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Obviously Sholay is the 'big one' with Amitabh and Dharmendra, with good reason. However, way back in the day of video cassettes and those early-on Hindi channels had the shows that just played songs (always my favorite shows, even more than actual movies most of the time), the songs of this movie have lived rent free in my head. Because they're fucking amazing - all of them.

Ek Rasta; Humka Maafi Dai Do; Yaar Ki Khabar; Ladki Pasand Ki; Ab To Ram Hi Jaan Bachaye - not just the music, mind you, but the filming of the songs as well (admittedly, in that end, some more than others). I absolutely loved (and still love) these songs immensely.

So, after much putting off and the recent struggle-bus of trying to find a movie to watch, I finally just said "fuck it" and turned to this. After all - if you're never sure, just find one that has songs you love, so at least that'll keep you entertained (well, except for the modern day movies, where a lot of the fun songs just play over the end credits, forcing you to suffer through hours of bad before getting the song). So, we get to this 1980 flick - released 5 years after Sholay but once again teaming up the lead duo (and, to some extent, Amjad Khan as a bad guy, though his role is much less vital here).

Typical of the 70s/80s, we start of with a Disney-level killing off of the parents (though, importantly, 'no body' comes into play in 1 instance) by an evil sort-of family member (someone who, we very quickly learn, just cares about the money the family has) who decides to keep the kids around and raises them - via fear and threats - to be a cop (Amitabh) and a thief (Dharmendra). And for years, they've done his bidding. They grow up and Amitabh returns from police training (yay, Ek Rasta!) and now he wants them to join/take on the smugglers of the country (that's a good thing, right?). But of course things go from there - they fall in love (yay, more songs!), old faces return (Helen!), the inconsequential bad guys play small roles before dying (Sujit Kumar, who really only shows up to ogle during 1 performative song and then have a long fight sequence across a field before dying; Prem Chopra, who at least gets multiple scenes before he drives a car off a cliff and has it burst into flames; slightly more time for Amjad Khan, who ends up also dying in a car), there's a very minor laugh track (thankfully not overdone like 90s Bollywood went crazy with) with a police inspector (of course, most of the fun just comes from our leads) - and eventually the truth of who killed their father is going to come out. Cue overly dramatic fight sequence on a ship and, to cap it off, a very poorly green-screened escape of all our good guys on a raft.

Sholay, it is not (though, honestly - I like the songs here much better). But its still enjoyable for the majority of its 2 hour, 45 minute run time. And the songs keep you going early on, and the tunes come back at various times at background music just to remind you. It never goes full bonkers - beyond sidelining so many typical 'main villain' actors - and also, thankfully, isn't as heavy as Sholay (sometimes, you don't need to leave a movie crying), but it is entertaining. And that's good enough.

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Wow, as crazy as the first one was, this one was even more so. (Maybe even to beyond-absurd levels.)

What amounts to emotional blackmail (and threats of lawsuit) bring our two leads back together - Anna's character as a blogger-turned-author (fresh off of sleeping with Blake's husband and all the truths we learned about her and her brother and her father and her husband and her kid) being coerced, at her own book reading, by Blake's recently-released-from-prison character to be the maid of honor at her upcoming wedding. In gorgeous Italy, of course, because Blake has found herself a man who apparently has ties to the mob.

But, of course, nothing is simple - on top of Anna, who still isn't sure why she is there and if Blake is planning to killer her, we have Blake's ex-husband (again, the guy who slept with Anna as well), and a very unhappy to-be mother-in-law, and two uneasily-at-peace warring families, and, just to add to the fun, Blake's mother.

And, of course, things quickly go to shit - the ex-husband, a full-on drunkard now, ends up dead ('accident,' of course, because no one is going to blame such a big family - though we, of course, know better, partially because we saw it happen). And that's not even the beginning of it - things get every more crazily fucked up after that. More deaths, crazy twists, and what might be the worst FBI agent ever.

Of course, it isn't even the crazy twists that really get you - it is the story Blake tells towards the end, and the ending bits. Like, just fucking bonkers, whomever came up with this story. (Also, the Tiberius locale death scene just looks crazy fake, to the point of being hilarious - hopefully this was intentional, because otherwise it is definitely a scar on this film.)

I wonder what's next: Yet Another Simple Favor, or whatever. It'll probably be equally bonkers and ridiculous - but clearly that is what this story is going for. And it feels like they've achieved it - which, congrats to them. Let's bring on the 3rd one!

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Oh my fucking god YES!!

