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MOVIE REVIEWS [In Brief] [He Said, She Said] . Eastern Promises, Rise: Blood Hunter, Planet Terror

Okay, so I said I’d be back on my queue films again, but Kris and I had a rather busy weekend — albeit one packed to the brim with pure awesomeness. In fact, we were so busy, I only made it halfway through Tales from Earthsea. Still, we managed to squeeze in a couple great films, and a couple not so great. We should have reviews of Gone Baby Gone and Finishing the Game later this week. For now, these reviews for Eastern Promises, Rise: Blood Hunter, and Planet Terror will have to suffice.

Eastern Promises
HE SAID: David Cronenberg’s mainstream drifting continues with this insultingly dumbed-down (read: critic pleasing) tale of London-based Russian mafia, and a young nurse who discovers a terrible crime at their highest ranks. At just 100 minutes of runtime, the film features, as my lovely wife so eloquently put it, “a whole lot of purposeful buildup towards absolutely nothing.” Sure, the film features a very noteworthy sequence of now Cronenberg standard shocking and sudden ultra-violence (complete with a very naked Viggo Mortensen), but that alone cannot counteract the wooden acting, the plodding sequences of redundant exposition (see: the lead in to the aforementioned sequence, a desperate attempt to spell out the setup for the lowest common denominator), and some very awkward dialogue. Viggo Mortensen does do an admirable job with the material, while Vincent Cassel hams it up to the extreme. Naomi Watts….well, let’s just say it’s time she checked the expiration on that free pass the critics gave her for Mulholland Dr. Eastern Promises is quite possibly the worst Cronenberg film this side of Crash. See Spider or Naked Lunch instead.

SHE SAID: I know Eastern Promises wtf?? There goes Cronenberg playin’ with prosthetics again. His endings are always let-downs (and I’m a tremendous fan of Naked Lunch), but this one was really unforgivable. I would really be intrigued to see a film describing the Russian slave trade, but this clearly did not capture the brutality of it, no matter how hard it tried to shock you with almost boring narration from a victim’s diary. The most memorable scenes were the ones in the kitchen, preparing food, and of course the Viggo Mortensen balls flappin’ and eyeball slashin’ scene.

Rise: Blood Hunter
HE SAID: Before this film, Sam Raimi’s Ghost House productions had yet to produce a quality horror film. Now that Rise: Blood Hunter has arrived, it looks as though the wait is still ongoing. Rise is quite possibly the most boring female vampire assassin film ever made (though I imagine these are few and far between), even with its crossbow wielding heroine, sequences of Sapphic succubi (featuring Carla Gugino), and respectable amounts of blood. In hopes of maintaining at least some audience interest, the narrative is presented in a nonlinear fashion, though the interleaving of these segments is even more arbitrary than Babel. Seriously, it’s as if the filmmakers constructed a linear cut of the film, chopped it into chapters, and set the whole thing on shuffle for the final print. Lucy Liu somehow manages to look even more wretched than usual, while inexplicably mustering loads upon loads of complements from the film’s white male cast. The whole preposterousness of it all made me wonder if there possibly were films abroad where non-Caucasian women incessantly ogle Clint Howard. If the producers knew they were making a bad film with bad acting, why not get a bad acting cutie (see: China Chow) to play the role instead? But with all this negativity you might be wondering if there could possibly be anything good about the film. Well, there’s an odd cameo featuring Marilyn Manson sans makeup, however it’s not worth the pain and suffering involved in enduring the 45 minutes or so lead-up to it. The plot? Who cares. Rent Blood: The Last Vampire instead.

SHE SAID: I saw five minutes of this. Lucy Liu slipped on some blood and fell. I left the room, came back and Mako was flat on his back on the floor. Clumsy vampires.

Planet Terror
HE SAID: I didn’t have time to review the better half of Grindhouse when we saw it theatrically, but now that I’ve picked it up on DVD, I like it even more. A brilliant blend of zombie, body melt, contagion, and action films, Planet Terror is everything grindhouse cinema could hope to be give a big studio budget, B+ list actors, and loads upon loads of “Robo Cop” blood squibs. It’s slick, without compromising the enthusiastically slapdash but ever so fun characteristics of its forebears. The film features some of the funniest moments of the year (“You’ll shoot your face off”), as well as some of the grossest (the wrist in the door, OUCH!). Rose McGowan is incredibly sexy and funny as lead Cherry Darling, while Freddy Rodriuez kicks ass as the pocket-bike racking El Wray. Quentin Tarantino’s rapist with a melt-away penis is quite possibly his best role to date. All in all, Planet Terror is a gleefully tongue in cheek ride into horror excess. Check it out.

SHE SAID: I loved Planet Terror, too.. it’s still campy-funny the second time around! Freddy Rodriguez has the right amount of charisma, comedy and anonymity to pop as an unsuspecting hero. Rose McGowan is the perfect sarcastic whining toughie. Crazy intense injuries.. government conspiracy storyline.. artillery appendages.. cameos by Bruce Willis and Fergie?? Planet Terror has a surprise at every turn.

About the Authors

Chris Nelson and Kris Kobayashi-Nelson are the proud co-founders of dreamlogic.net. The adventurous soulmates occasionally take a break from ghost hunting, spelunking, pranking, programming, munching, and 4-hour bike rides to view some killer flicks.