Timur Bekmambetov‘s Night Watch (Fox Searchlight, opening wide 3.3), a supernatural thriller set in Moscow, opened in Russia in the summer of ’04 and across Europe in September ’05, and here it is finally opening in Los Angeles…at the funky-ass Nuart in West L.A. That tells me plenty right there. But this quickie trailer (the entire movie speeded up) tells you it’s an eyeful, and I like this passgae from Kenneth Turan’s review, observing that Bekmambetov “has combined two things that never connected before. He’s taken a glossy Hollywood-type fantasy thriller about the battle between supernatural forces of good and evil right here on planet Earth and infused it with a homegrown, distinctively Russian soul. Think of it as a popcorn movie with a vodka chaser. A really strong vodka chaser.” The scary part is that Night Watch is the opening chapter of a trilogy (the second installment, Day Watch, just opened in Russia last month, and the third part, Dusk Watch, will hit theatres in ’07), and that’s something to regard with extreme caution. It means Bekmambetov probably has a Peter Jackson maestro complex (“I am prolific, I contain multitudes…my head is bursting with fanatstic images!”) and that’s been known to bring torture to some of us. I guess I have to go to the Nuart today and pay to see it. No one from Fox Searchlight sent me a screening invitation. Did a publicist think it over and figure that Night Watch‘s Jacksonesque qualities…? Naaah.