Movie Review: Identity Thief

Thursday, March 21, 2013

Movie Review: Identity Thief

Identity Thief
Directed by: Seth Gordon.
Written by: Craig Mazin and Jerry Eeten.
Starring: Jason Bateman (Sandy Patterson), Melissa McCarthy (Diana), Amanda Peet (Trish Patterson), T.I. (Julian), Genesis Rodriguez (Marisol), Morris Chestnut (Detective Reilly), John Cho (Daniel Casey), Robert Patrick (Skiptracer), Eric Stonestreet (Big Chuck), Jon Favreau (Harold Cornish).

Melissa McCarthy is an extremely talented comedic actress who I don’t think Hollywood has any idea what to do with. Her performance in Bridesmaids, while a tad overrated, managed to break through the bias against broad comedies of awards season to capture her an Oscar nomination. Her brilliant two scene performance in Judd Apatow’s This is 40 was the best thing about the movie (and the outtake of her rant that play during the end credits made me laugh more than anything else in that movie). She was probably the best host on SNL last season, and I’m looking forward to her hosting again in a few weeks. But as for leading roles in movies, I fear we’re going to have to sit through more films like Identity Thief.

On the surface, Identity Thief should work as a broad comedy. McCarthy can be brilliant, and has no problem going wildly over the top, and in Jason Bateman she has just about the perfect straight man – he did that on Arrested Development, and it’s his specialty in movies now. The problem with Identity Thief is really quite simple – it’s not funny. The screenplay by Craig Mazin and Jerry Eeten quite simply doesn’t give McCarthy and Bateman – not to mention the rest of the cast – anything to do, and worse gives you whiplash with all of the movie’s shifts in tone. Are we supposed to hate McCarthy, like we do in the beginning? Laugh at her, like during the middle part (including a ridiculous, and not in a good way, sex scene) or are we supposed to pity her, as during the film’s final act. A good screenplay could make us do all three, I suppose, but this is not a good screenplay.

Bateman stars as Sandy Bigelow Patterson, a Denver accountant (of course, because he’s boring, he’s in accounting) who discovers that someone in Florida has stolen his identity. This person turns out to be Diana (McCarthy). The police are apparently powerless, so Sandy heads to Florida himself to bring her back to Denver and clear his name. It doesn’t take long to find her, and it doesn’t even take long to convince her to come with him – for one thing, he promises no police, he just wants her to tell his boss, who may fire him, that he didn’t do anything wrong, and for another, Diana has two drug dealers (T.I. and Genesis Rodriguez) and a bounty hunter (Robert Patrick) chasing her, for reasons I’m not entirely sure of (it doesn’t matter why they’re chasing her, just that they are). So in essence, we have a version of Midnight Run, the excellent 1988 bounty hunter comedy with Robert DeNiro and Charles Grodin. Except, of course, Identity Thief isn’t funny, and Midnight Run was.

Identity Thief was a bad movie in the first and second acts. The sex jokes are tasteless, but not funny, the fat jokes are even more tasteless and unfunny, and when they combine the two of them in a sex scene between McCarthy and Modern Family’s Eric Stonestreet (another fine comedic actor), the result is nearly unwatchably unfunny. I don’t really have a problem with “tasteless” comedy – but the general rule is, it has to be funny, or else it’s just juvenile at best or offensive, at worst. The first half of Identity Thief has healthy doses of both.

But the film really falls off the rails during its final act – when all of a sudden, we are supposed to feel sorry for Diana. The movie doles out one of those tragic tales that is meant to make you see Diana in an entirely different light. If movies have taught us anything, it’s that every screwed up character is screwed up because of a lousy childhood – that even people in their 40s are completely incapable of getting over. In a way, it reminded me of the indie hipster movie last year The Comedy, except McCarthy is not nearly as insufferable as the main character in that movie. But the result is the same – we’re all of a sudden supposed to see depth, and feel sympathy, for a character we’ve been led to believe is horrible. It didn’t work in The Comedy, and it doesn’t work here.

