The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007)

There should be some sort of rule that movies with foregone conclusions aren't allowed to run past the two hour mark. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford drags for over two and a half.

When just from your title and setup your audience already knows the who (Robert Ford), the what (kills Jesse James), the when (somewhere towards the end of the movie because that'd be more dramatic), and the how (probably with a gun considering the time period and the fact that these guys were train robbers) - all you have left is the why, and even that is partially answered (because he's a coward). The challenge is to fill in the details and the rest of that "why" in a gripping manner for the rest of the film. And that's where this film fails. It's no small undertaking but anyone would be hard pressed to sustain tension with this story for two and a half hours.

It's too bad because it is such a striking film visually. Grain shines in the sunlight and sways in the wind. The sky is full of appropriately threatening and tumultuous-looking clouds. The train lights fall on Brad Pitt's Jesse James creating a perfect silhouette before a moment of action. The men disappear through the steam like ghosts. The cast is an array of familiar and vaguely-familiar faces (Brad Pitt, Mary Louise Parker, Casey Affleck, Sam Rockwell, Zooey Deschanel, Jeremy Renner, Paul Schneider). They all do a fine enough job but everything is too subdued for anyone to shine through like the aforementioned grain.

Rating: 2/5

Recommended for: lulling yourself to sleep

Burn After Reading (2008)

Burn After Reading has two things you'd expect from a Coen brothers movie: dark humor and Frances McDormand. The fault lies in the marketing as to how laugh out loud funny this movie is. The trailers, the commercials - both portray it as the most uproariously funny thing you'd see in 2008. It is not. What we're looking at is dark - very dark.

Two gym employees, Linda (Frances McDormand) and Chad (Brad Pitt), find the memoirs of a recently laid off fed agent (John Malkovich) on a cd in the locker room. They mistake this for top secret information and set to sell it back to its owner. The disc actually belonged to the agent's wife (Tilda Swinton), who was trying to find info about him for their upcoming divorce.

What follows is generally people acting horribly to each other and lots of patented Malkovich yelling. When physical violence erupts it is intense - also a Coen trademark. Richard Jenkins steals a bit of the limelight as Linda and Chad's powerless boss Ted while J. K. Simmons brings a little straight-laced humor in his brief scenes as an agency superior. And if anyone is actually goofy funny, it's Brad Pitt who brings a much needed lightness to the story. Still, overall not much of a comedy.

Rating: 3/5
Recommended for: Adults who'd watch anything that has the Coen brothers' name on it.