The girl on the train - 2016

A good movie. I don't know why it only has 6,5 stars on imdb, I think it was a very good movie. Not an easy one, very dramatic, really a lot of drama, but also a nice mystery that unravels bit by bit.
I'm not going to watch it again because it's really very dramatic, but I'm glad I watched it.
It was well done in all aspects, I think, any one I can think of: acting, directing, lights, makeup, clothes... nothing 'really' wrong that I can point out. Of course I'm very annoyed at the nude scenes, not many but still there, specially one of the most dramatic scenes of a young woman, basically a girl since she was seventeen in the story, walking out naked because her daughter had died. It's dramatic, but the nude scene takes part of the drama out of it, it makes it less dramatic and more voyeuristic.
This was a good movie, it didn't need that.

There is only one thing that I don't understand. What day was it when she wakes up? It should be saturday right? She still bloody, and everything happened Friday night, so... ok, then we see her going out and at night the police is there... Well yes, maybe 24 hours have passed, but they are really quick in this movie uh?

Mostly the story is in the present, but there are bits from the past, to make you see different sides of the story.

Details:
Rachel, an alcoholic woman, travels by train every day, and watches the house of her ex-husband where he lives with his new family, and also the neighbours, a couple that she imagines like the perfect couple, what they never were.
Until she sees her with another man. She thinks she's cheating and she hates it.

She wakes up covered in blood, not remembering anything she did the night before. She's shocked, she has no idea why she has all those bruises and why she has blood on her face and clothes.
She cleans up. She goes to a AA meeting because of what happened.
She sees Martha on the train and hides. She remembers the night she made a big embarrassing scene at her barbecue, breaking a plate, swearing and being aggressive, shouting at her husband totally out of control.
When she gets back home, to her friend Cathy's home where she lives, there are a couple of detectives, asking about Megan, Tom's nanny.
Tom is her ex-husband, his wife is Anna and their baby is Ivy.
Detective Riley says that Megan has disappeared, and Rachel was seen in that area that Friday night. Rachel doesn't remember though.
Rachel was fired a year ago for her alcohol problem, but never told her friend. Every day she takes the train to New York anyway.
Rachel told Riley she doesn't know Megan, but then remembers the woman she saw from the train, and tells Riley that she had a lover.

4 months before
We see Megan talking to her therapist. She looks like a very troubled girl, making advances but he doesn't let her go on with that. He tells her that she's in an abusive relationship, with her husband Scott, but she denies, saying that it's not abuse if you don't care.
A very troubled woman.

Rachel goes to see Scott, she tells him lies about being Megan's friend, so that he will believe her when she tells him that she had a lover, and she confirms his suspicions that her doctor was her lover.
He's out of his mind. Trying to calm down he reasons that it might be a good thing, maybe Megan is alright and only ran away with her lover..
Scott tells the police about Abdik, and in return the doctor tells them that he was violent with her.
Tom sees Rachel around and thinks that she came there for him.
Rachel thinks she remembers something and shouts that Anna hit her.
Rachel goes to see Abdik as a patient, trying to find out more about him because he was released by the police because there are no proof that he might be involved in Megan's disappearance.
She tells him that she has memory loss, that she can't feel guilty about what she did because it doesn't feel like herself at all.
Anna is scared by Rachel, thinking she's stalking them and even tried to abduct her baby daughter, so she goes to the police, and when she speaks of all Rachel's phone calls, Riley questions if Tom is telling the truth, if maybe he's seeing her again.
A bit suspicious, Anna tries to spy on his computer, but can't find his password.
Scott tells Rachel that Megan was pregnant. She told her doctor but not her husband.

A month before.
Megan couldn't sleep and went to her doctor's house because she needed to tell him something, to say something out loud because it weighs on her. When she was 17 she had a daughter, and she held her to her body while taking a bath but she fell asleep and the baby fell and died.
Rachel tells the doctor of when she went to see her old house, and she saw Anna asleep so she took the baby, she only wanted to hold her but Anna freaked out when she saw her in the garden with her baby.

Megan's body is found, so it's now a murder investigation.
Anna sees Rachel outside Scott's house, watching the reporters, and fears for her baby but Rachel walks past her without a word.
Anna talks to Tom, remembering when she was 'the other woman', when Tom cheated on Rachel with her, and suggests Rachel might have killed Megan, but Tom shuts her up, saying Rachel is sad not violent.
Rachel comes back home to find Scott there. He's aggressive, says that the police questioned him, that they think the two of them are lovers, that now he knows that she didn't know his wife at all.
Luckily for her, he's scary and emotionally trying, but he doesn't hurt her.
She goes to the police to accuse Scott, but Riley says that he has a solid alibi.

Last Friday
Megan found out that she was pregnant and she called her doctor to come to her house. She needed help, consoling, and he hold her, when Rachel saw them from the train.
There was maybe one kiss, but they were never lovers, he was trying to help her, she was lost and troubled and needed help.

Rachel sees Marta on the train again but this time she doesn't hide, she confronts her and apologises many times for her behaviour, but then the big switch of the movie happened.
Marta tells her that she did nothing wrong, she didn't feel well after drinking too much so she went to lie down on a bed, but Tom insisted to take her home and shouted at her while she just apologised.
Rachel thought that Tom got fired because of what she did, but Martha says that he got fired because he slept around too much, she says that she did nothing wrong, and now Rachel remembers things the way they went, Tom shouting at her, breaking the mirror at home, insulting her and being aggressive.
Anna still can't find the password to Tom's computer, but she finds a phone in his bag, and she finds out that it's Megan's phone.
Rachel tries to remember by going to the same place where she got all bloody on the ground that night. Now she remembers Megan going away in Tom's car, and it was Tom who pushed her down and hit her face with his keys. A man living nearby tried to help her up but she cursed him making him go away.
Rachel goes to see Anna, tells her that Tom is a liar but Anna says she knows that Tom has cheated on her many times, but she doesn't want to leave him. Rachel says that he killed Megan but Anna doesn't want to believe that, says that they don't know what happened, but then Tom appears and Anna goes inside with the baby.
Rachel doesn't let it go and shouts that he saw him with Megan that night. Now Anna admits that she found Megan's phone.
Rachel says that she knows now that he always lied to her, making her believe that it was all her fault, that she did horrible things when it was not true.
He tries to make her drink but she refuses. He hits her.

We see now what happened that night, Megan went to the woods with Tom and he thought she wanted sex but she wanted to tell him that she was pregnant. He said she needed to abort, she says she never planned to force him if he doesn't want to get involved, he told her she'd be a horrible mom, that he kept her as a nanny because it was fun to have her in the house. He tries to make her leave but they fight, she pushes him, he pushes back and she falls and hits her head. Accident? Oh no, he kicks her head a couple of times, hides her body and since she's not dead yet he hits her with a big rock multiple times !

Tom still tries to pin it on Rachel, saying it was her fault, that nothing would have happened if she had left them in peace, which is obviously bullshit and Rachel doesn't fall for it anymore. She tries to leave but he stops her and almost strangles her, but she hits him and runs out. Tom runs after her and Rachel stabs his neck with a bottle opener.
Anna sees him on the ground all bloody and pushes the opener more.
Both women are taken away by the police and questioned. Rachel says that it was legitimate defence, that he would have killed her like he killed Megan, and luckily Anna says the same thing, that he would have killed her, and that Rachel was right.

Good.

The last scene shows Rachel on the train again. I think she's now moving on, but for real this time, not like she was 'moving on from her divorce' when she kept drinking and going to their house.
Maybe this time she won't start drinking again and things will get better.


