Eastern Promises (2007)

There is a new member of the Pantheon of Terrible Movies, and his name is Eastern Promises. After poking around a bit, I was surprised to see that not very many people have realized this -- currently, it's got 89% on the tomato-o-meter.

First, let me make an obvious point: If a director centered a film on a grotesque caricature of African Americans, and went so far as to cast only white people and have them act in blackface, he'd be publicly eviscerated. He wouldn't be allowed near a camera again, ever. I have no idea why it's acceptable to do the same damn thing with Russians. If you don't find it offensive, surely you (like me) find it boring. In a similar vein, if you're going to fill your movie with Russian characters, you should hire some actual Russians. There's a whole country full of them, and many of them can act. It may surprise you, but they do a pretty good Russian accent!

Now, I know what you're thinking: "Ross, it's a movie! I'm looking for over-the-top exoticism! And I don't speak Russian, so they don't sound silly to me." Let me point out, then, that the movie fails on its own terms. I guarantee that, within a half hour of the movie starting, you will know exactly how it will finish. I guarantee this. Not only will you have worked out the basic plot points, you will have figured out how the characters will "develop." The only things that will surprise you for the remainder of the movie are the bizarre decisions made by poor Naomi Watts, with which David Cronenberg clumsily advances the plot. It's as if they realized halfway through shooting the movie that they hadn't really come up for a reason for the Russian mafia to care about a nurse, and decided to have her throw herself at them until they reacted. Awesome.

We could ask whether Viggo Mortenson's character is interesting. I'd say "kind of." He made an admirable attempt to learn some Russian, and developed a surprising command of the Russian smirk. This isn't to say he's convincing, only that he's more convincing than most of the other actors. I think that the interesting part of the movie is supposed to be his struggle to walk the line between good and evil. I have to say, not much struggle is apparent. He only kills "bad guys." When put into a morally ambiguous situation, he always makes the "right" decision. He doesn't seem to have any regrets, really, and this makes him kind of boring.

If you want to watch a good movie about an undercover cop with a funny accent, watch The Departed. The only reason to see Eastern Promises is If you want to see Viggo Mortenson naked and bloody in a sauna.

Angel-a (2005)

K: This is the type of film that I find very difficult to describe, plot-wise. It is a French film about a good man who needs saving--mostly from himself. In a fit of pique at the world, he makes a show of killing himself by jumping off a bridge into the Seine. Whether he would actually do it or not is anyone's guess, because before he can decide one way or the other, he sees a tall blond woman jump into the water. He jumps in to save her, and is in turn saved from having to make good on his suicide threat. The series of events that follow change him in a way that is difficult to describe without sounding corny. "He learns to love other people by loving himself" sounds pretty after-to-school-special, but trust me, it's awesome.

It is done in black-and-white and I honestly don't think that it could have been done in color. It is a bit shocking to see high-grade special effects done in black and white and the result is quite haunting.

The lead actor is phenomenal. He plays an extremely difficult role, and he nails it. His transformation is dramatic, but also completely believable. I'm going to look for more of his work.

The lead actress seemed a bit forced I couldn't tell if a native speaker would find her more stilted or less. Anyway, one could probably argue that the distance in her voice added an otherworldly quality to her character. If you wanted to be all hoity-toity about it.

I would highly recommend seeing this film on the big screen. There is something about it that reminds me of 1930s expressionist film--a genre that is best seen BIG.

The Simpsons (2007)

K: Usually, bad previews are kind of an early warning system for sucky movies--especially in big, multiplex theaters like Quality 16. So although we'd heard great things about the Simpsons movie (good enough to make us actually go to a theater other than the Michigan), we were pretty nervous by the end of the coming features. The worst was for this movie about a guy who gets laid a lot because every woman he sleeps with finds her true love immediately afterwards.

Yeah. I think I'll skip that one.

Fortunately, the badness of the previews only reflected the badness of the summer film season (Fred Claus, anyone?) rather than the quality of the feature presentation.

There were several times that I thought I might die from the laughing. Oh the pain.

But the Simpsons are funny, so that's not really impressive in itself. What *is* impressive is that they managed to do just enough with their wide screen format and R-rating to make me feel like it was worth paying for (this didn't show at the Michigan, so we had to pay to see it), without screwing up the things that make the Simpsons so successful on tv.

But the most amazing part of the movie hit us as we were driving home afterwards--the income freshman class has never known a world without the Simpsons. Crazy man.

No End in Sight (2007)

R: After the debacle that was the first twenty minutes of The Ten, we decided to go immediately from The State to The Michigan, to see No End in Sight. It's not bad, though it's not fantastic either. Most of the movie is a broad overview of the Iraq war, and it's not a bad one. They've interviewed a lot of the right intellectual types (George Packer, Samantha Powers, Nir Rosen), and a pretty good collection of people from the first part of the occupation (the Jay Garner part). If you're not willing to spend more than two hours trying to understand the events of the last four years -- and let's be honest, we're all busy people -- this is a good place to start. Not as good as at least some of the books on the subject*, but better than trying to keep track of things by following the news.

The director seemed to have a hard time deciding what the focus of the movie would be, though, and focus is pretty important in a two hour movie on a very complicated subject. After awhile, they decide to spend some time on the decision to disband the Iraqi army, and do a pretty good job going back and forth between people from the Garner team and the one member of the Bremer team who was willing to be interviewed. It's a pretty good segment. There's also an interview with a young marine which is pretty compelling, and a pretty strange "home movie" put together by a private contractor.

On the whole, I don't feel like they did much with the medium. I feel like there are lots of things that they could show -- life in Baghdad would be a good place to start -- rather than the telling that they stuck with. On the other hand, I have a hard time figuring out what other medium would have been appropriate for this kind of broad overview. It wouldn't have worked as a magazine article, and I don't know that it would have worked on TV. In that sense, then, maybe it was the right medium. I'm not sure.

K: I pretty much agree. One point that I would make is that some of the footage of Iraqis and their reactions are pretty compelling. It was actually surprisingly moving to see the footage with the original sound. The footage was the kind of thing that you might see behind a talking head on the news--but without the sound, it feels much more removed. I would say that it's worth seeing.


*If you're curious, check out "The Assassin's Gate".

The Ten (2007)

R: As it turns out, this film is terrible. There's really nothing to explain -- it's supposed to be funny, and it's not. The level of the humor is, I think, high school. Not as in "aimed at high school students," as in "written by high school students." Actually, I can only confirm that the first 2/10 of the movie is awful. We left after that. God bless the Gold Card -- we'd have been pretty angry if we'd paid to see the movie.

More importantly, my longstanding love for the film reviews in The Onion is gone forever. Did they like this movie? No, they loved it. Was it some new hack who wrote the review? No, it's Nathan Rabin, who bears the title of "head writer". Ok. Maybe the best skits are at the end? No, some of his favorites are at the beginning. The ones we saw. Sooooo... yeah.