Well it's Oscar season, or near enough, and hence I'm at the movies a number of times a week.

I've had the joy of seeing Michael Clayton, The Assassination of Jesse James, Gone Baby Gone, Eastern Promises etc all relatively recently, and it's been great seeing good movies, since they were few and far between for the majority of the year.

I'm not gonna say much about Michael Clayton here, just that it's one of the best movies I've seen this year, and I highly recommend it.

This review will mainly be on Gone Baby Gone with a bit of Jesse James thrown in for good measure.

I was lucky enough to see AJJ on Wednesday and GBG tonight, both starring Casey Affleck, who I am digging more and more with every role I see him in. The similarities between the characters he portrays is evident, in their being small, young, and this being used against them. He's much more cocksure in GBG, which maybe doesn't make him as interesting, but it's still fun to watch.

Gone Baby Gone is a mystery directed by Ben Affleck and based off of a Dennis Lehane (Mystic River) book. This story is based in a poor area of Boston, much like Mystic River, though this urban Boston is portrayed much more real and gritty, which is a credit to the crew.

The story follows the younger Affleck as a PI hired to augment the investigation of a small girl, since some people will talk to PIs and not cops. Morgan Freeman is a captain of police, and Ed Harris is a detective. One of the unique things about this movie is the narrative structure. You're only about an hour into the movie when suddenly the mystery is solved, but there's still another hour to go. It's very offsetting and I was surprised by it, though it all comes together eventually.

Now as time goes on, and the plot comes around full circle, and you learn of everything, well I wasn't sold. I'm having a hard time explaining what I mean, but basically as Affleck starts investigating what happened, everything is just coming so easily. I have begun watching The Wire on HBO On Demand. The Wire, for those that haven't seen it, is a cop drama that blows all previous cop dramas out of the water. It's ultra-realistic, and thus it's warped my mind on this mysteries. I watched 13 hour-long episodes of the first season of the Wire to see them wrap up a case on some drug dealers, so it's hard to see people chase down some bad guys in the space of 30 minutes.

Basically, my problem with the mystery part of the movie was that it seemed somewhat humdrum. I love mysteries, but this one didn't particularly rock my socks, while Mystic River blew me away. However, the dilemma at the end is what sets this film apart from most mysteries you will see. I won't give anything away, but it'll get you thinking and possibly arguing. It was really the big thing that saved this film from being a run of the mill mystery.

The film is aided by the aforementioned gritty urban Boston and the denizens withing. Ben Affleck apparently got non-actors from the area to play parts, and it works to wonderful effect.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, also starring Casey Affleck as Robert Ford and with Brad Pitt as Jesse James was much more adored by me.

This is a western about the infamous outlaw. I'm not very familiar with Jesse James, I just know he's one of the villains of the Wild West, though this film painted him in a much more morose light. This film covers his gangs' final big time robbery and the months that would follow. Robert Ford is a sad creeeeeeeepy sap that is a hanger-on with the group, and has a sick sort of admiration for James.

Sam Rockwell, Jeremy Renner, and Paul Schneider play other members of the gang, and they're all superb. I love that they casted these guys for these roles, using actual actors over nobodies or pretty faces, as it adds something.

People have likened this movie to something that Terrence Malick might make. I've seen The Thin Red Line and The New World, and Malick loves to use poetic voiceover narration and beautiful shots of landscape and such. While that is present in AJJ, the narration is more straightforward and actually relevant to the story. This movie is definitely slow and long, coming in at 160 minutes, and I guess you could say it's Malickese, but there is also something of the violence that the director, Andrew Dominik, displayed in his prison drama, Chopper.

So the film covers the lives of James, Ford, and the others in the time following their last train robbery as James becomes paranoid of his friends turning him in for the crimes he's committed, and Ford getting more and more angry with the constant teasing for his oddness.

Casey Affleck is absolutely amazing in this movie. Brad Pitt is good, but Affleck steals the show. From his first scene when he asked Jesse James' brother if he can become a member of the gang, to when he kills someone in the middle of the movie, to his conversation at dinner with Jesse James one night about what they have in common... one thing that makes this movie so interesting and great is how I feel that it would only work this well in this genre during this era. It's so interesting seeing a movie about celebrity and fame, with a creepy character like Robert Ford in a Western based in 1882.

There was a review on AICN by the webmaster, Harry Knowles about how films like this killed the Western, and how a movie like 3:10 to Yuma was what a classical Western was like. He commends both movies for being great. I can absolutely see what he means with the former. You can truly feel that the age of the cowboy and outlaw is coming to an end with this movie. James, Ford, and the others are portrayed a bit pathetically, with none of the bluster you would expect. Even their one robbery at the beginning is done unprofessionally and messily. A masterful job is done humanizing these characters that would so often be represented as superheroes in a previous era.

So that's that. Go see Michael Clayton and AJJ if you possibly could, and also Eastern Promises, 3:10 to Yuma and In the Valley of Elah are all great movies. Gone Baby Gone is maybe a step down, but still worth seeing.