Wow, this The Brave One movie is just straight-up gross. Part of 2007’s revenge genre micro-renaissance (see also: Death Sentence), the Neil Jordan-directed film stars Jodie Foster as a New York City radio producer/host whose fiancé (Lost’s Naveen Andrews) is murdered in a brutal Central Park mugging. The loveable liberal eventually acquires a gun and begins offing thugs, Bernhard Goetz-style.

While the film begins placidly as Foster wanders the city, recording found sound for her show and pondering gentrification, it quickly sheds any genteel pretensions and goes straight for the sleaze. I almost turned it off after the scene where shots of doctors treating Foster’s wounded body are intercut with a sex scene flashback; there’s just something so very, very wrong with that. The movie’s weird stance that despite the city’s increased affluence, there are still ’80s-style weirdos in Central Park who will jump you (and videotape it, like all good hoodlums) is confused and smug. Jodie Foster should do better than this movie, which is now out on DVD in case you’re interested.

Another movie that sucks is Elizabeth: The Golden Age. I never thought the original Elizabeth was all that and a bag of chips, but Shekhar Kapur’s sequel, made nearly a decade after the original solidified Cate Blanchett as a star, is far less entertaining. Our Virgin Queen now needs to contend with the treacherous Catholics, in the form of the scheming, bearded Spaniards and the pretender to the throne Mary “Queen of Scots” Stuart (Samantha Morton, wasted here like everybody else). New on the scene is the chivalrous/sneaky Sir Walter Raleigh (Clive Owen), who woos both the horny queen and her ladies-in-waiting. Though there are murder plots, naval battles and plenty of panting, this film is boring and pompous.

If you slept on James Gray’s We Own the Night last year, now’s the time to catch it on DVD. An NYC ’80s period piece crime movie, this gorgeously designed and shot thriller kicks The Brave One’s ass as a portrait of the city at its most violent.