We’ve been watching a lot of movies and I have failed to be impressed by any of them. What is it with movies sucking so hard lately? I mean, I guess none of them sucked, they just weren’t very good, and they were supposedly the best movies of last year. Eh.

The Darjeeling Limited: B

Watching the short film “Hotel Chevalier” that was included on the DVD to be viewed as a prequel to the movie really biased me against the main feature I think. Did that short show in theaters? I love Wes Anderson, but that short just seemed like an excuse to get Natalie Portman naked and have Jason Schwartzman be cruel to her. Okay, so they were in a shitty relationship and she was a bitch to him. This is never shown, either in the short or in the feature. All you see is her showing up and him being an asshole. By the time the feature started, I was already biased to not like Jason Schwartzman’s character. I think I would have been able to get into the movie more if I hadn’t watched the short, although in general the movie did annoy me in that way that movies like “L’Ultimo Bacio” annoy me - the plot always centers on these guys who are running away from all responsibility and all the nagging shrew and bitch women that they have for mothers and daughters and girlfriends and wives because they feel so crushed by, y’know, having to be fathers or lovers or even decent human beings. Oh, boo hoo! My heart bleeds for you. In “The Darjeeling Limited,” Adrian Brody runs off to India while his wife is nine months pregnant because he just can’t deal. Well suck it up, Adrian! How do you think your wife feels? But anyway, I mostly liked this movie even though there were three whiny men and it was too long. The footage of India was gorgeous. I thought the flashback sequences were really emotionally powerful. Angelica Huston was a hot nun, even if she was grossly underused. The three guys were great at their parts, even if their characters were really annoying. Wes Anderson really needs to try to include more women in his movies. His strongest movies were “Rushmore” and “The Royal Tenenbaums” because they had female characters that were well written, explored, and given their own subjectivity, not just the nameless girlfriend who stands around naked.

Eastern Promises: B+

This movie was okay, I just felt like it wasn’t very satisfying at the end and was mostly forgettable. The commercials really hyped it up to be a thriller, a terrifying foray into the Russian mafia, something that was going to be suspenseful and scary, and it wasn’t any of those things. Something was just a bit off with that movie, I’m not sure what. It was like all the individual moments never built to anything bigger. The actors were wonderful, and the characters were all extremely well developed with an economy of words and time. It didn’t suffer from script bloat or from being five hours too long like every other movie that’s made these days. It was beautiful to look at. It just… didn’t go anywhere. The end was meant to have real punch, but it just fell flat. Things that made it worthwhile: Viggo was sexy and Naomi Watts rode a motorcycle. “A History of Violence” was better, though.

There Will Be Blood: C+

The more I think about this movie, the more I dislike it. Once again, the previews hyped it up to be this epic story of a battle between good and evil, greed and God, capitalism and religion, the founding of America, the beginning of the battle for the ever more valuable oil. It wasn’t any of those things. I actually liked that the movie wasn’t structured as a trite good/evil story a la “The Stand” or something, but it wasn’t anything else either. This movie was almost three hours long and HAD NO POINT. Someone, please, tell me what was the point of this movie with its endless shots of the same things and its weird modernist soundtrack? Although Daniel Day Lewis was supposed to be this massively powerful oil man, you never get the sense of his effect on anyone else besides his son. He comes to this town to build a well, and not only do you never see the effect of this oil business on the world, or America, or the West, you never even see the effect on the townspeople who have welcomed him onto their land. The same for the preacher kid. He has this church, but you never get a sense of what exactly he’s doing with it. He was presented as this opposition to Daniel Day, but he was never really developed as a character. In fact, the movie doesn’t spend much time on him at all, considering he’s one of the major players in the plot and they had three hours to flesh him out. I don’t mind a three hour epic story if I feel like it had a point. “The Aviator” wasn’t a perfect movie, but you got a sense of the influence that Howard Hughes had on the world. The same for “Boogie Nights” - that movie did a fantastic job of placing the porn industry into the larger world of the Seventies in America and focused as much on the big picture as it did on the individual characters. At the end of “There Will Be Blood,” I don’t feel any comment had been made on the world, on oil, on morality or religion, on capitalism, or on America. I don’t feel like I even learned anything about those two characters. Deeply unsatisfying. I like that PT Anderson has been trying different things instead of making the same movie over and over again (a la Wes Anderson), but this was his weakest effort to date.

American Gangster: B

Eh, this movie was just boring. The story’s been told before and better. This version of the SAME FRICKIN’ STORY was way too long (although, to be fair, possibly the theatrical release was tighter than the extended cut on the DVD), and didn’t pack an emotional punch. I didn’t care for or hate any of the characters. Denzel and Russell were fantastic as usual, but I just didn’t give a shit what happened to either of them at the end of the movie. I’m so sick of One-Man-Against-The-World martyr stories. Sure, Russell had other cops helping him, but they were only allowed to utter occasional single sentences for expository purposes, they had no character or personality or quirks. Denzel had a wife, but you are never given any real understanding of her motivations or her character. She just exists to be this pretty girl at the club that Denzel desires. Ugh. Also, it was boring. Give me “The Departed” over this movie any day.

In conclusion, no one knows how to edit movies anymore. They’re all bloated, all too long, all full of scenes with no purpose. Except for David Cronenberg, his movie was the best of the bunch, and I probably am predisposed to think that only because it was blessedly short.