Bayside resident Mark Metcalf is an actor who has worked in movies, TV and on the stage. He is best known for his work in "Animal House," "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Seinfeld."

In addition to his work on screen, Metcalf is involved with the Milwaukee International Film Festival, First Stage Children's Theater and a number of other projects.

He also finds time to write about movies for OnMilwaukee.com. This week, Metcalf weighs in on "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" and "Sweeney Todd."

THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD (2007)

I grew up in St. Louis. I used to go, with the Boy Scouts and with my dad and my brothers, to Merrimac Caverns. I grew up hearing all the stories about Jesse James and the James Gang. Legend has it he used Merrimac Cave as a hideout. In fact, he hid in many of the caves in Missouri when he was running from the law, as he often was.

Missouri happens to have more caves than any other state in the Union, or the Confederacy for that matter. I was in one near Hannibal just last March that has his name and a date in 1879 scratched into the ceiling. This early graffiti has been authenticated. It's the same cave where Tom Sawyer took Becky Thatcher when he was hoping for maybe one more kiss, but Injun Joe interrupted them.

Jesse James was kind of a hero to me when I was playing cowboys and Indians all over the neighborhood. I usually liked being the Indians or the outlaws. The romance was always on the side of the outlaws. That's the nature of American popular literature. We all love the bad boys. Boys and girls alike, men and women, we are attracted by the danger. The rush feels good and a little brush with the rush is a nice way to make a memory.

So with all this prior connection with Jesse James, it's a little hard for me to like a movie that celebrates the "dirty little coward that shot Mr. Howard, and laid poor Jesse in his grave."

Mr. Howard was the name Jesse James used when he was living at home with his wife and kids and not out robbing the rich and giving to the poor. I relate all of this because I am aware that most people don't have the fascination with the man that I do. Anyway, this movie with the really long title is more about Bob Ford than it is about my beloved Jesse James. Casey Affleck plays Ford and he is perfect as the sniveling little weakling who ingratiated himself into Jesse's life and his gang near the end of a long career.

Subsequently, his feelings having been hurt because Jesse didn't accept him as an equal but treated him as the cloying, sybaritic fan that he was. Ford shot him in the back after eating a home cooked meal prepared by Jesse's loving wife, Kate. Do you sense a little bias on my part? Yeah, I know. I told you, I grew up thinking Jesse James was a hero, the same hero that everyone in the 1860s and '70s thought he was.

Brad Pitt plays James. And even though Jesse was actually kind of a small, weaseley man, it's right to have a movie star play him because Jesse was like a movie star or rock star in his day. Pitt is really very good. He plays Jesse as obviously quite mad -- paranoid, delusional, completely aware of his status as a rock star but plagued by guilt and shame about it too, autocratic and ruthless, but a good and loving father.

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