Music: RIP Rod Temperton, Invisible, yet Heard Everywhere

- The Guardian

the British songwriter behind Michael Jackson’s Thriller and Rock With You, has died aged 66.

Jon Platt, the chairman of music publisher Warner/Chappell said Temperton died in London last week following “a brief aggressive battle with cancer”.
“His family is devastated and request total privacy at this, the saddest of sad times,” Platt added.
Temperton, whose other credits include Boogie Nights, Off the Wall, Give Me the Night, Sweet Freedom and Always and Forever, is one of the most important songwriters and composers in contemporary pop.


Hailing from Cleethorpes, his career began in the disco group Heatwave, a band best known for Boogie Nights, and went on to write for the likes of Anita Baker, Aretha Franklin, The Brothers Johnson, Herbie Hancock and Quincy Jones, who enlisted him to work alongside Jackson.

Advertisement

His compositions for the King of Pop – particularly on the Thriller album – are some of the most famous pop songs in history, and the album continues to sell more than 100,000 copies a year.
He came up with the title for the smash hit song and album Thriller,

“I wrote two or three hundred titles and came up with Midnight Man. I woke up the next morning and I said this word, Thriller,” he has been quoted as saying.

Musician Mark Ronson paid tribute to the songwriter on Twitter: “so devastated to hear that Rod Temperton has passed away. a wonderful man & one of my favourite songwriters ever. thank you for the magic x”.

Temperton was described on social media as “a great British songwriter” by former Culture Club singer Boy George, while rapper LL Cool J said “we have lost a true genius”.
Temperton was also nominated for the best original song Oscar for Miss Celie’s Blues in 1986, a track he co-wrote with Quincy Jones and Lionel Richie for the film The Colour Purple.

Let's Get [bin] Laden: Zero Dark Thirty

Jessica Chastain is the sexiest ugly woman in Hollywood.

to the immediate hue and cry of "sexism!" I say, "get stuffed!"

To the matter of her character in this typically intense, well-paced thriller from kathryn Bigelow - CIA operative Mya is the pounding heart of the piece. Sheh as no boyfriend, very little in the way of a social life; she has ahrdly any possessions or hobbies or toher interests.
All she has is a passion to catch the most wanted man and most elusive master-terrorist on earth: Usama bin-Laden, or UBL, as she frequently refers to him. But Mys is, in one sense even more faceless than UBL. Her superiors, including boss (James Gandolfini) at the Agency don't know her, though they certainly know of her; the terrorists who are shielding and carrying out the orders of UBL dont know her though they know she's onto his trail that no one else has ever been. Even her partner in the field dont truly know her.

But thanks to Bigelow, and screenwriter Mark Boal, the audience gets to know her, even if its in little bits Eschewing the kind of easy through-line that might conceivably have shown by cause and effect how American forces finally captured and killed bin Laden, Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal (who wrote Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker) instead dramatise how fraught with difficulty and uncertainty each line of inquiry was as administrations changed and the means for achieving their objectives altered.

Based on first-hand accounts, but necessarily fictionalised, Zero Dark Thirty does not – as some have claimed – definitively conclude that torture facilitated bin Laden’s capture. Rather, the scenes depicting so-called “enhanced interrogation” provide important context. Because these techniques were used, the film seems to be saying, we don’t know how this story might have turned out had they not been part of the Bush administration’s immediate post-9/11 anti-terrorism strategy. Thus not to show them would have risked whitewashing the tale and turning it into a jingoistic slice of American triumphalism.

Nevertheless, part of the reason these scenes have such an impact is the forthright way Bigelow introduces them. Zero Dark Thirty begins with a blank screen and the harrowing sound of anguished, real-life, emergency phone calls from the World Trade Center on 11 September, 2001. For close to two minutes that’s all we get and the effect is devastating.

Those making and receiving the calls are the first distressed inhabitants of a new world and when Bigelow cuts to her first scene, the revenge-tinged ugliness of the American response to this new world becomes plain to see. Suddenly we’re in a CIA “black site” two years later with a bearded American agent by the name of Dan (Jason Clarke) attempting to extract information from a Muslim prisoner strung up by his arms from the roof of a jail cell. What follows is brutal. Beaten, waterboarded and humiliated, the prisoner is thoroughly dehumanised by his American captors and Bigelow’s camera, framing the action simply and without judgment, doesn’t flinch.

But, back to Chastain. She's astonishing in the role, not because it’s a particularly showy part (although she is in almost every scene), but because she remains such an enigma. Here, the chameleon-like quality that has made Chastain  - with her ski-jump nose - simultaneously the most in-demand and the most inconspicuous actress of the last two years works to her advantage. Her character is defined by ruthlessly executed action and, as such, the film becomes an almost fetishistic tribute to her and her colleagues’ relentless professionalism.

The persistent, low-level tension is, of course, jacked up several notches during the climactic assault on bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. As with the combat scenes in The Hurt Locker, Bigelow doesn’t use gung-ho theatrics. Shot mostly in night vision, it’s depicted matter-of-factly without swelling music or Hollywood heroics, with an ambiguous final shot that hints at the unknowable cost of revenge. Zero Dark Thirty is a deftly made, intelligently handled and serious piece of film-making that again stamps Bigelow's class as the pre-emeinent explorer of that thin line between wholesale action and the dark shards of the psyche. 

