the Vatican, and it’s where the assassin was hiding. He doesn’t kill them, he tells them that killing them is not part of his job and leaves, but then his car explodes when he starts the engine. 

They think now that there is another intended victim, the Camerlengo himself, and rush to the Vatican to find him in his study while Richter is trying to kill him, and some agents shoot Richter saving him. They find the ‘bomb, under S.Pietro, and they urge the woman to change the battery and make it safe again, but she says there is no time, it’s not safe, and she suggests leaving it there where it is and run away before it explodes, but the Camerlengo can’t bear the idea of S.Pietro exploding, so he shouts No! before taking the bomb himself and running out when he flies himself an helicopter (why was it outside already? who called an helicopter there?? Did I miss it?)

The bomb explodes up in the air, everybody’s safe, but for a moment they think the Camerlengo died, then a parachute appears in the sky and he lands like a hero and now everybody’s calling him a hero and wants him as the new Pope (madness!).

Right then, when everybody thinks it’s all over, Langdon finds out that it was all the Camerlengo’s plan to make the Church stronger - make the Church strong again!! said the guy before trying to destroy everything good his people ever did… oh no wait, I’m getting confused with the news now, let’s get back on track, to fiction, where the good ones actually win.

Langdon realizes the Illuminati never had anything to do with this, it was all the Camerlengo’s doing to protect the Church from itself and make it stronger, or so he says. To do this he killed the Pope, his adoptive father, and when he sees that he’s been found out, he sets himself on fire and dies. The new Pope is the surviving Cardinal, the Italian Cardinal Baggia, now Pope Luca. 

Now, the ending part with the bomb was really nice, very cool, very effective, from the No! to the hero-like-landing, very powerful scenes, but I’m glad it ended this way because the scene when he got saved from Richter was all wrong! I mean, it would have been wrong had he turned out to be the good one, but since he wasn’t then it’s ok! :-) 

ITA angeli e demoni