The film was directed by Seth Gordon, whose debut film was the excellent documentary The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, about grown men who obsess about getting a high score on an old Donkey Kong arcade game. But it now appears that what he really wants to do is direct subpar comedies – there was the awful Four Christmases (with Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon), the actually enjoyable Horrible Bosses (although, I suspect, that had more to do with Spacey, Farrell and Aniston than Gordon) and now Identity Thief.

The film is a hit – I saw it weeks after it came out, and it’s already past $100 million at the box office, which pretty much confirms Bateman and McCarthy are movie stars, who can sell this type of comedy. Has anyone really enjoyed the film though? I guess there must be some, but Identity Thief isn’t even good enough to be called sitcom level comedy. It’s a confused, unfunny mess.

Movie Review: Neighbouring Sounds

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Movie Review: Neighbouring Sounds

Neighbouring Sounds
Directed by:  Kleber Mendonça Filho.
Written by:  Kleber Mendonça Filho.
Starring: Irma Brown (Sofia), Sebastião Formiga (Claudio), Gustavo Jahn (João), Maeve Jinkings (Bia), Dida Maia (Ricardo), Irandhir Santos (Clodoaldo), W.J. Solha (Francisco), Lula Terra (Anco), Yuri Holanda (Dinho), Clébia Souza (Luciene).

The past haunts the present in subtle, yet powerful, ways in Kleber Mendonca Filho’s brilliant debut film Neighbouring Sounds. The film opens with old photos of slaves on Brazil’s sugar plantation, before flashing forward to present day Recife, a town on the Brazilian coast where the upper, middle and lower class live side-by-side, yet worlds apart. If you can afford to, you lock yourself behind gates and walls, as the residents of this small neighbourhood are paranoid of the people around them that they do not know. This paranoia seems unfounded, as we don’t see much crime on the streets – and what we do see is committed by the spoiled grandson of area’s richest resident Francisco (W.J. Solha) – who made his money on the sugar plantations. He owns much of the area, but while his is the fanciest house in the area, with the most protection, he is also the only one who feels safe enough to leave his house in the middle of the night – to walk down to the beach and go swimming in the Ocean, despite signs warning of sharks.

The film has a large structure, layering story upon story much the same way Robert Altman did in films like Nashville or Short Cuts. Gradually, characters begin to emerge. Joao (Gustabo Jahn), another grandson of Francisco, who has a job showing condo in his grandfather’s building – condos where maid quarters are expected. He hates his job, but does it anyway. He has started seeing Sofia (Irma Brown), who used to live in the area and wants to see her former house before it’s torn down to make way for even more condos. There is Bia (Maeve Jinkings), a bored housewife, who escapes through pot and an unbalanced washing machine. She is fighting a private war with the barking dog next door, and gets into a fight with her sister – they are both getting a new TV, and Bia’s is bigger. There is Dinho (Yuri Holanda), the delinquent car radio thief, who as the grandson of Francisco, has no need to steal people’s radios, except that he wants to.

The common thread running through the movie is Clodoaldo (Irandhir Santos), who shows up one day and gets all the residents to agree to pay a monthly fee for him and his men to patrol the streets at night to keep everything safe. This basically involves them sitting under a tarp, talking to each other on their walkie-talkies. Clodoaldo has secrets as well, as everyone in the neighbourhood does, but is also the only character who comes into contact with everyone else – from the upper class of Francisco and Joao, to the middle class Bia, to the lower class maids and doormen the other forget about, unless it’s to complain about them.

Neighbouring Sounds is a slow burn of a movie. When the film begins, you think it may just be a slice of life film about this neighbourhood. And yet, fairly early on, the sense of mounting dread begins. You know from the start that something darker is lurking beneath the surface here, you just cannot quite figure out what it is. None of the characters are what you would call wholly good or wholly bad. Joao seems like a nice guy – in one of the film’s best scenes, he’s the only one who argues on behalf of a doorman the rest of the condo residents want to fire for sleeping on the job – which would mean the longtime employee could be gotten rid of with no severance package. In this scene it becomes clear that resentment is not just between the different classes, but between everyone – no one trusts their neighbours. But Joao also puts his longtime maid out to pasture, replacing her with her dour daughter, even though she doesn’t want to retire, and at only 60, doesn’t really need to. On the surface he seems nice – he seems to have some guilt about his family’s wealth and wants to be seen as just another resident of the street, but his sense of entitlement gradually starts to show.