Rachel - Emily Blunt
Megan - Haley Bennett
Anna - Rebecca Ferguson
Scott - Luke Evans
Tom - Justin Theroux
Dr Kamal Abdik - Edgar Ramirez
Cathy - Laura Prepon
Detective Riley - Allison Janney
Martha - Lisa Kudrow

ITA la ragazza del treno

Fire twister - 2015

One of the worst movies ever, really. Maybe not the worst, but I can't think of a worse one right now... I wonder who made it, maybe some school kids, I don't know. It wouldn't be a bad first attempt at filmography by a bunch of teen friends, I guess.
Unfortunately I think we can assume that it was made by grown-up people... in which case it's awful.
By the title I wasn't expecting a masterpiece, of course, but I was kind of hoping in a b-movie, you know, a bit of silly fun, but the problem is that nobody can be saved here. The acting was awful, the effects were ridiculous, the dialogues not to be spoken of, nothing made sense, not one thing was decent.
The plot it's sort of the usual one: a rich bad guy plans an explosion for his wicked plans, the hero and his gang get involved by mere chance and decide to save the world.
That's pretty much it.
The enemy is a fire twister, obviously. Four people were about to put a pacifist stunt when Scott saw a bomb with the usual nice timer (who needed a timer there? There was nobody around, there wasn't supposed to be anyone around, so why kindly out a timer there? Who knows, apparently all bombs must come with a timer in plain view..).
Scott sees that they have only 30 seconds and instead of jumping down screaming to everyone to follow him while he runs away he turns to the others saying that they got a problem, there's a bomb there... and then they run...
Lots and lots of stupid things like that. A bunch of mercenaries tries to kill them from the start (but only after the explosion, maybe because they saw the bomb, we can let this one go). They have automatic weapons, they are supposed to be good at their job, and yet they can't hit four people out in the open. Later they can't hit them after catching them by surprise, being pretty close to them, and shooting like crazy. They try a lot, then they think of a trap which works, and what do they do now? They take them prisoners to talk, to negotiate... what?? Nothing, absolutely nothing. They shot in front of houses before, now they must do it quietly... another nonsense.
The fire twister is supposed to destroy everything in its way... the heat can burn a leaf quite far away... and yet they don't have the slightest scratch, a young mother landed on a tree...
the twister is chasing them and they lie down covering their heads... and the twister kindly moves around them, I guess, because afterwards they look in front of them and the twister is behind some houses... this twister really doesn't want to hurt them...
It's all so fake, there's really nothing decent.
One thing that I thought at first was a mistake it was actually right. The mercenary woman had a picture of the four of them and she said 'the three environmentalist' or something, which wasn't because  she can't count, but because the annoying one was a traitor, paid to bring them to that location, of course not knowing that he was risking his life.
Let me just mention another stupid thing, the first half of the movie saw our heroes trying to 'find' the twister, as if a huge twister wasn't visible by itself, and this one was made of fire, bright red... and the world was constantly taken by surprised, people walking by without suspicions until the twister was right there... nobody had a smartphone (in 2015?) but still everyone had a phone, and yet the news didn't get around... apparently the news talk about it (let's not talk about how awful the scenes of the news coverage were...) but nobody watch tv here...
The twister kept burning a lot because it was supposed of being made with a new experimental kind of fuel, based on hydrogen, that is attracted to heat to sustain itself... and for some reason a big explosion can put it out.
I mean, the plot is absurd, but it could have still served an acceptable b-movie if anything, at least one single thing had been good. But no.
The acting and directing are the worst, really.
Nothing is acceptable here.
I really can't understand how things like this get around, really...


Scott - Casper Van Dien
Carla - Lisa Ciara

ITA uragano di fuoco

Premonition - 2007

Personally I thought the ending was real shit, but I suppose you can choose what you want this movie to mean: you can choose to think that it allowed her to re-discover what really matters, to find faith again, to find love again... but you must really  want to see it like that, because otherwise what you’re left with is what I saw: a sick trick. Not really well done when you think too much about it, but still basically a sick trick.

The plot is that a woman finds out that her husband died in an accident, but from the next day she starts living that week’s days in the wrong order. The first we see was a Thursday, then she wakes up: on Monday, then Saturday, then Tuesday, then Friday, then Sunday and at last Wednesday.

After that I guess they didn’t know where to go from there so they just skipped it all instead of trying to come up with any explanation and we see her waking up weeks later.

What happens day by day:

---Thursday, Linda takes her two daughters to school (Bridgette has a perfect face). She puts stickers on the glass door so the girls would see it. She hears her husband Jim’s recorded message. A sheriff comes to tell her that Jim died yesterday. Her mom comes to stay with her to help.

---Monday, she wakes up and Jim is alive. She thinks it was just a bad dream. Doing the laundry, she stumbles on a dead crow and throws it in the bin.

---Saturday, she sees that all the mirrors are covered and she doesn’t know why. It’s the day of the funeral and she freaks out saying that he’s alive and her mom thinks she’s gone crazy. She freaks out again seeing her Bridgette’s face full of scars and she has no idea what happened to her. The stickers are on the glass door. She finds some lithium pills in her bathroom prescribed by a Dr Roth. She searches the name in the phone book but the page has been torn and she finds it in the paper bin. 

At the funeral she makes a scene, she thinks he’s alive and wants them to open the casket, they refuse but then they let it fall and it opens and his head only rolls out. 

So we can assume that he was decapitated in the car accident.

She sees a blonde woman and walks to her asking who she is, the woman says that they talked ‘yesterday’ but Linda has no memory of that and the woman drives away quickly.

At night, dr Roth arrives called by her mom who questions how Bridgette hurt her face, implying that Linda needs help and might have hurt her daughter, so they take her away and commit her to a psychiatric hospital where she hears him saying that she told him about his death the day before it happened.

---Tuesday, she remembers everything but can’t understand what is going on. She searches for dr Roth’s name and in her hurry she rips the page. She goes to see him and tells him everything. He thinks she’s crazy and gives her pills (but she’ll never take them).

She visits Jim at his office where she meets his new colleague Claire and we all can see that there’s something between the two of them...

It starts raining heavily and Linda shouts to take the laundry back in, but Bridgette doesn’t see the glass door and runs right into it, hurting herself. She takes her to the hospital and Jim joins her.

She throws the phone book page in the waste bin and finally seems to put two and two together, these things are what she already saw, so she writes it all on paper, what happened each day to try and make some clarity. 

Linda covers all the mirrors so that Bridgette won’t see her scarred face.

---Friday, remembering what happened at the funeral, she now goes to talk to Claire. She learns that Jim was about to cheat on her when he died. 

She checks her insurance, where they tell her that Jim raised it right before leaving. 

She arranges everything for the funeral the next day. Her mom seems shocked that she’s so calm now.

---Sunday, Linda tells Jim to spend time with the girls and he agrees and spends time alone with them having lots of father-daughters fun. She goes to church, talking to a priest about premonitions. He tells her a story where the premonition became true and another where it didn’t. He says that people must find out what’s really important and find love again, or something like that.

Knowing about Claire, she acts weird, sending the girls to kiss their dad twice, asking him why doesn’t he tell them that he loves them. He says he loves them and then that he loves her, when the girls ask. Out in the garden she tells him that they’ve drifted apart and she doesn’t want that, then it rains and a lightning kills the crow that lands right there.

Back in the bedroom, they make love.

---Wednesday, finally Wednesday, the day Jim is supposed to die right? She wakes up to find that he didn’t wake her up like she asked him to. He took the girls to school and is now driving away.

On the phone with Claire he tells her that he can’t do it, she booked a room for them but he says that he made a mistake and can’t go throw with it.

Then he leaves the message we heard at the beginning of the movie.

Linda is right behind him, she calls him, they share words of love and both smile and she tells him to stop and wait for her, but then she notices that he stopped right where he was supposed to die so she tells him to come back. He has to stop in the road because he almost hits a car, but then the car won’t start again. Linda sees the big truck that will kill him and shouts for him to walk away, but there’s nothing she can do other than watch the accident happen in front of her eyes.

Not only his car is cut in two in the crash, but it goes on fire too.

---weeks later, we don’t know how long has it been but we see that they are moving out of that house, that Bridgette’s scars are almost gone and that she has a prominent belly, that Sunday she got pregnant.

The end.

Now, I said sick trick because if she hadn’t tried to save him making him stop and turn around, he wouldn’t have died.

Also:

-Tuesday she saw dr Roth. Why? I get it she was confused, but to call him after knowing that he committed her, that he questioned if she had anything to do with his death... doesn’t sound right.