This is so much fun - the chemistry between everyone, Bob, Yelena and Red Guardian just being fucking amazing throughout, Bucky's scenes (which, admittedly, were in the trailer)! We get a crazy awesome villain (under-utilized, maybe even?) that delves into the idea of loneliness/being alone and needing others/family, and family itself, and not running from the past or just pushing all emotions into a void within you and trying to hide them - it's so well done!

That end credits scene, too - super exciting! I don't know how it'll all work out, though I'm sure that'll come to us soon enough, but it is so exciting!

The resolution of the '*' in the name, also. And getting to see Geraldine Viswanathan, which reminds me also that I need to watch the 4th season of Miracle Workers.

Val not getting her just desserts - in fact, if anything, she just got actual desserts - was a bit of a sour point, but I guess that was expected. The Bucky/Red Guardian duo didn't get as much 'buddy' time as they did in that What If? episode, but clearly they were able to start on that journey (especially Red Guardian), and for sure if you gave them time, it could happen. And I would watch the hell out of that. But, also, just anything Yelena. Between Black Widow, Hawkeye, and this, she just cannot miss (in the MCU, at least). What comes of Bob from here, I don't know. But I'm curious as hell to see how/if he is able to keep this under control because, if so, he becomes a huge weapon for them (of course, that's how Hulk was for a while too - so they just kept sending him off planet to give us an explanation for why he wasn't around).

I'm obviously biased - I've enjoyed essentially all MCU titles (loved, even) - but damn, this one was a lot of fun. And eschewing the whole "the universe is in danger" villain to focus something slightly closer to home definitely helped keep everything tighter and more in check. Absolute gold.

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It has been YEARS since I've read the book, so I went in with literally zero recollection about anything happens, aside from 'Robert Langdon is in this.'

And, now that I've sat through the whole thing, I think if you were to ask me about it, essentially all I'd be able to add is "its so damn long." For a movie that is essentially taking span over the course of 12 hours, it feels like they literally tried to make the movie go for all 12 of those hours. There's a lot of stuff that happens - mostly, a bunch of selfish, closed-minded, "fuck everyone else" (they have to die anyways) men who are okay with shit happening because they don't believe that anything, literally anything, should cause them to change their centuries old traditions. (And if millions of people die in the process, so be it - because they'd die at some point anyways.)

I don't know if the book did this as effectively or if it just the magic of movie-making, but all of the characters are almost entirely unlikable - the one exception to this, for a portion of the movie, turns out to be the worst of them. Feigning like he cares about people just so he can spread his hate to others.

The female lead just kind of comes and goes as the story needs her to - mostly just expositional stuff about how to stop everything before, in the end, pulling the rug out from under her and having her just be like "wait, no, things changed, I can't." Oh, and the translate a sentence of Latin early on to start everything. Oh, and tearing the page out of the book, which - yikes - but also, fuck the folks who decide to hide away and make impossible to access anything that they disagree with.

The fact that that moment happens where he walks in and is like "we need to evacuate to save people, and to save all the visitors" and everyone's response is "fuck you" is absolutely fitting, and the fact he does, in fact, just fuck off and continue doing whatever they want him to do in response is bonkers (bad way).

On the other hand, this poster for the movie is pretty cool.

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I watched this video almost immediately when I got the email - and immediately reached out to a friend and was like "please watch this and tell me that I'm not misinterpreting the tone of the video."

I wasn't, and this confirms I wasn't the only one to feel this way - completely passive-aggressive essentially right from the start and super condescending.

Clearly there was a lot of shit going on with NaNo that isn't even worth getting into (others have done it better, and have more knowledge about it), but on a completely selfish/personal level:

1- I'm going to miss the adoption forum. That was my go-to place whenever I visited the site, and I've missed it tremendously since that initially "no more posts allowed" policy started.

2- This goes back years!, but man, that forum redesign was utter shit. On top of constantly logging me out for no real reason, it was a pain to get through and was clunky as hell. Missed, and still do, the original forums. I'm sure it was done for a reason, but they could've at least tried to find something ... I don't know. Better.

okay i need someone else who's been at least tangentially aware and/or involved with NaNo to watch this video and chat with me about it because I have THOUGHTS™ (below the cut).

Here's the thing—aside from the fact that NaNo's PR has been slowly imploding for the past ~five years, this video itself feels VERY MUCH like a CYA from the Interim Director (a fact bolstered by both the fact that it's being posted on the "NaNoWriMo Kilby" account, not the formal NaNo one AND the fact that at multiple points, it's tosses out what Kilby specifically did to "help" things) as well as an indictment of long-time participants (despite the claims that it's not, Kilby states in the PPT that "[the board of directors] heard repeatedly from other would-be grassroots supporters that they aligned with [NaNo]...but that the community vitriol was a problem," then in the audio overlay specifically calls out that "a lot of people who viewed [NaNo] as a welcoming community had that view challenged this year. and it wasn't because of what HQ was doing, but because of what they were seeing from people who were self-identified Wrimos", then later pins the collapse of the organization on people not giving enough money to support NaNoWriMo) rather than a solely objective analysis of what's happened.

