Ask not what Safeway can do for you...

I contend that there is no more depressing an activity in the world than filling out a standardised job application for a low-pay, low-responsibility position within an anonymous megacorp. Besides the concomitant ignominy and self-esteem issues, the sheer cognitive dissonance involved in struggling to complete disingenuously you-oriented questions like ‘How do you see a role at HMV fitting in with your long-term career aspirations?’ is conducive to angst levels seldom encountered outside 19th century Russian literature. Not to mention that jobs menial enough to make the C.V.-based application process superfluous usually pursue an alternative that neatly sidesteps most of the early-life achievements (getting GCSEs, A Levels, degrees and such – hell, learning to read and write in general) that once seemed like a big deal. Instead, the applicant is required to explain his or her suitability for a series of tasks so mundane and unchallenging that they could just as easily be completed by a ten-year-old (provided that ten-year-old was doped-up on Ritalin), but which are dressed in absurdly grandiose jargon, so that stacking shelves becomes “Systematically realising procedures for high-impact product distribution throughout the site.” The worst part is that so much emphasis is put on using your own initiative (“Responding dynamically to unforeseen environmental challenges without managerial intervention,” or suchlike), and on producing explicit examples of past situations in which you did just such a thing. The last thing anyone working a minimum-wage job for which the core activity can be concisely described as ‘picking things up and putting them down elsewhere’ wants to do is get their higher brain functions involved.

Essie Jain - The Inbetween

It’s well known that New York is a Mecca of bisexual cross-dressing musico-haircut savants, who only ever look down from their vertiginous espadrilles to breathe sensual life-fire into the hearts of the stricken normaloids scrabbling in the dirt for flint. The term ‘New York-based’ denotes a certain cachet, and is not to be employed in a casual fashion.

Given this, one might be forgiven for being initially underwhelmed by Essie Jain, an N.Y. singer-songwriter of mists and mellow fruitfulness, lacking the visceral punch of her urban cohorts. Add to this the critical kiss-of-death that is a Daily Telegraph endorsement and things look grim.

Happily, the erstwhile Londoner has more to offer than Melua-like cooing; for one thing, she sings like someone who exists. In fact, fragile tangibility is this record’s strongpoint – it sounds like a whole bunch of Real People made it and Enjoyed the experience, which makes it a lot easier for the listener to reciprocate.

W.

Oliver Stone is one of the most overtly political filmmakers working in Hollywood today. From early efforts like Platoon and Wall Street to 2006’s World Trade Centre, his movies have often been aggressively topical, demonstrating an obsessive desire to get under the skin of modern America. True to form, he’s created a biopic of the 43rd President of the United States at precisely the time the public wants to forget him. Most people won’t see W. until after George Bush’s successor has been elected, but Stone seems to think that they’d do well to remind themselves just what they’re leaving behind.

That isn’t to say that the film is a complete hatchet job—while it presents Bush (Josh Brolin) as arrogant, naïve and opportunistic, it never attacks his basic sincerity. The sinister shenanigans are left to Dick Cheney (Richard Dreyfuss) and Donald Rumsfeld (Scott Glenn), with calls for restraint coming from Colin Powell (Jeffery Wright). Unfortunately, few of the supporting characters transcend these broad attributes; the weirdly arthritic Condoleezza Rice (Thandie Newton) barely speaks for the first hour, and when she does it sounds like she’s lost all her teeth. Tony Blair (Ioan Gruffudd) gets a two-minute cameo, and he’s so wooden you never want to see him again. Whether that’s good acting or bad, I can’t surely say.

The only notable figure besides Bush himself is his father, George H. W. Bush (James Cromwell), who’s presented as a tremendously authoritative and conscientious individual. Stone’s main thesis in W. is that Bush Jr.’s decision to run for office was driven by his desire to reproduce his father’s achievements, rather than any strong interest in (and grasp of) politics. Plausible as it may be, this point is made without particular subtlety or insight.

Ultimately, W. fails to say anything interesting about the man who’s commanded both the highest and lowest approval ratings of any President in American history; there’s an indifferent, just-for-the-record vibe to proceedings, and were it not for the (distractingly) high-profile cast, you’d think you were watching a half-decent TV movie.

Things you’ll learn from watching Max Payne:

leading man Mark Wahlberg is part of the 10% of the adult population that’s left-handed, suggesting that he’s a more-than-normally-creative person. Witness his rather novel ‘overhead’ handling of a pump-action shotgun.

Unfortunately, when it comes to originality, ballistic gymnastics is pretty much the movie’s only ticket. No surprises there – this is an action film based on a shoot-em-up computer game that wants to be an action film – but it’s always nice to have a few fleshed-out characters to dispatch and receive the bullets, and a few coherent story strands to connect them.

As it is, the film propels its various two-dimensional personalities using a series of narrative non sequiturs; whenever it seems like the trail’s gone cold, somebody will randomly check a previously unmentioned lead, or an entirely new character will make a cameo appearance in order to dispense vital information.

If only the destination was worth the effort, this would be excusable, but the fact is that Max Payne fails to deliver even in the senseless-violence stakes. There are only two or three action sequences worthy of the name, and they’re pretty forgettable.

Max’s main weapon is his lack of social skills, and here at least he is wanton – alienating colleagues and rejecting the advances of outrageously nubile femme fatales with a sullen perseverance that looks just a little bit like boredom. After 100 minutes of stock characters, unintelligible plot twists and gloomy cinematography, you’ll be able to empathise. At least it was educational.