I saw two movies this weekend!

RIGHT BY YOUR DOOR 

Maureen McCormack (best known as Howard Stern’s movie bride) and Rory Cochrane

I’m a mainstream movie guy who digs action and violence not slowness, sap or period pieces, so I generally stay away from small indie flicks, with some exceptions, but this movie is truly amazing.  If you dig horror, it will scare the crap out of you on a deep, gut level (especially if you live in a major city).  If personal relationships is your thing, it will tear your guts out through your aorta.  Heart-wrenching and horrifying, it tells of a terrorist attack in Los Angeles, and one man and one woman who survive, on different sides of the same door.  If you’re a right-winger, the slightly paranoiac atmosphere might irritate you, but no more than the lefty slant on 24, and I know lots of Bushies who really dig that show.  The acting is first-rate, the direction keeps a fast, action-film pace in essentially a three-person character study.  I hope people go see this movie.  It’s awesome.

If you do see it, drop a comment and let my readers know I’m not wrong.

WAR 

Jet Li and Jason Statham look longingly at each other in the poster for “War.”

While I’m at it, I figured I’d also review “War.”  This is the latest Elizabethan romance starring  Jason Statham of “The Transporter.”  War is the first of this trilogy, and they filmed all three together.  It’s a little hard to follow, but the basic plot is that Jason is a prince in the castle of a Spanish king who needs him to marry the princess of France (played by Christina Aguilera, in an unbilled, minor cameo) in order to establish an alliance against the Holy Roman Empire.  I think this part is true, but this is where the historical aspect of it ends.  Right when Jason is to meet his bride, Jet Li appears in a smoking explosion and snags the king’s scepter.  Jet Li jumps back into his time-travel portal and Jason leaps after him to follow.  (We saw Jet in the sequence before the credits kicking the shit out of some aliens or something and then leaping into this big silver ring that we later learn is the time-travel machine.)  Anyway, the portal wasn’t designed to transport two people, so the two of them get stuck between time in this little room that looks remarkably like the bubble bounce at Chuck E Cheese.  Most of the film takes place here, as Jet and Jason realize how much they have in common.  In one truly moving scene, Jason tells Jet about how he never really wanted to get married to that girl and Jet says, “I understand.  You were only doing your duty.”  They lean forward to kiss (for the first time), when the portal re-opens, sucking Jet Li out into his own time and Jason back into his.  Separated by a rift of over 300 years, we see a tear in Jason’s eyes.  Meanwhile, Jet, who now has the scepter with him (I’m not going to give away why he needs it), now must choose whether to jump back in time again and be reunited with Jason or fulfill his mission.  What he does choose to do is the cliffhanger, and they promise to deliver the next film by next fall.