Genuinely sad that this is happening, but imo this video felt condescending as fuck, between what feels like a thinly disguised "you all didn't know everything that was going on" mantra being hammered home every few slides, the fact that it's a recorded slideshow instead of a video or a comprehensive written report with verifiable evidence of the steps taken to mitigate the legitimate concerns that were raised with their team regarding organizing and child safety on their platforms, AND the fact that near the conclusion, Kilby states "what hurt the organization far more and for far longer [than the genuinely BAFFLING stance that they took on AI in late August of 2024]...was the fact that many members of a very large, very engaged community let themselves believe the service we provided was free."

(for context, the below screenshot was taken today and conspicuously notes that "Oh, and best of all, it's free!")

Kilby makes a salient point that artistic/creative efforts—especially non-profit organizations—are struggling to find funding from their communities. That's real, and it should be cause for concern for any of us on here/elsewhere who find value in the arts, whether as creators or enjoyers of it.

That said, as much as the financial concerns of NaNo may have been the driving factor behind the shutdown Kilby is discussing, it's kind of wild to hear the narration go from such clinical descriptions of what they did when grooming allegations were raised to "but you all didn't bother to donate enough so now we're shutting down >:(" energy.

The decline of the org is clearly a multi-faceted thing, and while I appreciate that many of those factors were discussed here, to me the tone of this video felt off-putting and a bit like a last-ditch effort from someone trying to clear their name before bailing on a sinking ship.

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Well, this is, most definitionally, a movie. It has actors, some of whom we even recognize from multiple other things; it has a plot, that comes to us with a beginning (of sorts) and an end; it has drama and it has humor (I guess?); and it has some good(-ish) guys and some bad guys.

But with all that, it's also just - I don't know. Interesting. The leads are all excellent in what, at least for moments, seems to be an exercise in cursing to the heart's desire (though, not as bad as Burn After Reading, or the first 30 minutes of 30 Minutes or Less, which is as far as I made it into that movie). Eventually the plot does take off, though you know much before Uma Thurman's character what the bags actually represent, which seems to be the turning point here.

I guess there's something here about finding your inner talent, or something, but mostly it seems to be a tongue-in-cheek bashing of the art world. Uma Thurman as a desperate, adderall-snorting art dealer with a failing gallery, gives her drug dealer a painting in lieu of money (again, failing gallery); this dealer knows Samuel L. Jackson's character, a Yiddish-speaking bagel shop owner which is a front for something much worse, who sees the ridiculous painting worth ridiculous amounts of money and hatches a scheme to legitimize his money; this leads to, out of necessity because they don't have an artist, Joe Manganiello's killer becoming an artist. Due to the ridiculousness of this art world, his paintings take off, leading him to question a life away from crime - which the crime bosses he works for obviously don't like. Uma, meanwhile, sees her gallery finally take off - even more so after she realizes the truth of his profession (she assumed he was a drug dealer) and, on video at his opening, vomits into one of the bags.

But, of course, having your killer in the news - even more as a concept than by name - is not ideal, and the bosses aren't happy. Finally, a deal that obviously they don't intend to keep is reached - if artist and art dealer can off one of the most famous, well-guarded bad people (well, 1 bodyguard, so I don't know about that), they'll give them 'anything.'

It's clearly one of those 'dark comedies' that puts high emphasis on rich people and their glitzy life, and on murder and death (Bollywood loves movies like this right now, too). The comedy, I guess, comes from this? - I'm not sure, this one wasn't exactly funny. Even the starring trio couldn't really turn it into more - we're all just along for a slightly uneventful ride.

Not that the movie is bad, mind you. It's just ... meh, I guess. Art snobs are, above all, snobs.

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Well, in stark contrast to the lack of thrill/entertainment in the newly Netflix-produced/released Jewel Thief: The Heist Begins is this wonky 2004 "high school heist movie" where a bunch of desperate (mostly) high schoolers decide to break into the poorly-guarded ETS building and steal the answers to the ETS (any plan on how they'd bring those stolen results into the test itself is not further explained). And while it is a bit dumb, and also definitely very much a "high school movie" (including the "I've never broken a rule" [almost] valedictorian), they pack in the things you need to really make it feel like a heist movie.

