2020 Blind Spot Series: The Ring (2002)

Despite it being widely praised by fans of the genre, I was never compelled to watch Gore Verbinski's The Ring as I always thought it'd be just another mediocre to say the least American horror. But it's a must-see, apparently, hence I picked it as my Blind Spot film for the month of October. And I wasted two hours of my day off to see it, hours I could have spent watching two episodes of Netflix's Dark, which is scarier, far more tense, suspenseful and twisted than this dreadfully boring flick. 

St. Vincent (2014)

I love Bill Murray, Melissa McCarthy and Naomi Watts so passing St. Vincent was not an option for me, even more so if you consider the film got a Globe nomination for Best Comedy/Musical. Unfortunately, my cinema didn't show it, I missed it and it took me more than four years to catch up.

The story follows Vincent (Bill Murray), an old, grumpy and alcoholic Vietnam veteran who lives alone and gambles regularly and whose only friend is a Russian sex worker named Daka (Naomi Watts). When Maggie Bronstein (Melissa McCarty), a med-tech divorcée, moves to the next-door house with her eleven-year-old son, Oliver (Jaeden Lieberher), Vicent offers to babysit him for money and he soon turns out to be exactly the mentor Oliver needs as the kid has to deal with his parents' divorce and the new school.

Eastern Promises (2007)

A few weeks back, the theme for Thursday Movie Picks —a series hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves— was gangsters and David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises was one of the most popular titles. Since I like Cronenberg and Viggo Mortensen (and his full-frontal nudity), I checked it out.

The film revolves around the London Russian mafia and centres around the death of Tatiana (Sarah-Jeanne Labrosse), a fourteen-year-old girl who died in childbirth. Midwife Anna (Naomi Watts) finds her diary and decides to find the girl's family so that the newborn can live with them. She asks her Russian uncle (Jerzy Skolimowski) to translate the diary for her; in the meantime, she follows the trail of a business card found in the diary, and she winds up at a Russian restaurant owned by Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl) who promises to help her to translate the diary from Russian to English. Little does she knows Semyon is the mob's leader and his family is involved in Tatiana's death.