Movie Book Pt III - Review Revue: Selected Review Films

Better Mus Come

Better Mus Come begins with a poem before proceeding to a shootout at a political rally - in between there's a young single father trying to care for his son in a harsh innercity slum.

Its a very appropriate opener for a highly stylized, and ultimately successful attempt to capture the paradoxes that characterize Jamaica, which most of us take for granted, but which perplex foreigners.
Its 1978, and tensions between the two political parties are red hot, red with blood and muzzle flares. But the film is viewed notthrough the prism of the politicians - who appear only fleetingly, but through the young men  - and women - who their outsize ambitions and lust for power manipulate and hold captive.

For the next 20-40 minutes, the story unfolds largely in vignette form, darting and skipping furtively from scene to scene like a gangster trying to evade a police raid.

Thereafter, the narrative gradually but noticeably becomes more sure-footed and the film progresses more fluidly to its tragic conclusion (that's as much as I'll give away for those who haven't seen it). Indeed, there's lots to like about this movie, not least - understandably - the music (both the score and the soundtrack are fabulous.

Also, Better Mus Come reaffirms Jamaica as one of the most  - if not the most - 'cinegenic' (my coinage) of locations. Even the grimiest slum scenes have a vibrance about them that cannot be put down to mere artifice. the actors all perform creditably - Sheldon Shepherd in the lead role has a good future ahead based solely on his presence (here's hoping he can actually get some roles) and Ricardo Orgill as the "resident hothead" and Everaldo Creary as the part-time DJ and jokester with a brutal streak, also light up the screen.

Better Mus' Come's arrival on the Jamaican scene is both auspicious and ironic. Auspicious because it breaks a long drought for indigenous feature films and heralds a mini-wave of renewed cinematic interest in Jamaica (at least two other Jamaican-themed featured are set to roll out shortly). Ironic, at least form the party political point of view, as its strong undertone of disenchantment with the then ruling party is now mirrored with the opposite party, the electoral tables having been turned  (but then, what's new?).

As to how it'll play overseas, that's a different question. It's well made, but somehow doesn't seem to be the stuff of which Hollywood Reporter front pages are made. Cliched as it may sound, Europe seems a better bet, or even Canada, and foreign language re-dubs could well find a comfortable home in South America.

Its not the Jamaican classic it aspires to be, but Better Mus Come is a timely and worthy addition to the annals of Jamaican film.

MAN ON WIRE  & INCEPTION

Two contrasting movies, both brilliant, about the power of dreams and ideas. First up, on a misty morning in August 1974, lifelong wire-walker Philippe Petit and his accomplices (mostly French, but a couple of Yanks as well) completed one of the most stunning feats of daring in modern history: he walked a tightrope stretched between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre in New York City. James Marsh's retellling of the momentous feat is itself one of the most deeply affecting films I have seen in a long time.
Most gripping of all is the painstaking and fateful process by which Petit and his band of lawbreakers (the film's title comes from the police entry on the official arrest warrant, in the section, "nature of complaint")and the visuals of Petit "reaching the clouds" (the film is adapted from his book by that title) are truly awe-inspiring. rent it, borrow it - heck! steal it even, but see this movie.

Of more current vintage, director Christopher Nolan, with great help form his cast, handily proves, once again, that the term "smart action-thriller" need not be an oxymoron.

The plot centers on the ability to enter other persons' dreams and thereby alter the dreamscape and remove vital information therefrom. Quite handy for the elegant but clearly illegal business of corporate espionage, which is what mostly occupies the time of lead character Dom Cobb (Leo Di Caprio). But of course, things aren't quite what they seem.

Nolan's fight and action scenes are as visually arresting as anything out of Hong Kong or Hollywood, but the action never overwhelms nor interferes with the writer-director's mission of exploring the power of ideas and the unfathomable maze that is the human mind.

As stated before, the cast is uniformly good, but Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Ken Watanabe are the standouts as well as Frenchie Marion Cotillard.
treat yourself to a movie that satisfies on all levels. Head to the Palace circuit and see Inception. 


With great help from his cast Christopher Nolan once again handily proves that the term "smart action-thriller" is not an oxymoron

Runaway [music video]

Kanye West epitomizes the dichotonous nature of today's hip-hop. Like jazz, it has proven, over a relatively short existence, an able adapter, incorporating numerous other genres. Like its genetic twin, dancehall, it can also be maddeningly one-dimensional and crass.

Such is the nature of West who, on this wanna-be magnum opus designed to hype the market in advance of his new full-length CD, My Dark , Beautiful, Twisted Fantasy, displays a penchant for both high art and lowbrow "hoodisms"

Nowhere on this 3-min long-form video is this more evident than in what I call the "ballerina sequence" . As dancers in black tutus pirouette and cavort elegantly within sight of  a long banquet table at which the diners are all dressed in white, West raps "24/7, 365 p---y stays on my mind"

The story itself is simple - a Phoenix like creature (female) flames to earth, where she has to grasp the complexities of her new environment and where she also falls in love with West.

