Key to any team's success is the manager: the architect of every hard fought battle between the goal posts, who must weather the storm when players fail to perform.
In the annals of modern British football, Brian Clough remains one of the most cha
rismatic, bullish and successful figures.
He is still the only domestic manager to win back-to-back European cups.
In August 2006, David Peace published his controversial book, The Damned United, about a tempestuous period in Clough's professional life during the 1974 season.
Friends and family reacted angrily to the depiction of Old Big 'Ead as bullying and selfish.
Those same loved ones have predictably refused to watch Tom Hooper's film, adapted for the screen by Peter Morgan (Frost/Nixon, The Queen).
They need not worry.
Steeped in nostalgia and blessed with an endearing performance from Michael Sheen as the so-called 'greatest England manager we never had', this valentine to the former darling of Nottingham Forest shoots and scores on many levels.
The film opens in July 1974 with Brian and his two boys, Simon and Nigel, travelling to West Yorkshire to succeed Don Revie (Colm Meaney) as manager of Division 1 champions, Leeds United.
An impromptu interview with Granada TV, in which Brian openly criticises Revie's tactics, declares war against senior squad members including Billy Bremner (Stephen Graham), Johnny Giles (Peter McDonald) and Norman Hunter (Mark Cameron).
"I don't have to justify myself to you," Brian tells Johnny sternly after a disastrous start to the campaign.
"No, but come Saturday, there will be 40,000 people here who you do have to justify yourself to," retorts the player cockily.
Flashbacks to six years earlier reveal the seeds of Brian's dislike of Revie as he and loyal assistant Peter Taylor (Timothy Spall), take Derby from the foot of Division 2 to the dizzy heights of Division 1.
The Damned United is an enthralling and largely affectionate tribute to a man who wears egotistical bravado like a comfortable, old jumper.
"I certainly wouldn't say I'm the best manager in the business, but I'm in the top one," he tells an interviewer boldly, concealing the fears we glimpse when he is alone, powerfully conveyed by Hooper during a rematch between the two clubs.
The Derby manager cannot bear to watch from the stands and emerges from the office convinced his team has lost; a wry smile spreading across Taylor's face says otherwise.
Morgan's script elegantly navigates the timeframes, providing us with background to the rivalry that drives Brian to the brink of self-destruction.
Sheen's rapport with Spall galvanises the picture, with an amusing emotional pay-off in the closing minutes when Clough has to grovel for Peter's forgiveness after a spat.
ALSO SHOWINGTWO LOVERS (15)Set in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, the new film from writer-director James Gray (The Yards, We Own The Night), explores a destructive menage a trois against a backdrop of parental expectation and religious fervour.
Emotionally troubled Leonard (Joaquin Phoenix), who fails in his latest attempt to commit suicide is determined to earn the love and respect of his Orthodox Jewish parents (Moni Monoshov, Isabella Rossellini), who hope he will marry within the faith, preferably Sandra (Vinessa Shaw), whose father is a prime candidate to buy the family dry-cleaning business.
Leonard dutifully pursues the romance and is genuinely attracted to Sandra but he finds his affections torn between the sweet, reliable Jewish girl and fun-loving, free spirit Michelle (Gwyneth Paltrow), who lives across the stairwell and is a regular fixture on New York's party scene. Unfortunately, Michelle already has a boyfriend - a married man (Elias Koteas) - and she is hopeful that he will leave his wife to be with her. As Leonard's infatuation with Michelle intensifies, his emotional state becomes increasingly unstable.
THE HAUNTING IN CONNECTICUT (15)Based on a true story, Peter Cornwell's supernatural thriller revolves around a close-knit family pushed to the brink by unseen forces resident in their new home.
Peter Campbell (Martin Donovan) and his wife Sara (Virginia Madsen) move to upstate Connecticut with their family into a beautiful Victoria home, which conceals a dark past.
The building used to be a funeral parlour and the old owner's son Jonah (Erik J Berg) was a conduit for evil, bridging the divide between the real and the spirit worlds. Jonah returns to wreak havoc on the Campbells.
And don't miss . .THE LIFE BEFORE HER EYES (15)Diana McFee (Uma Thurman) has a doting husband Paul (Brett Cullen) and a beautiful daughter Emma (Gabrielle Brennan), who seems to be taking after her mother when she was younger by getting into trouble with the nuns at her school.
As she tries to connect with her daughter, Diana thinks back to her school days and her unlikely friendship with religious good girl Maureen (Eva Amurri). Indulging in sex with an older boyfriend, the young Diana (Evan Rachel Wood) is blissfully unaware of how precious life is until a mentally unstable classmate (John Magaro) makes good on his boast to bring a gun into school and kill every single one of the students and teachers.