-Thursday, the recorded message was the same he will make at the end. But why is Bridgette’s face not scarred???

-Ending: what we saw happening on Saturday was real or not? Why didn’t her mum know how Bridgette cut her face? They really locked her into an asylum? Then what happened to her after that?

They offer no answer, we find her at home ready to move out with her daughters. 

It seems all messed up to me.

Hannibal season 2

In progress

1
It starts with Hannibal and Jack fighting in Hannibal's kitchen, a big fight where they try to kill each other. Jack thinks he's winning, strangling him, but Hannibal stabs him in the neck with a piece of glass and we will have to wait to see how it ends.
12 weeks earlier:
Hannibal makes dinner for Jack. A dish so beautiful Jack says "I almost feel guilty about eating it" - Hannibal: "I never feel guilty eating anything" :-p
Will accuses Hannibal, so Hannibal tells Jack he must investigate him :-p
but Jack is very troubled and feeling guilty about Will.
Purnell, the character played by Cynthia Nyxon, asks Alana to withdraw her report on Jack for misconduct but Alana thinks that Jack destroyed Will's life so there will be an internal investigation.
Will is now in Chilton's hospital but refuses to talk to him, asking for doctor Lecter.
Beatrice, or whatever the cop's name is, tells Hannibal "you're not a suspect, you're the new Will Graham" and sure enough he goes to the crime scene.
Doctor Du Maurier (Gillian Anderson) is upset/annoyed, saying that he is making her lie for him "again". Hannibal: "it would seem Jack Crawford is less suspicious of me than you are" - "Jack Crawford doesn't know what you're capable of" - "neither do you".
Winston, one of Will's dogs, keeps going back home (awww)
Hannibal prepares a meatless meal for Chilton - since he 'lost' a kidney - and he tells Hannibal that Will had Alana hypnotise him, and tells him "you do realise you're his favourite topic of conversation. Hannibal Hannibal Hannibal. Not with me of course" and "he tells everyone that you are a monster". Hannibal: "well in that case you are dining with a psychopatic murderer Frederic" and they touch glasses :-p
Will now remembers Hannibal shoving that ear down his throat.
Alana believes Will did it but doesn't remember and is not responsible because sick.
Various bodies turn up in a river. Wills tells cop Beatrice that the killer is making a colour pallet because everyone had a different shade of skin. The body found are those he discarded.
2

Murder in three acts - 1986

A chuckling and yelling Poirot, an embarrassing Hastings and what can now be described as a very bizarre dress code. Moral: it wouldn’t be bad if the names Poirot and Hastings were taken off and if it presented itself like a comedy-mystery (not that it made me laugh at any point, but at least some things would be more acceptable in a movie marked comedy).

Problem is, this wasn’t Poirot at all. Mostly because of how it was written: joking, raising his voice, laughing, sleeping on the couch, chuckling all the time... 

and Hastings... ridicule is what it was, specially when he put that little foulard around his throat.

I don’t know why these characters were written this way, but they were totally different from the real ones (real as in : in the way Christie wrote them of course).

Plot:

Poirot joins Hastings in Acapulco because Hastings insists that he should attend a party at the famous actor Charles Cartwright’s villa. There are other guests of course, and after a toast reverend Babbington suddenly falls down, dead. It looks like a natural death, no poison is found in his glass and Poirot can see no reason for killing a man like him (although he knows very little of the man so how can he really tell and being so sure about it... :-/ )

He goes back to Los Angeles, saying that he will write his memoirs (while in reality he does nothing but sleeping on the couch without his shoes on). 

Some time later, two weeks I think, almost everyone present when the reverend died gather at the house of doctor Strange (Wally, not Stephen). There’s another death, this time is the doctor himself, and this time it was poison indeed.

Cartwright appears at Poirot’s hotel room in Los Angeles (it was a hotel right? or was it his place? not sure..) to tell him about the new death. 

Poirot investigates. He invites everyone to ask them to tell him whatever they might know about the two deaths, and at that gathering after a toast Cartwright clutches his throat very theatrically and falls down, startling everyone who think he’s dead, but not surprisingly to the viewer he’s not (I mean, it was such a fake-looking death...)

There’s a little thing that didn’t make sense I think, regarding one of the doctor’s patients, a woman in a sort of catatonic state: a telegram arrives to Poirot saying that she knows something about the murders and later on the woman is killed. I thought that Poirot orchestrated the fake telegram, but later on Poirot says that the murderer sent the telegram ( or rather payed a kid to send it) so why would he do that?? Mah.

Anyway: The ending: (so this is your warning: everything will be revealed in the next few lines.

All through the movie many characters show strange expression to make you suspect them, or exchange significant glances between them, I guess with the same purpose of making you suspect them, but nothing of that makes sense. 

Anyway, when Egg talks about a dress rehearsal, suddenly Poirot puts everything together and gather all the characters involved to solve the case.

Everybody suspected the butler to have killed the doctor because he disappeared right after, but he actually never existed. It was all a masquerade, the actor playing another role, Cartwright played the butler and that’s why the doctor joked with him that night, he knew about it of course, but what he didn’t know is that he wanted to kill him and he did. Why? Because being his doctor he had diagnosed him with some kind of psychosis that could make him become dangerous to others and to himself - it is revealed that he attempted suicide once and that’s why he has a showy scar on his wrist (that nobody knew about before the end despite him being a famous actor always around).

He killed him because he didn’t want the doc to put him away or something like that, but it is curious that the doctor thought those things of him and yet let him play that farse just for fun...

Anyway, now that all is revealed Cartwright shows his unstable nature playing his defence counsellor and stuff before being taken away by the police.

About the first murder, there was actually no motive at all, it was a random death, anyone could have died, it was just to rehearse the important murder, see that it could be done.

Hastings realise that it could have been him, and Poirot realises something much worse, that it could have been him. 

At the end, Poirot asks writer Ms Crisp to write his memoirs together and she accepts.

The girl playing Egg was very pretty, and she looked beautiful in the red dress. I didn’t understand Cartwright’s outfit, maybe designed for the warm weather?? I don’t know, white transparent shirt, white shorts and white socks just below the knee.. oh my.

There’s a scene at the market when there are really big strawberries and it looks like Poirot was about to take one (as in stealing one) before Egg came up to him startling him. :-/

At the beginning, Poirot even inquires if the writer that has a male name but is a woman is one of those people that changed sex, insisting on that point later when he will make the sign of scissors with his hand... Poirot! There can be no comment to this...