The mounting dread is aided by the intricate sound design of the movie, where everything is ramped up just a little beyond its normal volume – footsteps on the ceiling above you can sound as ominous as anything else in this movie. And gradually, a few bizarre things happen to make you wonder just what precisely is going on.

Neighbouring Sounds is a remarkable debut film for Kleber Mendonça Filho. Like many first time directors, he picked an ambitious project – many characters, interlocking stories, subtle shifts in tone, gradually ratcheting up the tension – but unlike many directors he has the skill to pull it off. The movie ends with two scenes in which we see the past coming back to haunt one character, and then that same past seemingly about to repeat itself with another character. All over a fence. Or a dog.

Movie Review: Caesar Must Die

Movie Review: Caesar Must Die

Caesar Must Die
Directed by:  Paolo Taviani & Vittorio Taviani.
Written by: Paolo Taviani & Vittorio Taviani based on the play by William Shakespeare.
Starring: Cosimo Rega (Cassio), Salvatore Striano (Bruto), Giovanni Arcuri (Cesare), Antonio Frasca (Marcantonio), Juan Dario Bonetti (Decio), Vincenzo Gallo (Lucio), Rosario Majorana (Metello), Francesco De Masi (Trebonio), Gennaro Solito (Cinna), Vittorio Parrella (Casca), Pasquale Crapetti (Legionary), Francesco Carusone (Fortune Teller), Fabio Rizzuto (Stratone), Fabio Cavalli (Theatre Director), Maurilio Giaffreda (Ottavio).

Caesar Must Die uses real inmates from Rebibbia prison, just outside of Rome, playing themselves, and also playing characters from William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. The film opens and closes with scenes in color of the inmates performance, in front of an apparently enthusiastic crowd, of Shakespeare’s play. In the middle, which is shot in stark black and white, we see the six months of rehearsals that went into mounting this production. But Caesar Must Die is not a documentary about prisoners performing Shakespeare. Even the rehearsal scenes are scripted by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani. They do this to draw parallels between the prisoners and the characters they play, and by having men who are in prison for years if not for the rest of their lives, it gives some of Shakespeare’s words new meanings.

As a film, Caesar Must Die is a fascinating experiment – but not an altogether successful one. If you don’t at least have a working knowledge of Shakespeare’s original play, you may well be lost while watching the movie. At only an hour and sixteen minutes, obviously the majority of the text has been cut, and of course, not everything is from Shakespeare’s play even at that, because the filmmakers aren’t really interested in another version of Julius Caesar, but in how the prisoners respond to Julius Caesar – what they make of the words and ideas behind the play. It is ironic, of course, to have prisoners talk about liberty – and their idea of honor may differ from ours. And the central debate behind Julius Caesar is of course whether the conspirators are “justified” in killing the man they once adored, but who has now become a tyrant. As with any production of Caesar, the character playing Brutus (Salvatore Striano), is the most fascinating. The other conspirators are after their own means by killing Caesar – it’s not for the greater good, but for their own. But Brutus is different. He believes in what he does.

There are wonderful moments in Caesar Must Die – an unforgettable audition sequence for example, where the prisoners have to say the same lines in two different ways – once filled with sorrow and regret, once with angry and rage. These guys, it must be said, are pretty damn good (at least some of them).

I admired Caesar Must Die more than I actually enjoyed it. It is certainly a fascinating idea for a movie, and the film looks great in black and white. But I cannot help but think that the idea here is better than the execution. The structure is essentially a play (the rehearsals) inside a play (Julius Caesar) inside a movie (Caesar Must Die). The best moments are when the prisoners connect with the dialogue and themes of Shakespeare’s play – and struggle, like anyone else, in the best way to convey their meaning to an audience. But there are moments when the Taviani’s lay things on a little thick. Nearly every review I have read mentions the line, late in the movie, where a prisoner looks directly at the camera and says “Since I got to know art, this cell has become a prison”. The idea behind the line, that art can free you only so much, is a decent one. The execution comes across as phony, and trying too hard. While there is a raw intensity to the prisoners, they are not exactly polished actors, and subtlety is not their strong suit.

