Eastern Promises

Cast
Viggo Mortensen
Naomi Watts
Vincent Cassel
Armin Mueller-Stahl
Screenwriter
Steve Knight
Director
David Cronenberg
Running Time
100 minutes

When a Russian teenager dies in childbirth, nurse Anna (Watts) determines to find her family and save the baby from foster care. The girl’s diary leads her to enigmatic ‘driver’ Nikolai (Mortensen) and the bloody underworld of the Russian Mafia.

A Cronenberg film so it's pretty grisly in some scenes. Well played and directed but it just sort of rolls to a stop at the end.

Die Falscher - The Counterfeiters

Cast
Karl Markovics
August Diehl
Devid Striesow
Martin Brambach
August Zirner
Veit Stubner
Screenwriter
Stefan Ruzowitzky
Director
Stefan Ruzowitzky
Running Time
104 minutes

In 1936, Salomon ‘Sally’ Sorowitsch (Markovics) is arrested for forgery and sent to Mauthausen concentration camp. Eight years later he is transferred to Sachsenhausen to head up history’s biggest counterfeiting operation - part of a Nazi plan to destabilise the Allied economies.

A fine film with a strong performance by Karl Markovics.

Ratatouille

Cast
Patton Oswalt
Ian Holm
Lou Romano
Brian Dennehy
Peter O'Toole
Brad Garrett
Janeane Garofalo
Will Arnett
John Ratzenberger
Screenwriters
Emily Cook
Cathy Greenberg
Directors
Brad Bird
Bob Peterson
Running Time
111 minutes

Remy (Oswalt), a country rat, has an exceptional sense of taste and wants to be a chef in Paris. When he meets inept human Linguini (Romano), newly installed on the bottom rung of top chef Auguste Gusteau’s restaurant, they hatch a plan to bring Remy’s creativity to the table.

Excellence all around from the script to the voice acting and the animation.