Visually lush, sonically diverse, and intelligently crafted, Runaway can be forgiven its excesses, especially since its creator so willingly acknowledges them in the first place.

HARRY POTTER & THE DEATHLY HALLOWS PT. I

Of course, it was already more than obvious that iconic wizard Harry Potter and his cohorts Ron and Hermionie had already grown way past their Hogwarts undergrad roots.

But this, the first half of a split final instalment (part II is slated for Summer 2011) essentially confirms that the trio is no longer at the institute of wizardry and witchcraft. They're not on their own; much of the expanding cast that saw them through the last couple of Potter flicks is back, except, of course for the venerable Dumbledore, even though the story's resolution hinges in part on him (or something of his).

In any case, evil takes no rest and the chillingly ruthless Lord Voldemort is gathering his own forces for the final assault on goodness and in particular, on the wizardly boy wonder. Voldemort's growing strength pushes the 'kids' further out into the Muggles world and thus into greater exposure.

This means, among other things, more adult disguises and more hyped-up action (chases, battle scenes, etc). Some posted reviews have cited this new Potter as slow, but from this vantage point, its not the pacing that's the problem; its the soul, or lack of it. There's a 'let's just do it and get it over with' air that pervades the film, particularly in the interactions between Harry and Ron, who make a bit of a Steinbeckian pair (broad-shouldered Ron towers like a Lennie over the more wiry, Lennie-like Harry).

As usual, there are good performances from the repertory players (Alan Rickman, Bill Nighy and helena Bonham-Carter all shine in their respective roles) and Alphonse Cuaron's direction is generally sure-footed.

Simply, the new Potter, as the "beginning of the end" won't disappoint hardcore Harry-philes and won't prove intimidating to the scattered few newbies left.  

THE NEXT THREE DAYS

How far would you really go for love? Would you bust your wife out of jail?

That's the premise of this intense and sometimes credulity-stretching film from Paul Haggis (Crash, In The Valley of Elah), with Russell Crowe the doting husband and father who is jolted into action following on the arrest and imprisonment of his wife for the murder of her boss.

Through research, Crowe's character, John Brennan to "escape expert" (read jailbird) Damon Pennington (Liam Neeson, making the best of his five minutes) who advises him to plan down to the minutest detail. John takes this advice to heart, and the film's middle third is taken up with the minutiae of mastering guard and delivery schedules, disposing of his house and preparing for the getaway. Moreover, this segment shows John's increasing isolation from his parents, and even from his who is, naturally, unaware of the plan, and is going stir crazy.

Indeed, the last three Days only really gets going within the last 30 minutes, when Brennan actually springs his well-laid plan into action. Of course, the unexpected surfaces, and Brennan has to think on his feet. The audience is swept along in the pursuit, with the police and authorities perennially a few steps behind the couple, and with the wife (Elizabeth Banks) nearly sabotaging the whole thing on her own.

An Oscar-winning screenwriter( Million Dollar Baby) as well as a director, Haggis is adept at layering his story's revelations, but ultimately we don't quite learn as much about the hero and about his relationship with his spouse as we would like. Things are suggested, possibilities raised and scenarios are painted, but the full narrative punch somehow seems to elude us.

Nevertheless, while at times formulaic, 'Three Days' is never frivolous and as suspense action-thrillers go, will more than serve in this pre-holiday period.

SEASON OF THE WITCH

So, until the inevitable Sorcerer's Apprentice sequel, audiences are thrown this tired bag of bones to chew on (and the Sorcerer's Apprentice was hardly a worthwhile meal in the first place).

This time around, modern-day NYC has been forsaken, its back to medieval Europe, in the grip of the plague while many, many leagues east, knights hack the 'infidels' to death under the urging of chain mail-wearing priests. Sorcerers and zealots good; witches, bad. At least that's the comparison that's being begged by this set-up. Cage here is one of the aforesaid knights, renowned for his battlefield skills and valor, but disgusted by the killing and distrustful of his masters' religious zealotry.

He, along with his compadre (well played by Hellboy's Ron Perlman) choose to desert the Crusading army, and spend days wandering through death and desolation before alighting upon a town, decimated by the plague. Here, they are "unexpectedly" pressed back into serving the church, this time to deliver an accused witch (Claire Foy, from "Little Dorritt") for "trial" at some far-off monastery, accompanied by a priest (Stephen Campbell Moore) an aspiring knight, a wily salesman (read "con") and a town elder who has lost his entire family to the contagion.

All the visual bells and whistles are there, particularly in the cliamactic scene when things get really ugly, and  director Dominic Sena (who previously worked with Cage in Gone In Sixty Seconds) clearly knows how to get maximum mileage from the assigned talent.

The problem is Cage himself. All the promise of Rumblefish and Birdy and Racing with the Moon and Raising Arizona has just been thrown out the window and then trampled on. It appears, especially since the blockbuster success of National Treasure, that Cage is content to shoulder a kind of "occult-lite" formula, bringing little to these films other than his mere presence, which I guess in itself accounts for bang atte box office.

 This writer certainly wasn't expecting him to stay in the same quirky mode of his earlier work for his whole career, but this is worse: big-name schlock done purely for expected profit. Whatever the current state of his finances (reports abound of money disputes and impending bankruptcy), its sad to see good talent squandered in this way. he needs a "Refresh" and soon.

