BOARDING GATE — CANNES 2007

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French auteur Olivier Assayas continues his skewed logic of post modern noir with an erotically charged thriller about Sandra, an ex-prostitute turned international drug runner (Asia Argento), who revisits her former lover Miles (Michael Madsen) for one last roll in the hay.

The couple hasn't lost their flair for dramatic BDS&M encounters, and the bawdy sequence is the centerpiece of the movie. What follows is an unfulfilling chase story that ends on a diminished chord.

Olivier Assayas's films are a frustrating cinematic ritual for their oblique rendering of kinky sexual intrigue lurking beneath the surface of every business decision and transaction perpetrated by his characters.

Call it a cinema of guilty pleasure, and don't worry if you fall asleep in your seat after the sex scene is over. You won't be alone.

Rated R. 106 mins.

EASTERN PROMISES

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The personal diary of a Russian girl who dies while giving birth at Christmastime attracts the attention of Anna Khitrova (Naomi Watts), a London nurse who makes it her personal mission to get the diary translated.

Anna makes the mistake of following a trail that leads to a family of first generation Russian mobsters, bent on protecting their sex-trafficking operation.

Screenwriter Steve Knight ("Dirty Pretty Things") tailored the script for director David Cronenberg who masterfully weaves suspense, intrigue and fascinating characters into a modern noir milieu.

Eruptions of sudden violence carry Cronenberg’s signature brand of palpable force.

Viggo Mortensen and Vincent Cassel are stupendous as Russian underworld miscreants hiding more secrets than there are pieces inside a Russian doll.

"Eastern Promises" is an exceptionally well-crafted thriller that draws its audience through a thick narrative maze of complicity and double crosses.

Rated R. 100 mins.

BRICK

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This glorified student film is only barely elevated by the talented Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Brendan Frye a noir-speaking California high school misfit caught in the violent middle of a drug gang responsible for the death of his ex-girlfriend (Emilie de Ravin).

Joseph Gordon-Levitt very nearly makes sense of writer/director Rian Johnson’s knee-jerk Dashiell Hammett barbs of spiky repartee that serve as a narrative one-note samba.

"Maybe I'll just sit here and bleed at you" is one of Brendan’s snappy retorts that coincidentally speaks volumes about the writer’s approach at this off-beat and unsatisfying movie.

Inferior cinematography strains the already trifling movie.

Focus, people, focus.

Rated R. 110 mins.