Still, the movie is a fascinating experience, and as a lover of black and white films, one that is wonderful to look at on the big screen. I don’t think the film comes together to make a wholly conclusive statement, but it’s an interesting film to say the least.

Movie Review: Stoker

Monday, March 18, 2013

Movie Review: Stoker

Stoker
Directed by: Chan-wook Park.
Written by: Wentworth Miller.
Starring: Mia Wasikowska (India Stoker), Nicole Kidman (Evelyn Stoker), Matthew Goode (Charles Stoker), Dermot Mulroney (Richard Stoker), Phyllis Somerville (Mrs. McGarrick), Harmony Korine (Mr. Feldman), Lucas Till (Pitts), Alden Ehrenreich (Whip), Jacki Weaver (Gwendolyn Stoker), Ralph Brown (Sheriff).

Korean director Chan-wook Park has made a name for himself by directing ultra-violent movies in his home country. Yet as violent as his films are, they are also extremely well made, and for the most part intelligent. Oldboy (2003) is inarguably his masterpiece so far – a revenge film/melodrama that Quentin Tarantino obviously admired - the jury he headed at Cannes gave it the Grand Prize of Jury, essentially second place, which was interesting because while Cannes has no shied away from extreme Asian cinema, they have shied away from giving it prizes. Like many foreign filmmakers who find a following in North America, Park decided to come to Hollywood. His Hollywood debut is Stoker, a nasty, wonderfully directed and acted Hitchcock homage. While Stoker may not be as good as the Master’s best films – or Park’s own best films for that matter – it is still an early year highlight.

Mia Wasikowska stars as India Stoker, a sullen, depressed, extremely intelligent teenage girl, whose beloved father (Dermot Mulroney) dies in a car accident on her 18^th birthday. Her mother Eve (Nicole Kidman) doesn’t seem all that broken up by her husband’s death. And then on the day of his funeral her Uncle Charlie (Matthew Goode) shows up, and moves right into their house, and has eyes for his sister-in-law, who seems more than game. What makes this even stranger is that she didn’t even know she had an Uncle Charlie – but the longtime family housekeeper (Phyllis Sommerville) does know him – and she quickly vanishes. A relative (Jacki Weaver) will also show up one night, wanting to talk to Eve about Charlie, but she leaves the house after dinner, and India never sees her again either.

It is with mounting dread that we watch the movie, and we fear for this sullen, but innocent young girl who is at the mercy of a monstrous mother, and perhaps an even more monstrous Uncle (and if you’ve seen Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt, you know what we’re dealing with in Uncle Charlie). Wasikowska is great in her role here – seemingly still, but she is constantly watching and never misses anything. She is better in roles like this – or as the title character in Jane Eyre – than in more “heroic” roles like Burton’s Alice in Wonderful. Her beautiful, seemingly innocent face is capable of telling us so much, so when the movie starts twisting, and the plot twists become more and more ridiculous, Wasikowska keeps the film grounded and believable. We may not believe what is going on around her, but Wasikowska makes us believe in how India responds to it.

Kidman is excellent as well, even if Eve is a tad one-dimensional – she is the monster of a mother, who doesn’t really love her daughter, as much as she feels jealous of her – jealous that her late husband spent more time with India than with her. And when Charlie comes in, and outwardly prefers Eve to India, she is so blinded by her own pride, that she doesn’t see what is happening right in front of her eyes – that Charlie has no real interest in her. He only has eyes for India. Matthew Goode is good as Charlie, a charming mask, an easy laugh and all charm. He is the mystery at the center of the film. Where did he come from? Why did he come back? Given the name of the movie, Park’s last film Thirst, and given that Charlie always leaves his plate untouched, you’d be forgiven in thinking that he is perhaps a vampire. Goode gamely plays along, not offering too many clues as to what his secrets might be.

