They call me Jeeg

What is a hero? It’s an individual gifted of great skill and extraordinary courage, that knows how to choose good instead of evil, that sacrifices himself to save others but mostly he doesn’t hold back when he has everything to lose and nothing to gain.

In a time of superheroes, where superheroes seem to define ourselves, our ambition and the perfection of a life that looks so unrealistic that cannot even be dreamed about, we find Jeeg reminding us that in real life, nothing is perfect, even if you are invincible.

It’s heartwarming that among this endless, hard to avoid, superheroes zoo, the “Eternal city” of Rome gave the world a story about not saving the world.

Enzo Ceccotti is a low life thug that hates people and tries to make a living day after day until once, while escaping from the police, he ends up jumping in the Tiber getting infected by a strange goo. What happens next is the awakening. After a shootout on a rooftop, he fell from the 9th floor straight to the ground: a few blinks, a couple WTF and the fear of not comprehending what just happened.

Once he gets back home he meets Alessia, his criminal associate’s daughter, whose mental state has been shattered due to some traumas she was victim of when she was child that froze her reality and comprehension. In her mind all is about the story of the cartoon “Steel Jeeg” and she believes that her father has been taken prisoner by the lord of fire, asking Enzo to help her save him and fulfill his destiny.

Enzo doesn’t care about people and even less about the world, but his journey will be a long intricate dance with local mobsters, Alessia and himself. 

But what would be the first thing you’d do finding out you have super strength? Well, I am not sure yet, but honestly punching an ATM out of the wall and taking it home is probably the most original “first thing to do” I have ever seen.

Life as an outcast can be a choice, but what the director Gabriele Mainetti has to say here is that there is always time to change and do the right thing. The two main characters, Enzo and Alessia, have nothing in common, they are different in so many ways, but…

Superheroes don’t have to save the world to be super, but just by doing what is right.

“They call me Jeeg” is a true superhero story, a real one. Something that can happen to anyone without the need of monsters or aliens to take over the world. It can happen in the town close to where we live or in the same neighborhood. There are no crazy millionaires or former random guys from the army who seek revenge. This is just about a little kingpin who wants to become famous and a cheap messed up drug operation: that’s it.

What makes it real are the people in it: all way far from the perfection we see in Hollywood’s blockbusters, but just regular people.

My only regret is about having watched it yesterday and not in 2015 when it came out.

Mrs. Scarlett

The Cabin in the Woods

When a group of teenagers decides to spend a weekend in a cabin in the woods, the audience can already taste that some weird shit is going to happen: grab your popcorn, take a seat and brace yourself. Awe a soda might be useful too.

There’s an athlete, a good girl, a bad girl, a junkie joker and an actually smart guy: an interesting party whose fate has been sentenced by a creepy old hillbilly at the last gas station before reaching the destination. 

Chris Hemsworth, Kristen Connelly and… Sigourney Weaver: not your everyday’s cast for a horror movie.

Group of teenagers: checked. Cabin in the woods: checked. Weird basement: checked. People watching them as if they were on Big Brother and betting on who’s gonna die first: checked. 

Wait what?!

Yes, because from the beginning of this story there are glimpses of this other facade where scientists keep under surveillance these kids every minute of their life making us think they are being unawarely dragged to this isolated place.

Let’s have a look at the cover: a cabin shaped as a Rubik’s cube, changing and adapting perhaps, but adapting to what? To the people of course and to their choices because through choices we pave the path to our future… or our nightmare.

There is the middle age class working behind the scenes to “keep the show alive” and putting, or pushing, the kids to make choices enhancing their senses and shaping the world around them with the sole goal of making them choose what is going to be next. Some hardcore parenting here.

I got hooked, ladies and gentlemen, I wanted to know. My mind was overheating with all those cliches, but also I couldn’t keep myself from wanting more. Each scene in that “backstage” where people were talking about zombies, demons, merman and death like it was a normal day at work in, truth to be told, a very friendly and positive work environment. WOW: seems like a dream job and now I’m even wondering which benefits you might get with it.

You get the constant feeling that this seems something like puppeteers orchestrating a show and you really want to know why, but for that I leave you the pleasure to find out yourselves.

Until now I don’t understand how a movie so brilliant in its genre didn’t get any “follow up” (kinda). There is so much interesting stuff that would deserve a spin off or even a tv show and it would be way more deserved than many other useless productions. 

One day maybe.

And, just between us, what’s your worst nightmare?

