Review of Citizen X (1995) by Senh D — 24 May 2004

First the movies:

Citizen X - A very good movie about Russia's first serial killer and the many frustrating years of Russian bureaucracratic hoops their first profiler went through to catch him. If you're into movies about serial killers and profilers, this a very good one, especially for a straight to cable movie.

Shoot to Kill - A fish out of water cop thriller with Sidney Poitier, Tom Berenger, and Kirstie Alley. A robber stole some jewelry from a bank and killed one of the hostages. He escaped to the woods, killed some hikers, and took the guide (Kirstie Alley) as a hostage. He needs the guide to get him through the dangerous and moutainous terrain and into Cannada. Tom Berenger plays Kirstie Alley's boy friend, who's very familiar with that wooded and mountainous area. Sidney Poitier plays the cop who enlists his help to track down the killer and who must rely on his expertise in the woods. There's a very homoerotic scene during a snowstorm when the two had to dig a hole into the snow and had to cuddle together naked to keep each other warm. They became a lot closer after that scene. There are also some pretty good Cliffhanger-like action sequences in the woods. When Sidney Poitier and Tom Berenger's characters got out of the woods and into Canada, the fish of water roles are reversed. Now Tom Berenger's character must rely on the cop's skills to rescue his girlfriend. Overall, not bad, especially since you get two fish out of water stories in one. Roger Spottiswoode also directed Tomorrow Never Dies, and you get see early that he's a pretty good with action scenes.

My Wife is a Gangster - a very funny Korean comedy about a tough female mobster who tries to fulfill the dying wish of her sister to get married. In a way, it's kind of the opposite of Miracles (Jackie Chan) except it's the other way around - the mobster must pretend to be a normal, law abiding citizen to marry a normal guy.

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The Shouting Match.

Anyway, on to the shouting match. Our apartment complex recently got new ownership. They want to make the place a bit more respectable so they're doing a bunch of improvements and renovations. Most of these include entering our place and doing work inside which normally requires us to move stuff away from the walls and/or closets. And they have a tendency to give us less than a day (24 hours) of warning. And this day was one of those days. I left for work at around 10:30am - no written notice taped to our door. Binh icq's me at work from our apartment at 11:30pm, telling me we have to get stuff cleared out from various walls, the kitchen, and my closet. First, there's a lot of pent up anger from by all the noise caused by the workers in the morning. But today I'm really just annoyed that we again have to re-arrange stuff in our apartments and without much warning time. Cuz it was kinda late, I taped a note on our door telling them not to enter our place until 10:00am. They came at 10:00am, but since the restroom was being used, I told them to come back in half an hour. The contractor got really angry and said they'll just skip us and do it some other day. He walked off and told his guys to leave. Now, I'm the angry one. I didn't want to move all that stuff again. I stormed out of our apartment with the notice, screamed at the workers, then the contractor, and then his supervisor, pointing at the text in the notice that says they're supposed to give us at least a full day of warning before they can enter our apartments. The supervisor called and screamed at the apartment managers for not giving us the notice in time. They then agreed to do their work, and I apologize for screaming at them.

After all these inconveniences, I know the owners will probably end up raising the rent for the "improvements". That's when it's probably time for me to move. I'm not gonna pay more for being inconvenienced on a daily basis.