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Eastern Promises opens the way any good family movie should, with a guy getting his throat cut open at a barber shop. Lesson learned: the mafia is bad. Good to know.

The movie is about a mafia driver/bodyguard played by Viggo Mortensen and his developing relationship with both a London-based Russian crime family and a midwife (whatever the hell that is) played by Naomi Watts.

I’ll be honest, for the first 20 or so minutes of Eastern Promises, I thought the movie took place in Russia. I just figured it was a movie about the Russian mafia so it would make perfect sense that the movie would take place in Russia .

I remember sitting there wondering, “Why the hell are they speaking so much English?” Usually, the characters would speak English and only occasionally would the speak in Russian. I just figured the filmmakers wanted to make it easier on the audience like they did in Hunt for Red October. You know, have them speak mostly English and on occasion switch back to Russian to maintain a level of authenticity. Nobody wants to read subtitles all the time, right?

And I paid no mind to the fact that Naomi Watts lived with her family and they all spoke English. Again, maybe they were doing a Red October. Or maybe they were an English family living in Russia. It’s crazy in Russia , you know. Everything is opposite there (In Soviet Russia, hamburger eats you!).

I suppose I should have gotten it when Viggo Mortensen’s character was giving directions to Naomi Watts’ character and they were both looking at a big map of London. And then Viggo stopped mid-sentence, looked directly into the camera and said, “This movie takes place in London, not Russia.” Totally missed it.

Anywho, the plot in uber-Cliffs Notes form: A woman dies while giving birth, Naomi Watts takes care of the baby, finds the dead mother’s diary, gets it translated and finds out the woman was raped by someone in the mob, and befriends Viggo and then plot twist after plot twist after plot twist. And hilarity ensues! Not really.

I’ll be surprised if Viggo does not get an Academy Award nomination for his performance. Everything about his character, from his accent to his numerous tattoos convey that this is man has a definite past and is not to be taken lightly. There are certain shots where he comes across as a stone cold killer and others where you can tell that just maybe he’s not such a bad guy. There’s a scene where his character is ordered to have sex with a woman to prove he is not gay (wait, what?) and as he’s doing it you can see the torment in his face, as though perhaps he is not your average mob enforcer.

Then, there’s the much talked about shower fight scene. It’s a balls-out (literally) scene not for the squeamish. I’ll just say the conclusion of the scene had everyone in the theatre cringing and muttering something along the lines of “Oh shit.” It’s a very well done, very realistic fight scene. Well, that’s not to say that I know what it’s like to be attacked by two guys with knives in a London bath house. Still, that scene alone almost makes the movie worth the price of admission.

If you like movies about the mafia, this one’s for you. If you liked the blood and guts and overall badassery of Goodfellas and Casino but could have done without all the Wopishness, go see this. If you want to see Viggo Mortensen as his usual badass self and playing something other than King Aragorn or the mean guy from GI Jane, go see this. And if you are deeply obsessed with Lord of the Rings and want to see King Aragorn’s wang, well, I guess you’ve probably already seen this and downloaded a camcorder bootleg copy of it and watched it over and over. You weirdo.

This review has the potential to be completely meaningless, because there is not much difference between me reviewing the Simpsons Movie and Lindsay Lohan reviewing cocaine. Too soon? That being said, my overall opinion of the Simpsons Movie is this: it was awesome, but bittersweet.

Let’s get to the awesome. It’s pretty much everything a Simpsons fan could ask for. It more or less plays out like an extended episode, albeit a very good episode (i.e. any episode from seasons 4-9). The simplest joy of it was simply being able to see the family, town and townspeople on the big screen and on a much, much grander scale (like the South Park movie). The characters themselves were also slightly modified, their edges lightly shaded to reinforce with us that yes, we are indeed watching Our Favorite Family on the big screen and not just an extended episode.

The movie itself is full of the fresh, twisted humor that has kept the show running for eighteen seasons with no end in sight. There are so many sight gags, inside jokes and jabs at anything and everything that a second viewing is completely necessary (if only it didn’t cost $11 to see a movie in LA).

That being said, I wish I wish I wish this movie had happened a long time ago. Honest fans of the show will tell you the show lost its luster about a decade ago and devolved into a half-assed parody of itself. It all boils down to the bottom line. The show is still Fox’s cash cow, still bringing in an average of 10 million viewers each Sunday. I am suspect, however, that a large amount of these viewers still watch the show just because they grew up with it and don’t know anything else. It is more or less like an old family dog that just needs to be put to sleep.

In my perfect world, the show would have followed the path of Seinfeld and bowed out after ten seasons, still fresh and still loved by its fans. Then, a Simpsons movie would have come out every couple of years. Unfortunately for the show and all of us, it is beginning its 19th season in a couple of months and has devolved more or less into a parody of itself. It was once the hottest thing on TV, now it’s more or less riding on its own coattails.

Anyone who knows me knows that I at one point was completely obsessed with this show. I still have roughly the first 15 seasons on VHS. I once spent twelve bucks and an hour and a half at an arcade playing and beating the original arcade game. One of the happiest moments of my life was when the show started airing in syndication. That was then, this is now.