Perhaps more of a star than any of the cast members is Park and his direction. This is a wonderfully directed movie, with excellent, creepy sound design, and a camera that looks unblinkingly at the horror on screen. Some will inarguably say that the film’s style is over the top and trumps the subject, but Park’s style perfectly matches the over the top subject matter. The violence in the film is strong, bloody and potent – and yet still cannot hold a candle to what Park has put on screen in the past – because it doesn’t need to.

Of course, as with most movies of its sort, Stoker’s weakest moments are when the secrets the film has worked so hard to conceal come pouring out – this time they are both horrific and disturbing, and yet still kind of bland and predictable. Yet what Park is able to do is twist individual moments brilliantly – making us think one thing, only to have his camera pull back and reveal an entirely different meaning (the scene in the shower is the most brilliant example of this). The film begins and ends at the same spot, and yet what was beautiful at first, has now become horrific when we understand the meaning. With Stoker, Park succeeds wonderfully in doing what Hitchcock loved to do – playing the audience like a piano.

Movie Review: Oz: The Great and Powerful

Movie Review: Oz: The Great and Powerful

Oz: The Great and Powerful
Directed by: Sam Raimi.
Written by: Mitchell Kapner and David Lindsay-Abaire based on the books by L. Frank Baum.
Starring: James Franco (Oz), Mila Kunis (Theodora), Rachel Weisz (Evanora), Michelle Williams (Annie / Glinda), Zach Braff (Frank / Finley), Bill Cobbs (Master Tinker), Joey King (Girl in Wheelchair / China Girl), Tony Cox (Knuck), Stephen R. Hart (Winkie General), Abigail Spencer (May), Bruce Campbell (Winkie Gate Keeper).

When I watched Oz: The Great and Powerful a few days ago, I did so in 2-D. I don’t really have anything against 3-D per se – although normally, I don’t really think it adds much to the experience – but the time of the 2-D show was just much more convenient to me, so that’s what I saw. While I was watching the film, I couldn’t help but wonder if director Sam Raimi – or any director who works in 3-D these days – considers how the film is going to look in 2-D. Afterall, many audiences will still their work on the big screen in 2-D, and many more will do so over the years on televisions in their own home. The reason why I ask this is that are moments in Oz: The Great and Powerful which were cringe worthy in 2-D – blatant moments where things fly at the screen with absolutely no reason to, other than to give the audience their money’s worth on the 3-D surcharge. There were other bad moments – although maybe they were just as bad in 3-D – where the visual effects seemed off – a moment where Oz and Theodora are running over a hill for example, that simple seemed clumsy.

I wondered these things for a few reasons – for one, they stood out like a sore thumb. For another, the film is directed by Sam Raimi, who is a gifted director, and whose earlier films all had his signature style – a style that shows up in only one shot of Oz: The Great and Powerful (the plants with the eyes, and how they see Oz and company in case you’re curious), but for the most part, Oz: The Great and Powerful has none of Raimi’s fingerprints on it. It could have been made by just about anyone, because more and more of these special effects epics are starting to have a homogenous look to them. The other reason I noticed was much simpler – I was bored. Oz: The Great and Powerful utterly lacks in imagination in its storytelling, and along with the flaws in the visual effects, this made it impossible for me to be swept up in the movie’s “magical world”. The world of Oz in this film is so clearly fake, that it took me out of the movie. An even bigger problem is that the characters seem as fake as their surroundings.

Compare this to the original The Wizard of Oz from 1939. Visual effects have obviously grown by leaps and bounds over the past 74 years – but that’s not necessarily a good thing in every respect. The Oz in the 1939 classic was still a “real” place – everything in it looked as though it could touched and felt, because, of course, it could. Everything in the new movie looks like a computer game. And on another level, although the effects in the 1939 version show their age in many ways, the story is so compelling, the characters so relatable, real and either lovable or hateable, that kids still get drawn into the movie’s spell all these decades later. I doubt anyone will be watching Oz: The Great and Powerful decades from now.