But, with the Ghost Rider sequel filming as we speak, creative renewals will just have to wait

The Hangover Part II

Producers and execs: "Okay, so we made hundreds of millions with the last one. How do we top it?"

Answer: "Why, with penises, of course!"

One can almost hear the conversation unfolding in the Warner Bros. "Situation Room". Faced with honing the formula without making it unrecognizeable, director Todd Phillips and writers Craig Mazin and Scott Armstrong set out to exploit the still considerable shock power of the male organ. This time, when the guys wake up with temporary amnesia after a night of pre-nuptial debauchery, they find themselves in a Bangkok dive; instead of a tiger, they're greeted by a monkey and, shortly thereafter, by the partially obscured penis of "international criminal" Mr Chow (Ken Jeong) with whom they had a drug-related run-in in the first movie.

Needless to say, the situation snowballs rapidly from there: Stu, the dentist, and the groom in this instance, has a tattoo on his face; Alan, the zany-raunchy idiot-savant of the first movie now has a buzz cut in contrast to his  bushy sideburns and beard, and Phil.....well, more on him later.

The challenge this time around is to find Stu's future brother-in-law, Teddy (Mason Lee, the son of "Brokeback Mountain" director Ang Lee), himself the favoured son of the Thai immigrant family that Stu is set to join.

The quest for Teddy leads through Bangkok's seamy nightlife, where one of the city's notorious "lady-boys" (let's call them "intersexuals" - female faces, breasts and  - you guessed it - ding-a-lings) confesses to  a night of wild abandon with Stu with the following classic zinger: "I shoot load in you, you shoot load on floor." Bradley Cooper, as Phil, takes on the role of straight man with even more assurance than he did two years earlier and Zach Galifianakis smartly tweaks his "stupid is smart" schtik to suit the needs of the new locale.

Armed with that knowledge, they journey from Bhuddist monastery to city centre high-rise to riverside cafe until the mission is accomplished. But whilst the film's pace is zippy, and the scenes in which Mr Chow - inevitably - reappears are almost worth the ticket price, a good portion of the thrill is understandably gone from this sequel. That air of "will they or won't they make it?" has essentially been replaced with "what other crap will they get into now?" The waste of Paul Giamatti, as an undercover Interpol agent, is almost unforgivable.

Still, if you're a big  fan, this extension of Hollywood's newest franchise offers just enough high-speed chase, ridiculous culture clash and super-raunch to meet your expectations. The rest will be scratching their heads every so often and wondering, in the words of the cast....."What tha --?!"

[Author’s Note: oddly enough, it was this review post, of a film I was markedly disappointed by, that pushed my blog views to the level they are now. I remain gratified, if mystified by the popular reception of this nearly botched sequel]

Drive
With no fewer than 20 previous features with the same title, one could well be forgiven lowering expectations for this thriller, even with Ryan Gosling in the starring role.

But this spacey, yet intense work, from Danish import Nicholas Winding Refn not only shows Gosling, the hot Hollywood property of the moment, firmly in control, but more than adequately challenged by Albert Brooks, near flawless as the urbane yet sadistic loan shark who dogs him almost from the beginning.

Our hero (he's never actually named)  in fact moonlights as a wheelman (that is, he drives a getaway car for bank robbers, etc) in between doing movie stunts and working for a local mechanic, who calls him only "The Kid". In his apartment building, he meets Elise (Carey Mulligan) a young mother who's awaiting her partner's release from prison, but not, as it turns out with great eagerness. The two engage in a wonderfully underplayed semi-platonic affair.

Two dark threads interwine with this urban idyll. First, the mechanic fancies himself a stock car owner with the Kid at the helm but, of course such things need money, and lots more of it than he can lay his hands on. Enter Brooks, who routes his operation through a pizza parlor owned by an outcast Jewish mafioso (the suitably creepy Ron Perlman).

The second issue is that Elise's spouse, a small-time hood with the oddly statesmanlike name of Standard Gabriel, has been sprung, but he still owes protection money to another bad guy, who's now demanding (with a serious beating as persuasion), that he rob a certain local pawnshop as part settlement on his "debt".

Seeing the distress that Gabriel's position places on mother and son, our hero chips in - he offers to drive the getaway car, of course. This brings him into contact with said bad guy and the luscious but hapless Christina Hendricks (Oh the fantasies...but, we digress), a gangster's moll who even the gangster is apt to ignore.

Of course, the job is a set-up. It yields an indeterminately large sum of cash, but also precipitates a high-speed chase and marks the step-up point in the movie's violence quotient. Gabriel is shot dead at the scene, and not too long after that, the luscious redhead is dispatched with a shotgun blast to head.

Gosling, forced to keep his head whilst all about him are losing theirs, demonstrates he knows his way around guns and improvised weapons the way he knows his way around cars. Also, as tender as he was with Elise, he's not above slapping said gangster's moll half silly, in order to get at the truth.

Laconic, and with a seemingly permanent half-smirk throughout the proceedings, our hero might seem hard to like, but Gosling does a good job of humanizing him and investing him with a strong, but off-kilter sense of morality.