Poirot - Peter Ustinov

Hastings - Jonathan Cecil

Cartwright - Tony Curtis

Egg - Emma Samms

Angela Stafford - Diana Muldaur

Janet Crisp - Concetta Tomei

ITA Agatha Christie: delitto in tre atti

Agatha Christie's Poirot - The labours of Hercules

I didn't really like this, to me it was confusing. So many characters with barely any introduction.
It starts with a big party of some kind, with undercover agents and a chief inspector that is not Japp, and of course Poirot.
They are waiting for a thief to show up so they can catch him... A girl plays the bait with her big jewels, she's afraid but Poirot promises that she'll be safe.
This is enough for us to understand that she'll meet a terrible end, and sure enough she dies, along with a female cop and a male sergeant, I think, and a painting is also stolen.
We move three months later. Poirot still feels guilty of course. Depressed. When his driver cries because of a maid he loved but went away following her madam, a famous ballerina, to Switzerland, he promises to find her and bring her here if she agrees.
He goes to Switzerland and he's told that the murderer will also be there.
He meets a young man that was also at the party. I think he's the one that fell in love with the girl abused by her husband. From outside her door, he hears a drunkman shouting, he enters to stop him but apparently her mother killed Clayton and threw his body out the window and down the mountain. Mom and daughter are scared, and he thinks of paying the hotel for its silence, or something like that, saying "this is not England, the solution is probably a bribe"... sigh, they are all righteous in England right? A lot of people in the world can vouch for that, or at least what's left of those people now...
Anyway. Later he will confess to Poirot to killing Clayton, but Poirot doesn't believe him. He thinks the guy has integrity and is honourable, he once took the blame for his minister and now he does the same for the girl, but Poirot says that they are actually sisters who staged it all to get his money, and he guesses how it went exactly, saying that Clayton never existed and the older sister impersonated him (because women wear their clothes with the buttons right over left while men left over right...).
Poirot is told that the girl with the ballerina is not the maid he's looking for.
Poirot meets his Countess, that countess, and apparently she has a daughter, a criminologist, very cold and sharp. The countess gives him a gift, a pair of precious cufflinks!
There's an avalanche so they are all stuck at the hotel.
He asks the ballerina about the maid, she says that Nita died. This ballerina spends her time in her bed as if she was ill, with a doctor controlling her life, but Poirot tells her that she's not ill.
The countess' daughter is called Miss Cunningham, and now she yells saying that she was attacked in her room but she's unharmed, and yet her dog did nothing.
The two sisters tell Poirot that he once did nothing to get the countess arrested, and now he should do the same for them or there will be extreme measures, but he refuses to be pressed.
He gets attacked at night, a guy with moustache helps him shooting the intruder who escapes thru the window. It was the 'cop' posing as waiter, he says that he's Marascope (or something, the thief-murderer he's looking for) then he falls down the mountain.
Poirot thought that he was the undercover cop, while actually it's the guy with the moustache.
Poirot pretends to be able to repair a radio to talk to the police and he says that the road will be cleared soon.
He reunites everyone in the usual scene where he explains everything. He talks about his 'labours': first, a stolen painting has been covered and hung on the wall; the ballerina has the jewels that the murdered girl was wearing, and she IS Nita, the countess wears the brooch of the older sister , "she steals so rarely these days"...
The young man says that the sisters are gone but actually he hid them. Poirot speaks harshly to them that they prey on people's goodness.
Poirot says that Miss Cunninghan was not really attacked, she is the real Marascope. She asked the ballerina to keep the jewels with an excuse. Her accomplice is dr Lutz. She smiled eerily then drew a gun that was in her mom's bag, and Lutz too, and the cop too of course.
She doesn't shoot her mom but she turns and the young guy knocks her out... what a stupid ending.
The ending: the Miss tells him that he's so vain and smug and yet he failed the young girl and she also tells him "I shall find you" and he replies "I shall not hide"
Of course Poirot can't spare her, he spared the countess but that was different, this girl is soulless and bloody and manipulative and utterly cruel.
At the very end, Poirot takes Nita to the driver as promised. Poirot smiles to him, wearing the countess' cufflinks.

Tape 407 - 2012

Awful, a bad movie really, not even a funny b-movie, just a bad one, often annoying. Unless you really really like the idea, not so new anymore, of having the whole thing showed to you through one of the characters’ videocamera. I was never really fond of that, but here it’s also very messy and most of the time it’s also unfocused! It didn’t get me in the spirit, it only made me annoyed.

Plus: it wasn’t even clear sometimes who was recording! After a while I guessed that the two sisters used it in turns although I don’t know why since at first only one liked it and the other kept telling her to stop. Why would she do it then? To have a light? When was it set, in the 90s? It’s a 2012 movie or what? Why didn’t they all have lights on their phones? What year was this??

Anyway, details:

Teenage sisters Trish and Jessie board a plane and record everything to let us know who else is on board. 10 or 15 minutes later, right after the ‘happy new year’ , the turbulence starts and the plane crash. The yelling and confuse chatter begins.

Only half plane is visible, only a bunch of people survived, the rest is dead somewhere. Lois the flight assistant says that rescue will come soon but nobody comes, and they have done nothing but sit and wait. Nobody does a single thing to attend to the many injuries, only a man puts a belt around a girl’s arm because it’s badly cut and she keeps crying. Trish I think.

Only now Lois thinks about looking for a first aid kit (I understand the shock, but almost an hour has passed for them, people are hurt, bleeding, and nobody does a single thing..)  but they don’t use it because the main plot starts. They hear strange noises. This is the mystery of the movie, what is around there? uuuuh.

Lois finds nuts and blankets on the plane, but then something grabs her and pulls her away. They can’t see what it was. A woman, Laura, is a US agent with a gun, she shoots but doesn’t know if she hit anything. It may be dark but they can see each other pretty well, but can’t see the giant beast....

Anyway, Lois dies but she hasn’t been eaten or shot or stabbed, who knows what that thing was...

Laura yells a lot too, like everyone else. Isn’t she an agent? Yelling like a scared teenager? :-/

Now too scared to stay there, they all move and reach some kind of hut, and again they yell a lot, like ‘close the door!’ and ‘stay away from door and windows!’ ... from the window we can see a raptor-like creature, which makes me think that that hut is not really a safe place, and still nothing enters! What a polite beast, sees a closed door and stays out..

They talk and yell a lot without actually saying anything, then they find a military box with two torches, how convenient. 

They see a car, but when noises are heard again the driver goes back in and drives away, whoever he was.

They say that they are only 6 now, so the two sisters, Laura, Charlie the big man with a head injury, Jimmy the photographer and Tom the man who lost his wife in the crash.

They run away. Tom is pulled away by the mysterious creature ( ... ) and it looks like the camera is hit many times, I don’t understand what that meant...

Trish hurts her ankle and again cries that she can’t move. Everyone has disappeared, but Charlie comes back to help her. Now they switch the camera off, it’s dark but we still hear them. Why?

Camera back on, they run and find a road, also they find again Jimmy that has been bitten in a leg and Laura. They find abandoned houses, and now Trish can move on her own. It looked like she was almost dying from the arm injury and couldn’t stand on her two feet because of her ankle, now she moves with barely a limp. 

They find abandoned houses but the girls notice fresh marks of tyres and shoes... :-/ so not really an abandoned area.

They enter and find a radio. They manage to contact someone who keeps asking how many survivors there are, and insists they go back to the airplane to be rescued. There are only 5 now, since Tom was caught.

They go back to the plane, finding the road because Trish noticed the stars and they follow the stars... really, they did that...

Jimmy doesn’t feel good and throws up strange eggs...

They find a car and Laura drives. They hit something, not knowing what. Jimmy says he’ll run out to divert the attention from them but Laura runs after him.

Jessie starts driving and she hits Laura!! The only moment I actually laughed. Come on!

Jimmy is now all ‘go, go!’ Laura is dead apparently, but nobody even checked :-/

I don’t know where they lost Charlie, but there’s only the three of them now and they reach the plane but Jimmy is caught too, so they drive away again. 

It’s only the sisters now. They crash the car, but it’s morning, they go out and run. Jessie runs back to get the camera (really???) and then they run. They find a sign with secret military zone written on it, or something like that.

They find a road and a car who stops for them. The man again keeps asking how many survivors there are. He is clearly more interested in that than in what happened to them or how hurt they are.

They insist that everybody else is dead and it’s only the two of them now. They get in the car thinking they are being rescued but the man shoots them both. 

Not really a surprise, it was quite obvious.

He says something like ‘full sweep complete’ on his radio, then he picks up the camera murmuring something like let’s see what’s on this tape (or something like that, speak clearly people!) but he can’t see because the creature appears and kills him. 

Yep, it is very much like a small maybe middle-size dinosaur. 

End of the movie. So what, alien dinosaurs??? The military knew these creatures were roaming free and this man was not worried about that at all??

At least now all the yelling and confused chattering is over. good.

What an awful movie.

I think the movie can also be called Area 407, which is even worse.

Black butterfly - 2017

Not bad you know, I rather liked it, specially the end. It wasn’t what I thought at first, and I liked that. 

Antonio Banderas was ok, I didn’t like Jonathan Rhys Meyers but maybe that’s a good thing because he’s the mysterious vagabond who must give you the chills, Piper Perabo was ok too.

I recommend it to anyone who is not in search of a strictly orthodox thriller or horror because this movie is not that. There is no horror at all, there isn’t much in terms of crime investigation, barely any in fact, and there is a bit of thriller but there are also moments of slow talking and slow scenes.

It is an enjoyable movie to watch once, not so sure the second time because once you know the end, you’re left with the boring parts only. 

