Unlike the trailer for Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring, which was well done, this trailer is below average. It goes on way too long, exposes too much about the story and lays down atmosphere or intrigue for the audience. This is simply a Cliffs Notes version of the film with titleboards tossed in to remind you it's a trailer.

This trailer also downplays the presence of Gollum in the story. He's in the a couple of times, but as one of the major players and one of the more visually striking ones at that, one would expect for him to be a bigger display in the ads.

Labels: Cate Blanchett, Christopher Lee, Dominic Monaghan, Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, John Rhys-Daves, Liv Tyler, Lord of the Rings, movie trailer, Orlando Bloom, Peter Jackson, Sean Astin, Viggo Mortensen

I find it interesting how much the trailer relies on the heroic archetype to sell the movie. This is a perfect execution of how to sell a story based on the heroic journey. They establish the opening act conflicts

• Open with the normal, fertile world (shown in the opening shot of the trees)
• The conflict (read evil) enters into the clean world - via the ring
• The hero (Frodo) is told of the conflict
• He refuses
• He begins the journey and collects his allies
• End with a montage of conflicts and moments of peril with promises of strange and frightening villains.

Perfect.

Labels: Cate Blanchett, Dominic Monaghan, Elijah Wood, Ian Holm, Ian McKellen, John Rhys-Daves, Lord of the Rings, movie trailer, Orlando Bloom, Peter Jackson, Sean Astin, Sean Bean, Viggo Mortensen

Sure the apocalypse has come leaving civilization destroyed, there's no food, you're cold, homeless and constantly fighting off cannibals, but on the bright side...oh, that's right, there is no bright side. You're going to die, you will starve alone and cold and when you're dead cannibals will feast on your malnourished bones. Happy times! The End.

If you like depressing I have found the new center of your DVD library. My friend Krusty over at Fistful of Donuts hits the nail on the head with his review:

And The Road doesn't hold out much hope for mankind. Cannibalism, rape, torture and murder are just under the surface of each of us, according to this film, and even good people are likely to become senselessly, inhumanly cruel when removed from the dictates of civilized interaction. This movie isn't just cynical; it's absolutely relentless.

Relentless is the exact word. You have a scene where the father portrayed by Viggo Mortensen (who is apparently made of leather now) teaches his son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) how to put the pistol in his mouth and properly blow his brains out. If that doesn't give you pause, I don't know what will.

The film follows a father and son as they walk south following an apocalyptic disaster. The disaster itself is not explained or shown. We are not given a view of the world as it falls apart. The focus is on the desperate last gasps of humanity. Civilization completely gone, hope for long-term survival gone, men become animals scraping for every last scrap of existence - it ain't pretty.


The problem the film faces is if you're going to ask your audience to sit through this kind of content, you better have a solid point to make. You better end with a definitive statement. This film lacks that satisfying payoff. I don't mean we need to have a happy ending, but one with some depth. The ending of this film stinks of a focus group, or at least a writer who didn't know how else to end things.

There are many aspects of the film that are well thought out and executed about as good as possible. There are strong supporting performances by Robert DuVall, Michael K. Williams and Charlize Theron. All of this wasted by a less than brilliant ending. In this way, the film replicates its presentation of civilization, a great deal of effort, much of it worthwhile, but it all comes down to weak moments that devalue everything that came before it.



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Eastern Promises (2007)
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Labels: Charlize Theron, film, Guy Pearce, movie trailer, Robert Duvall, Viggo Mortensen

This documentary was a surprise.

Daniel McNicoll's simple documentary focuses on the topic of sword fighting. Its not just ren fest losers pretending to be their twelfth-level Paladin wielding their Sword of Power. McNicoll delves into the history and sociology of the sword in Europe. The sword has been a power symbol for centuries and the proper use of the weapon has been a sign of manhood for generations.

The film presents a number of serious modern sword fighters along with interviews with actors who have been trained on the weapon. It also explores the forgotten history of European martial arts.

Like the fantastic documentary Helvetica, I expected this to be a second rate doc but found it to be an enthralling look at a little thought of part of our culture. This is worth putting in the Netflix queue.



