DVDs of the week

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Enigmatic: Brad Pitt as Jesse James

Meditative: The Assassination of Jesse James

Great twisted ride: The Nines

Funny: Black sheep

Incomprehensible: Southland Tales

Dumb: Breach

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The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, starring Brad Pitt, The Nines and Black Sheep are amongst the DVDs out this week.

DVD OF THE WEEK
The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford Collector's Edition
Warner Home Video, 15, £20.99
***
Aside from Casey Affleck's deserved Oscar nomination for his compulsive, nervy portrayal of Robert Ford (the coward' who shot his hero, Jesse James), I still fail to get the fuss surrounding this over-hyped exercise in boot gazing. Admittedly, Brad Pitt (pictured) is inspired casting for an exploration of one of the earliest celebrities in the US. Why did people love, even worship James so devotedly, when he, apparently, robbed the rich only to feed himself and brutally slaughtered any working man who got in his way?

The film's narrator may have swallowed a thesaurus but director Andrew Dominik never takes us any deeper into the Jesse James enigma'. Roger Deakins's lyrical photography may bestow a strangely haunting gravitas on the big screen but on a TV scale it just can't fog the fact that the narrative all but completely stalls after the opening, eerily thrilling train hold-up. Meditative' is the word of praise that's been most frequently used to describe this empty-hearted Western – though to me, sedative' would be more accurate.

Extras: What makes it all worth it. The two-disc limited collector's edition includes a 44-page digibook plus extra feature documentary Death Of An Outlaw, including cast interviews. Larushka Ivan-Zadeh

The Nines
Optimum Releasing, 15, £15.99
****
This smart, funny, refreshingly intriguing three-parter is as schizoid as you'd expect from John August, a scriptwriter who penned both Charlie And The Chocolate Factory and Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle.

One morning, Hollywood movie brat Gary (Ryan Reynolds) wakes to discover he has no belly button, then sets fire to his mansion. Put under house arrest by his agent, Gary finds a mysterious Memento-esque note, in his own writing, telling him to Look for the nines'. He's subsequently transformed into two parallel versions of himself: Gavin, a TV writer and Gabriel, a videogame designer, each of whom are involved with Mary, a motherly type who gives them hints such as: Eights are koalas – they control the weather.'

That it stars Reynolds, poster guy for dumb US comedy fodder, of all people, is, in fact, the least surprising thing about this admittedly overambitious sum of Adaptation, divided by Van Wilder: Party Liaison, plus The Matrix.

Its tongue-in-cheek creation myth may not ultimately add up to anything much, but who cares?It's a great twisted ride. You look a little A Beautiful Mind-ish,' Mary tells a glazed Gary. He's not the only one.

Extras: Commentary and interviews with August and Reynolds, Summing Up The Nines featurette, deleted scenes. Larushka Ivan-Zadeh

Black Sheep
Icon Home Entertainment, 15, £19.99
****
Get ready for the Violence Of The Lambs!' goes the tagline for this brilliantly funny Midsomer Murders meets Bad Taste effort in which a bit of genetic engineering on a New Zealand farm turns its woolly occupants into bloodthirsty killers. What can we say, except full marks for actor Peter Feeney who, as guilty farm owner Angus, manages to play dead straight a role involving lines such as: It's an exciting time to be in agricultural sciences,' pulling down his pants to rede˚ ne animal husbandry', losing his male member in a savage biting accident and winding up in charge of a flock that, when deadly, looks like it was hewn from sock puppets. Baaa…

Extras: Commentary, making-of, deleted scenes, blooper reel, trailer. Sharon Lougher

Southland Tales
Universal Pictures, 15, £19.99
**
Richard Kelly's magnificent car crash follow-up to cult hit debut Donnie Darko is, the cover tells us, a multilayered vision which defies categorisation' – apart, it seems, from loved it' or, most likely, loathed it'.

It's Los Angeles 2008, three days before the end of the world (hmm – sound familiar, Donnie fans?). A nuclear attack on Texas triggers World War III, a conflict instantly sponsored by Hustler. Meanwhile, an amnesiac movie star called Boxer (Dwayne The Rock' Johnson), who may be The One, writes a sci-fi script with his porn star mistress (Sarah Michelle Gellar), who is launching a perfume line. She's also secretly in league with some lesbian neo-Marxists who are mounting a guerrilla opposition to some Republican quantum physicists. Then, before you know it, Justin Timberlake pops up to do a little song and dance routine and there's this weird straight-out-of-David Lynch dwarf lady with a pet blue ball and… enough!

This epically incomprehensible work has much potential for becoming a cult classic of sorts. Though the fact it's seemingly cut down from a (possibly brilliant) seven-hour movie, makes me quake at the prospect of a director's cut'.

Extras: Making-of. Larushka Ivan-Zadeh

Breach
20th Century Fox/MGM, 12, £19.99
**
I am an FBI agent!' Perhaps the dumbest line from the dumbest movie ever made but at least Point Break was entertaining, if watching Keanu Reeves jump out of a plane was your idea of fun. Breach, on the other hand, in which Chris Cooper plays a very different kind of FBI agent (one with a brain), is a tension-free slog crying out for Patrick Swayze on a surfboard.

Cooper is real-life double-crosser Robert Hanssen, who sold secrets to the Soviet Union for more than 20 years. The film unwisely covers only the last two months of his time at the bureau, as a rookie operative (Ryan Phillippe) is asked to gain his trust and find proof of his deceit. Unfortunately, the unspectacular spy-on-spy action that follows is about as exciting as a barney between Steptoe and Son.

At its most blistering, we watch Cooper and Phillippe going to church together. It's not exactly The Bourne Ultimatum, is it? Heck, it's not even Point Break.

Extras: Director's commentary, deleted and alternate scenes, two featurettes. Ross McGuinness

 

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