Bradford cinema-goers have much to look forward to in January with a series of ground-breaking films scheduled.

Todd Haynes's Bob Dylan film, I'm Not There, is scheduled for ten showings; there are a dozen screenings of Brad Pitt's film The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford; 32 of Ang Lee's acclaimed erotic wartime thriller Lust, Caution and 13 of the highly-rated movie The Band's Visit.

In addition there is a short tribute to the late Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni with showings of Blow Up and Zabriskie Point.

In I'm Not There - originally sub-titled Suppositions on a Film Concerning Dylan - six people play different aspects of Dylan throughout his career including Richard Gere as the Billy the Kid persona.

In the Sam Peckinpah movie about the young gunman, Dylan played a cameo role as a knife-thrower called Alias. With his strange personality, quick smile and calculating eyes, Dylan would have been ideal in the title role, given instead to Kris Kristofferson. Haynes seems to be agreeing.

Another performance that critics have praised is Cate Blanchett who, reportedly, turns in a riveting performance as Dylan in 1966 during his controversial electric acid rock tour of Britain.

One of the clips available on the internet shows her (as Dylan) in black jacket, jeans, dark glasses riding in the back of an old fashioned Rolls-Royce with Dylan's manager Albert Grossman and deadly sidekick Bobby Neuwirth. Blanchett has the full range of Dylan's funny-nervous mannerisms of the time.

What an extraordinary actress she is. In 2003 she played the Irish journalist Veronica Guerin, who was shot dead by criminals for writing exposes about the Dublin underworld.

Latterly she showed what she could do as Gloriana', Queen Elizabeth I, in the historic biopic Elizabeth: The Golden Age.

Now she is showing the feminine side of one of the world's most influential and important contemporary singer-songwriters.

Amazingly, director Haynes got Dylan's full approval, including access to his back catalogue of more than 500 released songs for the soundtrack. He explained his approach recently.

"When somebody says be yourself', we all nod as if we agree on what that means, but I don't think I believe in Dylan's singular self any more than I believe in anybody's. If there is one thing all my films continually challenge, it's that idea."

In one of his songs Dylan sings: "I might look like Robert Ford, but I feel just like Jesse James."

The back-shooting of James in 1882, one of the Wild West's pantheon of larger-than-life characters who lived outside the law, has fascinated film-makers ever since Tyrone Power played a romanticised version in 1938.

Seventy years on, Andrew Dominick's 160-minute film portrays Robert Ford, played by Casey Affleck, and his growing resentment of the legendary leader of the James gang. One critic suggested there was a homo-erotic element in Ford's fascination evident in the film; but in the main his motive was celebrity.

He tried to make a name for himself on the stage as the killer of James, but people ignored him. Ten years later Ford himself was shot dead by Ed O'Kelly in Colorado.

Ang Lee's espionage thriller Lust, Caution is set in wartime Shanghai -- Japan attacking China. It involves a passionate affair between a turncoat Chinese secret policeman working for the Japanese and a female agent sent to betray him to the Chinese resistance.

Does he love her or is he using her? Does she love him or will she lead him into a death trap? The people at the National Media Museum seem confident that the film will prove popular.

The film and the story are said to be loosely based on an actual event that took place in 1939-40. It won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and Seven Golden Horse Awards in Malaysia.

Israeli director Eran Kolirin's 2006 film The Band's Visit is a comedy about social displacement and unlikely relationships that can be taken, on another level, as a film about the difficulties of political and cultural détente in the Middle East.

The members of the Alexandria Ceremonial Police Band - in powder blue suits - turn up in a small Israeli town for a concert at the local cultural centre and miss the last bus home. Stranded in the back of beyond, they resolve to make the best of the situation without drawing too much attention to themselves.

But the band's irascible leader Tawfiq and Dina, the kind-hearted owner of the local bar, find themselves attracted to each other.

The audience at Cannes reportedly gave the film rapturous applause. The film has subsequently proved to be a favourite at international festivals.

Antonioni's 1966 film Blow Up is celebrated as a take on Swinging London with David Hemmings playing the role of a trendy photographer, loosely based on David Bailey.

However, it is also a thriller. Something in one of his photographs catches his eye. To see in more detail he blows it up and then revisits the scene, unable to shake off the feeling that he is being watched and pursued.

Zabriskie Point, largely regarded as Antonio's failed attempt to do a Blow Up about the Californian counter-culture, nevertheless contains a memorable finale as a house explodes to the sound of Pink Floyd's Careful With That Axe, Eugene.

Other January films at the National Media Museum include Eastern Promises, about East European gangsters in London, and Once, the low-budget romance, also involving an Eastern European, but set in Dublin.

  • For more information and tickets the cinema box office number at the National Media Museum is 0870 7010200. The cinema will be closed from December 24 to 26 and on December 31. It will be open on January 1, however.