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Labels: documentary, film, John Rhys-Davies, Karl Urban, movie review, Viggo Mortensen

Screenwriter: Joe Penhall
Director: John Hillcoat
Actors: Viggo Mortensen (Eastern Promises), Robert Duvall (The Apostle), Charlize Theron (North Country) and Guy Pearce (Memento)

Labels: Charlize Theron, film, Guy Pearce, movie trailer, Robert Duvall, Viggo Mortensen

Ed Harris isn’t a brilliant director by any stretch of the imagination but he is a reliable one. Not surprisingly, his film (as was his previous work Pollack) is very strong on the performances. He knows how to draw good work out of his fellow cast members. This is an obvious benefit from his expertise in acting. He is also very smart in his casting choices. In this case he matched Viggo Mortensen (who I don’t think is capable of giving a poor performance), Renée Zellweger and Jeremy Irons with roles that play to their talents. The script by Robert Knott and Ed Harris (a first writing credit for both actors) is based on the novel by Robert B. Parker. It is clear the two men were cautious to give the story room to develop and their actors plenty of material to handle. While the performances are fantastic, the script is the foundation for the successes in the production.

The story centers around a couple of guns for hire who are brought in to police a small Western town. The men Virgil Cole (Harris) and Everett (Mortensen) are opposites that complement one another. Virgil is a stony eyed, simple minded law man. Everett is a laid back, literate man. The partners are confronted by two serious issues in their new town. First is Randall Bragg (Irons), a murderous rancher. The other is piano player Allison (Zellweger) who starts a rocky relationship with Virgil. The conflicts and tension between the characters is patiently built mostly through character development instead of cheap plot devices. While there are some dry moments, the film overall avoids falling into being a chat fest. Harris walks a delicate tightrope between being too heavy on the dialog and just being another gunfight Western. The fact that he avoids these traps is made even more impressive when one realizes that the film also avoids almost all Western cliche in the process. Even if you don’t like the film, you have to give credit that this was not lazily made. If nothing else, Harris is a very deliberate film maker and obviously works hard to get his results.




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Labels: Ed Harris, film, Jeremy Irons, movie review, Renee Zellweger, Viggo Mortensen, western

Labels: film, JK Simmons, movie review, Omar Sharif, Viggo Mortensen

Screenwriters: John Wrathall
Director: Vicente Amorim (At Play In the Fields of the Lord)
Actors: Viggo Mortensen (Eastern Promises), Jason Issacs (The Patriot), Jodie Whittaker and Steven Mackintosh (The Daisy Chain)

Labels: film, Jason Issacs, movie trailer, Viggo Mortensen

A guy movie/documentary. Interesting topic, the history of swords and sword fighting. The statement in the trailer about swords being present in every great story - that's not exactly true, but swords do play a central role in most of our classics. Personally, I'm looking forward to seeing this.






Screenwriter: Daniel McNicoll
Director: Daniel McNicoll
Actors: Viggo Mortensen (History of Violence), Karl Urban (Doom) and John Rhys-Davies (Raiders of the Lost Ark)

Labels: film, John Rhys-Davies, Karl Urban, movie trailer, Viggo Mortensen

What's better than a good Western? A good Western with some brains and style. This certainly looks like it fits that description. Ed Harris directs this adaptation of Robert B. Parker's book. He also stars, along with Viggo Mortensen, Renee Zellweger and Jeremy Irons, in this story about a couple of hired guns (Harris and Mortensen) who come to the aid of a small Western town being run by a dictatorial rancher (Irons).

Looks good. Heck, this may be Viggo Mortensen's best film since Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III. Yes, he was in it.

Screenwriter: Robert Knott and Ed Harris
Director: Ed Harris (Pollock)
Actors: Viggo Mortensen (Eastern Promises), Renee Zellweger (Cinderella Man), Jeremy Irons (Casanova), Ed Harris (The Abyss), and Lance Hendrickson (Aliens)

Labels: Ed Harris, film, Jeremy Irons, Lance Hendrickson, movie trailer, Renee Zellweger, Viggo Mortensen

Short Review: There is exactly one too many naked men in this film – that is to say there’s a naked man in this film.

