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. 

Tale of Tales (2015)

It doesn't happen every day that an Italian filmmaker works with international actors so I was very interested in seeing Matteo Garrone's Tale of Tales when it was released. Unfortunately (or fortunately considering how I felt about the film), it wasn't screened nearby and I eventually forgot about it. 

Inspired by a collection of tales from Giambattista Basile's Pentamerone, the film tells there intertwining stories: the tale of a queen (Salma Hayek) so obsessed with having a child that she is willing to whatever it takes; the tale of two elderly sisters, Imma (Shirley Henderson) and Dora (Hayley Carmichael), one of which reduces the king (Vincent Cassel) with her voice; and the tale of a princess (Bebe Cave) whose fate is in the hands of her  neglecting father (Toby Jones).