Mr. Yellow

PS: mine would probably be going back to school.

No one gets out alive

A house, a girl, an evil presence: horror movie 101.

(It would be nice sometimes to have a decent plot)

The movie is about Ambar, an illegal immigrant who moves to Cleveland after the death of her mother. Here she ends up finding the only affordable place being a room in a big old house in the suburbs. So the girl finds the house (or vice versa?) and the house shows the girl that all the charges are already included: ghostly presences, creepy whispering, old man banging his head against the wall, failing lights: the whole package.

I am personally very confused by many Netflix productions because somehow I always feel like there is something missing, and that something is always related to the plot.

This movie overall it’s actually ok, even better than most of the garbage we can find around and this is why I’m a little bothered. Yes, for sure it is nothing original or revolutionary but does its job avoiding most of the cliches that I am personally sick of such as teenagers/kids bullism, group of friends getting lost and deciding that splitting the group is the best idea, the “nobody believes I see things” until it’s too late and sex scenes.

“No one gets out alive” manages to create the right amount of suspense, even without scaring much, and it doesn’t lose track of Ambar succeeding to keep us focused on her background story with the natural curiosity of finding out what is going on in that haunted house.

Unfortunately we will never know unless we read the novel (thank you Wikipedia for clarifying all my doubts). Without going into many details I reached the end with the frustration about not knowing what was all that about. Thinking from the beginning that the house was haunted and be disproved towards the end it’s something rare and very satisfying, but it’s not enough if not supported by an explanation and because of that leaves unfortunately the viewer with too many WTF.

In the end it’s not bad, but it could have been a little better.

Mr. Yellow

P.S.
Do you think that putting the stone box upside down would have solved the problem?
What’s with the paint/powder on doors and walls?
Ghost fights in a movie not ghost related?
How a 50/55kg girl with a broken ankle can take an 85/90kg man from the 2nd (or 3rd) floor to the basement?
What’s with the butterflies?

The Guilty

I didn’t have much time last night and a 90 min movie with Jake Gyllenhaal seemed the perfect choice.

Full disclosure: I was not aware that this was a remake of a 2018 danish movie.

I would start with: the title has nothing to do with movie. True.

In this movie there are two stories and one actor: the two stories are linked to the main and only character, but they are (at least in this remake) completely unrelated to one another. The first one is about the suspicious call of a woman to 911 and the investigation/manhunt following her abduction in the attemp to track down the vehicle she is in before it’s too late.

It doesn’t happen very often to watch a movie that is shot is a single room simply because the challenges are too many in order to avoid a static, boring, yawning result. Jake Gyllenhaal gets the whole credit with his perfomance to keep the movie and the story alive, to keep the viewers on edge wanting to know more and being uncapable, as him, to see what is going on out there, outside that room: being able to hear what he listen through his headset and nothing more.

He is a great actor: I felt what he felt, trying not to lose focus, being sharp and pushing down the feelings keeping control while trying to be able to help that person in need. Heart beating, running against time, panting, while sitting on the chair.

There is something missing, though. If just this would have been the movie, I would say “Chapeau, well done”, except for a couple or rage exploit, perhaps out of place at work but had no actual ripercussion.

In this “something missing” takes place the second story that somehow is thrown in with no real explanation or connection, and that “Broken people tend to save broken people” is definitely not enough. This “side” story is mentioned for probably less than 5 minutes at the very end of the movie, hinted a couple times before but without any real clue about the situation (ok, family issues, wow), leading the viewer to a weird “Awe, that’s what’s goin on with him?”. I’ve also being wondering for the whole movie if there was a deeper meaning for that as asthma inhaler, but no he just has asthma.

This, after all, can be considered as an atypical detective movie and maybe a one not to miss for its peculiarities. Don’t expect too much and you won’t be disappointed by this 90 minutes phone call.

Just remember: be nice to call center’s operators and 911 dispatchers because they listen to our bullshit 24/7.

Mr. Yellow

Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood

Once upon a time there was indeed a land, a place where dreams were coming true. A land full of colors, full of hope, where people chased ambition, fantasies and freedom. Memories of a childhood where we used to see us there one day, living our life to the fullest driving a convertible, having a burger with a milkshake at the drive-in.

This is not just a movie, this is an experience. Tarantino wants the viewer to feel, to embrace, to touch the atmosphere of a Los Angeles in transition going towards the end of an era and shaping to a new beginning. We get carried away and cuddled by the music, by the lights of a colorful city, a better time perhaps, or perhaps a time where it was easier to hide secrets.

