LIFE (15, 111 mins)

Director: Anton Corbijn

2 stars

In 1955 Los Angeles, photographer Dennis Stock (Robert Pattinson) is trying to make a name for himself, working mostly on movie sets and at premieres when he’s introduced to a young actor named Jimmy Dean (Dane DeHaan).

This initially intriguing but largely dull drama takes place just before Dean hits the big time. He’s already shot East of Eden though it hasn’t been released yet, while Warner Bros are in the process of deciding whether to offer him the lead in Rebel Without a Cause.

A few months later he’d be dead, his persona immortalised forever by just three movies. But in the meantime he’s more or less unknown and Stock thinks he can help them both out.

He sees the potential star in James Dean and, realising he won’t be unknown for long, wants the big photo-shoot break that will get him an assignment with Life magazine.

They strike up a friendship but Dennis has a hard time getting him to commit, and they circle around each other for what must be a good half of the film. Will Dean let him take the pictures? Won’t he?

It’s a long time to wait covering much of the same ground, yet they come across as reasonably compelling presences all the same.

Early moments look like we might be getting a real insight into a legendary figure. Dean wants to be a great actor, and comes across as cool upfront but insecure in private, and unsure how to play the showbiz game.

The movie is correct to focus on a specific period of his life rather than go the full biopic route, but there needs to be more going on than this, and it becomes apparent after a while that this is a one scene film, with that scene played out over and over.

DeHaan doesn’t look especially like Dean, particularly once the film cuts to Stock’s actual photos of him, but he captures his laconic, mumbling manner in reasonably convincing style. Pattinson is unfortunately lumbered with trying to dredge up audience interest in a guy where there may not be any to be found. With Dean you can at least see the hook.

A lot of scenes pass without us getting any further forward, or offer any clear notion of why we’re watching it. And the longer it goes on, the less interesting it becomes.

It does that thing you get in Hollywood biopics as characters offer awkward introductions to real people, but scores a few points in displaying the power of movie moguls back then. Ben Kingsley as Jack Warner wants to control every aspect of Dean’s life, and the inanity of the publicity machine is revealed.

But while the film manages to avoid the clumsy early need of having to spoon-feed us who Dean is, it later negates that by filling in his details with on-screen text, the laziest device available to movie biographers.

MISS YOU ALREADY (12A, 112 mins)

Director: Catherine Hardwicke

2 stars

Lifelong friends Jess and Milly (Drew Barrymore and Toni Collette) live in London in those ludicrous houses you only ever get in movies; Milly and her husband (Dominic Cooper) live in an East End conversion, Jess and her husband (Paddy Considine) live on a boat.

It’s a friendship that’s somewhat foisted on us, told in montage and never feeling organic, but tested early on in this tawdry weepy when Milly is diagnosed with cancer and faces bouts of chemotherapy.

To its credit it doesn’t desperately overplay the cancer card, but the problem is that’s the only card it has, though when it keeps attempts at humour it doesn’t fare too badly.

Beyond the illness stuff it’s just a bland, soap-standard domestic drama, filmed with handheld cameras to make it appear edgy when it so clearly isn’t.

Most of the conflict comes from Milly treating everyone around her badly, and that’s an acceptable angle which comes off thanks to the excellent Collette, far more convincing than the limited Barrymore. Obviously things need to come to an emotional head, and while it attempts to be this generation’s Beaches, there’s no danger of that.

CAPTIVE (12A, 97 mins)

Director: Jerry Jameson

2 stars

Based on real events that took place in Atlanta in 2005, this feeble thriller stars Kate Mara as a single mother struggling with drug problems who is in danger of losing custody of her daughter.

Meanwhile a violent convict (David Oyelowo) has escaped from custody and is on the run and their paths cross when he forces his way into her house and keeps her hostage while seeking a place to hide out.

Much of the movie plays out between them over the course of a night, and it’s all very clumsy and less than polished, thanks to an undernourished, first draft-standard script that means everything operates on the most basic level.

The police investigation looks like it’s been dreamt up by someone who saw a couple of episodes of CSI, and as a thriller it’s very tame stuff, with most standard elements a dead loss.

At its centre we’ve got a terrific actor in Oyelowo, but there’s not much he can do when everything around him is so weak.

Every so often Mara reads to him from a book she’s been given, a kind of spiritual self-help manual, and it’s this as much as anything that’s behind the film’s existence. Faith-based movies make good money in the States but rarely get released here, and you’ve got to wonder where the audience will come from.

JUST JIM (15, 84 mins)

Director: Craig Roberts

3 stars

Submarine’s Craig Roberts turns to directing with this oddball Welsh comedy. Roberts takes on the lead as well as Jim, a put-upon schoolboy (Roberts is actually 24 by the way, but he just about gets away with it) who is alternately bullied and ignored by everyone around him.

Into his life comes a cool American neighbour, Dean (Emile Hirsch), who teaches Jim how to stand up for himself and be more confident.

For a short time there’s a chance the film is going to down a sort of Tyler Durden route, that Dean is actually a figment of Jim’s imagination, but the more he interacts with the people in Jim’s life, the more dangerous he becomes.

Roberts directs with confidence, bringing a Wes Anderson vibe to the visual tone, and there are a few nicely constructed and observed comedic moments. It’s just all very throwaway though, and the longer it goes on, the less it manages to hold together as a feature.