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Following the recent successes, SPIDER and A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE, director David Cronenberg has quickly turned into a filmmaker whose next film is a cause for excitement. Not quite on the same level as his past two productions, EASTERN PROMISES is still a compelling thriller that peers into the underworld of the Russian mob in London. Cronenberg’s HISTORY OF VIOLENCE star Viggo Mortensen deserves an Oscar nomination as the lead in a cast full of excellent performances.

A 14-year-old prostitute dies during childbirth. Midwife Anna (Naomi Watts, KING KONG) finds the girl’s diary, which is written in Russian, and makes an effort to get it translated, so that she can find the girl’s family. She eventually follows a business card found in the girl’s journal for a private Russian restaurant, where she meets the owner Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl, SHINE), who claims he does not know the girl, but offers to translate the diary for her. In meeting Semyon, she meets his drunk and leering son Kirill (Vincent Cassel, IRREVERSIBLE) and the stoic driver Nikolai (Mortensen), who we soon learn are involved in the bloody murder that starts off the picture.

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Director Neil Jordon (THE CRYING GAME), along with top-notched performances from Jodie Foster and Terrence Howard, takes many of the conventions of the revenge thriller and weaves them into a sad reflection on lose and violence. The emotional honesty for 99% of the running time moves the viewer over the contrivances. When the build up began for the final revenge shootout, I wasn’t rooting for the vigilante; I was scared for her, because her anger had now clouded her good judgment.

Erica Bain (Foster) is a radio talk show host, who tries to capture the sounds and sense of New York City. She is about to marry doctor David Kirmani (Naveen Andrews, TV’s LOST) until they are attacked viciously by three men during a walk in Central Park one night, leaving her in a coma and her fiancé dead. After her recovery, Erica has a hard time adjusting to her old life. After a long period isolated in her house, she wills herself to leave, buying a gun for protection. Then late one night, Erica gets in the middle of an act of violence, leading to her shooting a man. From this point forward, she unconsciously then consciously goes looking for violent confrontations. Detective Mercer (Howard, HUSTLE & FLOW) is a lonely cop, who is frustrated with a system that lets criminals go free. He is assigned to catch the new vigilante killer plaguing the streets of NYC. A twist of fate brings Erica and Detective Mercer together. They form a friendship, but will it last once he begins to suspect her?

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Wow the last time I had a chance to post new items into the archive was April. With the addition of This Weekend’s Film Festival, new old reviews from past editions of my old e-mail newsletter have been slowing getting online. Part of the delay in catching up with the older reviews is that I’m fleshing out some of the shorter items. With some it’s easy, especially for films I really liked. For the middle ground films, it’s tough to remember what I actually thought, because the film has slipped from my mind. Anyway, here’s an eclectic mix of the remaining films from the September 16, 2004 edition of my newsletter. Hey, even if you were one of the lucky few to have read them the first time around, they’ve been upgraded. Consider them the director’s cut.
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Though it may be more developed than TALLEDEGA NIGHTS, BLADES OF GLORY starts out like a mid-level speed skater, but ultimately limps across the finish line by embracing clichés instead of cutting them down. There are laughs to be had and far less awkwardly unfunny moments as star Will Ferrell’s previous sports spoof, but it never takes its premise further than some PG-13 potty humor.

Chazz Michael Michaels (Ferrell) and Jimmy MacElroy (Jon Heder, NAPOLEON DYNAMITE) are the premiere male figure skaters in the world. However, their personalities are like fire and ice. Michaels is a sex-addicted bad boy loner while MacElroy is an effeminate lyrical performer. After tying at a championship event, the rivals get into a brawl on the medals stand, which leads to their lifetime ban from their division. However, after their lives have fallen apart, they discover a loophole — they can skate in the pairs division. MacElroy’s former coach (Craig T. Nelson, TV’s COACH) convinces the former rivals to team up, forming the first male figure skating partnership. This infuriates brother-sister champs Stranz and Fairchild Van Waldenburg (Will Arnett, TV’s ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT & Amy Poehler, MEAN GIRLS). After MacElroy develops a crush on their younger sister Katie (Jenna Fischer, TV’s THE OFFICE), the Van Waldenburgs plot to rip Jimmy and Chazz’s partnership apart.

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This sad inspection of how death affects children and adults alike is painful, humorous and, at times, melodramatic, but always insightful when looking at how profoundly the actions of parents change their children. Director Michael Cuesta and writer Anthony Cipriano have crafted a look at how tragedy at a young age can sometimes cause arrested development, while never falling into the common pitfalls of films that deal with children by surrounding them with cookie cutter adults. In covering the lives of three friends, the filmmakers understand that there are more influences in their lives than just each other.

Jacob and Rudy Carges (both played by Conor Donovon, THE DEPARTED) are twin brothers, however Jacob was born with a large pink birthmark over one side of his face. When we first meet the brothers, Jacob is hiding behind his new hockey mask as the duo fends off their treehouse from bullies. Their best friends are the bold Malee (Zoe Weizenbaum, MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA) and the overweight Leonard (Jesse Camacho, TV’s RUDY: THE RUDY GIULIANI STORY). When a tragic accident leads to the death of Ruby, each of the three children handles it differently, confronting their fears in various ways.

