Sunday, January 11, 2026

The Courtship


tags: Amazon video, drama, period movie, Hungarian, romance
⭐⭐⭐⭐

From Amazon Prime Video
1920's. Promising a generous dowry, a father finds a husband for his daughter through a want ad. Can the arranged marriage turn into true love?

Predictable funny sweet movie. All the possible clichés checked out but I enjoyed it very much, regardless. Watch it in its original Magyar language with English subtitles.

Highly recommended.

Friday, January 9, 2026

Believe Your Eyes


Believe your eyes, not the main stream media and morons AKA Democrats who fight for illegal criminals and fraudsters draining your hard earned money for them to buy luxury cars and houses. Democrats NEVER fight for American citizens. EVER!

The woman who was killed was an anti-ICE professional paid to block streets to prevent ICE agents to do their job which is to arrest illegal aliens who have records of rapes of minors, murders, and fraud. 

FAFO

The same agent this year was already dragged by a car driven by a Hispanic illegal criminal who was found guilty and now in jail. The agent was hospitalized for his injuries. Cars are being used as a weapon by criminals and demented democrats. 

Update 

Here are numerous illegal alien criminals in Minnesota the dead idiot democrat voting woman, her partner, and democrat politicians are protecting from ICE agents. 

Thursday, January 8, 2026

A Gun For Sale











tags: classics, crime, mystery, noir, thriller
⭐⭐⭐⭐

From Goodreads
Born out of a brutal childhood, Raven is an assassin for hire whose latest hit—a government minister—is one calculated to ignite a war. When the most wanted man in England is paid off in marked bills, he also becomes the easiest to track—and police detective Jimmy Mather has the lead. But Raven’s got an advantage. Crossing paths with a sympathetic dancer named Anne Crowder, the emotionally scarred Raven has found someone in the wreckage of his life he can trust, maybe his only hope for salvation. Or at least, escape—because Anne is also Mather’s fiancée. Now the fate of two men will depend on her. And either way, it’s betrayal.
This is the first time I read A Gun For Sale. It is a very good story told seamlessly. The author was obviously sympathetic to the assassin. Raven, the assassin, was an ugly looking guy - small bodied and with a harelip which made it hard for him to elude the police. The assassination was not the reason he was being sought by the police. It was the stolen bills that he was paid for the job of killing a Czech government minister in order to start a war. Raven wanted revenge for the duplicity of the man who hired him. 

He encountered Anne on a train and tried to steal her ticket because he cannot use the marked money for anything, not even for food. He was able to keep Anne as his hostage of sorts, intending to kill her but Anne was smart. The way she got away from him was pure genius. They met for the second time when he found her in an apartment bound and gagged by the man Raven was trying to find. Small world but this happened in the same town of Nottwich where the assassin, the man who hired him, and the police are all in. The short story has a happy ending for Anne and her police detective fiance. Not so for the 2 bad men. 

Recommended for readers who don't mind reading books written in the 1930s.

I read Graham Green's Brighton Rock many many years ago and also a few short stories, some made into movies. The Third Man and The Fallen Idol are terrific. I  have yet to see Brighton Rock movie adaptation which is already on my Kanopy watch list. Or maybe I have seen it already. 

Saturday, January 3, 2026

Run Away

 

tags: cults, drama, Netflix, thriller 
⭐⭐

From Netflix 
Simon's perfect life is shattered when daughter Paige runs away, later found strung out in a park. Simon's search leads into a dangerous underworld where an act of violence rocks his life. 
The Netflix series is an adaptation of Harlan Coben's book Run Away. The synopsis sounded familiar and I checked on Goodreads if I had read the book. I had, in 2019. I vaguely remember except for the cult and the PI Elena. In the book she is an Hispanic lady but since the series is a British production, the character was changed. I don't recall some of the additional characters and I may have to read it again. 

I am not too happy with the casting, as usual. How in the world does a shortish overweight woman work as a SWAT team leader(?) and sort of able to "rescue" a fit tall guy, who later became her husband. I was laughing hard at the giant beach ball running while carrying a heavy weapon trying to kill the bad guys in a warehouse. The warehouse scene explaining how she met her husband is totally unnecessary. The other fat girl is a police detective/investigator acting like a teenager in love and sleeping with her partner. Speaking of the partner, the young Black actor is surely an eye candy but sheesh, he simply cannot act. His idea of acting is knitting his eyebrows. All. The. Time. 

Not recommended.


Friday, December 26, 2025

Ang Mutya Ng Section E

 

tags: action, comedy, drama, Filipino series, High School kids, romance, violence
⭐⭐⭐⭐

from IMDB
A notorious all-male section is shaken up by the arrival of a female transfer student, causing chaos as the grumpy class section president tries to drive her away.