The plan are largely bare bones (again, made much easier because the place is weakly guarded and because finding the test is not really meant to be the crux of the matter), and even sort of backfires because of that reason. Having made it all the way to the computer with the test, and even having broken in, they realize they've made it too far to just give up. So they decide, seriously, to sit down and take the exam as a group (well, 2 groups of 2 - one taking the math portion and one the verbal; the 3rd group are the lookouts) to have the answers. And they do exactly that.

We get some background on the characters here - maybe cliché, to some extent, but again, at least they make the effort to complete the backstories and explain why these characters are doing what they're doing. They also try to counter some of the typically accepted generalizations - the athlete is solid at math; the (almost) valedictorian is a horrible test taker because she gets lost within word problems - while diving head-first into others - the Asian (stoner) is an overachiever at math, and also apparently at coding.

Of course, while they do steal the answers - at a cost - this movie isn't about "cheating gets you ahead." They all decide not to use the results (although, they don't go completely to waste), having learned the truths about themselves the night of the heist (into the next day) - and also accepting the truths of who they are. I think, based on what they tell us, only 1 of them definitely gets the score they were shooting for.

Look back now, this is a crazy cast - with pre-Avengers Chris Evans and Scarlett Johansson, and even NBA player Darius Miles!, and Matthew Lillard, amongst others.

It's not on the same level as like any of the Ocean's movies, or The Sting, or anything, but it does manage to be both a decent heist movie (again, without really formulating much of a complicated plan) and a decent young adult/high school-to-college-age student movie (developing friendships, learning about yourself, picking the right way to lead life, expressing yourself). Nothing necessarily to make it stand out - beyond the cast, maybe, and the crazy idea of stealing SAT scores in that way - but it at least includes the thrills and excitement that most heist movies require to seem truly thrilling (including failability, plans going sideways, and the really real risk of them getting caught).

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SPOILER NOT SPOILER: THEY FUCKING SHOOT/KILL A DOG (JUST OFF SCREEN, BUT THEY SHOW US THE IMMEDIATE AFTERMATH)! Poor dog deserved better. (This is apparently done to show us that the guy is unhinged, because apparently him killing someone right at the beginning of the movie, and again later on, isn't enough evidence.)

This feels very much like most other Netflix titles - they have money to burn, so they have multiple international destinations and high glitz and production appearance, but the story is a major letdown.

Our protagonist, played by Saif Ali Khan, is a thief who is hiding out in a foreign country, separated from his family because his father threw him out for being a thief (he also made some comment to his dad about "your generosity will not bring mom back!" immediately before being thrown out, but this is not further explored at all). He's being followed by two essentially clueless agents, working under Kunal Kapoor (more on him later), in what essentially feels like a knock-off, but worse, from Tees Maar Khan (down to escaping from them, this time in an airport instead of the airplane itself). He's well hidden, except for from his brother, who is able to find him without issue to alert him to the fact that their honest-working father is now being threatened - through some pretty dumb scheme, honestly - by a villain (played, of course, by Jaideep Ahlawat).

For some reason, this villain - who begins the movie by brutally killing his accountant because some of his info got leaked, costing him, and people who give him their money?, a lot of money and forcing him to auction off some of his artwork - tells us that he's "trying to be good, but this nonsense keeps bringing him back to his days as a goon. He then proceeds to randomly decide he wants to steal a diamond - or well, have it stolen, because he's not a thief - and spends a total of 0 seconds actually showing us that "good" person he's trying to be. Beyond the killings - the man at the beginning, the dog, a flight attendant - he also apparently abuses the young girl (20s-30s, I guess?), a wasted Nikita Dutta, who he has apparently blackmailed into marrying him (again, not really explored, beyond a throwaway line she utters). So he's blackmailing the father to get to our protagonist - but given how easily the brother finds him (they haven't communicated in 3 years, they're clear to tell us, so it's not like he knows off-hand where his constantly-moving brother - he tells the agents that they've been following him through multiple cities, so it isn't like he's been at one place), you'd think Jaideep's men could've found him too. But I guess it's easier to given a bunch of money to someone, even if it is illegally obtained money, and have them do that work for you (I guess it is necessary, story-wise, just to introduce the very predictable and Bollywood family angle).

Protagonist says no to helping, because his family isn't family after they threw him out and cut him out - but then immediately, and with no reason given, changes his mind. He gets the help of a video game playing girl, and hacker it seems, who randomly shows up to help and then disappears so as not to be involved in the plot really at all. So he tricks the agents into taking him back to the country, where a very stupid 'cat and mouse' game goes on between him and the very obsessed, detrimentally so, agent (Kunal Kapoor), who is rude to everyone, can somehow control foreign agents based simply on his gut feeling (always right), can immediately know that everything is a plan by our protagonist, and yet is always 2 steps behind.