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With the sixth anniversary of 9/11 this week, like many others, I felt it’s a fitting time to contemplate the many issues and feelings that surround that terrible day. In choosing films for This Weekend’s Film Festival’s lineup, I specifically stayed away from films that have politicized the attacks. I truly believe in the age-old words of wisdom that if we do not learn from the past we are doomed to repeat it. It’s equally true that one needs to know their enemy in order to defeat them. The films I have collected deal with various aspects of topics that connect directly with September 11th, including the Taliban, terrorism and the lives lost as well as those who survived. In only five films, there is no way to cover the many aspects of what 9/11 means to everyone. So I’ve decided to use a collection of films that deal with terrorism and then the events of 9/11 as captured on film.

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As PAN’S LABYRINTH was picking by Academy Awards for Best Art Direction, Cinematography and Makeup, it surprised some when Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s first feature film walked away with the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. More traditional Oscar fare than Guillermo del Toro’s breathtaking fantasy, THE LIVES OF OTHERS has the intelligence and emotion of great drama, but the urgency of a top-notched political thriller. Set a few years before the Berlin Wall fell, the film investigates the overreaching practice of the East German government to spy on its citizens.

Top spy Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Muhe, FUNNY GAMES) tells his superior Anton Grubitz (Ulrich Tukur, AMEN) that he suspects famed playwright Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch, BLAKC BOOK) of subversive actions. Corrupt minister Bruno Hempf (Thomas Thieme, DOWNFALL) has a vendetta against outspoken artists and desperately wants to find anything that can bring Dreyman down. So Wiesler is called on to lead a day-and-night spy operation on the devoted socialist Dreyman and his girlfriend Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck, THE GOOD SHEPHERD), a highly admired stage actress. Dreyman’s friend Paul Hauser (Hans-Uwe Bauer, GOOD BYE LENIN!) is quite outspoken against the practices of the Ministry of State Security, known as the Stasi, especially in light of the blacklisting of their friend Albert Jerska (Volkmar Kleinert), a once famed stage director who hasn’t been allowed to work in nearly 10 years. A tragedy finally motivates Dreyman to speak out against the lies of the Stasi in an expose article to be smuggled into West Germany and printed in a magazine there.

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Mega-producer Brian Grazer, who is best known for being Ron Howard’s producer, made some ripples in Hollywood when he announced that he was producing a NC-17 documentary on the influences of the porno flick, DEEP THROAT. Instead of being a truly provocative expose of the history of porn, the film from directors Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato ends up being something that would be a good extra for the next anniversary DVD edition of the infamous porn film. So to answer the question that everyone will want to know going in — yes, there is pornographic content in this film. For the most part it’s nothing more gratuitous than anything on late night Cinemax. What earns the film the NC-17 is a clip of the act that earned the film it’s name and made its star Linda Lovelace a porn legend.

For better or for worse, the release of DEEP THROAT in the summer of 1972 changed American culture. It was one of first porn films released without the guise of being a science doc. The corny dialogue and preposterous plot — a sexually frustrated woman discovers the reason why she has never had an orgasm is because her clitoris is located deep in her throat — grabbed the attention of audiences. For the first time, high-class folk found it chic to slum it and attend a sleazy downtown porn house to see what was quickly becoming a household term.

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In 2003, the Dixie Chicks were country music princesses. They were at the top of the charts and their concerts were selling out arenas around the globe. Then, when the U.S. was on the brink of invading Iraq, lead singer Natalie Maines made the statement that they were ashamed that President George W. Bush was from Texas. This began a fervor, which this great documentary intricately documents, making it one the best rock docs ever made.

Part of the backlash from the statement started with country music stations banning their songs, spurred by calls from irate fans. Some stations even sponsored promotions for former fans to bring in their Dixie Chicks CDs to have them run over by a steam shovel. Alienated from their Red State base, the threesome, which also includes sisters Emily Robison and Martie Maquire, had to work on reaching out to new fans. We watch as they prepare for the U.S. leg of their world tour post incident, record their next two albums and strategize on how to handle the predicament and how it has changed their image.

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Named by THE TIMES OF LONDON as one of the most controversial films of all time, ROMPER STOMPER is everything AMERICAN HISTORY X wished it were. In not making a movie “about” skinheads, director/writer Geoffrey Wright makes the best movie about skinheads. We are put directly inside an Australian white supremacist gang and the film only gives us a troubled outsider as our in-route into the story. It’s unflinching about the violent lifestyle of skinhead gangs and never forces characters to have epiphanies where they learn that racism is bad.

Hando (Russell Crowe, 3:10 TO YUMA), leader of the skinhead gang, is enraged by the growing number of Vietnamese immigrants buying property around his neighborhood. Along with his quiet right hand man, Davey (Daniel Pollock), and the rest of the thugs, he brutalizes a trio of Vietnamese skateboarders, which includes Tiger (Tony Lee), a young man who vows revenge. At the local bar one night, Hondo sets his eyes on Gabe (Jacqueline McKenzie, TV’s THE 4400), a trouble epileptic girl, who has some serious daddy issues. The gang’s violent attacks on the Vietnamese will have their repercussions, leading to more and more desperate actions.

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