I noticed the second season of this Filipino series in one of Kdrama websites but the first season is missing. I looked for and found the complete first season 16 episodes in another website and finished watching. I'll start the new season when it is complete. 

The Jewel Of Section E is the literal English translation of Ang Mutya Ng Section E. Mutya, pronounced moot-ya or moo-tcha, means pearl, gem, jewel, or muse. The series obviously got the idea from Japan's Hana Yori Dango but I can't accuse the writers of ripping off HYD because HYD is a Japanese anime version of Pride and Prejudice's Mr. Darcy and Lizzie Bennet. Yes, it is.* The lead male is always wealthy, arrogant, and a snob and the lead female is feisty and not afraid to speak her mind. Pride and Prejudice probably created the original love triangle with Darcy, Elizabeth and Wickam. But the similarity ends there because Wickam is a cad and HYD and AMNSE made the second lead a kind lovable boy. In HYD, he has blonde hair and in Mutya, he is Japanese with rooster red hair.   

The girl JayJay, was expelled from her school because of violence and she was taken in by the International School with the help of her wealthy cousin. JayJay is not just feisty, she is downright gangster. LOL. In no time did she become friends with the boys in Section E and also a few of the girls in the higher Sections. 

Recommended for Hana Yori Dango fans.

* Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet pairing is the staple of Mills & Boon romance novels - wealthy, stiff, arrogant mid 30s male and very very young spirited female. I read enough of them to say it is true at the time. I can't say for sure if it is the same today, though. 

Sunday, December 21, 2025

Guns & Moses

 

tags: Amazon Prime movie, gun toting Rabbi, thriller 
⭐⭐⭐⭐out of 5

from Amazon Prime Video 
A small-town rabbi becomes an unlikely detective and gunfighter after his community is violently attacked in this sharp, high-stakes thriller packed with action, wit, and heart 

The title got me to check it out on Amazon Prime Video. I thought it will be a comedy but it is not and I loved it. A murder mystery with cliched usual suspects but I enjoyed it very much. Rabbi Moyshe is an unlikely gunslinging detective wannabe but he had no choice in order to protect not just his family but also the innocent patsy. 

I like the part where rabbi Mo, a few days before the murder, approached the young man falsely accused by police. The boy was taunting the group of Jewish people outside the strip mall. Rabbi Mo offered some brownies and asked him to talk to the group. The boy listened to the old man about being a holocaust survivor and he eventually got a brownie and ate it, didn't argue with them at all. Rabbi Mo believed his innocence because he "ate the brownie". It's very meaningful, IMHO. The movie is not about anti Jews but about money and corruption. Cliche, I know.

Having gun protection during congregations not just for Jewish people but all religions specially Christian gatherings, is absolutely necessary. Hanukkah and Christmas are specially targeted by satanic moslems wherever in the world they are. So, this line is important not just in a movie but also in real life: "May God and your Glock protect you."

Highly recommended.

Saturday, December 20, 2025

The Great Flood


tags: AI, disaster, Korean, mystery, Netflix movie, sci-fi 
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐out of 5

from Netflix
When a raging flood traps a researcher and her young son, a call to a crucial mission puts their escape — and the future of humanity — on the line. 

I loved the movie. Visuals, acting, dialog, and CGI are very good. One of my favorite Korean actresses, Kim Da-mi stars as the "mother". 

It is part disaster, sci fi and mystery, I was confused at first but I stayed on watching the seemingly endless time loop similar to Tom Cruise's Edge of Tomorrow. 

When researcher An-na died, her memories and emotions were used to create an AI version of a mother who genuinely cares for her child, recreating it over and over again until they are ready to be sent to Earth and repopulate it after devastation from the flood disaster. 

Viewers who love a disaster movie will be disappointed because the story is about AI and how it might become useful in the future. The movie is not for everybody but will be appreciated more by true science fiction fans.

Spoilers

Monday, December 15, 2025

Brat Farrar











tags: mystery, ugly
goose🥚

From Goodreads 
What begins as a ploy to claim an inheritance ends with the impostor's life hanging in the balance. In this tale of mystery and suspense, a stranger enters the inner sanctum of the Ashby family posing as Patrick Ashby, the heir to the family's sizable fortune. The stranger, Brat Farrar, has been carefully coached on Patrick's mannerisms, appearance, and every significant detail of Patrick's early life, up to his thirteenth year when he disappeared and was thought to have drowned himself. It seems as if Brat is going to pull off this most incredible deception until old secrets emerge that jeopardize the impostor's plan and his life. Culminating in a final terrible moment when all is revealed, Brat Farrar is a precarious adventure that grips the reader early and firmly and then holds on until the explosive conclusion.
This is the worst mystery novel written by Josephine Tey and the worst I have read this year. She made an impostor, criminal, and thief an honorable character and made a 13 year boy murder his twin brother right after their parents were killed. Just because he didn't like his brother. No other explanation and not believable at all. This was an awful read.  