The "Miami Vice-style" titles and cinematography may be a bit off-putting, depending on your visual taste, and there's also the near cheesy New Wave soundtrack (I'm not knocking New Wave). But beyond that, Drive is a film in which heart and mind are aligned to offer some real surprises - most of them welcome.

Take it for a spin and see.

There Be Dragons
"In a child's heart, there are many seeds; who knows which will bloom"

With strong shades of The Kite Runner, Writer-producer-director Roland Joffe (The Mission) delves into the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s to produce a stirring missive on faith, betrayal, shame, forgiveness and redemption.

The story actually starts in the 1980s, with a writer trying to piece together the strands of myth concerning a Catholic priest who braved both the Fascists and the Communists in doing good and ministering to the locals, the movie's main sub-plot.

The priest, we learn, is the childhood friend of a Fascist who has infiltrated the ranks of the Communists, seeking to avenge the death of his industrialist father. On the way he also falls in love with the paramour of the Communist leader.

Their adult paths scarcely cross and Joffe weaves a complex yet compelling tapestry as the son slowly uncovers the sins of the father. In a film world where war scenes have overblown, technologically dictated snoozefests, the conflicts here retain the full measure of immediacy and urgency. The film's religious thread, while strong, never overwhelms, and the characters always come off as flesh and blood human beings rather than one-dimensional cardboard cut-outs.

Oscar Wilde is quoted in the movie ad saying "every saint has a past; every sinner a future." the two types meet, meld and transform each other in this slept-on gem of a movie.

Soul Surfer
Its pretty much all there: the set-up, complete with engaging surf action scenes, the breathtaking scenery of Hawaii, the congeniality mixed with intensity as the subject - in this case, champion pro surfer Bethany Hamilton - makes her climb up the rung to sporting glory.

All that's really missing from this affable sports story is the "villain". Understandably, given the need to hew close to a PG-grade rating, the shark which essentially sampled Hamilton's left arm is not even shown at the point of attack - a steadily darkening pool of blood alerts us to the tragedy that sets the story in motion and the beast is only seen a few scenes later, hanging upside down from the end of a line.

Its only substitute is a rival surfer, Malena, who mercilessly muscles Bethany out of choice waves whether she has two arms or one. Dennis Quaid and a badly aging (had to say it) Helen Hunt play the parents who try to navigate their own roles amid the tragedy and the new world of adjustments in its aftermath. And there are brothers, family friends and assorted personalities (media  and otherwise).

But the action of course revolves around Ann Sophia Robb ('Jumper" "Bridge to Terabithia") and she's more than up to the task, delivering credibility both on and off the water. There's also Carrie Underwood, a couple shades of bland as the "voice of wisdom" and leader of Christian relief missions in the aftermath of the tsunami of December 2005. Its on that mission trip - having skipped a previous one to Mexico, that Hamilton "sees the light" of her self-centred value system and regains her appetite for surfing.

As a diversion, Soul Surfer is useful enough; as a surf movie, it doesn't quite measure up to Rick Elgood's 'Surf Rasta" (did that one make to local screens?) or "Point Break" but apart from Christian groups and educators looking for uplifting fare to build sermons and ministries around, there won't be many people who find it essential.

Jackass: 3-D

The folks at MTV Films, producers of this vile and mindless bit of masturbatory diversion, trumpet the "3-D' aspect as if it could somehow lift this garbage to the level of tolerable.

It can't, of course, but the cast and crew obviously couldn't care less about the success or failure of 3-D, or any other device. Redemption, after all, is not what they're after.

Jackass is probably as fail-safe a movie formula as can be imagined: the same mentally regressive Neanderthals that have gone for the TV series and the previous films will almost certainly return for more erupting faeces, brawling midgets and jet-blasted subjects.

The best – no, the only - thing that can possibly be said for this Jackass is that it must have been more fun to make than it is to watch.

Denzel from a different angle: Flight

He's been bad  before, of course (Training day, American Gangster) but Denzel washington has not played a character whose vices are as out there as Capt. Whip Whitaker, commercial pilot. Sex, drugs and rock n' soul are all part of his pre-flight check. .

It all comes to a head on that one horrible flight. The suspense ratchets up when the jet's hydraulics fail and Whip – roused from his stupor by a line of coke – must literally turn the plane upside down to make an emergency landing. The raw panic is palpable. But what astonishes is Whip's unflappable cool, born of a lifetime on the job and, just maybe, Dutch courage. The sequence is a marvel of technical wizardry. But Zemeckis never lets FX crush the story's human scale. Six lives were lost on this flight. But 96 more were saved because Whip was flying high.

That is the ethical tightrope that Flight walks. Whip is hailed as a hero, given that 10 other pilots failed to duplicate his feat in simulations. His newfound admiration and adulation only serves to lead him further down the personal chute. Not even his recovering junkie girlfriend can steer him toward renewal.

Whip is actually in the middle of a high-stakes game. The airline and the pilots union want a cover-up. A hotshot lawyer (Don Cheadle) is hired to spin reports of Whip's high-octane blood-alcohol level at the crash site. At a public hearing, the head prosecutor is determined to make someone accountable for those six lives lost. How can Whip get through an interrogation, especially the morning after a killer bender? The same way he landed the jet, with a little help from his dealer friend Harling (

The drama levels off between the crash aftermath and the hearing,, but Denzel is still Denzel, capable of holding the viewer's attention even as he continues in free fall. This is no addiction drama, but a more deftly shaded and more riveting entertainment of a man forced to face some ugly truths about himself.  Whip is a man of exceptional talent, but he is a man without any support.

