Fitzwilly

1967

This is a story about a butler and the other servants if you will who work for a woman named Miss Victoria Woodworth. and for all intensive purposes will now be miss w.

The movie opens with essentially a heist occurring to discover that the people working the heist are all her employees, why they are stealing and swindling you do not know yet. Fitzwilly aka Claude R. Fitzwilliam aka the butler, is the ring leader.

Now you must assume that miss w is wildly rich as this is set a many years ago and she has a mansion along with I'd say 12 people running her household. 

All of a sudden a young woman shows up at the door saying she has an appointment with miss w, she wants a typist to help her write a different kind of dictionary. This will list all the ways most people spell a word-that are wrong-along with the correct way to spell it. But before being hired the young woman-Juliet- must be approved by the butler. Now why you ask would a butler decide on who will be staffed? Apparently he is Claude R. Fitzwilliam II, the son of her original butler and has been living with miss w essentially his entire life, almost as a mother. 

The butler says he doesn't want to hire her, then the woman eggs him on about why so to prove her wrong he hires her. Why would this be an issue you ask? Oh because they cant really pay for her. But I thought miss w was wildly rich? No no no, her father was and when he passed away he left her virtually no money. Why? We never know, but apparently the heists have been performed to pay all her bills and charity donations without the frail old woman realizing she doesn't have an honest dime to her name. 

Of course Juliet slowly figures out that something isn't right and to throw her off the scent Fitzwilly asks her on a date. 

They of course decide they are madly in love with each other after a few brief kisses throughout the night, and Juliet confesses she knows about the stealing but wants to know why they do it. All is explained and of course loving eyes see no problem with this as long as it ends before the wedding, yes thats right, with/in 24 hours they decide with no discussion necessary they are engaged. 

However theirs still the issue of miss W having no money so one last ELABORATE heist is planned, to rob a dept. store much like Macy's. They station boy scouts in front of 2 doors and throw money or something of that sort in front of the 3rd. Then post signs in all windows saying "free color tv with any purchase no matter how small" so of course rioting quickly ensues. 

Fitzwilly changes into a disguise-which ironically looks much like he does now everyday, and convinces the man watching the vault that he's with the insurance company and all the money should be given to him for safe keeping and avoiding potential robbery. He then mails the money to himself so that he wont be walking out of the building with anything.

However no one accounted for the footman who is a religious fellow and confesses to a crime, but not where the money is, and says he acted alone. 

Miss w is called and brought in to discuss the consequences and (thinking she's wildly rich) writes a check for the amount that was stollen as if it's pocket change. Everyone now is at square one. 

Then as everyone feels hope is lost, you discover miss W sold her "dictionary" for a series of screen plays and will now have limitless money coming in, in a 5 year plan, and they all lived happily ever after.

In all i give it a high rating. It's full of unrealistic love stories and an outlook on how easy it was to rob rich people back when security was a very different thing. You must remember when watching it that these were very different times then now, and can make you giggle as to what was considered normal then. Of course Dick VanDyke does a wonderful performance per all of his roles. I recommend it for a lazy sunday or a night in with your significant other, your lady friend will be impressed that you picked a movie that didn't involve blowing things up. 

Monsters

Spoiler alart:I will ruin all mystery to this movie
This is a good concept to a movie but not extremely well executed.
Essentially it's about something was brought to earth(from somewhere in space) 6 years ago that mated with earth organism to create a "monster" breed of THINGS that include but are not limited to actual giant "monsters" as well as things that live on trees and potentially much more but thats all you REALLY see. The monsters are essentially giant squid/octopi that have electricity in them. you only ever see them at night and they're always glowing.
So lets start at the beginning.
You see a mystery man entering a hospital in mexico-where the infected area is located. He's there to pick up a mystery woman. You have no idea who either of these people are. You later discover the girl is a daughter of some huge publication owner and the man works for her father as a photographer. his job is to photograph the monsters, which he poorly does throughout the film. His boss (father) has instructed to get her home safely.
Why she is in Mexico is a mystery, in which is never solved. You find out she has a fiance (who is obviously rich by the giant engagement ring she has.) The man has a son, and a baby momma who wont allow him to be a "father." You also observe that they are slowly developing feelings for one another.
So they reach a place to buy ferry tickets and the guy highway robberies them and says its $5,000 to get a ticket. they have to leave by the next morning at 7am the last ferry before they shut down the boarder. They are essentially quarantine'ing mexico to try and contain the monsters and theres 48 hours before they are locking down the boarders for 6 months, we now have a time cap on escape.
so they stay in a hotel and the guy goes out gets drunk and fucks a mexican who steals both their passports and tickets, how do they board the ferry now? Oh wait they cant.
so the guy running the tickets area says for $10,000 they can go through the infected area by land. which involves a boat ride, a car ride. They have no money since they were robbed so they give the expensive diamond engagement ring in exchange for travel arrangements. The boat ride goes somewhat smoothly beside the fact that the boat motor BREAKS and they have to fix it for hours in the middle of the night and a monster tries to get them, via water attack. They fix the motor and get away, phew.
They reach the jeeps who then start driving them, they camp for the night, find some of the organisms have grown on the trees til the monsters (large ones) attack the jeeps and all the people in them. The couple gets left alone in one jeep in which they shut up and turn off the lights and apparently thats the key to survival as ALL other vehicles and people are destroyed and killed.
Now they are left to finish on foot. They reach the boarder in which you expect will be covered with patrol vehicles and army personal to discover it's deserted.
They find an abandoned gas station, they call the police to get rescued and as they wait the girl calls her fiance after she's conveyed to the audience and other guy that she doesn't want to get married to the fiance anymore.The other main character calls his baby momma and son to tell them he's okay, make sure their okay and cry at the fact he cant be a father.
The monsters then attack the building and is basically syphoning energy from the television. You must assume at this point that thats how they are living. Then another monster arrives, they interact and have a touching "beautiful" moment, then part ways and leave the 2 of them completely unharmed then they finally kiss for the first time after viewing the beautiful moment and in turn creating their own.
Then a police car arrives at the gas station and the credits begin to roll...
So essentially nothing is resolved, she never technically gets home though you assume she will. You never meet the father, the fiance, see the resolution of her ending her pending nuptials, and though you discover the monsters wont kill EVERYONE they're still killing people and have now infected the U.S. The only thing that was SOMEWHAT resolved was the fact that they fell for each other.
So visually-great, intensity, great  story wise and resolution/progression-fail.
Worth watching if your bored, but not a life changing movie or award deserving film.