The Headliner

Flight

I'm not a nervous flier, and I thought that, based on what we saw in the trailer, I was prepared for the plane crash in the first act of Flight. I was not. I will always remember Flight for eliciting a reaction in me that no other movie ever has: That crash sequence was so terrifying that it made me cry.

Fortunately, I had lots of time to recover my composure; following the crash, the movie goes on for a couple more hours (the run time is 138 minutes, but it sure felt longer) as pilot Whip Whitaker (Denzel Washington, who's been nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for his performance) deals with the fallout from the crash. Is he a hero for coming up with a solution to land the plane that saved almost everyone on it? Or is he a villain for doing so with (spoiler) the help of a variety of intoxicants, both legal and not? As strong as that crash sequence is, by the end you can barely remember it was in the same movie as this long, depressing addiction drama.

Star

Rihanna's Fast Track to Disaster: "Rihanna loves to party, but this past month she's gotten really out of control. She's been drinking almost every day and talking about smoking weed a lot too." On Twitter, "she often tweets about '420,' a popular term for smoking marijuana," and "makes no effort to hide her nonstop alcohol consumption." She stopped off at "Club Perfection in Queens" at 2 a.m. on May 2, to "dance with and throw money at the strippers" at the "grimy strip club." She shrugs off similarities to Whitney Houston, but crazy nights have "become the norm" for the 24-year-old. "She's actually a very lonely girl," says a friend. "She gets fed up with sitting in her hotel room, so she goes out drinking." She was hoping to get back together with Chris Brown, but Brown "returned to his girlfriend Karrueche Tran and even got a tattoo of her face inked on his arm to prove his love and loyalty. When Chris got the tattoo, Rihanna freaked out. She's been obsessed with the thought that he's going to marry Karrueche and she'll never be able to get back with him. She's heartbroken and in a bad place. She's been numbing the pain with alcohol." She likes to test boundaries. "When people tell her she's a role model, she goes crazy. She doesn't want to hear it. If anything, she rebels and goes out and does something even more shocking than the time before." When she "posted a picture of a substance that appeared to resemble cocaine" her managers got mad, but "she responded by claiming to be in a lesbian relationship with her friend Melissa Forde." Riri "loves being a bad girl and shocking people. She says she's having fun, but it's clear she's acting out because she's in a lot of emotional pain."

“When it comes to comedy, go big or go home,” intones the voiceover towards the end of this first glimpse at The Big Year, a mid-life crisis buddy picture starring unlikely buddies Steve Martin, Owen Wilson, and Jack Black. Except to judge from the trailer director David Frankel (The Devil Wears Prada) has done neither, choosing instead to camp out in the schmaltzy, half-smiling desert between hard-R soft-brow gags (fat man fall down! Old man miss plane!) and fourth-quarter release feel-goodisms (learning, laughing, long-distance phone calls to the eternally patient Rashida Jones). The movie is adapted from a book of the same name that isn’t about budding bromance exactly — it’s about birding. And not Owen Wilson’s usual catting around either — actual bird-watching, the kind that keeps Jonathan Franzen up at night. We’re guessing 20th Century Fox made the right call that general audiences are more into dudes behaving (semi) badly in an around-the-world adventure than ornithology, but the first impression is decidedly less impressive than, say, an Asian Crested Ibis. We can’t help but peruse the castlist and think that the stellar group of women gathered to roll their eyes and generally support their misbehaving mates — including Jones, the outstanding Rosamund Pike, and the underutilized JoBeth Williams — would have made better travelling companions.