Similarly, our protagonist is literally always 2 steps ahead. There is no point where there is any tension of him getting caught or subverted in his plans - even the one sequence they tend to play off that way, in the museum, they immediately (and repeatedly) tell you that he planned to go south and that they way it went was exactly how he wanted it to go (he tells us, multiple times, and even the obsessed officer trailing him knows this almost immediately). What this effectively does is kill any real excitement or thrills - and for a movie entitled 'Jewel Thief: The Heist Begins' - the complete absence of thrill and entertainment/excitement is a huge bummer.

The plot is, from the start, entirely predictable. Despite the song showing Jaideep Ahlawat busting some moves, the movie never lets him let his hair down and just have some fun - there's a reason that song just plays at the end credits - and he's nothing more than your stereotypical rich bad guy, who wants bad stuff done and keeps a very close eye on the do-er (with a secret desire to terminate said person after the job is done) - while failing to see the poorly-told developing relationship between his wife and this man - and ends up backstabbed by the man he was trying to backstab, left at the end to backstab the other man who is ridiculously involved in all this.

Even without the dog sequence, this movie is junk - and with it, it is even worse. It fits every cliché of this sort of 'heist movie' genre, yet somehow fails completely to thrill and entertain. (Which I guess is a skill in itself, cuz how do you have a heist story and Saif and Kunal and Jaideep and make it this blah?) And somehow, they manage to waste the talents of everyone in the cast by making everyone essentially a cardboard caricature and not at all interesting.

Between Saif and his family, Saif and the girl, the girl and Jaideep, Jaideep's past, everything about Kunal's obsessed character, and the other girl who is helping him for who knows what reason, there are just way too many storylines that get essentially no (or, even worse than that, absolutely poor) exploration. Partially expected, if you're going to focus on the heist, but then just don't introduce so many half-baked lines to begin with. The absolute lack of fallability of our protagonist is also pretty stupid, because the whole point of the heist movie is to have the thrill of "will they get caught?" which, outside of the fact this is partially set in a plane, is never even a remote possibility. And since it being set in a plane is part of his plan, you know he's got a way out, so even that is essentially zero risk.

Netflix needs to give up on making their own shit - they're not good at it. It also seems very on-par with the course of Bollywood thus far - the ability to make even a decent movie is completely lost. One of the most 'blah' heist movies I can recall seeing.

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So, as a whodunnit, this one is sorta middling. The mystery, while clearly present, is sort of in the background to our main characters. Nick does some detective work, yes, but we're not really privy to much beyond him being like "I think I know what is going on" and not-so-discretely sleuthing.

Where this movie clearly excels, though, is in the main characters. William Powell and Myrna Loy, as Nick and Nora, are absolute gems and their chemistry, interactions, and just overall relationship are undoubtedly the stars of this movie. Almost 100 years later, movies still struggle with (or stories just refuse to tell) the idea of a happy relationship (few exceptions like The Addams Family aside). Of course, some of this is probably because it becomes easy drama - and stories need drama! - so they just pick on that and turn every relationship into insecurity and doubt and jealousy. And yet, here was have Nick and Nora, who, like Gomez and Morticia, are absolutely in love with each other. Sure, they joke around with each other and poke fun, and rarely he'll get her into a cab so that he can go investigate without her, but they're also just like - happy with each other and their own quirks. She tries to push him to investigate, despite his having retired from detective work, and even gets involved in it (although, smartly, she's also at some point like "okay, wait, this is getting very dangerous). The scene before he's about to go investigate at the factory, where she's worried about him but still comes to him before he leaves and they talk things out, for example.

I mean, it's still the 1930s - so we do have the scene, for example, where he knocks her out because she was "in the line" of the shooter. (Sure, but a full-on TKO?) Or the aforementioned "put her in the cab" sequence (played for laughs, of course). But, in general, their relationship is wonderfully portrayed and their characters are just a lot of fun throughout the movie. Just watching them at the parties is half the fun - the mystery is present in the background, yes, but that's not what holds your attention. It's them.

(I also went down the rabbit hole and watched the entire Be Kind Rewind video on Myrna Loy. 1) She's awesome. 2) Highly recommend everything on that BKR channel!)

The mystery didn't hold as much for me - maybe because I very early was confused about who all the characters were. It does sort of get cleared up at the end, mostly (there's still a few where I don't know exactly who they are or what they're doing as suspects, but that's okay). But we get the typical "everyone gathers in a room" reveal - but, typical to all else in the movie, the mystery is still mostly secondary to Nick and Nora and their teasing each other and, most importantly, to the comedy. It's not exactly a "comedy mystery" in the vein of Clue, but it is a different level of "comedy mystery" that is a lot of fun.