Tey had a habit of telling instead of showing. Throughout the short novel, now 21 year old adult Simon, never showed that he is an evil Cain. It was all in the mind of the impostor who was always sure it was Simon, at age 13 who killed his brother, without explaining why he thought so. Just a hunch. What?? Simon confessed to him when got drunk and justified the impostor's suspicion. 

The author never showed any sympathy for the fictional family who lost the parents at the same time, just told what happened., as though in real life she abhored the landed gentry. Anyway, the parents left 13 year old twin brothers Patrick and Simon, 11 year old Eleanor, and 1 year old twin babies, Ruth and Jane. I was so annoyed when out of the blue, the impostor Patrick thought that 9 year old Ruth probably has never been spanked. She hadn't done nor showed anything to make an adult spank her. She was a well behaved and spoken young girl. That's lazy crazy writing. Tey was not a talented writer or she was absolutely bonkers when she wrote this book. 

Not recommended.

Sunday, November 30, 2025

The Jealousy Man and Other Stories











tags: Jo Nesbø, short stories, mystery, The Jealousy Man
⭐⭐⭐ 

From Amazon  

A detective with a nose for jealousy is on the trail of a man suspected of murdering his twin. [adapted into a movie, Killer Heat.]
A bereaved father must decide whether vengeance has a place in the new world order after a pandemic brings about the collapse of society.
A garbage man fresh off a bender tries to piece together what happened the night before.
A hired assassin matches wits against his greatest adversary in a dangerous game for survival.
An instantly electric connection between passengers on a flight to London may spell romance, or something more sinister. 

From Goodreads
Five stories set in the near future.
 
Welcome to Rat Island and a post-pandemic America, where the upper-class elite is waiting atop a skyscraper to be evacuated while the masses fight for survival down in the streets. 
In Shredder, a scientist researching eternal life has finally found a memory shredder that will help him forget everything, before it’s too late. 
Cicadas tells the story of two best friends on their way to the bull races in Pamplona when they fall in love with the same girl. 
The Antidote follows an estranged son with an agenda as he goes to visit his father at a snake farm in Africa. 
Lastly, in the epic and vicious Black Knight, we meet a psychologist who also happens to be an assassin contracted by big business.
All the stories have a common theme: jealousy. Some are very good but some are mediocre at best. The movie adaptation of The Jealousy Man has just 2 similarities to the story - the murder and the location. Everything else is skewed. The role played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt is a 60 years old Greek, still active police detective. He is not a lousy poser that the producer made him in the movie. Movie adaptations from books are always annoying. 


Friday, November 28, 2025

J and K Drama OST

Collecting original music from Japanese and Korean dramas started with Japanese Hana Yori Dango and Korea's version, Boys Over Flowers. I downloaded songs from several dramas until I got tired of it. Most are from 2012 series. I recently downloaded a couple from 2 newer Korean dramas. Netflix also added several of my favorite romance dramedy series, some from 2009, and I rewatched You're Beautiful. Park Shin Hye was just 19 years old and not very good but I still love her and the series, and the songs. This is another gender bending theme, with Shin Hye's character playing her twin brother invading the boys' house. So much fun and crying in this drama. LOL

The latest from Korea, Dynamite Kiss, is currently airing on Netflix, Wednesday and Thursday, on the  US Top Ten every Thursday. 
   

Korea, 2009, You're Beautiful with Jang Keun Suk and Park Shin Hye, newly added on Netflix. The song is performed by the blonde one, Lee Hong-Ki with his band F.T. Island. All 3 boys are musicians. 


Japan, 2005, Hana Yori Dango, 2 seasons, theme song by Arashi, member Jun Matsumoto plays the male lead,Tsukasa Domyoji. This is way better than Korea's Boys Over Flowers. The video was made in 2007 and has nothing to do with the drama.


Korea, 2024 - 2025, Iron Family, 50 episodes

Japan, 2012, Rich Man, Poor Woman with Oguri Shun 
 

Korea, 2012, To The Beautiful You, Korean version of Hana Kimi. It has more drama and romance and cuter leads, Minho and Kang Haneul. Sulli, the actress who pretended to be a boy sadly passed away in 2019.
 

Korea, 2009, Boys Over Flowers, Korean version of Hana Yori Dango. It made Lee Min-ho an international star. Still on Netflix.   

Japan, 2012, Sprout, with really young actors ;

Korea, 2012, Love Rain, with Jang Keun Suk and Im Yoona, coming to Netflix soon.