We are taken by hand through the life of Rick Dalton, living his downfall, his depression and his morning margaritas: all this in those deep blue eyes. It is undoubtedly magnificent.

The melancholia of a city believed to be still innocent and unprepared to be torn apart by violence and crime to the eyes of the world.

It is interesting how every scene begins with the best intentions and ends in the worse way, or the other way around: from the innocent hitchhiking of Pussycat to a massive hate show, from a depressed and hopeless Rick on set to his best performance.

Music and good songs will never leave us alone, this seems to be the theme, this seems to be the contagious heartwarming smile of Margot Robbie while driving on the highway. Pervaded by this impulse of singing and dance, to be happy because after all what else should matter more than that? Sing, be free.

This is a reminder of the world we live in and the world we could and should live in. A personal shout out that history cannot be changed, but the world can. Cinema belongs to people and Tarantino sent us back to Los Angeles with the purpose of questioning the audience with a big “What if?” as a farewell.

What if on that dark and sad night in 1969 those people knocked instead at the wrong door? What if.

Maybe we would have continued singing songs, seeing the good things where and when we want to see them and never wake up. What if.

I don’t know much about “what ifs”, but I know what and what I’m gonna do is tune up some OST, headphones on, eyes closed and fly away waving my head and smiling to the world.

Mr. Yellow

Lord of the rings

This text is about my love story with Lord of the Rings. I don’t remember how old I was but I do remember I first watched The Fellowship of the Ring on a VHS. But, for the record, I was very young back then.

The first movie didn’t get me at first. It was a long movie and I was a child that couldn’t really understand how someone could make a movie without a finale. However, everything changed with the Two Towers. After watching (at the cinema, this time), I was shocked: I was so into the movie that I didn’t see the hours passing by. Now, that brand new universe created by Tolkien sparked my curiosity and love. 

While I was anxious to see where Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli’s journey was taking them, I was also wondering if the Ents could represent how the environment could feel about us. I personally enjoy the scenes of the Ents kicking Saruman’s ass. Today, I ask myself if humanity would not deserve to have the ass kicked by all the forests we keep destroying, but this is a topic for another time. Frodo and Sam’s journey was not a big deal to me, but I guess I took a while to understand its beauty.

After the epic Battle of Helm’s Deep, I ran to the bookstore and got the 3 books. Reading them, I deeply fell in love with everything we discover throughout the ring’s journey: from the personal stories of each character to their contribution to the quest. 

Men, Elves, Dwarfs, Wizards, Ents, Hobbits: living in Middle Earth in a certain place and time, making alliances and, sometimes, betrayals. Lord of the Rings does tell a story about a very powerful ring that, in the wrong hands, could destroy the world, but what really gets me is the fantastic world that was designed, with unique languages, outfits and great metaphors of our own world. Everything was so well thought out by Tolkien and well enough transposed to the cinema by Peter Jackson that leaves us some questions that only great stories can do: Can we see yourselves in these characters? If we were in his/her shoes, what would our choices be? 

The fellowship that began the journey together in the first movie with different personalities, knowledge and background, were forced (or destined) to split up to save that world. After that, they are just doing the best they can, with what they have, day after day. Each one understands their share of responsibility.

When Aragorn, in the Return of the King before riding to Mordor doors, said: “For Frodo”, I understood that even great King’s fate may depend on a boy’s task who was struggling to accomplish (and which, by the way, was not exactly a his own choice).

Only after watching the movies many times, I, finally, understand the beauty behind Frodo and Sam part of the story. I mean I still think their scenes are long and a bit boring, but I guess that’s how it has to be shown.

In the end, when our “hero to be” found himself to be won over by the power of the ring, but here weakness played the part of revelation, showing us once again that in the moment of need we can count on people who truly love us to be there. I didn’t see that coming by then, however, it was the perfect end for a breathtaking trilogy.

When I was a child, the Lord Of the Rings taught me about the grey zone we all have inside our hearts. It taught me how cool it can be to have friends from different cultures and that I could fall in love and change a bit the plan I had for me before, if I want to. 

Until today, Frodo teaches me that sometimes a big responsibility is thrown into our hands and we have to do something about it. And even if we don’t have a clue from where we should start, we have to take the first step and hope we are lucky enough to have good friends to get our back.

Mrs. Orange

Leon: The Professional

Jean Reno has always had a special place in my heart.