It is funny that, due to the success of this movie, they made a bunch of "The Thin Man" sequels - even though the eponymous 'Thin Man' is the missing many Nick is hired to find and not Nick himself.

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Through some absolutely out-of-left field rabbit hole, I found myself this morning on the Peschel Press (which I'd never heard of before) blog in which they have been reviewing all Agatha Christie adaptations - specifically for the movie Aar Ya Paar, which I have watched relatively recently (last couple years at latest; probably last year?). Clicking around - because, hell, as a fan of whodunnits and Christie's works, why the fuck not!? - I came across their review of the Bengali movie Chorabali (based on Christie's Cards on the Table). I didn't entirely remember the story - beyond it being Poirot plus Ariadne Oliver, and dealing with the card game bridge - but, again, why the hell not?

Apparently Chorabali means 'quicksand' - though clearly the poster above says 'the game of hunting' (to note: I cannot confirm that the writing above that actually says 'chorabali'). Which, sure. I guess there's some deeper meaning to that, at least in Bengali - the subtitles weren't helpful (especially because of someone's horrible fucking idea to put white text on the screen while at the same time the filming frequently has white objects in the same location, making it impossible to read).

I'm not sure how much the card game actually matters here - I mean, our Poirot-lite character is like "the scorecard matters" multiple times and he does eventually get around to asking a couple (two?) questions about it, but really its just at the reveal that he's like "it gave me a clue" and it isn't fully explained in a way that Poirot would explain it. Probably because, honestly, they probably figured the viewers didn't know about, or care about, bridge.

However, at least based on my post-movie review of Cards on the Table's plot, the movie seems pretty faithful to Christie's story. Right up until it isn't. (More on that in a second.)

The story itself putters along at its own desired pace, right from the opening death sequence (or, well, the finding of the dead body). No one is really bothered to speed things up. After the expositional introduction, our characters have long conversations and longer commutes - the officer, for example, takes long trips to visit the suspects, asking 2-3 questions before leaving. One of the characters essentially has nothing to do except, as a reporter, randomly showing up to break news and stir up drama ("news reporter"). Our Battle rushes to conclusions, usually wrong; our Poirot is very un-Poirot, minus his reference to the 'little gray cells' when all is said and done; our Oliver appears to sort of be the protagonist of the story.

Which - getting back to that "Christie until it isn't twist." The twist itself, honestly, is pretty delicious - though you also sort of hope something like that is coming, because if this entire mystery turns out to be "she was just narrating her fictional story," that would take out a lot of steam. Things merge, nicely enough, but when that final reveal comes, it throws things off in a different way. Like, why would she be narrating this story to her ... boyfriend? spouse? whatever? ... when it is her real life experience? Especially when the truth would then be available to everyone (since she appears to be writing to publish?). And why then would her story be exactly like the 'Cards on the Table' story that is literally sitting on her table. Like, a nice call out to the inspiring material, but like - she's literally just telling him that exact story and saying she's writing it. It sort of crushes the story if you think about it at all. Which is unfortunate, because the movie is otherwise really well done (even if a bit slow).

It's almost like they adapted it and wanted their own twist - which is perfectly fine! - but their twist - itself awesome - just crushes the house they'd built up with this adaptation. Because an otherwise awesome twist just doesn't work with the backdrop of this story. As soon as you know that she's telling a story she was part of, and not just entirely making it up (which I assumed pretty early on, because no way she is narrating the movie to us - because that's a hellish 'twist' that I wouldn't expect any writer to put us through), the final twist is entirely predictable. And mostly unnecessary, beyond giving us closure for the one character who is mentioned and never shown. The bigger mystery is the "whodunnit" of interest, and that's well covered. Of course, even our Poirot and Battle seem to completely ignore the fact of the poisoning that is mentioned in the port-mortem, which seems like a major oversight.

The only other sequence, other than that final twist, that really seems out-of-place, is the sequence in the pool. Like, what the hell reason did she have to act that way? It goes completely unexplained and unexplored - we just have some acting completely irrationally towards her friend and trying to drown her because ... she's sad someone else died?

This is now the second Bengali movie I've seen (after Khoj) - both are slow-moving mysteries that have absolutely no interest in giving you much action. It's about the story and the characters, and you just have to take the ride as it comes. Which is fine, but it does start to drag a bit at the end. The suspense here is otherwise well done, especially if you haven't read Christie's original work that this is based on.