So this is a serious WARNING to future me and everyone who might find this, if you haven’t seen it or have forgotten it completely, don’t read further because once you know the end there’s no more reason for watching it again.

Details:

It starts with a crime, we see a family: father and son are playing while the wife walks to their car alone. When they reach the car too, she’s nowhere to be found.

Then the movie starts introducing the main characters: Paul is a writer who lives alone in a very solitary area, with a big empty field in front and a small lake. He drinks a lot and his house is a mess. His wife left him and he has writer block. He wants to sell the house because he has no money, so Laura is trying to sell it for him.

While driving to the shop, his agent tells him that his screenplay has been rejected the way it is and he’s so angry that he starts driving fast and wants to pass a truck at all costs but the driver won’t let him go easily.

He stops for a coffee with Laura, they talk of the house then he invites her to dinner. She appears hesitant but accept, to talk about business.

The truck driver appears and seems mad at his earlier behaviour, but a man throws him out, whispers something in his ear and the driver goes away.

Paul has no money so he buys everything promising he’ll pay later. Poor shop owner, I hate it when people do that, if 1% of them may actually need help and will pay as soon as possible for sure, all the rest are just taking advantage. Even if they will pay, that’s still taking advantage since shop owners have to pay for their stuff too, and usually immediately of they won’t get their goods. 

People: pay for what you buy!! 

Anyway, let’s move on.

Driving back home, Paul meets the vagabond Jack who helped him earlier and picks him up. He tells him that he can stay at his home for the night and a hot shower, but then the next day Jack starts talking about doing a few jobs for him, repairs around the house, cleaning and cooking, in exchange for his hospitality, and it may take a few days or more...

Paul tells him that he’s alone and there is no phone and no internet (well he has his cell phone, but no home phone due to some problem), which doesn’t seem the right thing to do, it really seems the basic start of the classic thriller, and you start waiting for the moment Jack will turn psycho on him.

Jack has a black butterfly tattooed on his back, and says that it’s very rare and hard to catch, hence the title of the movie.

Other than working, Jack talks to Paul asking about his life and his work. Tells him that he must stop drinking (Paul drinks A Lot!) and focus on his writing. Jack suggests writing a new story using his life, a story about a once famous writer who is now an alcoholic and picks up a vagabond... they talk about it together, Jack reads the first draft and burns it and gives more suggestions.

He attacks Paul in his sleep with a knife at his throat, saying he only wanted to show him how it works in real life, unlike in his script where girls begs not to be hurt when that happens for real one is not able to talk at all.

A delivery man knocks on his door and Jack raises the rifle at Paul, who tells him to put it away. Jack apologises, saying that he’s been in prison once and is a bit paranoid now (doesn’t really makes sense, but let’s move on). Paul is angry and tries to walk away, Jack follows him, Paul punches him, they fight and Jack wins.

Paul tries to drive away at night, but Jack stops him and makes him smash his bottles of alcohol.

When Laura shows up saying she was worried because she hasn’t heard from him in days, he tries to leave with her using her car, but Jack appears on the road stopping them shooting at the car, and brings them back to the house. 

Jack is now using a black double-barrel rifle, whatever that’s called, which is definitely not the one he had used before, not the one he found in Paul’s house and that he said he used for hunting.

Where does that come from??

A sheriff arrives asking Paul if he has seen a missing woman, he says he has never seen her, but then when he’s walking away Paul screams his name so Jack runs out, forces the sheriff in the truck of his car and shoots him.

This is where I got suspicious, because we didn’t really see him shooting the man, why not?

Paul and Laura lock themselves in the house. Jack pretends to drive away with the police car so Paul takes Laura out and they run towards the train (why? to catch it while it’s moving? I don’t think that might work in real life, those things are fast and people’s arms are not made of iron...) but Laura hurts her ankle running so he stops for her and Jack catches them again.

Laura stabs Jack with a small pair of scissors and angry he takes her to another room not telling us what happens there.

Paul has been tied up with duck tape, but he manages to free himself breaking a picture frame and cutting the tape with the glass (and not even a scratch on his hands or wrists!!)

He takes the weapon, sees the girl on the floor and threatens Jack, starts saying that it is a sign from God, that he is grateful because Jack was sent by God to him, the vagabond who goes around killing women giving him the chance to stop him... and he takes a hidden box with mementos of those women putting something in Jack’s bag. 

So Paul is the one who killed those women! And now wants to blame it all on Jack. Paul shoots him but it turns out that he only shoots blanks. He has his hunting rifle again? It looks like that, but this is a double-barrel, the first one looked smaller, like it only had one??  I’m not sure about this though, hunting rifles always have two after all right? Boh.

Jack takes the rifle and knocks him off. When Paul comes to he’s on a chair, handcuffed, and Jack and Laura are wearing FBI vests, and even the ‘truck driver’ has one, and the sheriff is alive.

Many people are in his house, searching for evidence. 

Jack tells him that he’s been looking for him for three years, that they found all the bodies but the first one, his wife, and asks him where he buried her.

Paul plays it cool, saying that he came into his house and planted those evidence, and the words he said were just part of his screenplay and nothing more.

Jack must get a confession or they have nothing, but then Jack notices something. A dirty excavator. He looks at the picture of Paul’s wife, taken right outside the house, and notices that there was no lake. He asks Paul, what would he found if he were to dig underneath his pond, really underneath it? Would he find his wife?

Now Paul understands that he’s lost and tries to bargain to put the death penalty out of the table, but Jack tells him that he had his chance and now it’s too late and walks out.

The end? No it’s not. There’s one more scene!

The screen goes black and it looks like the ending but then something falls down waking Paul up, and we see him lying on a couch with an old typewriter in front of him and he starts writing a new script called Black Butterfly...

you can understand that it was all a dream, from the start, because everything looks different (only the bottle of alcohol looks the same).

Before he wrote on a computer sitting at a desk, now he has an old typewriter and writes sitting on the couch.

This was the second switch, it had all been but a dream, all of it, and he uses it as his new screenplay.

Personally I like this ending :-)

Pisac u najam by Zoran Zivkovic

First of all, the title and the last name of the author aren’t written exactly like this, but I have no idea how to write it with the right characters, sorry about that. 

He’s a Serbian author and this is his first work that I’ve read. I liked it very much. It’s a small book, 139 pages the one in my hands, and written with rather big characters, but that’s no problem at all, I enjoyed very much reading it. I thought it was nice, intriguing and funny. The ending was a little hurried and not completely explained, but that can’t erase the nice moments and laughs it caused me while reading it.

The protagonist is a writer, we follow his thoughts and what he does. The whole book’s plot starts and finishes in one day. He is obsessed with receiving messages and checking them immediately, and he’s also obsessed with saving every single e-mail into different folders.

He lives alone and hasn’t written anything in a while, he’s stuck. He has a cat that he ‘rescued’ one day: he was walking and this little kitty did his big cat-eyes at him and he brought him home. Since then, they have learned to live together and of course the cat is not as ‘little’ anymore.

The story starts with our writer receiving an e-mail from someone who won’t give his real identity but conceal himself under ‘a fan’, Ammiratore. He asks him to write something for him and give him all the credits. Our writer (who goes by the name Felix as his cat when online) is outraged, but keeps replying with calm and politeness. 

Usually Felix doesn’t receive many letters all at once, but today seems to be an exception. After his ‘fan’, four other pen-friends fill his day. We read each e-mail with him, read his thoughts, and then his replies. From time to time his cat disrupts his thoughts doing something, like walking on his desk, sleeping on his notebook - which is not a big bother since he usually uses the big one.

Whenever he gets irritated his cat shoos the anger away. We learn of the difficulties he went through the first days of their living together, when he didn’t know how a cat releases energy from time to time running around playing, how the cat keeps sharpening his claws on his furniture, how he once fell off the window scaring him to death, how they have slowly become inseparable, so much that he now loves his cat dearly... it’s adorable how he talks about how he doesn’t want to wake him up when it sleeps on his notebook, how it has slowly become the center of his world and the master of the house...

the pen-friends stories are rather bizarre and sometimes funny.