Flight reminds us of Denzel's own singular talent, and just what he can do when a role hits him with a giant challenge. He not only carries this film, he runs triumphantly with it. 

Follow us: @rollingstone on Twitter | RollingStone on Facebook

Freedom Sells.....But Who's Buying?

That's how it must have seemed to Venezuelan revolutionary Francisco Miranda(actually born in the Canary Islands) as he embarked on his quest to rid Latin America of foreign (read "Spanish")domination and create a republic from the base of the Mississippi to Patagonia governed by rule of law and the respect for individual freedoms.

In the wrong hands this could have turned out to be wretched exercise in Latin civics, but director Luis Alberto Lamata spins his true-life tale like the finest of swashbuckling political adventures, whilst maintaining an intimate feel for his hero. Miranda (a commanding portrayal by Jorge Reyes) opens the film in a physical and emotional funk: confined to a prison cell by the very people he banded together on the road to freedom (including an ascendant Simon Bolivar), he has only his trusted Man Friday - Salim, to relay on.

In comes a local priest, with an offer to write the general's awesome and multi-layered story for the world and future generations to remember. The over-protective Salim smells a rat, but Miranda is lured by the offer to immortalize him and his journey in words and thus begins a breathtaking (if at times a tad lengthy) odyssey across late 18th and early 19th Century Europe: Spain, France, Russia, England. America's in there too, with  Miranda contributing to the American and French revolutions before turing his full energies tothe cause that ignited him in the first place: freeing his homeland.

Here, the film becomes slightly less compelling, as apart from a fateful landing with his troops on what is now Venezuela's east coast, there is little to occupy the viewer satisfactorily apart from the inner conflict that now racks the priest as he seeks to sort out his now complete admiration for the man he was initially send to deceive and disgrace (and even kill, but we give away too much)

The appearance of Danny Glover, as a terror-minded free Black, is another sore point. Though the exchange between the two characters provides some nice insights, the overall scene is so contrived as to suggest that Glover's presence was almost solely for the purpose of attracting funding (who knows, he may well have funded it himself, at least in part).

Still, there's no denying Miranda is a stylish and moving true-life account of one of the most charismatic, polarizing and seminal figures in Latin American history.
Bob Marley said "Now we'll find out who is he real revolutionary" He needn't have looked as far as Zimbabwe in the late 70s. History already offered up a bonafide example in nearby Venezuela.

Testosterone Theatre: Lucky Number Slevin

A big bet gone wrong; A man brutally killed; a boy secretly spared; an average guy and a an average girl thrown together in New York City apartment.

What could commonly link these together? That's a big part of the fun that writer Jason Smilovic and director Paul McGuigan have in this unrepentantly bloody yet strangely high-spirited and even compassionate thriller that combines the usual cliches of revenge, murder, love and family in some very un-cliched ways.

Wrapped in a towel, Slevin (the wonderfully enigmatic Josh Hartnett, who has since faded into obscurity) encounters Lindsey (Lucy Liu), a chatty coroner whose eager to hear his story, as twisted as it is and later becomes. Slevin, it appears, is caught up in a bitter rivalry between two local crime bosses - the irascible Rabbi (Ben Kingsley) and the worldly yet unforgiving - and laconically named - Boss. Throw in a disproportionately interested cop (the always excellent Stanley Tucci) and the shadowy yet sarcastic assassin hired by each boss to take out the other, and all is set for som hard-charging fun as the disparate threads are unravelled and re-tied.

Slevin is essentially a straight forward, neat black comedy of errors(mistaken identity for one). The dialogue is at times razor sharp and the action is well shot. The body count climbs steadily as the movie progresses at a cracking pace that never becomes dull. Slevin is thematically similar to a few other choice stories, but like Kiss Kiss Bang Bang - Slevin should be enjoyed more for the ride and the audience should try not to guess ahead of the plot and let it unfold naturally.

Contents Under Pressure: Skyfall

"You know the whole story"

So says Bond to his mentor/taskmistress M in the climactic stages of this, one of the best in the half-century Bond franchise. It's success lies primarily in credibly showing 007 rising above pressures, both external and internal, rather than cruising coolly through assignments as may have been the case with previous Bond movies (before the Daniel Craig era).

He starts out gasping for air, having been shot by his own fellow operative, with none other than M having given the order. But hold fast, dear Bond fans, things are not quite what they seem. A vengeful rogue agent has taken it upon himself to disparage MI-6 by revealing and eliminating agents in place all over the world, particularly in China and Macau, where much of the action takes place.

We're also introduced to a new headquarters and a new Q, the technology and gadgets expert, only this time he's a mere whelp, with the requisite cynicism and dismissal for the old ways to boot. His "war chest" for Bond this time out consists of a mere miniature radio transmitter and a fingerprint-coded grip on Bond's trusted Walther PK-38 auto pistol.

