no beer (sob)

spoilers ahead!!

And there had to be a last movie, since everything comes to an end.  It was Das Ende der Wahrheit/El final de la verdad/Blame Game (who's doing crazy title translations now?).  This is a political thriller, in which a journalist is murdered for asking questions that are hitting too close to home for the German secret service, and her boyfriend decides to do some digging himself.  Her boyfriend is, in fact, a secret service agent, which she knew, although she didn't know his real name, apparently.  There are some power shifts in the agency and the boyfriend finds himself blocked out of important decisions and missions, because he favors keeping sanctions on a Middle Eastern leader who has connections to a "legitimate" mafia organization, which has connections to the German secret service.  This organization is involved in "security" and "stability", providing logistic support for humanitarian organizations as well as shipping arms and components that can be used to manufacture them.  The boyfriend pulls some strings and gets information on the links between members of the secret service and the leader and his lackies, despite being run off a lonesome highway, injected with alcohol and left as a drink driver in the police station.  The underling to the mafia-secret service agent has a change of heart when he realizes that nothing in the whole situation is about the safety of the nation or peace anywhere on earth, and he decides to tell the agency director what he knows along with the boyfriend.  They manage to catch the director at the airport about to fly to the small country in question, bordering Pakistan in this movie universe.  Their convoy is attacked and almost everyone dies - except the boyfriend.  He returns to Germany to recover from his injuries and try to build a relationship with his daughter.  While she is staying at his house for the weekend, he realizes that a matryoshka doll was missing from his girlfriend's house the last time he was there.  He had been given her belongings from the hospital since nobody else claimed them, and the doll is in the box.  It contains a tiny digital camera with a film of a meeting between the logistics company and members of the German secret service, plotting to end trade restrictions and make all the money selling weapons in the Middle East.  With this recording, the boyfriend finally gets the higher-ups to take notice and take action against this agent.  What he doesn't show is that his friend in the agency, who is now going to take over as director, was also at the meeting.  He says now she'll have an obligation to cut ties with the logistics company, and take out the assassin who orchestrated the murder of the journalist, which she does.  The boyfriend goes back to the journalist's lakeside cabin and slides into the water off the pier, maybe trying to show her that he is involved in things (in the first scene she is swimming and he tells her he prefers the view to the experience).

I think I did alright this year, being a little limited in my schedule.  The films I saw were all enjoyable and not such big surprises as there have been other years.  Little surprises I guess, but pleasant ones.  They were varied in genre too, which is nice.  The only thing I miss is a good classic, black-and-white.