Text Matt Bochenski
A round-up of the top films and tunes heading your way this month
American Gangster
Director Ridley Scott Starring Russell Crowe, Denzel Washington
Ridley Scott’s latest tour de force is a brilliant welding of a black gangster’s Scarface-like rise to fame and an absorbing police procedural about one honest officer’s attempts to bring him to justice.
Denzel Washington sets fire to the screen as Frank Lucas, a Harlem hood who uses the cover of the Vietnam War to export large amounts of pure heroin into the US, becoming fabulously wealthy in the process. Russell Crowe is the embattled narcotics cop fighting police corruption and Frank’s gun-toting family, while simultaneously getting a divorce from his wife and losing his kid.
There are definitely clichés in their cat-and-mouse relationship, or maybe they’re just trappings of the genre. But in the hands of the masterful Scott – whose powers of storytelling are often ignored in discussions of his flashy aesthetic – the years on screen and the hours in the cinema simply fly by. This is top-notch Hollywood film-making with great performances, spotless production values and solid period detail. Unmissable.
Interview
Director Steve Buscemi Starring Steve Buscemi, Sienna Miller
In 2004, Europe’s filmmaking community was shocked by the death of Dutch director Theo van Gogh. An outspoken Republican and atheist, he was murdered for his political views at the age of 47.
To honour his legacy, his final three films are being remade for English-speaking audiences by some of Hollywood’s favourite indie kids. Step forward Steve Buscemi and Sienna Miller in Interview, a carefully crafted re-imagining of van Gogh’s original.
Buscemi is Pierre, a poisonous political journalist re-assigned to the celebrity beat after making up a number of falsified stories. Miller is Katya, America’s number one soap star and the object of Pierre’s barely concealed lust and resentful fascination.
Over the course of one highly charged (and highly improbable) interview in Katya’s spacious Manhattan apartment, the pair circle each other like vultures, teasing, flirting and picking each other apart in a game of subtle psychological warfare.
Though it’s a stagey, cagey affair, it’s worth it for Miller’s fabulous performance which ruthlessly sends up her own vacant image while simultaneously proving that she’s anything but another Katya. This is intelligent, grown up stuff.
Led Zeppelin
Mothership
Despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that Led Zeppelin haven’t played a gig together since the death of drummer John Bonham over 25 years ago, a staggering 20 million people entered a lottery to win tickets to see them in London this month. With that kind of phenomenal demand, it was only a matter of time before their record company figured out a way to part this new generation of Led Zeppelin lovers from their hard-earned dosh.
So, for the 19,970,000 fans who were left empty-handed by the O² Arena ticket lottery comes Mothership, a cannily-timed collection of the ultimate rock band’s ultimate classics. Everything but Robert Plant’s kitchen sink has been thrown at this album to make it the last word in everything Zeppelin. But what’s most surprising about this 24-track, double disc set is just how much ground it covers.
Strange to think, but most of the band’s really famous tunes – Whole Lotta Love, Stairway to Heaven, Black Dog and the rest – were recorded during a relatively brief period from 1969 to 1971. This essential album roams across their full discography, however, including the likes of Kashmir, Misty Mountain High and Communication Breakdown.
Alicia Keys
As I Am
While other female R’n’B stars like Lil’ Kim and Eve are busy throwing their bodies in people’s faces to get attention, soul siren Alicia Keys has always let her music do the talking. As I Am is no different – an empowering show of popinflected urban rhythms, which proves that sensuality beats sexuality every time. Pick of the bunch on this album is lead single No One, whose upbeat R Kelly-ish vibe about how “no one’s gonna come between us” has crossover smash written all over it. “Everything’s gonna be alright” she sings and, on this evidence, she’s not wrong.
Book club
The Late
Hector
Kipling
by David
Thewlis
David Thewlis may be best known as Remus Lupin in the Harry Potter movies, but the English actor has turned his attention to novel writing with great results. Hector Kipling is part of London’s boisterous art scene. He paints giant canvases of heads from the flat he shares with his gorgeous girlfriend, while bitterly mocking the pretension and success of his circle of friends. But a visit to a beatnik bar introduces Hector to an unpredictable groupie and his life suddenly spirals out of control. This is a shocking, hilarious, sweet and disgusting story of life and art, narrated first-person by Hector in one of the most original and distinct literary voices for ages. It ruthlessly lampoons real figures from the contemporary art world while sustaining the pace and energy of a pulp crime novel. Hector is a wonderful creation – horribly vain and selfish but also something of a tragic hero. Thewlis’s time in the Harry Potter films may be drawing to a close, but on this evidence, he has a fine second career ahead of him.
Creation
in Death
by JD
Robb
American crime writer Nora Roberts has written an amazing 27 novels under her pseudonym JD Robb. In Creation Myth she returns to the mean streets of a near-future New York and her protagonist Lieutenant Eve Dallas.
Dallas is a haunted figure, chased by demons from the past – of victims she couldn’t save and villains she failed to capture. But when a body turns up with a silver ring on its finger, it soon becomes clear that her old nemesis, a serial killer known as The Groom, is back in town and on the hunt. Before she knows it, Dallas is sucked into a very personal game of cat and mouse.
With its echoes of Thomas Harris’s The Silence of the Lambs and scenes of quite graphic sex and violence, Robb’s world isn’t for the faint of heart. For those with strong stomachs, however, she writes with such verve that it becomes a wickedly visceral trip into an alltoo-familiar other world.
Robb might not pull any punches in the cataclysmic resolution, but when it’s this compelling, you really wouldn’t want her to.
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