Of course, this "quasi-reboot" doesn't mean a sweep of the former Bond DNA. There are still high-speed chases (the opener takes place in Istanbul's Grand Market, of all places), there's still the sharp repartee with M, there's still time to make out with gorgeous women in exotic locales (this time on board a sailing yacht), while enjoying his signature shaken-not-stirred martini (which shares screen time with global ad partner Heineken beer) and reflect on his overall usefulness and commitment to Her Majesty's Secret Service.

And, of course, there are still villains. And the Bond rogue's gallery gets a considerable upgrade with the addition of Javier Bardem as the rogue. Slick, sardonic, sinister and charming all at once, Bardem is never better than when he recounts the perceived "injustice" that took him out of the Service and kindled his ire against his old employer.

The denouement takes us to a remote Scottish country estate, whose name informs the title of the film: Skyfall. There, the movie lagely devolves into the standard Hollywood-type climax, with much gunfire and explosions. But before film's end we're introduced to Moneypenny (Jamaican Naomi Harris) and to another character - that person's identity we'll keep to ourselves.
Its still a secret service after all.

Just Right for November: The Ides of March

1. The Ides of March
2. Production year: 2011
3. Country: US
4. Runtime: 100 mins
5. Directors: George Clooney
6. Cast: Evan Rachel Wood, George Clooney, Jeffrey Wright, Marisa Tomei, Max Minghella, Paul Giamatti, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ryan Gosling

George Clooney made this, his second film dealing specifically with politics in 2011, a critical juncture for both real-life US political combatants as they head toward this year's Decision Day.
Clooney's film is altogether more brutal than The Candidate, which, if only for Redford's presence, retains a core of idealism, as indeed to an even greater extent do Redford's post-Watergate thrillers, All the President's Men and Three Days of the Condor. In fact the informed cynicism that The Ides of March brings to mind is that displayed in Gore Vidal's play and film about a presidential election, The Best Man, when Vidal himself was deeply involved as a Jack Kennedy supporter, as well as his sequence of political novels that began in 1967 with Washington, DC.
Co-scripted by Clooney with Beau Willimon (on whose play Farragut North the film is based) and Grant Heslov (who was Oscar-nominated for Goodnight, and Good Luck), The Ides of March is set largely in Cincinnati where the handsome liberal governor of Pennsylvania, Mike Morris (Clooney), is competing in the Democratic primary elections with his eye on the presidency. It's March, the streets are slushy with melting snow and the air's full of heady rhetoric about the future of America spoken by people with patriotic pins on their left lapels standing in front of outsized Stars and Stripes. A man emerges from the darkness to speak with disarming honesty about his liberal political positions, but he's not Governor Morris, who is in fact a background figure. He's Stephen Meyers (Ryan Gosling), a 30-year-old aide of great brilliance who is using a speech he's written for Morris to test and adjust the acoustics for Morris' public debate with a fellow contender. Gosling subtly suggests something indefinably suspect about his character.

Morris' seasoned campaign manager, the rumpled Paul Zara (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) demands loyalty above all else, but all to give him reassurance that his otherwise unremarkable persona is still relevant.

Clooney's critical point is that nobody's hands are clean. Everyone is fighting for their own turf, either advancing or defending their chosen interests, while outwardly professing loyalty to the cause of the candidate. They frequently end up trapped by their own weaknesses (sex, power, money) rather than being persuaded by superior arguments or circumstances. But is it better to win and deliver on half your pledges or retain your purity and achieve nothing?

The film's "money scene" comes near the end, when ousted campaign manager Zara is called into the Governor’s Chevy Trailblazer, a hulking black hearse, which has backed into an alley in Cincinnati. The conversation is unseen and unheard by the audience who are confronted solely by the vehicle for the duration of the scene until Zara climbs out, and with his fate sealed, lights a cigarette, while the car pulls away.

The Ides of March reconfirms Clooney's directorial gifts, especially his ability to sustain both dramatic tension and moral focus. With a crucial election now pending, and the incumbent Democrat in the fight of his life, this thriller entrant from last year deserves renewed consideration.

One rough Chop: The Grind (2009)

If the first fifteen minutes of a film are the film in microrcosm, then you might just be able to spare yourself excessive torture in the case of this free-wheeling but ultimately tedious thriller, set in the moral wasteland that is suburban Southern California.

In he opener, a man (C Thomas Howell) has had his hand run through a kitchen sink disposal; another man has been stabbed to death by a young woman with whom he has just had sex, and  the previous man - who also doubles as a kind of infrequent narrator - has had himself set up in the Internet reality soft-porn business (hotgirlzoncamera.com), courtesy of a teenage apprentice and his black associate, both of whom have various degrees from the proverbial school of hard knocks.

The rest of the film maintains this lurid trajectory, even as the "protagonist" struggles to get enough returns from the business to make good on his outstanding obligations to the men who tried to grind his hand up. Those guys are led by a fearsome figure, none other than Danny Trejo - who following this release would go on to such glorious roles as "Machete". Another well-known Hollywood miscreant, Tom Sizemore, rounds out the rogues' gallery.