Altomare is another writer, who thinks  the outmost of himself and he’s probably jealous that his work isn’t recognised as much as Felix’s , Banana is a flashy big woman who approached him one day and started sending him her impressions upon reading his books before sending him her own attempt at writings, which means various different episodes based on dreams she dreamed on the night between Tuesday and Wednesday (other nights’ dreams don’t matter to her); the episodes are all so different that it doesn’t seem a book at all, and she’s waiting to dream the dream that will link them all together.

There’s P-0, also a fan of course, who sent him a pastiche after the other, based on his own books (basically he started from the original, changing many things but keeping the soul of it, more or less) and then there is Pandora, an old woman who lives in the same building: they met at the veterinary, she has a very old dog and they started talking and then they exchanged e-mails, and she also started sending him little things she wrote, at first about little moments with animals as protagonists, then about her walks with her dog.

The curious thing is that today they all have strange requests. 

P-0 has already wrote a pastiche for all his books, so he says he would like to write the pastiche before the original, and wants him to write the original based on his pastiche, which of course makes no sense.

Banana tells him that she finally dreamed the conclusive dream: she saw him writing it! and then since they were both half naked they did... that, and now she wants him to write the most important (and impossible) chapter for her, and her letters become more and more incoherent, talking about her ‘book’ as if she was a single mother and he was leaving her without acknowledging their son.. at last he stops replying to her and she becomes aggressive in her last letter.

Pandora says that her dog is about to die - too old and unwell - and she wishes he will write a book about her dog so that reading it might soothe her pain.

Another curious thing is that today they all start telling him that he should write it using a pseudonym and they all suggest Felix.

He doesn’t want to do what they ask of him and at first he replies politely trying to make them understand that , but when they insist and insist he gives up and stops replying.

The same thing goes for Altomare too, he talks to him about writing under another name, then about doing parodies of his own work, using the name Felix.

After he stops replying to them, he concentrates on his ‘fan’, and him too suggests using the name Felix so he wonders who that is, how he knows him, and if he might be one of the others...

but then the cat makes him stop all this nonsense, and we understand that he himself was writing as his ‘fan’ using his notebook, and that the purpose of all this was to be able to write again, and it works. He says he’ll write to the other four accepting to do what they ask in his own way, all of them together, because like the ‘fan’ said, he won’t be stuck anymore and he’ll be able to write... this book, I’d say, is the final result. Writing about the cat Felix will be the solution to his problem.

The letters were quite funny as the story progresses :-D

It was a very nice read. It only stopped too abruptly, leaving me a bit... I mean, why did he agree with the others who were so insistent and in Banana’s and Altomare’s case even rude in the end? And more, what were they all threatening to do to him if he didn’t agree? We’ll never know.

There was a point half-way through where one ponders: how is it that the notebook is opened if he’s not using it? (when he says he hurries to close it so the cat can sleep on it since he likes that). Still, as always I don’t like to stop and think of things, I’m not interested in guessing the ending, I’d rather be surprised. Anyway, it was just a little clue, that is recalled at the end, when he says that he quickly sends the last email so he can close the notebook for the cat again. 

ITA il ghostwriter.

Independence day : resurgence - 2016

A big toy-movie, I found it entertaining enough, I honestly feared worse. It was quite predictable indeed, but the many battle-scenes made it entertaining anyway. It’s full of b****hit, absolutely, no doubt about that, and also many elements wanted to recreate the first story, of course, plus there were many details that... well, I couldn’t avoid thinking of the Millennium Falcon escaping from the beast mouth in one scene, or thinking of Star Trek many many times, and not because Brent Spiner is in the movie, he was in the first too but that was different.

We see most of the old characters/actors, but of course not Will Smith, I can understand that, but still I think they didn’t need to make his character dead :-/ 

They chose a female President for this movie, only to have her make a terrible decision and then kill her off. :-/

The characters are: Jake (Liam Hemsworth), a pilot; Dylan Hiller (Jessie T. Usher), the little kid of the first film now all grown up, a pilot himself like dad was. David Levinson (Jeff Goldblum) of course, and his father Julius (Judd Hirsch). The old president Whitmore (Bill Pullman) and his daughter Patricia (Maika Monroe). General Adams (William Fichtner), the scientist Okun (Brent Spiner), Mrs Hiller (Vivica A. Fox) and the new entry: the new president (Sela Ward), Rain (Angela Baby) another pilot, and Charlie (Travis Tope) the silly talk-too-much pilot, plus an African Warlord or something, rather cool.

So, in details:

a very stupid, very American, very human decision: they see a sphere-like ship approaching, and without knowing anything about it they shoot it down. Which is more or less why everything else happens. How demented is that? It COULD be an enemy, so just in case shoot it dead !! 

... 

Did they think it was a Borg ship???

They didn’t care about the possibility that they might be declaring war to another alien race, as if one wasn’t enough. Let’s not talk about killing some innocent aliens, it’s not like people care about innocent’s lives if they’re not their own, right?

Anyway.

We are told that after the events of the first movie, Earth sort of reunited, putting aside all the insignificant differences, realising we are all on the same side and all that stuff that is so Star Trek, but so not human. 

We meet Jake and his friend Charlie who gets distracted during a complex operation and almost causes the whole base to be crashed under a big thing (what was it, a weapon of some kind? I’m not sure). Jake acts of his own initiative saving the day but nobody thanks him, instead accusing him of the accident.

The aliens and their stuff have been dormant for twenty years and all of a sudden they wake up. Also an alien machine in Africa, now it is all light up. 

Honestly, I think they were taking the whole matter a bit too lightly...

In Africa we meet David again, and also Catherine (Charlotte Gainsbourg), who knows why, she studies the aliens and for whatever reason the Africans obey her...

Dylan is some sort of hero (because of himself or because of who is father is?) while Jake caused some accident during training, so as soon as they meet again, Dylan punches him in the face. 

Charlie has a crush on the new Chinese pilot Rain and his way of approaching her is rather embarrassing...

After they shoot down the sphere-like ship, they want David to attend a ceremony instead of studying the ship, but Jake ‘steals’ a ship and goes to pick him up. Catherine follows, so does the Warlord (if he had a name I didn’t catch it) and also, unfortunately, some kind of little bureaucrat  - I really have no idea what was his role in the movie, I only know that he was very annoying, that he was embarrassing, and that his character added to the stupidity because as it often happens the guy that at first looked like he had never lifted anything other than a pen suddenly becomes a warrior... well more or less, but still, he fights without killing himself.

At the ceremony to remember the heroes of the 1996 war of course David is not present, but president Whitmore shows up, in a sort of delirious state before his head starts hurting exactly like Okun’s - by the way, he also woke up after twenty years... and he started walking around as if only a night had passed. I thought he was dead...

A huge spaceship approaches, and after a scene much like Spaceballs where the ship never ends, this one scratches the moon before resting very close to Earth - it wants to dig to reach its center. 

It’s so big that it has its own gravity, and all things are attracted up towards it. 

Miller’s mom saves a woman and her baby but then she falls to her death. 

There’s a group of kids on the run, their families may have died and they are alone. They have a car and they meet Levinson dad and join him. 

The pilots try to attack the ship but it’s a tough battle, some manage to get in but it was a trap and their bombs don’t work, there’s an energy field. 

The warlord has killed an alien before and knows a little of their language... I mean, hats off to the only guy who seems to know how to actually kill aliens, without all the silly toys that the others like so much, but really, how did he learn their language? It seems easy when they tell you ‘x means this, y means that, so I guess that z means blahblah’, but when he didn’t know the meaning of any one symbol, how did he learn it? How can they say that he knows, maybe he guessed wrong, because come on, it can only be a guess, it’s not like he can access more data to confirm his theories....

It turns out that the ship they attacked at the beginning was actually here to help, it’s a sphere, the last survivor of its species, trying to put together a resistance. The aliens know it and want to destroy it. Good move, humans, you always know what to do! Shoot down the only one who was on our side!

There’s a big attack, the ex president goes on a suicide mission, the big mother ship is destroyed but not the alien-mother because it has a personal shield. Patricia (ex president’s daughter, I think) breaks that shield with a strong attack, but now the alien-queen calls all her ships to surround her and protect her and goes to get the sphere. Dylan and the others manage to get themselves free since they are now in alien ships and they manage to kill the queen before she gets the sphere. 

