Director: Doug Liman

Featuring: Naomi Watts, Sean Penn
 

When Jo Wilson wrote an Op Ed piece in the New York Times in 2003 saying that the Bush administration had massaged reports about the Iraqi weapons of mass-destruction to justify the Iraq War, some elements in the White House took it upon themselves to wreck his life and the life of his wife, whom they revealed to be an CIA agent. Her life was put at risk, as were the lives of her many contacts. The couple were branded traitors but both fought back, with the support of elements of the liberal press. Ultimately, White House staffers lost their jobs.

Naomi Watts and Sean Penn do a good job of conveying a marriage under unbelievable pressure and director Liman (who began the Bourne franchise by directing The Bourne Identity) harvests thrills out of battles they have with the government.

All The President’s Men this ain’t and Liman hasn’t followed the route of fellow Bourne director, Paul Greengrass, who was able to make Green Zone (a kind of companion film) more of a shoot-em-up thriller by telling the story of the search for WMDs on the ground in Iraq.

But this remains intense, intelligent film-making –although it also seems something of a stale story seven years on when Afghanistan is these days the daily headline story.


 

Director: Andrew Jarecki

Featuring: Ryan Gosling, Kirsten Dunst, Frank Langella.
 

Documentary film-maker Jarecki might have been expected to film this story based-on-an-unsolved 1982 murder case as non-fiction, given the massive success he had in 2003 with Capturing The Friedmans, his documentary about a popular children’s entertainer which turned into an expose of father and son sex abusers.

But he’s decided to make it his feature film debut – and quite a debut it is. Gosling plays the wealthy son of a rich New York family whose wife (Dunst) disappears. 20 years later the case is reopened and Gosling also seems to be linked to the death of his best friend (by a bullet to the back of the head) and an elderly neighbour.

Dunst is exemplary as the unsuspecting wife who too late starts to get suspicious of her definitely freaky husband. Gosling really lives the (very) warped character of the possible murderer. There are rumours that he fell out with the director during the intense shoot and that he found such an unsympathetic character difficult to play. He does a fine job.

The film isn’t perfect by any means – it gets muddled from time to time – but it promises much for Jarecki for the future.




 

Director: Tony Scott

Featuring: Denzel Washington, Chris Pine, Rosario Dawson
 

A driverless train loaded with combustible material is heading for a densely populated area at breakneck speed and Washington and Chris Pine are the only men who can stop it. That’s all you need to know, really. Scott’s camerawork and cutting is as dizzily frenetic as ever – can directors have Attention Deficit Disorder? Sometimes you wish this man would just sit still and let his actors do the work they’re paid for? Having said that, once that 6:5 special is racing down the track his jumpiness fits right in.

Washington and Pine have a believable relationship – the former a railway vet being forced to retire, the latter a posh kid opting for blue collar experience - but they don’t have much time for character development among all the flashy crash, bang, wallops.

Enjoy it for the action – and check out Konshalovsky’s The Runaway Train (made back in the day when Eric Roberts was a contender) for a similar ride.