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Another Hitchcock movie - in the "recent" times (last couple of years), I've watched Rope and then much more recently, The 39 Steps. While Rope was based on a play, The 39 Steps came from a book - and Suspicion similarly comes from a book (I have not read either book, though I am tempted to). I actually turned this one on right after reading a novel called 'The Hitchcock Hotel,' which referenced this movie and a certain milk scene - which, honestly, was highly anticlimactic.

There's a lot of stories that focus on crime, or the post-crime mental haze, from the point of view of the doer, but this story goes a different route: we see everything essentially from the point of view of an unknowing, suspicious 'other' party (the wife, in this case), who starts to fear that her husband has committed a crime and gets enveloped by this.

It is a fascinating case study in the psyche that is done well, and really well-acted by Joan Fontaine, and we can sort of start feeling ourselves also fall into this rut of suspecting him. (It doesn't help that he's full on gaslighting her, multiple times.) You want her to run, and she wants to run - eventually - but things keep happening to prevent it, such as the death of her father. Things finally come to a breaking point and she's had enough...

According to Wiki, this is where the book and movie diverge. The book apparently goes to an Inception-like "the truth is what you want," whereas the movie - well, apparently, the movie studio (or someone, but whomever decided this is a perfect example of why film studios should never have a say in the actual movie story) put their foot down on Cary Grant appearing evil/bad, and Hitchcock had to film a very certain "he's not guilty" ending (or he's one hell of a liar, and things are going to get very bad once they go back). The movie isn't bad, mind you, but the ending would've been that much more brilliant if they'd just stuck with the book and left it vague whether he is evil or whether it is all in her mind. This "give it definite conclusion" thing is nice, sometimes - and definitely avoids us doing mental gymnastics, like Chris Nolan has us doing so frequently - but, in general, I'd prefer the slightly more ambiguous.

The mind, man. It can be hell to get entrapped within ones own thoughts, and it is so easy to start cycling once you're stuck.

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Matlock, S1 E18

Welp, they did. Somehow they managed to turn Matlock into the villain, proving that seeking revenge not only harms everyone but also that once you get solely focused on revenge, you’re going to hurt A LOT of people.

She may end up being correct and proving her suspect as wrong, but she’s gonna burn all her bridges in the process. S2 better not gloss over this impending loss of trust.

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❤️

From a distance.

That’s it for my entire life - from a distance. God has made it clear it’s never meant to be from anything closer.

Destined/Fated to be a loser, apparently.

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I'm not sure I like the overall ending point of the movie. This idea that 'loyalty to friends' is more important than 'loyalty to society' - I mean, okay to a point, but this bad guy was literally killing hundreds of children. So, no, I don't think loyalty to 'friends' is over that - especially a friend he hasn't seen in years, who leads some sort of underground criminal empire thing, and faked his own death.

The ending shot was fucking amazing, no questions asked - even if based on a faulty moral - but like, why not, at some point, tell her the truth about him? And if she's still in support of him, she's not good. You'll pine after the unrequited love for a bit, but all this for a girl who is fully in support of a man who is doing things that is resulting in the death of kids, and everyone, by messing with medications. Worst of the worst - this ending scene would've been so much better if she'd turned him down for someone even semi-redeemable.

I'm also a huge fan of, despite all this talk of the 'third man' and all that, that this story never goes to a full-on 'flashback' of what actually happened that night. Like, we hear multiple accounts of it and by the end we can sort of figure out what happened, but I feel nowadays (especially in Bollywood), they would've ended the movie with an overkill flashback that shows everything. They've gone too far into the 'tell everything' and not leaving it up to interpretation or the mind of the viewer (Christopher Nolan aside); it isn't even just Bollywood, just look at that insanely unnecessary 'final speech' that we get at the end of The Electric State to really try and drive their message into our head.

But, yeah - friends are important - but if their actions are killing people, they don't deserve to just be given a clean slate. Especially when there is no remorse or desire to change. Mars the story a bit, but it is still an awesomely filmed movie.

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Went way back to watch one of the earliest Hitchcock go-arounds, with The 39 Steps - a movie that isn't really about steps, especially not 39 of them. Hell, even the whole '39 Steps' thing is more like a Macguffin-y organization which, outside of a couple folks here and there who are apparently involved with it, dealing with a Macguffin-y "spy secrets" issue.

Our protagonist accidentally happens across an unsavory situation, started off by him bringing a woman home who ends up dead, and has to go on the run. He comes across many folks, apparently none of them who can really be trusted, until he finds himself handcuffed by the baddies to one of the ladies who had try to turn him in - and they have to go on the run, together.

Distrustful at first, she does eventually come around when she overhears some of the bad guys talking - but they've still go the problem of proving his innocence and figuring out what the hell is going on.