Of course now that the queen is dead the battle is over. As everyone knows, where there’s an almost unbeatable race trying to kill us all, don’t waste your time and your characters-without-a-name’s lives fighting them one by one, go directly to their mom, ‘cuz all aliens are mama’s alien-boy and without her they don’t know what to do anymore, ships stop moving, aliens stop fighting, even the huge ship digging to the center of the Earth stops immediately and leaves heading back home. 

Not sure why, actually. Why did it leave? Does it have no shield left? Why isn’t it continuing its mission?

Anyway, the film ends with... how can I put it... you see, the thing is, it’s such nonsense that it’s hard to know how to say it. Basically the sphere tells Okun that humans are so great that it wants humans to lead the resistance against the bad aliens.... did it forget already that these so called great humans shoot it down on sight? Sure, after that they got lucky, which is the main and best characteristics of all these human heroes: the sphere was not destroyed and at the end the bad-aliens ran away with their tails between their legs, for whatever reason... and you know what they say, better to be lucky than rich, so the sphere is probably hoping that their luck will continue.

But ehi! I’m all for it if they want to make a third movie bringing the battle up there, I would watch it because even with all the nonsense, these movies are still entertaining, and the nonsense is not so much as to spoil the entertainment, so yeah, do make a third movie and concentrate on alien-humans fights, and big ships and whatnot. 

Maybe since you’re at it, see if you find another place for the humans, because after all the damage done to the moon and to the Earth, I don’t think things could really be the same here.... 

I mean, a 3000 miles diameter alien ship drilling its way to Earth core... that’s got to hurt...

ITA independence day: rigenerazione

カーストヘヴン Caste Heaven - Heaven of school caste by Ogawa Chise

I only read a few chapters online hoping it would change, show a hint of light at the end of the tunnel, but no, and it left me physically sick. Disgusted by the world created, where nobody is at least a decent human being, full of rape and violence and cruelty. It’s set in a school, so they are all classmates, and they are all present, unlike many stories where there’s a main couple and all the others are there only to fill the background. Yet, with so many characters, there isn’t one decent.

The plot that you read everywhere is “ruled by a cruel and arbitrary ranking system, the school is a pool of jealousy, envy and lust. Azusa was the king for a long time but one day he falls to the very bottom”.

This is nothing like Battle Royale though. This is a class where every year (or every so often, it’s not really clear when things will change) they see an empty cardbox on the teacher’s desk at it is announced that they must start looking for the cards. What they can find will be their role in the class until the game will start again. 

There’s a king and a queen, the highest ranks. Then there are those that suck up to the leaders, until at the very bottom there is “the target”, the one that will be constantly targeted. 

It starts with Azusa being the king and acting like a bully. When the game starts again he thought he could use Karino’s ‘crush’ on him to get him to find the king card for him, but Karino actually gets the king card for himself and hands the target card to Azusa, the only card left since he didn’t even try to search, he only wanted the king card and nothing else and was convinced he could use the other guy to obtain it. 

From this moment, those that had been bullied before become the bullies and Karino starts raping Azusa at any chance he gets. It’s not a case of ‘intimate’ or ‘unhealthy’ relationships, it’s a matter of rape treated as if it was just sex, as if it could be explained. 

Azusa’s character gets a little bit of background, to explain why he is who he is, because his mother (the only decent character I saw, but not a very ‘important’ one) is a poor woman, a prostitute who always told him that there are those at the top of society and those at the bottom and she hopes that he might finish school and find a way not to be at the bottom like her. She raised him alone and loves him, trying her best to survive in this f... up world. 

Azusa always felt that he can be what he wants, that he can be on top, should be actually. Throughout those pages I read he was the only one who didn’t change who he was in the first page, it only changed what he could do and what was done to him, but not his attitude or who he was. 

Still, the story starts with him being a bully, enjoying using others and punching the low-levels. So, he will be the victim throughout the story, but he started as a bully. 

One guy, the quiet one, seems to be a good guy for like a few seconds, even handing a better card to ex-target-Atsumu (I think that’s his name) and keeping a lower one for himself. They start a relationship and it seems like they’re both good, but then only weak-Atsumu keeps mostly on the ‘good’ side. The quiet guy becomes a shit himself when he helps Karino in his sadistic plan to have Atsumu rape Azusa - both the victim are forced in this, Atsumu doesn’t want to. Actually Atsumu is the only character that shows (other than a soul) how ‘society’s system’ unfortunately works. He kept being scared even after getting the Jack card, then started voicing his thoughts to protect his quiet guy, then started to feel that the Jack’s power wasn’t enough when the queen took away his guy for a while and he started thinking that he needed to be king and almost killed-hurt the queen if his guy hadn’t stopped him. He realises then that he almost became a monster and wants it to stop. He’s also the only one who ‘rebeled’ when he tried to talk to a teacher to stop Karino from keeping raping Azusa, and in retaliation Karino did what he did with the quiet guy’s help, making Atsumu’s wish to never make a friend again so to not put them in danger.

The toughest part though is that it’s not clear why this system exist. The teachers seem to not care at all, basically it’s the student themselves who carry on with this. The king tells his classmates to rape Azusa (to make him decide to accept to be raped by only him and not by everyone) and they run after him, just like that. Why do they do it? Nobody is forcing them. They enjoy the little power they have, it seems, because it’s always the student themselves who get upset if the target or a low-level seems to keep his head high or something, the adults seem to be absent almost completely. No adult seems to give a shit about this whole thing. One way or the other. If the students wanted it to stop, they wouldn’t even have to do much. They could respect the ‘system’, which means the king and queen come first, and then the others, and if there’s a surprise-interrogation let’s throw the target to the teacher... there would be no need for violence at all, that’s just them wanting it. The kids. They enjoy the system, revel in it, use it to express all their inner darkness.

It is also sad that Karino is rich, like the son of a rich man or a politician, I think it was, which also makes me think, what if he couldn’t find a high-level card? He does, but would they have accepted it if he hadn’t? Could this son of an important family ever be the target? 

Actually, do families know about the ‘system’?

Let’s not even waste words on the hypothesis that Karino might really be into Azusa and doing this to protect him or shit like that, because I hate all that. If he wanted to protect him the first step would be NOT to rape him every single day, NOT humiliate him, NOT torture him like that. Pretty simple.

I understand that it may be compared to real society, and there might be long discussions about this, and blah blah blah, still that would be true even if there was less violence. 

I don’t know if it has been finished by the author or if it’s still going on; if it’s finished and someone has read how it goes, I’d like to know if there is a light at the end of the tunnel or not (and how long is this tunnel...). I can’t bear it any longer, things only get worse page by page, the rapes are frequent and violent and I’m sick, emotionally and physically, I can’t stand this. 

Inspector Morse - The silent world of Nicholas Quinn

I liked this episode too. Not so much to watch it again and again, but enough to recommend everyone to give it a first try. It shows a bit of his personality: he likes to hear music very very loud, and he looooooves beer :-p

At a university, a man is killed, Quinn. He and his colleagues wrote exams.
Morse says that he always drinks at lunch time, it helps his imagination. He also says no woman would put up with him because he plays his records too loud...
Lewis doesn't like Morse drinking at a victim's house.
Morse uncovers a scandal about some of the university people selling the exams. Another one, Philip Ogleby, is killed, the one Morse suspected, and the Monica woman he kinda liked is hospitalised because of shock.
Morse likes "all sorts of puzzles, brain teasers, anything where you have to use your logic. My weakness is guess work, I leap to conclusions, sometimes, usually wrong"
At the inquest Morse reveals that he already has a warrant in his hand and is about to make an arrest. He arrests someone, an accomplice, and at the end arrests Quinn's boss, which surprised me because after his explanation of the 'how' I had another man in mind, and then it was indeed the cheating husband I had been thinking of, the one who showed up late because he was hiding the body.
At the beginning Morse says to Lewis: "you know Morse's law: there's always a 50-50 chance that the man who found the body did the deed" - "well, I was going to arrest him on the spot but I thought I'd let you have the pleasure" :-p
It took me some time to remember something: Morse realises he's 'gone and arrested the wrong man' when he realises that, if you read lips, it's easy to confuse 'doctor Bartlet' with 'Donald Martin', and at first I didn't remember the connection with Quinn until it came back to me that Quinn had asked Bartlet if "he" was involved but no, it was Martin.
At the end Lewis says "I should have arrested Martin straight away" because of "Morse's law" and Morse says: "that isn't Morse's law. Morse's law is : there's always time for one more pint" :-p
Just when Morse had decided to go watch 'last tango in Paris' they changed it to 101 Dalmatians, so Lewis goes home to fetch wife and kids :-D

Inspector Morse - The dead of Jericho

I had never seen this series, but I liked this first episode. This ep (haven't seen enough to judge the whole series, so I judge ep by ep) was slow, 'peaceful' for a crime show, you know, quiet, but not boring because many things happen and you find them out along with Morse, little by little.

