Relax. See a movie.

• Water for Elephants (Drama/Love story) •

Main Characters

• Jacob Jankowski - Polish-American; main character, fell in love with Marlena

• Marlena Rosenbluth - Star of the Circus, Benzini Brothers; wife of August

• August - Marlena's Husband, Owner of Benzini Brothers 

Jacob, an elderly man stubbornly refused to leave the place where the circus would be held claiming he didn't escape from a nursing home. Charlie, the circus manager,  thought that Jacob might've indeed escaped from a nursing home. Charlie, out of compassion invited Jacob to his office and eventually found the old man's circus story interesting upon seeing the photo of a woman on an elephant sitting in Charlie's desk. 

Flashback - Jacob as a young man studying at an Ivy league school Cornell University as a Veterinary medicine student. He received a devastating news the day of his final exam--his parents passed away leaving him empty handed. He learned his parents were in deep debt leaving him no home no nothing. 

Jacob took the first train he saw after walking many miles. He later on learned that he hopped on a travelling circus train called Benzini Brothers. 

He started working outright after he was invited by the men on the train who also works for the circus. Jacob saw Marlena, the beautiful bombshell who happened to be the circus' main attraction and her as white as a snow horse. Jacob noticed Marlena's horse is partially limping and seemed in pain since he's a VetMed student on his final semester.

Jacob was later on introduced to August so he gets hired as an official circus employee. August declined at first but when Jacob mentioned that Marlena's horse may never walk again he got August's full attention. August learned Jacob is from an ivy league school Cornell and even called him a veterinarian thus welcomed him to the circus, introduced him to Marlena (his wife). 

Jacob secretly fell in love with Marlena. He also learned that August has temper, a schizophrenic and at the same time cruel to animals. Because of Jacob's genuine love for animals he suggested to put down Marlena's horse to put an end to the poor animal's suffering. Jacob shot the horse, maybe inhumane but the most humane way to alleviate the horse's pain in an instant. 

The story is quite long but after Marlena lost her horse, August bought an old elephant named Rosie to perform with Marlena. Jacob often gets invited to dinner by the couple and he learned that August is possesive and sometimes hurts Marlena. 

August became cruel to Rosie and hurts the elephant because it won't obey any command from him. Jacob then learned that Rosie was trained in Polish thus solves the problem. Marlena alongside Rosie became the star of the show again. 

Marlena and Jacob fell in love, August found out about it, Marlena told Jacob that August is planning to dispatched him and the later offered Marlena to run away with him. The two did but eventually got caught by August's men in a hotel room, Jacob was mauled and the men took Marlena. 

Jacob went to the circus and there goes the havoc. August's dusgruntled former employees started unleashing the carnivorous circus animals like the lion, tiger etcetera. There was a stampede and while August is on the act of strangling Marlena (wh totally went nuts) the elephant Rosie then pulled something from the ground and hit August which instantly killed him. It was a relief, not the bloody part but that's the only way to end the story, get the villain killed right? and in that case no human gets penalized. 

Jacob and Marlena, inspite of the age difference got married and had five kids. 

The end.

Back to present day - Charlie agreed to Jacob getting a vet job at the circus. 

I honestly loved this flick. I did read few chapters so at least I already have an idea that it was during the time of depression. The book was quite lenghty and despairing but the movie was awesome. Given a chance i'll watch it again cuz there are very few movies nowadays that makes sense fortunately amongst them was Water for Elephants.

• Side Effects (Suspense) • 

Emily is suffering from depression long before. Her husband was incarcerated which even more heightened her depression. After her husband was released from prison she continuously acted weird because of her condition and turned to her new shrink, Dr. Banks who later on prescribed this experimental drug (seen on TV commercial) to combat her depression.

Emily used to see a different shrink in the past (catherine zeta-jones) but quit seeing later on. Things has gotten disarray when Emily started sleep walking as a side effect of the anti-depressant drug prescribed to her. One fateful day, Emily stabbed her husband while sleep walking which led to his death. 

Emily was detained because all the blame was put on Dr. Banks, he became legally responsible for Emily being his patient. Later on Dr. Banks learned that Emily is a liar and drilled down on him to be responsible for her condition. 

I found out later during the later part of the movie that Emily's former female shrink (catherine zeta-jones) has a relationship with her thus manipulates her and blame the crime on Dr. Banks so they could continuously conceal their illicit relationship. Zeta-Jones was also then responsible for Emily's money through bank transfers to different accounts making her look broke inspite of having a filthy rich husband with whom she eventually killed. 

zeta-jones and Emily's ploy did not last for very long. Dr. Banks used Emily to con zeta-jones but later on the two were both incarcerated. Dr. Banks reclaimed his job as a shrink and life with his girlfriend and stepson. 

I enjoyed this movie seriously because of the twists aside from Rooney Mara is one of the best actress i've seen to date (remember the Girl with a Dragon Tattoo hollywood version?). This flick won't bore you. 

• The Haunting in Connecticut (Horror) •

The Campbell family moved to upstate Connecticut because one of the Cambell boys, Matthew has cancer and they need to save money travelling far from home to the hospital. 

The Campbell's then chose this old Victorian home because of its low cost. The family settled in and started experiencing weird things. Matthew picked the basement room because he found it big enough for him inspite of the eerie locked sliding door.

Matthew started having visions about the house as if he gets teleported to a different time, same house yet he saw a lot of corpses occupying the locked door in his room. He then saw Jonah, the son of the house owner in his visions/nightmare or whatever who seemed to have strong psychic abilities.

Lemme just skipped that part a bit because the Campbell's then learned that the house they bought used to be an old funeral home. Imagine how spooky that is right?

Anyways, moving on, the house later on seemed possessed, things gets hauled here, there and everywhere, lights flicker, Matthew seemed possessed too.

Matthew became friends with a priest at the Cancer institute who happened to know matters about the supernatural. The priest advised they have to free Jonah's spirit and the rest of the souls trapped in the house. And so Matthew did by burning the house down but eventually almost caused his life. The Campbell's eventually survived.

This movie was ok. T'was lenghty though but nevetheless it's tolerable compared to other nonsense horror movies.