This is a brutal film and not for the queasy. The film opens with a gory throat slashing and then moves directly to a pregnant woman hemorrhaging at a convenience store. If this seems like a harsh way to open a film you can stop reading now, this isn’t the film for you.

The film showcases a family of Russian mobsters operating in London. Anna, a midwife (Naomi “how can someone so pretty be so boring” Watts) looks over a baby after the baby’s anonymous mother dies. Having only the mother’s diary (which is written in Russian) for identification, Anna decides to have a local Russian immigrant restaurateur translate the book. Unbeknownst to Anna, the restaurateur (Armin Mueller Stahl) is the head of a crime family and the dead girl is one of his sex slaves. Anna is quickly pulled into the web of the mobsters which includes the stoic Nikolai (Viggo Mortensen). If you don't think this sounds like a compelling narrative, you’d be right. The story is rather flat, but the lack of a fantastic arc to the story lends more credibility to the piece in a certain way. This is a mob movie with all of the contrivances removed. Since it is devoid of stylized assassinations and gangland battles, we are left with a stark character piece that is all too willing to show the bad side of those involved.

Mortensen (Hidalgo) is the real treasure in the film and he commands over the other performances. His Nikolai is an intensely interesting yet utterly despicable character. This performance is a clear candidate for a best actor nod and deservedly so. The man is willing to make risky moves in his career. Following the Lord of the Rings Trilogy it is certain he could have written his own ticket and gone the usual Hollywood route. Mortensen has chosen a different path and followed with more complicated roles that reveal an actor more interested in making intelligent works than popcorn fluff.

This film reteams director David Cronenberg (Scanners, The Fly) and Mortensen. Much like their previous effort, A History of Violence, this film studies violent characters and the morally confused universes they inhabit. This piece is filled with harsh scenes of cruel people doing cruel things to one another. Many feel that violence in film is inherently a bad thing. In particular people despise the acts like the ones found in this movie which seem to fail to provide a clear moral denunciation of the violence. I disagree with this view provided there is context and meaning to the violence. The violence in the film is not stylized nor is it cinema friendly. There’s a sense of dreadful inevitability to every horrifying act. The criminals are predators and they do what predators are inclined to do – hunt, destroy and consume. When a man is murdered by an opposing mob family or when a woman is introduced into sexual slavery, it is treated as a natural act no different than the killing of a weak elk by a lion. Those who live by the sword die by the sword so those involved should be shocked when their time comes. Cronenberg orchestrates the adult content to full effect. An example of this is the movie’s most striking scene where Mortensen’s character Nikolai is attacked in a steam bath. Nikolai and his two assassins slash at each other with knives, wrestle and fight. During this Mortensen is completely naked. His full frontal nudity is difficult to view not only because…well…Aragon’s personal hobbit is on display – but because his nudity, in light of viciousness of the attack, serves to bring an uncomfortable vulnerability to the scene. Many will be disgusted by the violence and frank sexual content. Some will claim the adult content is unneeded or at least too casual. I’d argue that the seemingly gratuitous nature of the sex and violence replicates how gratuitous they are when performed in real life. In an age when Hollywood is all too willing to show girls being tortured to death on screen (Hostel, Saw II, Wolf Creek) without a meaningful moral structure condemning the acts, seeing a piece treating violence in such an honest fashion is almost a relief.

Again, this is a very harsh movie. The blunt view of violence and criminality will be too much for many audiences and makes this a hard film to fully recommend. If you are able to handle the rough stuff, you’ll find this an intelligent and striking film. If you have any concerns about the content at all you’re probably best served by simply skipping this one. It’s a good film but it’s not worth it if you have problems with raw material.



Cautions: Blood, gore, violence, frank sexual acts, there's tons to be cautious about here.

Worldview: In a way this film paints a valuable look at what sin can and will do when left to fester. Morality, when discarded, is a difficult thing to regain and impossible to hold when one doesn't turn from their sin. At one point Nikolai claims he died when he committed his first crime as a kid - he was right. Those who fail to cast their sins aside are the living dead and will find no peace.



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Labels: film, mob, movie review, Naomi Watts, Viggo Mortensen, Vincent Cassel

Labels: mob, movie trailer, Naomi Watts, Viggo Mortensen, Vincent Cassel