The Assassination of Jessie James by the Coward Robert Ford

THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSIE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD ("ASSASSINATION," hereafter), is what you get when you put the director of photography in charge of editing. Here's a movie filled with beautiful images that linger, linger, and finally overstay their welcome. ASSASSINATION is an interesting movie. It's a beautiful movie. It could have been a great movie if it had just moved the heck along.

Casey Affleck plays Robert Ford, a man who gives Frank James the creeps just by being around, and who creeps him more the more he is around. Unfortunately, he creeps us out, too, making the seventeen hours the movie spends with the guy remarkably uncomfortable. Robert is, um, fond of Jessie in a creepily warped hero worship / deeply closeted homosexual kind of way. But Robert makes the ultimate mistake for a hero worshipper: he gets too close to the object of his admiration and learns that his hero is just a man, after all.

In the case of Brad Pitt's Jessie James, his hero isn't just a man, but an increasingly unstable psychotic who represents a danger to himself and everyone around him. Hell, by the time Ford takes his shot, it's a no-brainer. And in the moral world of the James gang, a world in which shooting a man in the back is just another day at the office, it makes perfect sense. And that works, and Pitt and Affleck are both quite good (as is the underappreciated Sam Rockwell as Robert's older brother Charley), and everything's fine, but the movie is just so damn slow.

This is a picture whose sunsets seem like they're in real time. Caterpillars mature into butterflies faster than ASSASSINATION moves along. Everything is so stately, so operatic, and for what? The murder of some other murderer? Maybe you have "get" the romance of the James Gang to "get" this movie, but all I saw was a bunch of thugs being led by a charismatic thug who eventually got what was coming to him.

No, thanks.

After The Sunset

AFTER THE SUNSET is like OCEAN'S TWELVE without everyone trying so hard to be cool.

It's a great premise - what happens after the brilliant jewel thieves pull of the ultimate heist and retire to the tropical island? Will they really be able to enjoy a life of lobster dinners and fruity drinks with umbrellas in them?

In this case, Pierce Brosnan and Salma Hayek play the thieves and Woody Harrelson is the FBI agent who just can't let them go. He follows them to the island just as a cruise ship displaying the world's most kickass diamond pulls in to port, determined to stick so close to the couple that they won't have enough room to breathe, much less try another heist.

And away you go from there, rolling into a brisk 90 minutes of jokes, cons, doublecrosses, and slamming-door farce. There is not a single beat in this film in this film that you won't see coming, in part because the film doesn't so much telegraph as broadcast its intentions. Nevertheless, the affair floats along on a tide of bonhomie, willing to bet that its audience will enjoy viewing a light, tropical, grownup fantasy as much as it seems its creators enjoyed staging it.

I rented AFTER THE SUNSET because I just loved the premise. How nice that it followed through.

Kung Fu Panda

I flat-out loved KUNG FU PANDA.

I walked in expecting a mildly entertaining Dreamworks cartoon, but I got a legitimate wuxia film with heroic swords, scrolls of wisdom, and absolutely stunning fight choreography. "But wait," you say. "You hated HAPPY FEET in part because you claimed that you can't get into CGI dancing. You've written that kung movies are basically dance movies with fake blood. So why don't you hate CGI kung fu dancing?"

Umm, because this is better. HAPPY FEET never allowed me to suspend my disbelief, but I was able to accept KUNG FU PANDA as I might any story a parent may tell his or her child. Sure, the kung fu is fantastic, but hey, it's a fairy tale, so why not?

As a comedy, KUNG FU PANDA kept my kid laughing. But hey, my kid's an easy laugher so I'm more impressed by the fact that it kept me laughing from beginning to end. As an artwork, KUNG FU PANDA is nothing short of stunning. In fact, I have an image from the film as my desktop at the moment - it's just that beautiful. And as a wuxia picture, well, the second voice we hear is that of James Hong. What more need I say?

I think this picture will wind up in my top ten for the year. It's just that good. Color me surprised and delighted.

Dragon Lives Again

DRAGON LIVES AGAIN is a cheap Hong Kong ripoff of Bruce Lee. It's a riot!

Here's the deal. Bruce Lee has returned from the dead to do justice and kick people in the face. My favorite part: the bit of exposition explaining why Bruce Lee looks surprisingly like Bolo Yeung: "Silly girl. Don't you know that people's faces and bodies look diferent in the afterlife?" If you've ever wanted to see a Bruceploitation flick featuring the The Man With No Name, the priest from THE EXORCIST, and Popeye, this is your movie. See it with friends.

Le Cercle Rouge

We were about ninety minutes into ‘Le Cercle Rouge’ when it dawned on us: “Hey, this is a heist movie!” ‘Le Cercle Rouge’ isn’t really about a heist, nor is it really about the people who take part in that heist. It’s more about a late-Sixties concept of cool, of honor, of codes and those who follow them. In that, it has a lot in common with ‘Bullitt,’ I suppose, but Alain Delon is no Steve McQueen. I found myself less than captivated.