It's a week of bravura performances among new releases, so pick your favorite headliner and go: Jodie Foster going vigilante (The Brave One), Casey Affleck turning traitor (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford), or Cate Blanchett reigning supreme (Elizabeth: The Golden Age).

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The Brave One

Tomatometer: 43%

Vigilante justice has a petite new heroine in Jodie Foster, who stars in and executive produced The Brave One. The victim of a random act of violence, nighttime radio host Erica Bain (Foster) survives but loses her fiancé (Lost's Naveen Andrews); arming herself with a gun, she finds her bloodlust increasing as she becomes the city's mysterious dark angel while a cop (Terrence Howard) begins to piece together the puzzle. But despite a Golden Globes-nominated performance by Foster, critics were split; whether you'll enjoy it may depend on your preference for exploitation films or intellectual character studies.



 

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

Tomatometer: 75%

Turning in his second stellar performance of the year (after starring in brother Ben Affleck's Gone Baby Gone) is Casey Affleck, who plays titular gunman Robert Ford to Brad Pitt's outlaw Jesse James in Andrew Dominik's poetic Western. The true story of James' death is fascinating in itself -- James, famous for leading a gang of bank robbers with his brother Frank, was shot in the back by a member of his own inner circle. Dominik's adaptation of Ron Hansen's novel applies a dual focus to both Jesse James and his killer, "Bob" Ford, allowing the film to become not only a historical retelling but a meditation on self-destruction and celebrity. If you love the visual daring of Terrence Malick, and wonder what the heck happened to Britney Spears, this should make for an intriguing time.


 

Elizabeth: The Golden Age

Tomatometer: 34%

Proving that critics can overwhelmingly scold a film but the Academy of Motion Picture and Sciences will still deem it Oscar-worthy, Shekhar Kapur's follow-up to 1998's Elizabeth finds the Virgin Queen (double-Oscar nominee Cate Blanchett) on the brink of war with Spain and dealing with her own forbidden attraction to the roguish Walter Raleigh (Clive Owen). Viewers hungry for the film's sumptuous production design and costumes will enjoy a bonus menu of behind-the-scenes featurettes, deleted scenes, and Kapur's feature-length commentary.


 

Across the Universe

Tomatometer: 53%

The music catalog of the Fab Four has been used before to illustrate a storyline -- we'll forgive Peter Frampton and the Bee Gees their abuse of the Beatles' songbook in Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band -- but writer-director Julie Taymor makes magnificently poppy use of it in this splashy, epic musical. Evan Rachel Wood and Jim Sturgess star as young lovers who along with their friends get swept along with pivotal events of the 1960s (race riots, bohemia, Vietnam) via song, every number inventively designed to borrow meaning from the lyrics of John Lennon and Paul McCartney.




2 Days in Paris

Tomatometer: 87%

Julie Delpy stars in her writing and directing debut about a dysfunctional couple (Delpy and Adam Goldberg) at the tail end of a vacation, and possibly their relationship, spending the titular time in the City of Love. Critics found the comedy of relationship errors sharply observed and charming; also of interest on the DVD release is a 16-minute interview with Delpy, who not only wrote and directed the film, but served as composer and producer.






Fierce People

Tomatometer: 23%

Teenager Finn (Anton Yelchin) would rather spend his summer studying the "fierce people" of South America with his anthropologist father, but must accompany his mother (Diane Lane) to live among the country club set with her former client (Donald Sutherland), based on the novel by Dirk Wittenborn.







Descent

Tomatometer: 24%

Rosario Dawson plays a co-ed rape victim who overcomes her subsequent social and psychological withdrawal to seek revenge upon her attacker; despite Dawson's noble performance, critics can't forgive the story its artful pretension or its degrading conclusion.








The Ten Commandments

Tomatometer: 16%

This week's pick of CG offerings is also the number one choice for camp value: an all-new cartoon version of The Ten Commandments, featuring Christian Slater as Moses! Unfortunately (rather, even more unfortunately) the familiar tale of Red Sea-parting and tablets from God is poorly animated...giving voice actors Slater, Alfred Molina (Rameses), Elliott Gould (God) and Ben Kingsley (Narrator) an even harder sell.








'Til next week, happy renting!