Birthday over. Thanks for the good wishes. Avoiding concentrating on bad news today. Let’s be entertained.

Films we watched over the long weekend.

SPOILER ALERTS FOR TWO BAD MOVIES, AND ONE GOOD ONE BELOW. THE ORDER WILL BE BAD, BAD, GOOD.

The worst was a new English film on Netflix called “Locked In” (thank you, Michelle). There’s an old country mansion in England, owned by a crusty, ex-actress, who lives with her chronically ill and chronically selfish son, along with the daughter of her oldest friend who had died, and to whom she had promised to take care of her daughter. The orphan daughter and the ill son marry, but it’s hardly a marriage in that the ill son needs constant caring, his mother won’t give it to him, and that leaves his young wife. The only other people they come into contact with is Robert Johnson MD, who is the family physician, and a nurse who treated the son when he was hospitalized and who is now treating the ex-actress, who is in a coma from an “accident”.

OK, so far, but then it goes astray. The doctor claims to fall in love with the young orphan/wife, and she with him. She is in a desperate situation, so from her place, this makes a bit of sense. From the doctor’s?

The doctor finds a way to drown her young, sick husband, so he is out of the way. But he has also been wooing the ex-actress (for reasons not quite clear to me), and this leads to an awful triangle, which winds up with the actress chasing the orphan/widow with a rifle, and the doctor running over the actress with his expensive SUV. Hence the coma.

Before it’s over, the orphan/widow shoots and kills the doctor just when he was getting ready to give a lethal injection to the ex-actress in the coma, but the nurse arrives just in time (and just when the police do – I think someone called them) and she vows to protect the murderer (and, I assume, care for the ex-actress, who it turns out is perfect mentally – or as perfect as she ever was – but can only communicate by blinking an eye). The end.

The second bad film was an American film from the 1950s called Accused of Murder. Can I even remember the plot? A prominent criminal defense lawyer is murdered presumably by a mob killer. He had been involved with a woman who is in the country on an artist visa and who sings at a tony restaurant/club. He wanted to marry her; she said “no”, and they had a series of arguments which leads her to be accused of the murder.

But a young woman who works as a 10-cents-a-dance dancer heard the shot, looked out the window and saw the mob killer. She was asked by the police to look at some photos to identify the man she saw. She did, she saw him, but she didn’t tell the police. Instead, she went to the man’s apartment and tried to blackmail him, but all she got was a black eye.

There are two police detectives on the case – Lieutenant Nice Guy and Sergeant Jerk. Sergeant Jerk is really a jerk, and Lieutenant Nice Guy is such a nice guy that he falls in love with the night club singer. They suddenly passionately hug and kiss each other, just as Sergeant Jerk walk through the door and gets Lieut. N.G. into a bit of a pickle.

Never fear, all is well, the bad guy is arrested, the black eye gets better, Sergeant Jerk mends his ways, and Lieutenant Nice Guy and the innocent singer with the artist visa share drinks at the bar as they talk about the days ahead when they will undoubtedly live happily ever after.

REMINDER: SPOILER ALERT FOR THE FILM YOU MIGHT WANT TO SEE. FILM = “JAANE JAAN”.

And we actually watched a film we liked and would recommend – an Indian film (subtitled) called Jaane Jaan, also on Netflix. Takes place in the north of India, a small town not far from Darjeeling. A young woman, estranged from her abusive husband for fourteen years, has built a life for herself and her daughter in this somewhat remote (but very picturesque) town in the mountains, owning a coffee shop. Her neighbor, an on-the-autism-spectrum math teacher, has a thing for her, but can hardly get up the courage to say “hello” when he goes every day to buy a takeout lunch at the coffee shop. He is the picture of unhappiness.

So is the woman, one day, when her former husband shows up and declares he wants two things – some money and his daughter.

The woman offers him money, but that does not satisfy him as he grabs for the daughter and a fight ensues, which ends when the woman discovers that he is dead. What to do?

The math teacher comes to the rescue. How does he even know that there’s a dead body in the apartment next door? Because he is brilliant enough to be able to add two and two together, when a normal person would not even know there were two two’s to be added. He volunteers to help, says he will destroy the body in a manner that no one would ever find it, and that she just should rest easy and rely on him.

ONCE MORE, SPOILER ALERT

The body is found within a day or two by the police. It is in a remote spot, has been disfigured and burnt beyond recognition. Near the body are the victim’s clothes, also burnt. But near the clothes is a tag, identifying the man.

An out of town police detective is assigned to help. It turns out that he was an old friend and classmate of the math teacher and is excited to see him. He also researched the life of the man who was killed and ties him into his ex-wife, whom he meets at the coffee shop. Suspicion falls upon the ex-wife, who is sure that she will be accused.

But no. The coroner says that the man died on the 10th (he had in fact died on the 9th), and on the 10th, his ex-wife and the daughter had what seemed to be an ironclad alibi. They went to a movie, to a restaurant, and to a karaoke club. And they had corroborating proof for each.

What happened? SPOILER ALERT. The husband was killed on the 9th. The math teacher did something with his body – we don’t know what. But on the 10th, the math teacher found a homeless man who was approximately the same size, murdered him and disfigured and burnt him beyond recognition, burnt the clothes, but left an ID tag for the husband (not for this murdered man) nearby, meanwhile arranging for the woman and her daughter to have a busy night, so that they could never be connected to the crime.

But the math teacher did not count on his old school friend who knew exactly how the math teacher thought and, reluctantly to be sure, concluding that only the math teacher could have carried out the crime on the 10th, but never understanding that the actual crime was carried out on the 9th and that he was dealing with two murders, not one.

The math teacher was convicted, and continued his life in his jail cell with his hard to solve math problems, no longer bothered by seeing but avoiding his neighbor and being annoyed by the children he taught in school.

All’s well that end’s well. By the way, this was a very well done film (subtitled in English). Interesting setting, and a unique way, as the film progressed, to explain to you the difference between what you saw and what actually transpired in a way that made you feel you were trusted to know the truth, not that you were dumb not to have understood it the first time around. If only that’s the way the world worked.