Talk to Me (Don Cheadle, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Taraji P. Henson, Martin Sheen, Cedric The Entertainer) – By far one of the best films of the year, this biopic of Washington D.C. radio legend Petey Greene takes us all back to the Civil Rights era of the mid-60s to early 1980s. Parlaying his prison radio show into a chance at the big time through sheer chutzpah and bravado, Petey leaves prison and seeks a job at Washington’s leading rhythm and blues (R&B) radio station, WOL. Owned by a white, but forward-thinking magnate (Martin Sheen), WOL is losing in the ratings so Sheen turns the programming over to his only black executive (Ejiofor from Inside Man, Children of Men), Dewey Hughes. Hughes came up the hard way but assimilated perfectly, patterning himself in every way after Johnny Carson and seeking his own career in a white man’s world. While the movie is definitely about Petey, featuring a stunning, Oscar-worthy performance by Don Cheadle, it also focuses on Dewey’s own ambition. In this way, you are watching two intertwined stories. That is the heart of the film. Petey’s dream – his only real passion – is radio and telling it like it is. Dewey’s dream is The Tonight Show, which he sees as reachable in the personification of Petey. The film is about ambition, about dreams, about booze, excess, race relations, race riots, and the growth of two human beings through it all. Together, Petey and Dewey quell the violence after the assassination of Martin Luther King. They galvanize with pride the overwhelmingly black community of Washington, D.C. They scale the heights of Petey’s popularity by making him a stand-up comic. And they lose their bond in the sentinel moment in the film – Dewey’s appearance on The Tonight Show. The movie isn’t perfect. It has some time sequencing problems and it doesn’t quite set up Petey’s role as peacemaker well enough. But it’s easily one of the best movies of this year. With great performances by everyone, it is easily a five-star movie that will play mostly the art houses. It’s low budget, but that adds to its appeal. It’s pacing is exceptional; its costumes true to time. It tells us the story of a self-described convict bent toward self-destruction who is saved by a buttoned-up man “too afraid to say the things he thinks.” And it’s a story about how that buttoned-up man becomes the star himself and fulfills his dream on the air and eventually in Hollywood. Find this film, please, and see it.