Because I was on News 24 on Friday, filling in for Mark Kermode, I saw three big films in two days at the end of last week. This is me sitting next to Gavin Esler and concentrating really hard so as not to nervously swing around on the swivel chair like I did last time.



And this is me talking, about the following films:



Michael Clayton is the latest legal potboiler from Hollywood, this time the directorial debut of Tony Gilroy (who scripted, or co-scripted the Bourne trilogy, and wrote this). Now, I don't mind admitting that I love George Clooney. If I were female or gay, I would fancy him. As it is, I'm just glad he's around on the big screen, filling it with his old fashioned movie star looks and presence. For me, he's in the mould of Gary Cooper, or Clark Gable - that is, not necessarily the greatest actor ever to walk the earth, but one with whatever alchemy it is that makes someone a movie star. He's also a hardworking Hollywood liberal, which means the projects he takes on - such as Syriana or the self-directed Good Night, And Good Luck - are not the standard, right-wing studio slop. Michael Clayton is an odd one, though. Certainly, its anti-corporate, pro-environment message (he's a law firm "fixer" expected to clean up when attorney Tom Wilkinson loses it after 15 years of defending an indefensible agrichemical giant) is a happy fit with today's "liberal porn", but it's not a campaigning piece. Rather, it's a downbeat character study in which Clooney doesn't smile once (or at least, when he does it's false). His marriage is over, he gambles, his brother's a junkie and he owes thousands of dollars after a bad restaurant venture. This is a refreshing role for Clooney, and sets the tone for the whole piece, which is dark and broody and paints a vulgar picture of corporate power. I cannot trust my own judgement on Clooney films though, as I love him too much.

The Brave One is also about law, but not the corporate kind. We're down on the streets, and in those tunnels in Central Park that nobody should ever venture down at night in films. Jodie Foster does, with her perfect boyfriend (Naveen Andrews) and lovely dog, and regrets it. Emerging from an extended spell in hospital, she turns into Charles Bronson and takes the law into her own hands. Directed by Neil Jordan (although not written by him, which is why it doesn't fit into his ouevre), it shows New York as we imagine it used to be before Guiliani "cleaned up" the city, except he didn't, as it's still wall to wall muggers and jackers and pimps, many of whom Jodie dispatches, to much cheering in American theatres, I'll be bound. It's a bit corny - Jodie has an African lady living next door who dispenses wisdom like only black characters can ("There are plenty of ways to die - you have to choose how to live"), her relationship with the cop (Terence Howard) who's after the mystery vigilante is unlikely, and one pithy line she delivers before killing a seedy pimp who called her a "supercunt" ("I'm the last supercunt you'll ever see") is pure Bruce Willis - but Jodie holds it together with her usual grumpy dynamism. Interesting how in 30 years she's gone from child prostitute protected by a vigilante in New York, to vigilante protecting prostitutes in New York: the first act of retaliatory violence even occurs in a convenience store.

3:10 To Yuma was my favourite of the three: James Mangold's old-fashioned Western. I like Westerns. I could sit down right now and watch anything with John Wayne on a horse, or Jimmy Stewart, or Gary Cooper. Thus, I approve wholeheartedly of this century's mini-revival (Open Range, Seraphim Falls, The Three Burials Of Melquiades Estrada, The Proposition, I suppose Brokeback Mountain, although that has pick-up trucks), and 3:10, a remake of the 1957 film, is on the money. Aside from better camera techniques (you can really see the dust flying off a wheel), there's nothing you can add to an old-fashioned Western. Thus, Russell Crowe and Christian Bale play it as if they were in 1957. It may be a sign of the times that the two leads are Welsh and Antipodean, but it doesn't matter a hoot. All the boxes are ticked and I left the cinema happy. There's something back-to-basics about Westerns that appeals: a pre-techonological America - not necessarily a pretty one, but at least one where a mobile phone call can't save the day.