Of all the tarnished stars, Howell appears to have come closest to getting his act together. He appears to have clawed his way out of the child-star abyss that he fell into after the classic, "E.T." and has roles in several big-budget action features, including the forthcoming summer blockbuster, "The Amazing Spider-Man".

In the meantime though, bills have to be paid, so there'll be modern-day B-movies like this one, with its soft-core girl-on-girl scenes, views of seedy Cali, and hardcore violence. it adds credits all around and provides minimal employment threaded by the thrill of near illegality, not unlike the venture undertaken in this story.


tom Sizemore

C Thomas Howell

Danny trejo

Thrilling x 3: The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest (Swedish version)

Facile horror and comedy franchises aside (just think "Saw") three seems to be the ideal number of instalments for extended feature film stories. Of course, author Stieg Larsson died shortly after submitting the three manuscripts that make up this series and, although all manner of reports are swirling in relation to the existence of a fourth, we're not likely to see anything develop in that direction for now.

So, on to film #3 and, after a minor slip in the second film (a matter of personal taste, really), this concluding chapter is a marvel of restraint and unfeigned intensity. After the ugly confrontation with her father that ended the previous instalment, Lisbeth Salander finds herself in hospital, having had a bullet removed from her skull, set to stand trial in connection with the murders of three people (including her abusive former guardian) and - worst of all - a few doors down from her father, whose head she attempted to cleave open with an axe.

A heady mix, to be sure and director Daniel Alfredson and new writer Ulf Ryberg walk the line between thriller and psycho-drama with surgical skill. Not ot give th ending away, and we have other matters in between, but the final denouement has just the merest shade of Francis ford Coppola's "Godfather" trilogy; multiple scenes cut together to "tie-up" the narrative, but done without confusing the viewer (even if you're watching subtitiles).

Her uneasy alliance with investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist continues, and its Blomkvist who supplies the legal help, in the form of his sister Annika (played with a disarming lightness by Annika Hallin).  Other than Blomkvist, there are precious few empathetic male characters; the Swedish Secret Police, the upper echelons of the regular police force, and a celebrity psychiatrist, peter Teleborian are all arrayed against Lisbeth. But of course, these entities and individuals all have skeletons in their respective closets, and those are largely displayed in a masterful courtroom sequence, which forms the centrepiece of the movie, with Annika an initially reluctant advocate and Salander in all her taciturn punk glory (and in the look which the producers of the Hollywood take-off adapted for star Rooney Mara).

Thankfully, the Swedish producers recognize that the end doesn't mean the clinical resolution of all issues and the series closes with its almost trademark image of the Stockholm skyline at dusk - gleaming and serene, yet darkly mysterious. whether or not  #4 is in the offing, this is really the only end that could do.

Skaal  

In Any Language(s)...A First-Rate Thriller: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo(Swedish version)

With his trilogy of thrillers selling upwards of 15 million copies in North America alone, it was inevitable that Hollywood would be sniffing around Stieg Larsson's Scandinavian suspense series. The much-hyped first instalment, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, arrives in cinemas just before Christmas, with the much-respected David Fincher (7, The Social Network) at the helm, and current 007 Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara in the lead roles, set to the music of Trent "Nine Inch Nails" Reznor. It promises much, and we'll see if it delivers.

Great suspense however, like charity, begins at home - and so the Swedes have already laid down the cinematic template for the Larrson stories, and I have to tell you, Fincher & Co. definitely have their work cut out for them, because "Men Who Hate Women" (the author's initial title) has set the bar pretty high.

The first challenge is condensing Larsson's 600 + page epic of right-wing extremism, financial highjinks and kinky sex murders into a watchable form that still carries the spirit and heft of the story. On that front, screenwriters Nikolaj Arcel and Rasmus Heisterberg (the first in an onoging list of near unpronounceable names) succeed quite handsomely, and the film's 160 minute duration, while not a breeze, is certainly no chore.

Some credit for that also goes to director Niels Arden Opley, who weaves the story's multiple timelines (the present, them mid-60s, the WWII years and more) into a cohesive and compelling hole. The mid-60s sequences, in particular, come off like some "Nordic Vogue" or vintage LIFE magazine spread. the film's very spare score  - a marked contrast to the Hollywood blockbuster style of telegraphing every moment with sound, makes the high points seem even - well....higher.

Then, of course, there are the players, probably well known in Sweden prior to the release of these films, their stocks have surely gone up since - but none more so than Noomi Rapace. Playing the title character, computer hacker and social misfit Lisbeth Salander (you'll have to watch to see where nad how the Dragon tattoo comes in ), she's a "human geothermal" - deathly cold on the surface, with her coal-black eyes, square shoulders and punk aesthetic, and volcanic underneath, as other scenes will show. As the veteran journalist thrown together with her as they track the murder-myster-turned-serial-murder-mystery, Michael Nyquist is almost her equal.

As far as the movie itself goes, if you have an English-dubbed, or English subtitled version, then it may not be necessary to read the book first (although I still recommend it), when your choice of download is Swedish with Dutch subtitling, then a good knowledge of the source material is essential.

Either way, "Dragon Tattoo" is a smart, well-controlled but compelling thriller adaptation. The coming Hollywood adaptation is billed as "the feel-bad movie of the season". As grisly as the subject matter is, watching this version ought to leave you feeling good.