Saturday, 12th January 2008 - 00:00CET
Films on release
GOOD LUCK CHUCK
comedy
It all started when Charlie Kagan was 10 years old. Breaking the cardinal rules of spin-the-bottle, Charlie refused to lip-lock with a demented Goth girl - and she put a hex on him. Now, 25 years later, Charlie (Dane Cook) is a successful dentist... and still cursed. While his plastic surgeon best friend, Stu (Dan Fogler), pursues as many of his patients as possible, Charlie can't seem to find the right girl. Even worse, he discovers at an ex-girlfriend's wedding that every woman he's ever slept with has found true love - with the next guy after him. Before he knows it, Charlie's reputation as a "good luck charm" has women. But a life filled with all sex and no love has Charlie lonelier than ever - that is, until he meets Cam (Jessica Alba). An accident-prone penguin specialist, Cam is as hard-to-get as she is beautiful. But when a genuine romance develops, Charlie realises he's got to find a way to break his good-luck curse... before the girl of his dreams winds up with the next guy she meets.
THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES
dramaThere have been countless books written and tales told about America's most famous outlaw - all of them colourful and fascinating, all focused on his larger-than-life public persona and daring exploits, and most of them bearing only incidental reference to the truth.
To those he robbed and terrorised, and to the families of those he admittedly killed, he may have been just a criminal, but in the sensational newspaper articles and dime novels chronicling the James Gang throughout the 1870s, Jesse was the object of awe and admiration. He was a Robin Hood, they suggested, targeting railroad owners and banks that exploited poor farmers. He was a man with a tragic cause, a wronged and wounded Confederate soldier striking back against the union that had ruined his life. Most importantly, to an increasingly buttoned-down and citified population leading ordinary lives, he was the last frontiersman - a symbol of freedom and the American spirit, a charismatic rebel who flouted the law and lived by his own rules... by all accounts, a legend.
Foremost among his admirers was Robert Ford (Casey Affleck), an idealistic and ambitious young man who had devoted his life to the hope of one day riding alongside his idol. He could never have imagined that history would ultimately mark him as the "the dirty little coward" who shot Jesse in the back.
But who was Jesse James, really - behind the folklore and the selling of newspapers? And who was Robert Ford, just 19 and a member of Jesse's inner circle, who was able to bring down such a formidable figure when lawmen across 10 states had tried and failed? How did they come to be friends and what happened between them in the days and hours leading up to the gunshot that would end one man's life and become the definition and sum total of another's?
No one will ever know the whole truth.
The year is 1881 and Jesse (Brad Pitt) is 34 years old. As he plans his next great robbery, he continues to wage war on his enemies who are trying to collect the reward money and the glory riding on his capture. But the greatest threat to his life could come from those he would trust the most.
WE OWN THE NIGHT
dramaAs decorated NYPD cops Joseph Grusinsky (Mark Wahlberg) and his father, Burt (Robert Duvall), prepare to take on a newly powerful and dangerous Russian drug dealer, they never thought they would be turning to Joseph's black sheep brother, Bobby (Joaquin Phoenix). Forced to choose sides, Bobby and his girlfriend, Amada (Eva Mendes), are caught in the middle - between the familial ties he has rejected and a future he cannot avoid.
THE JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB
dramaAs five women and one enigmatic man meet to discuss the works of Jane Austen, they find their love lives playing out in a 21st century version of her novels. Sylvia (Amy Brenneman), is shocked when her husband Daniel (Jimmy Smits), leaves her after more than 20 years years and three children. Jocelyn (Maria Bello), her unmarried best friend, distracts herself from her unacknowledged loneliness by breeding dogs. Prudie (Emily Blunt) is a young French teacher, in possession of a worthy husband yet distracted by persistent fantasies about sex with another man. The many-times married Bernadette (Kathy Baker) develops a yearning for one more chance at happiness. Beautiful, risk-taking Allegra (Maggie Grace), Sylvia and Daniel's lesbian daughter, has quit talking to her lover. And Grigg (Hugh Dancy), a young science-fiction fan and computer whiz, seems horribly both out of place and obliviously at ease as the only man to be invited into the book circle.
Six book club members, six Austen books, six interwoven storylines over six months in the busy modern setting of Sacramento, where city and suburban sprawl meet natural beauty. While the contemporary stories never slavishly parallel the Austen plots, the six characters find echoes, predictions, warnings and wisdom about their own trajectories within Austen's beloved narratives.
• All films are released by KRS.
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