Traitor (12A) ***
DAMON SMITHIn the war against terror, the truth is occasionally sacrificed at the altar of perception.
Convince the media and therefore the public that you are winning, and half the battle is already won.
Writer-director Jeffrey Nachmanoff exploits the disparity between fact and illusion in this taut thriller of political intrigue and espionage, creating a horribly plausible scenario for a devastating attack on American soil.
Central to the nightmarish plot is an undercover opera-tive, apparently embedded within a terrorist cell to bring it down from the inside, whose dubious actions continually suggest an ulterior motive.
Like the characters, we're left in the dark for most of the film as to whether he is double-crossing the Ameri-cans to avenge the murder of his Muslim father in a car bomb, which opens the film.
Rage and grief can corrupt even the purest soul, festering for years before they finally take hold.
A stirring performance from Don Cheadle in the title role muddies the waters, playing up the ambiguities in a character, who is being supplied with actual explosives as part of his covert mission.
Who is conning whom and to what end? Born in Sudan where his early life is marked by tragedy, Samir Horn (Cheadle) is a devout Muslim who aligns himself with the Americans, determined to do his part to heal divisions with the West.
Unbeknown to his girlfriend Chandra (Archie Panjabi), he goes deep undercover to bring down a cell fronted by Omar (Said Taghmaoui), who he befriends in jail.
They escape confinement and Samir offers his bomb-making expertise as part of a sick and twisted plan to strike fear into the hearts of every American family.
To prove his worth and gain access to the next link in the terrorist chain, Fareed Mansour (Alyy Khan), Samir must detonate a device and kill innocent civilians.
His handler Carter (Jeff Daniels), seemingly the only man who knows that Samir is undercover, urges his man to do whatever is necessary to achieve his goals.
If civilians must die, then so be it.
Meanwhile, FBI agents Roy Clayton (Guy Pearce) and Max Archer (Neal McDonough) begin to investigate Samir as a threat to national security.
As the evidence of a covert plot stacks up, the two men close in on the terrorist cell, jeopardising all of Samir's hard work. Traitor maintains a brisk pace after the pyrotechnic-laden opening, cranking up the tension as Samir provides Omar and his minions with the necessary tools to kill hundreds of innocent men, women and children.
Nachmanoff foregoes a barrage of action set pieces in favour of tense conversations between the characters, posing difficult questions about violence as a means to bring down the terrorists.
A couple of twists don't ring true and the ending signals its sly intentions far too early.
For a change, we are one step ahead of the characters.
Knowing (15) **
DAMON SMITHIt is no coincidence or quirk of fate that you are reading this review at this precise time.
There are no accidents or chance occurrences - everything is preordained and we are just passengers on this invisible roller-coaster through space and time.
However, there are people among us with the ability to predict the seemingly random events - they all hear voices in their heads.
Mankind's salvation lies not in the hands of governments, environmentalists or the scientific community, but in the ravings of the mentally disturbed, who are tuned into a frequency that most of us can never hear.
So claims Knowing, an apocalyptic thriller from director Alex Proyas (I, Robot), which gives one fractured family the impossible task of unravelling the secrets of this rapidly dying universe.
Fifty years after a group of elementary school children bury their drawings of the future in a time capsule, a new generation of curious kids opens the container.
Inside, young Caleb Koestler (Chandler Canterbury) discovers a sheet of paper written by a little girl, Lucinda Embry (Lara Robinson), which at first glances seems to be lines of random numbers.
When Caleb's widower father, astrophysics professor John Koestler (Nicolas Cage), examines the sequence he identifies the exact dates and death tolls of every major catastrophe to befall mankind.
More worrying, there are three more sets of numbers on the page.
Scientist pal Phil Beckman (Ben Mendelsohn) tries to dissuade John from paying any attention to numerology. However, a plane crash validates the prediction and John races against time to unlock the secret of the final numbers, aided by Lucinda Embry's daughter Diana (Rose Byrne) and granddaughter Abby (Robinson again).
Knowing surrenders its loose grasp on reality as father and son become embroiled in a series of spectacular action set-pieces and somehow keep a straight face as the plot twists and turns to its outlandish resolution.
There's no doubting Proyas's ability to orchestrate mayhem on a grand scale, however, the script doesn't pack a similar punch and most of the characters remain blank canvases until the final frame.
Cage hardly breaks a sweat in the gloomy lead role while Chandler Canterbury doesn't possess the acting chops in the film's pivotal scene of emotional outpouring.
Apparently, reading this review will have no effect on your decision to see Knowing or stay away.
