Two aged American heroes saunter on to small screens this week. No surprise that the one fighting fit is Clark Kent himself, back in moneyed, near-machine-like condition in Zack Snyder's sturdy, appropriately metallic and largely humourless Superman update Man of Steel (Warner, 12). Less expected is that it's dustily unfashionable lawman The Lone Ranger (Disney, 12) who gets far the more thrilling film. Unjustly maligned by critics who smelled blood as inevitable commercial failure loomed, it re-emerges on DVD looking to harvest as cultish a following as any Disney mega-production can hope for.
Man of Steel may boast the airbrushed visual sheen and positively homoerotic muscularity that is Snyder's directorial signature, but it's otherwise focus-grouped to the nth degree: the dominant creative presence is not Snyder but producer Christopher Nolan, whose recent Batman trilogy set the tone of stern, stormy revisionism that this fellow DC Comics adaptation obediently follows. It's not bad: seemingly drawn by Tom of Finland, Henry Cavill makes a fine new-model Superman, earnest enough to support the quasi-mythic approach the film takes to his all-too-familiar origin story.
But it's not half as much fun as The Lone Ranger: seemingly made by Gore Verbinski as a knowing joke at Disney's considerable expense, it conjures nostalgia for the old west while castigating its blood-stained heritage. Armie Hammer plays John Reid, the eponymous masked sheriff, as a lovably square stooge, but it's Johnny Depp's Native American spirit warrior Tonto who is fashioned as the story's true star, as the pair avenge the deaths of Reid's brother and Tonto's entire tribe respectively. The plot, however, plays second fiddle to the film's embellishments and diversions: Depp's delightful Buster Keaton act is one reason of many to give this glorious folly another chance.
I wouldn't pick either Reid or Kent in a fight against the redoubtable Kristin Scott Thomas, easily the best thing about two very different releases this week. Looking for Hortense (Arrow, 12) is the kind of thing we're used to seeing her in these days: a tasteful French comedy of manners that braids middle-aged marital strife with makeweight immigration politics, in which Scott Thomas's strikingly tart but under-utilised turn as a frazzled stage director is the sole energy source.
Rather more surprising is Nicolas Winding Refn's problematic but perversely mesmerising thriller Only God Forgives (Lionsgate, 18), a narrative-averse exercise in Asian design appropriation in which revenge is a dish best served slow. Except, that is, when Scott Thomas is around to spike things up as the ghastly mother of Ryan Gosling's obtusely inexpressive hero, a Bangkok drug runner whose brother is murdered by rival gangsters. Arriving to kick the retribution into high gear, the actress plays her underworld diva as equal parts Donatella Versace and Mae West, belittling her son's manhood in a riotous dinner scene unmatched by the rest of this handsome, nihilistic curio. Scott Thomas should really be in everything: perhaps she could even jazz up Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa (Studio Canal, 15), a half-hearted big-screen graduation for Steve Coogan's naff Norwich DJ, which boasts as many belly-laughs as an average episode of his sitcom – several, then – dispersed across the length of three.
Pick of this week's streaming options is a gem buried on Curzon Home Cinema: Harmony Korine may have found renewed cult favour this year with the meretricious Spring Breakers, but it's his bittersweet celebrity meditation Mister Lonely that remains his best film. Following a young Michael Jackson impersonator from the streets of Paris to a Scottish commune of fellow starstruck identity thieves – including Samantha Morton's Marilyn Monroe – it's a gently sympathetic take on Hollywood-fed obsession and possession, with added nuns for good measure; recent Korine converts should check it out.