Life is full of suprises, but few of these can impact our life that much to start a revolution. Life is routine, we know that, and if you do not, well if you believe your life is not a routine, it’s probably because you “live your life day after day to the fullest” it means you are too poor or too rich (and if so then not eligible) otherwise your mind just refuse to accept this simple fact: up, work, home. Reload.

Our life is shaken every now and then by events that we cannot control and can be the catalyst of a new beginning, a new direction, a new chapter. Unexpected twists make life wonderful because they make us feel, they make us feel new things, think differently and widen ourselves to new perspectives. Whatever happens is something we will never forget because of the intensity, the power this event hits us with. How deep it goes. We then evolve to a better or a worse version.

Can be love, any kind of love, making us savour any minute, any second of life or it can be something tragic where the way up will be slow and difficult.

This is what Leon is about. We all felt like Leon at least once in our lives (except for the murders part): alone in life, doin a job we don’t care for people who pretend to be our friends and care about us, with no purpose in life, just carrying on, going with the flow day after day until one day it happens. One day something triggers a spark in us: we open our eyes and wake up.

Mathilda shows up at out doorstep.

That moment is one of the most intense scenes in movie history. I felt Leon there, I felt him thinking, I felt my heart beating hard and melting at the same time while Mathilda was sobbing and crying, trying to whisper “Please, open the door”.

I have goosebumps right now, seriously.

Leon and Mathilda gave life to one of my favorite and genuine love story in cinema history: true and sincere, where everything else really didn’t matter anymore.A perfect/imperfect bond in which they complete and help each other to become a better person despite their differences.
And in such a delightful and tangible story, Luc Besson gave the public a true villain because “No love will bloom and prospere under my watch” he said.

Norman Stansfield aka Gary Oldman, had the role to traumatize the audience by giving an outstanding performance about how a bad guy in a movie should actually be and act as a bad guy.
One of the most unforgettable character written and played so well that deserved to be carved on Hollywood Boulevard.

So here I am, in 2021, still finding a good excuse to watch and follow this story as if it was my first time, hoping that maybe in the next one there will be a different ending and that “fate” is not already written.

But you know what? It was 1994, Mathilda was 12yo, but she was brave enough to ask the right question.

“Is life always this hard, or is it just when you’re a kid?”

Mr. Yellow

The Matrix

If I have to think of a movie that literally blew my mind as kid, I don’t have to think much.

I was 12yo when The Matrix hit the theaters and revolutionized the idea of sci-fi. It did at least for me.

The idea of being unaware prisoners, asleep in a water tank, trapped in a fictional reality, mankind as machine’s hamburger. Hey, maybe water tanks are for thirsty machines!

I really wouldn’t know where to begin if I have to mention all the things that made me think back in the days “THIS IS THE MOVIE”.

But what’s the movie about?

As an adult you see things in a different perspective, you understand that everything you saw and learned as a kid must be converted, must be adapted to yourself and to the world around you. I won’t even start my introspective voyage about early Disney cartoons because I am still processing them.

The Matrix is not about robots, war and a badass dude with superpowers. The Matrix taught me that life is about making choices and each choice we make determines our future self. Each choice we make, empowers our mind with responsibilities and courage. The choice of being curious, to see what the world is really about, to not be afraid of discovering yourself and sometimes not asking too many questions about free warm homemade cookies.

So, is it all about red pill or blue pill? No, it’s also about the journey that took you there to that single moment when you think about every step you made, every people you met, every wonderful or horrible thing you learned that shaped your path ’til the rabbit hole. How deep it goes? As deep as your imagination can go, while fear and doubts hold the leash.

Finding ourselves might actually be the most important goal we have in life and it’s no easy shit. We’ll be hesitant sometimes, but we got to push through, trying to see what we can achieve, trying to breath in, look back and see all the road we already did and be proud. Smile and be grateful.

Life is like jumping from one skyscraper to another with no ropes or parachute. Life punches you in the face challenging you to be better. How? Don’t THINK you are. KNOW you are.

Awakening: that the big deal.

Agent Smith to me represents all insecurities that try to hold us back, that wants us to fail. Agent Smith is part us and we cannot live without because no man has no fear. Agent Smith makes us humans, but only us can decide how his presence will impact our life and how important his role will be.

And here we are, even The Matrix, at the end gave us an old fashioned “Happily ever after” because no matter how dark the night is, somehow the sun rises once again, and all the shadows are chased away.

Brothers and Sisters of Zion, why Neo didn’t pet the cat?

Mr. Yellow