This is a decent thriller, no doubt, but I'm not sure I thought as highly of it as others seem to. Good, but not top-10 ever and not sure I'd say it is Hitchcock's best ever. Still decent though, and I was mostly enthralled/thrilled. I am tempted to pick up the book that it is based on and give that a read too. I'm also more curious about the organization as a whole - I wonder what the 39 steps are (maybe it was in the movie and I just missed it, but I'd like more background).

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What shit.

For the first half or so, this one bordered (barely) at a smidge less annoying than Classified, as the father/daughter relationship (this time going with the 'mother died so daughter has to come to a foreign country to be with dad' route) gets some work. Of course, as a result, there's also very limited and/or stagnant action early on as we instead focus on typical movie plot points like "father and daughter don't get along at breakfast" and "father has to work late and misses daughter's school event, where she won first prize" and "father doesn't remember daughter has food allergy and gives her said allergen."

Then things suddenly "3 Days of the Condor" - he gets to work one night and finds his office wiped clean and everyone gone (and as he soon finds out, by walking into a morgue and looking at the bodies, dead). And he learns that he's been part of something that isn't what it claims (cue similarities to Classified, which released 12 years after this movie). And he goes on the run, with his daughter, to figure out this conspiracy that goes all the way to the top of ... well, something.

Olga Kurylenko plays a corrupt CIA agent who shows up half way through, has a couple of scenes where she can state out loud that she "used to work with Aaron Eckhart" while secretly showing us that she's corrupt, before predictably (and without any shown reason or explanation) pulling a ridiculous about face on the bad guys she's partnered with (right after telling us all that all of the money she did this for is tied up to their evil Macguffiny plot going through) , allowing for her quick demise and meaning that they don't have to account for her in the movie climax (which clearly was the point - just to get her out of the way).

The daughter, meanwhile, repeatedly cycles between "accepting of the reality of her father's past" and "you lied to me, I hate you" (in the midst of repeatedly being chased by people who want them dead, mind you, which she seems to keep forgetting), eventually getting herself captured so that we can have a 'damsel in distress' moment where dad can only free her by turning over the incriminating materials he's found. While her issues with her dad being a killer, and having lied, and all that stuff, makes some sense, for her to keep airing her grievances as they're on the run and getting shot at (and, to cap it off, the scene where she's driving and suddenly decides to become unhinged) is absolutely ridiculous. Any sort of situational awareness would tell you to wait until you're slightly less in danger. It ruins what could've been a better story about father/daughter - not that she necessarily joins in in t he action or anything, but at least is smart enough to not make things worse as she works through her emotions.

Of course, all ends well - bad guys end up dead, the turncoat CIA agent ends up dead, and father and daughter reunite at the airport (apparently she's forgiven him again, for now; also, I thought he wasn't allowed to return home?). She even leaves her passport with the gate agent to wander off and look for her dad, which seems like a dumb thing to do.

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Early on in this movie, Ms. Exposition Lady says something to the effect of "he doesn't know he's got an in-body GPS tracker" - which is how they're constantly tracking him. This is only indirectly brought up after this point, by virtue of the tracking folks constantly being like "this GPS system isn't working" (the movie released in 2024, and there's no reason to think the movie isn't set in the same time - so how can they constantly be losing GPS tracking?) - but, like, talk about a completely useless statement used to just sort of explain everything to us right away.

Even worse, at no point during the course of this cat-and-mouse/chase sequence-heavy movie does he ever wonder "how do they keep finding me?". Even when it is all said and done, I don't think anything has been done about this "in-body" tracker. (Also, no explanation to how they placed such a tracker on him.)

Tim Roth's presence essentially tells you right away how things are going to go and what the surprise reveal will be. The movie synopsis I saw mentioned "a man and his daughter" - so when, after multiple minutes of her pretending to be MI-6, she drops the surprise "I'm your daughter" statement, you are not surprised. Also, other than giving him an out for when the fighting is done, it doesn't really add much to the story - she could've been anyone and would've tagged along with him for safety. Also, for someone who they can't GPS track, she had no issue at all tracking him down. But they need less technical junk and more just, I don't know, eyes.

Honestly, this movie would've been 100% more fun if they'd focused on the events before his daughter found him - the story of him being sent out on missions via the classified section of the newspaper would've been so much more intriguing, even with the interposition of his memories of the woman he loves. Sure, maybe the killing would've gotten old pretty quick - even the one mission we do see him on is quickly rushed through - but what we get instead is just a yawn-filled action movie that doesn't really do much of anything beyond just passively existing.

Except, of course, adding to 'Erased' within the 'Aaron Eckhart and his (estranged/unknown) daughter end up in an action/thriller conspiracy movie centered around his job' genre. Which is apparently a thing that we need.