Bad taste aside, the movie is still pretty awesome, even for bitter people like me. The movie maintains more than enough of the charm of the first ten seasons without loading itself up with the crappy writing that has dogged the show for the past eight years. As soon as the Twentieth Century Fox logo appears and Ralph Wiggum sings the Fox theme song, you know you’re in for a good time. Any Simpsons fan owes it to themselves to see the movie and make sure they see it in the theatre. And for those not familiar with the show, all three of them, this will serve as a great introduction.

Although it was slightly ahead of my time and I consider myself to more of a GI Joe kind of person, I’ll admit I was a little more than excited when I saw the teaser trailer for Transformers over a year ago. “A live-action Transformers movie?!? Fuck yeah, where do I sign up?” (I didn’t really say that out loud.)

Then it was announced somewhere down the line that Michael Bay was set to direct. I don’t even know how to describe how I felt when I learned that. On one hand, it’s Michael Bay . And on the other, it’s Michael Bay.

Because let’s be honest, Michael Bay is an awful director. He’s just…awful. He makes movies, not films. See the difference? James Cameron, he makes films. Michael Bay makes movies. And bad ones at that. Man, how awesome would it have been had Cameron directed Transformers? Instead, he prefers to waste his time looting the Titanic, starring as himself on Entourage and pissing off God. I digress.

But this is Transformers, people. If there’s one movie Michael Bay might actually be good at, it’s this. Robots and explosions, how hard can it be? I would gladly take two hours of a straight up robot war. Who wouldn’t? Somehow, someway, Michael Bay managed to fuck that up.

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It’s common knowledge that trilogies are risky endeavors. When I think of the parts of a trilogy I think of the same expression I tell homeless people when they ask me for spare change: “Hey, we can’t all be winners.” The basic rule of trilogies is: one of them, usually the 2nd, is going to suck. Just look at Return of the Jedi, Temple of Doom, Godfather III, Beverly Hills Cop 3 and Live Free or Die Hard* to get an idea of what I mean. Or think of when Michael Jordan played for the Washington Wizards.

*I know Live Free or Die Hard is the 4th movie and isn’t out yet but I got a hunch it’s due for suckage (It’s rated PG-13, for fuck’s sake). By the way, is Die Hard now referred to as a quadilogy?

For all those examples of the 2-1=3 rule of trilogies there is also the possibility of two, not just one, but two of them sucking. I refer to Major League, The Matrix, The Sandlot and Tremors, all examples of a grandtastic idea Hollywooded into a big pile of poop.

After the monstrosity that was Ocean’s 12, I was more than a little afraid that Ocean’s 13 was going to suck more than your mom. Luckily, the movie worked. Well, it worked in a relative sense. It’s not like it’s a good movie but it’s still good. It’s good in the same sense that Entourage is good: beautiful people doing cool shit and that’s it.

And just like Entourage and the first two Ocean’s, this one had its share of implausible plot elements, but you know what else had a lot of plot holes and stuff that would never happen? Million Dollar Baby. We all know women can’t fight. Huuuuge plot hole right there and it won the Oscar for Best Picture. All right, I guess 11’s plot was a bit more of a stretch than Million Dollar Baby and 12, well, the less we talk about Ocean’s 12 the better.

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I was watching Scarface a few nights ago and couldn’t help but notice that HBO has it categorized as Mystery/Crime. I guess this is because the two tend to go hand in hand so it’s easier to just lump them together. That being said and just to be safe, here is my list of ten possible mysteries that may be proposed in Scarface.

1. Wait, did he just cut that guy in half?

2. What are they snorting all the time?
3. Does Michelle Pfeiffer even weigh 100 pounds?
4. What language is that?
5. Why do rappers love this movie so much?
6. Can Tony do anymore blow?
7. Can Tony say fuck any more times?
8. Whatever happened to Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio?
9. And while we’re asking, what about Steven Bauer?
10. Why does Tony, a huge drug kingpin, only have like three bodyguards?

There I was walking to my local supermarket when I noticed out of the corner of my eye, there was none other than the legendary Patrick Renna. Who is Patrick Renna? You may know him as the fat kid from a little cinematic masterpiece known as The Sandlot. In fact, his image has become so tied to the film that if you google the fat kid from the sandlot I assume it will bring up a picture of him.

“Yeah, he lost weight,” my friend Alex told me. “Probably from working on Sandlot 3,” he said with a laugh. Tonight, I learned that there was in fact a third Sandlot. Wait, that must mean that there was more than likely a Sandlot 2 as well!

Did anyone know about this? I did a quick imdb and sure enough there are in fact two more Sandlots in existence (#3 is still in production). I honestly had no idea.

Luckily, Renna has no involvement with the two sequels. Thank goodness for him. I didn’t look into it too much, but one user comment described the second one as “just awful…destroyed the original” and the third one involves time travel.

Yes, that’s right. Time travel.