Drama

Across the Universe

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  • Title: Across the Universe
  • IMDb: link

“All you need is love.”

Across the Universe

The film begins with an English dock worker named Jude (Jim Sturgess) who travels to America to find his father.  His journey takes him to a college where he befriends a screw-up named Max (Joe Anderson) and falls head-over-heels for Max’s sister Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood).

Traveling to NY with Max Jude finds himself living with a nightclub singer (Dana Fuchs), a guitar player (Martin Luther), and a young lesbian named Prudence (T.V. Carpio) struggling with her place in the world.  Making a living as an artist and designer Jude enjoys his new world until the terrors of war fracture the group’s fragile peace.

What follows is an exploration of love against the backdrop of the 1960’s, Vietnam, civil unrest, violence, and change.  Max is drafted, Lucy becomes a civil activist, fame and glory strain the relationship between Sadie and JoJo.  The world changes and each struggles once again to find their place in it, stay true to themselves, and grow and change with the times.

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Trade

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  • Title: Trade
  • IMDb: link

Trade

The film begins with the kidnapping of Adriana (Paulina Gaitan), a 13 year-old girl from Mexico, and Veronica (Alicja Bacheleda-Curus), a young woman from the Baltic States.  They are taken by force to an unknown location and then put in the pipeline to be sold with others as sex slaves.  We watch their journey from Mexico, into the United States, and to New Jersey where they will be sold.

The other part of the story concerns American cop Ray (Kevin Kline) and Adriana’s brother Jorge (Cesar Ramos) who team-up to try and rescue his sister.

The film is full of disturbing scenes including the brutal rape of Veronica and highly suggestive scenes involving Adriana and girls and boys her age performing sex acts on the side of the road for money.  There are also scenes in which the girls are forced to change and pose provocatively for the camera, forcibly drugged, and beaten.  I honestly don’t know how this film avoided an NC-17 rating, which it justly deserves; it’s certainly not a film for the squeamish.

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Eastern Promises

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  • Title: Eastern Promises
  • IMDB: link

“Crime butchers innocence to secure a throne, and innocence struggles with all is might against the attempts of crime.”
—Maximilien Robespierre

Eastern PromisesThe film begins with two deaths and one birth.  A father and son brutally murder a customer in a barbershop.  Across London a 14 year-old prostitute (Sarah-Jeanne Labrosse) dies as she gives birth to a baby girl.  These two events are both traced back to the head (Armin Mueller-Stahl) of one of the city’s most powerful Russian crime families and his son (Vincent Cassel).

When a midwife (Naomi Watts) begins an investigation into the girl’s life she finds only darkness and death which put her, the child, and her loved ones in danger when the organization’s newest and deadliest member (Viggo Mortensen) is sent to retrieve the girl’s diary, protect the family’s secrets, and clean up the mess.

There’s much to appreciate here in a film where almost all of the performances are purposefully understated and controlled.  Even if the film doesn’t live up the high expectations of A History of Violence, there is plenty to enjoy including one of the most brutal fight sequences in recent memory between a naked Mortensen and a pair of Russian goons.

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In the Valley of Elah

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  • Title: In the Valley of Elah
  • IMDb: link

In the Valley of Elah

When I saw the trailer to this film I couldn’t get over how much it reminded me of your average Ashley Judd thriller/mystery vehicle (and isn’t it odd how Theron is even made up to like a little like Judd?).  Though the film turns out better than I expected, given its marvelous performances, it still gets stuck by the confines of its genre – complete with a head shaking and nonsensical ending.

Former Army Sergeant, and crime scene analyst, Hank Deerfield (Tommy Lee Jones) is informed his son Mike (Jonathan Tucker) is back from Iraq but AWOL from the base.

Hank leaves home and travels down to look for his son but can make no headway in the investigation and tries to enlist the help of a local cop, Detective Emily Sanders (Charlize Theron).  Things only get murkier when his son’s burnt and chopped up body parts are found on the side of the road.

Unwilling to let the Army investigate, and most likely hush up the crime, Emily and Hank work together to try and piece together his son’s last few hours and try to understand how and why his life ended in such a brutal act of violence.

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Resurrecting the Champ

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Resurrecting the Champ
  • IMDb: link

Resurrecting the Champ

I remember watching the trailer for this film and wondering why it wasn’t made for the ABC Family channel.  Truth is I’m not much of a Josh Hartnett fan, other than his small roles in films like The Virgin Suicides and Sin City.  This film, as cheesy as it is at times, comes off with some heart, and Hartnett deserves most of the credit.

Erik Kernan (Hartnett) is a sports writer, who, as his boss (Alan Alda) describes, has a talent for typing with very little writing.  Looking for a shot on the newspaper’s magazine, and a cushier gig, Erik proposes the story of a former boxing champion Bob Satterfield (Samuel L. Jackson) now living on the streets.

Although much of screen time of the film is taken up with Satterfield and his story and Kernan’s attempts to tell it to the world, that’s not what the film is really about.  More than anything else this is a film about fathers and sons.  Kernan deals with being separated from his wife (Kathryn Morris) and six-year-old son (Dakota Goyo), and at the same time tries to come to terms with the legacy of his father, a legendary radio announcer.

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