THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES
BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD * * * *
Cert 15, 160 mins
His first since Chopper, Andrew Dominik's contemplative revisionist Western uses the mythic outlaw and his killer as a fable about contemporary celebrity obsessed culture.
With stunning cinematography and haunting score, it's every bit the epic its running time suggests. Just don't expect the usual horse opera gunplay; this is much more about character study than shoot-outs.
It opens in 1881 with the gang pulling their last big robbery before older brother Frank (Sam Shepard) takes off into history and, forever adopting different aliases to avoid detection, 34-year-old Jesse (Brad Pitt) looks to spend quality time with wife (Mary-Louise Parker) and kids.
However, deeply paranoid, he likes to keep the sidekicks at hand; not least because he doesn't trust them not to sell him out. Well aware of his own legend, he's also flattered by and cautious of the sycophantic adulation accorded him by Ford (Casey Affleck), teenage brother to gang member Charley (Sam Rockwell) who knows more about him than he does himself.
Desperate to join the outfit, Ford's prepared to endure the humiliations if he can be close to his hero. At one point Jesse asks if Bob actually wants to be him. It's an observation that, along with the homoerotic subtext, underpins the film's psychology, casting Ford as the Mark David Chapman of his day who has to kill the object of his desire to achieve the same celebrity.
Intriguingly, Dominik's staging of and Pitt's subtle notes imply that Jesse was complicit in his own slaying, becoming more iconic in death with stores doing a brisk trade in photographs of his corpse. Freudians will have a field day.
But this isn't the end of the story. What ensues charts the price Ford paid for his betrayal, quite literally having to relive the deed in theatre shows before someone inevitably turns up to claim their own 15 minutes of fame and end his self-loathing.
With Pitt's magnetic portrayal of Jesse's mercurial swings between family man and volatile cold-eyed killer and sub-plots charting the other outlaws (Paul Schneider, Jeremy Reener, Michael Parks) as they seek to escape Jesse's shadow, the first two acts are compellingly intense, but after Jesse's killing, the last half hour rises to another level entirely, affording further opportunity to fully savour a revelatory multi-layered performance from Affleck that ranks among the year's white-hot best.
Some unnecessary blurred focus shots and the distancing storytelling narration compound its defiant uncommerciality, but it's still the best elegiac art house Western since Altman's McCabe and Mrs Miller.
FRED CLAUS * *
Cert PG, 115 mins
If you thought The Santa Clause 3 was bad, wait until you unwrap this pair of cinematic socks. The set up's yawningly familiar. Resentful family black sheep comes good in a moment of crisis, gets past his issues and learns about responsibility and life's true values.
The variation is that the mouton noir is Father Christmas' estranged older (even if he inexplicably looks 20 years younger) brother Fred (Vince Vaughn) who, having grown up in his do-gooder sibling's shadow with mother (Kathy Bates) only having praise for little St Nick, is now all humbug and resentment.
However, when a business opportunity means he needs a loan, Santa (Paul Giamatti) agrees on condition he come and earn it in the workshop helping meet schedules already pressured by increased kiddie demands.
Unfortunately, Fred's hostility and irresponsibility in tackling the naughty/nice list seems likely to get Christmas cancelled permanently by Clyde (Kevin Spacey), a humourless efficiency expert with an axe to grind.
Director David Dobkin's follow up to The Wedding Crashers, it's not insufferable. It's just not funny and despite the manipulative sniffle-inducing scenes and a sentimental message about how every kid deserves a present, nor is it especially charming.
Vaughn reprises his standard moves but never seems engaged with the material while Giamatti just seems lost behind the padding and prosthetics.
John Michael Higgins (head digitally super-imposed on small body) as the chief elf with a crush on Santa's accountant (Elizabeth Banks), Rachel Weisz as Fred's long-suffering girlfriend, and Miranda Richardson as Mrs Claus, are given almost nothing to do.
Yet the script still finds room for the obligatory cute orphan so Fred can renounce his cynical ways.
It earns a second star though for one genuinely inspired sequence in which Fred attends a meeting of Siblings Anonymous where others pouring out their fraternal problems include Frank Stallone, Stephen Baldwin and a blubbering Roger Clinton.
It may go over youngsters' heads but, along with a wry gag involving Spacey and Superman's cape, it will at least give the grown ups their only laugh for the entire two hours. Assuming they didn't flee to the foyer after the appearance of the Ninja Elves
HITMAN * * *
Cert 15, 92 mins
Promoted to starring role after Die Hard 4, Timothy Olyphant is No 47, a genetically modified unnamed assassin for the nebulous Organisation which does the world governments' dirty work.
However, assigned to take out Russian President Belicoff, he's amazed to see his target appear in public just hours after blowing his brains out. Yes, he's been set up as part of a complex political conspiracy.
So now he's got to find out by whom and why while being pursued by fellow Organisation hitmen, an Interpol cop (draggy Dougray Scott) and a Russian secret service boss.