Details:
Morse says that he doesn't use his first name and that it's not him being silly, it was his parents being silly :-p
He walks a friend home, and Ned, a weird young musician, lives with her, and her neighbour Mr Jackson spies on her through the window. She sings in the choir with Morse.
Anne is very patient with Ned and gives him everything, even money, willingly. Mr Jackson has a key and does work in her house and gets angry when she tells him not to spy on her anymore.
When Morse doesn't find her at home he goes to the choir performance alone.
It seems like she hanged herself. Mr Jackson tells Lewis that he gave back the key and that he saw Morse coming and going from that house... this is how Lewis and Morse first come together.
Annie had a baby boy that was adopted, and was pregnant again when she died. Mr Jackson knows that married Mr Richards had an affair with her and blackmails him. Later on, he is killed.
Morse talks to Ned to ask if he killed her or had an affair with her or otherwise why was he stealing from her, and Ned hits him on the head and runs out.
Richards calls Morse 'the singing policeman' :-p Detective Bell tells Morse that he keeps 'turning up like a bad penny' - 'I do, don't I?' :-p
Morse suspected Richards but he was talking to him when Jackson was killed.
Bell is promoted superintendent, and Morse gets the case. He's chief inspector now, working with Lewis.
He suspected Richards because his car was at Anne's house with a ticket on it. Richards was with another woman, it was his wife Adele, she went there but Anne was already dead.
Adele took love letters between Anne and her husband, Ned found her dead too but he needed heroine so he took her money and left.
Anne killed herself because Richards broke her heart.
For a moment Morse thought that Ned might be her lover or her lost son, but he wasn't.
Regarding Mr Jackson, the Richards brothers swapped places, and one of them killed him, the one who was not with Morse, whatever his name was.

Morse - John Thaw
Lewis - Kevin Whately
Anne - Gemma Jones

ITA ispettore Morse

Operasjon Arktis - 2014

From Norway. It was a good movie, with three children as protagonists. They don't really get along with each other, and they 'accidentally' end up alone in a deserted island. They must survive the cold and the bears, waiting for the stupid grown-ups to find them. Luckily food is not a big problem.
Details: Julia is the older sister. She cares about appearance, and at the new school she doesn't want to be mingled with her little brother and sister: Sindre and Ida. Basically Ida is a little know-it-all who thinks that Julia is a good-for-nothing, while Sindre is a bit of a troublemaker, butt a good kid: he won't lower his head and he would fight any bully on his way, but since Julia keeps on her own as if she doesn't know them, he doesn't listen to her at all. Their father is located at a base somewhere else, and Sindre misses him a lot, so when he sees a helicopter he wants to go to his father.
When the pilot sees the three children he warns them to stay away, and he's well satisfied when he sees them walking away, and thinks nothing more of it. Moron.
Sindre runs back and his sisters run after him. Julia tries to stop them but nobody listens to her so she joins them.
On the deserted, iced island there was a man, a researcher checking how much the climate change is affecting the ice and the lives of the bears. He got injured so he called for help. Now the helicopter is sent on an emergency rescue mission, but the children don't know this, so they hide inside the helicopter thinking they'll go to see their father. As soon as it lands, the children go out. It's night, dark, and they don't realise that they are in the wrong place. Well, Julia does, but they don't listen to her plea to go back inside the helicopter until they see it fly away without them.
Now they are there alone, nobody knows where they are. Their mom immediately calls their father and searches start immediately, but of course nobody thinks that they might have gone that far.
Well, they should have, and maybe would have, if that pilot had told anyone that he had seen the children... but he says nothing. He never thought it was important..?!? He was the last person to see them, but he never thought of telling anyone that he had seen them.... I mean, what do you call someone like that???
Anyway, the helicopter obviously landed near the researcher's shelter, so that's where the kids go, still thinking that in the morning they'll be able to ask someone for help, until morning comes and they realise where they are. There is nobody, nothing around them, only ice. They eat the man's food and have enough food to keep them warm while inside. Julia was dressed very lightly (for appearance purposes) but luckily she finds a big coat in there (wow, the man was twice her size, and yet...)
They find the man's diary and also a dog for company (the other dogs went into the helicopter? I think so). Reading that the man called for help, Julia realises there must be a radio somewhere. They find it but have trouble using it. They don't know how to make it work. Ida wants to do it but Julia doesn't let her because she's younger, and Julia tries herself but doesn't know how. There is also a mother-bear in search for food, for her and her little bear, but they manage to hide inside the shelter.
Now, there were many moments when two younger children made you want to slap them in the face, causing a lot of troubles, until you remember that they are indeed children, without proper control, so... it's actually quite understandable. Ida heard on tv that there is better reception in high places, so she sneaks out at night while the others sleep, takes the radio and tries to lift it up to see if it works, but it's heavy, she's a little girl, and no surprise, she drops it and loses sight of it...
The first time they see the bears the younger children are like 'awww so cute' and Ida is like waiting for them to come near, until Julia drags them inside the shelter. The dog is left outside, and the little ones want to open the door, but Julia is against it because it's too dangerous (well, she was right), fortunately the dog isn't as stupid as many humans and finds a way to hide behind the wood stack and go unnoticed. Thanks to the bear though, they discover the existence of a place underground with food provisions. That's great, now they'll have food for a long time, right? No, wrong, because Sindre thinks it's a great idea to go there alone to get food for the dog, and forgets the door open. Julia is very angry when she finds the place has been totally emptied by the hungry bear.
I mean, these two little children cause a lot of troubles, but they are indeed little children, left unguarded... so it's not really surprising, it's rather quite understandable.
Julia thinks they should move, but they meet more trouble when Sindre falls in the iced water because the ice was too thin. Julia saves him but she falls too (in order to save him), but luckily Ida keeps her head straight and manages to save her using something Julia can cling onto so she can lift her out of the water.
Sindre gets sick, no wonder, but now Julia starts reasoning on their choices. She asks Ida where the radio fell, and together they manage to get it back. It hadn't fallen in the water, only on the ice. Julia this time leaves it to Ida to try and make it work. The little scholar follows the book instructions (there was a manual? Come on, Julia, there was a manual?) and manages to make it work, and she leaves a message to a surprised man. They are starting to lose hope, Sindre is sick, they are tired...
The man who received the message calls others to discuss it, because it was a strange message, and he's told that there is nobody on that island, but luckily their mother listens to the discussions, and when she realises that the last time they went there was the same day the children went missing, she runs to that stupid helicopter pilot ( 'yes, I saw them, but I told them to go away, they were not in the helicopter'...... I have no words... ). The parents realise that they must have hidden in the back and immediately arrange a rescue mission. That night the weather is horrible and they can't see them and think of going back, until Julia manages to light a fire. She had prepared it earlier, but of course it was difficult to light it with a simple lighter, so she poured gasoline on it and she managed to light it, but it wasn't enough. Luckily ( !! ) since it was heavy she had left a trail of gasoline that made the fire move to the gasoline tank, which exploded alerting the people on the helicopter, so they went back and rescued the children.
The movie ends right there, after the parents hug the children.