Undercover Miss Hong

 

Tags: romcom, Korean, Netflix, mystery-ish 

Every Saturday and Sunday 

Asianwiki

Set in the late 1990s, Hong Keum-Bo (Park Shin-Hye) is in her 30's and is an elite supervisor for the Financial Supervisory Service. She is a cool-headed, working woman who only thinks about her job. She goes undercover as a 20 year old high school graduate, Hong Jang-Mi, and begins to work for a securities company where suspicious flows of funds are detected. There, she meets Shin Jung-Woo (Ko Kyoung-Pyo). He is the new CEO of Hanmin Securities Company. Shin Jung-Woo is a natural-born management consultant and a corporate raider, who believes that only numbers are honest. He uses any means necessary to reach his goal. He meets Hong Jang-Mi, whose face is the same as Hong Keum-Bo, whom he once loved. They become complicatedly entangled.

Yay! Park Shin-hye is back and playing a 20 year old High School graduate who was accepted to work in a business establishment under a program for people who never went to college. Park Shin-hye is 35 years old both in real life and in the series. 

I watched episodes 1 and 2 and I like it so far. I hope there won't be a love triangle.

Agatha Christie's Seven Dials

Tags: Agatha Christie, murder mystery, Netflix 

Goose🥚

From Wiki

Agatha Christie's Seven Dials is a British miniseries based on the 1929 novel The Seven Dials Mystery by Agatha Christie. Created and written by Chris Chibnall, and directed by Chris Sweeney, the miniseries stars Mia McKenna-Bruce, Edward Bluemel, Iain Glen, Martin Freeman, and Helena Bonham Carter.

Oops, British TV did it again! Bastardizing a perfectly good mystery novel by Agatha Christie is their modus operandi. It's getting tiresome. It is an adaptation but must they butcher the characters beyond recognition? I could tolerate just one episode out of 3. I don't know how the series ended.

• First, there is NO Lady Caterham, the mother of Bundle. She was already deceased in the first book with the same characters, The Secret of Chimneys. In the Netflix 3 part mini series, she is alive and well and it was Lord Caterham who died. Helena Bonham Carter playing the mother of Bundle looks like a grocery cart pushing bag lady. I am not kidding. 
• Netflix's Bundle is an emotional train wreck, the complete opposite of the novel's. Bundle is a lively character full of enthusiasm and ideas in solving the murders and just like her friends is not sulking and crying over their dead friends because there are murderers to apprehend and no time to spare. 
• In the book, Scotland Yard Superintendent Battle is a no nonsense law officer who is big framed and tall, built like an armoire. Here he is a short puny playful character, almost like a clown. 

Avoid if you have read the book. I recommend watching instead the 1981 TV series although old is better IMO, has all the humor, and follows the book closely. It's streaming on Amazon Prime.

The Impossible Fortune

Tags: murder mystery, The Impossible Fortune, Thursday Murder Club series

⭐

From Goodreads

Who's got time to think about murder when there's a wedding to plan?

It’s been a quiet year for the Thursday Murder Club. Joyce is busy with table plans and first dances. Elizabeth is grieving. Ron is dealing with family troubles, and Ibrahim is still providing therapy to his favourite criminal. But when Elizabeth meets a wedding guest who’s in trouble, kidnap and death are hot on their heels once more. A villain wants access to an uncrackable code, and will stop at nothing to get it.

Plunged back into action once more, can the gang solve the puzzle and a murder in time?

I think it's time to put the four octogenarians out to pasture. This fifth installment is lacking in humor and the usual solving of a murder. All four except Ron are hardly in it. My first beef is with the side character I don't care for the most, Joyce's daughter Joanna. She, her wedding, and her husband's 2 friends are at the center of the story. Ron and his family problems are also front and center. Joyce, Ibrahim, and even Elizabeth are like the side characters. Sheesh, Mr. Osman, what happened? Why a gazillion characters and red herrings that fell flat at the end?

I have a suspicious feeling that the author is hoping for another Netflix movie featuring Ron played by Pierce Brosnan because all members of his family are featured prominently in this book. The grandson, who talks like an adult, solves the second code together with an ex con teenager. 🙄 The first code is solved by Elizabeth but the second baffled her, an ex MI6 agent. Huh??!! IMHO, the book reads like an AI generated garbage.

Not recommended.

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.

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. 

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.

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. 

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.

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

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.