The answers may have something to do with Belicoff's gun-running brother and feisty prostitute Nika (Olga Kurylenko) who, enslaved and abused by the President, has also been targeted for elimination. Which is why he's dragging her along with him.
Of course, never having been exposed to such close interaction, she starts affecting his emotional detachment. Though not, in a refreshing change from the usual bed-hopping action heroes, his desexualised nature.
With dialogue so wooden you could build tables from it, it never bothers to explain the incoherent plot or why someone who surely requires a certain invisibility so blatantly stands out with a bar code tattooed onto their shaved skull.
Lifted straight from your Playstation, there's plenty of standard issue shoot-em ups with 47 taking out dozens of better armed opponents or slipping three-foot knives from his trousers.
But, an underestimated actor, Olyphant also invests the role with a degree of urbane cool and depth that makes this far better than a computer game adaptation deserves to be.
THE NINES * * *
Cert 15, 99 mins
Initially conceived as three films, this doesn't really gel as a single entity but, as an exploration of the godlike nature of the writer it does exercise a compelling fascination as you seek to determine what and who is real.
It also affords Ryan Reynolds a chance to shine in three different permutations.
In part one he's TV cop show star Gary who goes into a drug fuelled meltdown after breaking up with his girlfriend, is confined to house arrest under the watchful eye of a PR minder (Melissa McCarthy) and finds himself seduced by a creepy neighbour (Hope Davis).
Or maybe not. Maybe he's the creation of writer-producer Gavin who's working on a new supernatural drama vehicle for best friend and real life Gilmore Girls star McCarthy, with Davis as the network executive who's clearly not to be trusted.
Then again, come part three, perhaps everything's the work of video game designer Gabriel who, lost in the woods with wife (McCarthy) and mute daughter (Elle Fanning), encounters hiker Davis who may well be a psycho-killer.
Or, is Gabriel some mystical entity who's "revised" humanity ninety times already? And what's with the recurring references to the number nine?
A Twilight Zone collision between The Matrix, The Number 23, and The Prisoner that makes Mulholland Drive look a model of coherence, the directing debut of Tim Burton's screenwriter John August is every bit the mind-knotting puzzle as it sounds.
With an ending that leaps out of metaphysical space, the combination of multiple possibilities and no clear answers, it's as baffling as it is intriguing. But Sims addicts will get a real kick out of it
DECEMBER BOYS * *
Cert 12A, 105 mins
Daniel Radcliffe's first film since he started the Potter series was so poorly reviewed and died so painfully in London that it was yanked from the regional release schedule. Now it finally limps into Solihull for a one-off Monday screening.,
A 60s coming of age drama, it follows four Australian orphans, Spark, Misty, Spit and the older Maps (Radcliffe) as, to celebrate their shared birth month, the nuns pack them off from the outback for a seaside treat.
While staying with old sea dog McAnsh (Jack Thompson) and his ailing wife they learn childless couple, circus stunt-rider Fearless and wife Teresa are considering adoption, and all seek to position themselves as likely candidates.
Meanwhile, Maps finds first romance and sexual initiation with holidaying teen Lucy (Terese Palmer). Old fashioned in feel, it's an earnest but lacklustre, muddled affair, unlikely to engage either the teenage or adult audiences it awkwardly straddles.
There's some amusing moments and the muted scenes between Maps and Teresa capture the awkwardness of teenage sexual fumblings, but it's dramatically inert and the Virgin Mary visions seem to have wandered in from another script entirely.
Radcliffe's unexceptional but then none of the boys have much by way of character or personality to explore. A final twist reveals the film's really about friendship, but anyone still awake by then will be too bored to care.
A CRUDE AWAKENING: THE OIL CRASH
Cert U, 85 mins
A companion piece to An Inconvenient Truth, here's a sobering reminder that, with oil reserves running out at an increasing rate as economies expand and become more energy consuming, life as we know it is going to come to an ugly halt sooner than we think.
And that doesn't just means paying more for petrol. Oil may drive 98 per cent of the world's transportation, but it's also the foundation for industry, farming, pharmaceuticals, plastics and much more.
Back in the 50s, a prominent geologist became a laughing stock for suggesting oil production would peak in the 70s. It did, but still everyone refuses to admit we're facing crisis. While sunny 50s ads about cars and boundless supplies of black gold are set against chilling images of abandoned oil fields in Texas, Venezuela and Russia, experts paint a grim picture of a future where only the wealthy can afford to fly and everyone else reverts to horse and carriages.
Middle Eastern oil-suppliers consistently misreport reserves in order to maintain their quota figures and America makes oil the not so hidden agenda to its foreign policy. Wars, economic meltdown and social collapse all round, then.
Although there's hope with the slow shift to greener lifestyles, no one seems optimistic about finding workable alternatives in the time available either. It's a one-sided argument, but a terrifyingly convincing one. Put that bicycle on your Christmas list, now.