The movie stars James Franco as a carnival magician/con man/womanizer, who while running away from an angry husband, jumps into a hot air balloon and ends up in Oz when a twister hits. The first person he meets is Theodora (Mila Kunis), a witch, but a seemingly good one. She tells Oz of a prophecy of a wizard descending from the sky who bares the land’s name bringing peace to all. And of course said king who be showered with riches. So first Oz seduces her, then they head off to the castle where they meet Theodora’s sister Evanora (Rachel Weisz), who informs Oz of something Theodora forgot to mention. In order to rein, he needs to kill the “Wicked Witch” Glinda (Michelle Williams), who lives in the Dark Forest. So, with the help of his new flying monkey Finley (Zach Braff), Oz heads into the Dark Forest to kill the Wicked Witch.

If the movie was hoping to surprise us with a role reversal, I doubt too many will be shocked to discover that Glinda isn’t really the Wicked Witch – Evanora is. And because Oz broke her heart, Theodora turns wicked as well. You’re not fooling anyone by having the brunettes be evil, and the blonde being as pure as driven snow.

The bigger problem with the trio of witches though is simple – they are all extremely boring characters. This is doubly disappointing when you think of how the original Wizard of Oz (and all the Oz books) was one of the few children fantasy series to have strong, female protagonists. In this one, they have been replaced by a womanizing huckster, who treats the women poorly – and the women behave as one dimensional stereotypes. I love Michelle Williams – she’s one of the best actresses working today – but she’s not really right for a goody-two-shoes role like Glinda (how they hell they DID NOT cast Amy Adams in this role is a mystery to me).Instead of being sweet, innocent and lovable, Williams is just kind of bland. Weisz is even worse, as she’s one dimensionally evil and obviously so from her first scene. The film never really gives her much to do. I think they tried to make Theodora a more complicated character, but her transformation from wide eyed innocent to cackling super witch is so abrupt that it feels unnatural – not to mention the fact that Kunis doesn’t look natural in green paint – she’s just one more phony looking special effect. James Franco is fine, I guess, as the charlatan wizard, but there isn’t much he can do with the role. At least Zach Braff is an entertaining annoying flying monkey.

In the past few years, I have read more than one piece about how all big budget movies look the same – that they no longer have any style of their own, but all have the same “blockbuster” aesthetic. I still don’t know if I quite believe that – no matter what you think of Nolan’s Batman movies, they are all undeniably his in every way – including visually, and the same goes for Michael Bay. But these type of fantasy movies are starting to run together, and have little to differentiate themselves from each other, and suck all the style from the director. Is there anything in Oz that marks it as a Sam Raimi film? He is a gifted visual director, but here it’s layered under so much candy colored crap it’s hard to tell. Tim Burton had a similar problem with Planet of the Apes (truly, the least Tim Burton-esque of all Tim Burton films) and Alice in Wonderful. It seems to bigger your budget it, they more your film has to look like everything else.

Movie Review: The Last Gladiators

Thursday, March 14, 2013

Movie Review: The Last Gladiators

The Last Gladiators
Directed by: Alex Gibney.

I am a huge hockey fan. I have been a fan of the L.A. Kings since I was 6 years old, when they got my favorite player of all time – Wayne Gretzky. Yes, I was a bandwagon hoper back then, but since I suffered through 25 years with the team, I believe I can call myself a true fan now, and last year when they won their first Stanley Cup it was perhaps the greatest moment of my life that I really didn’t have anything to do with. The NHL has changed since I was a kid, and Alex Gibney’s The Last Gladiators shows one of the ways in which it has – fighting. There is no doubt that fights still happen in the NHL – and even if the media wags a disapproving finger at the NHL for allowing it to continue, fighting will always be a part of the game. But it isn’t as big of a part as it once was. Watching The Last Gladiators takes you back to a time when bench clearing brawls were common. And the speed and ferocity of the fights in those days seem much worse than today. Fighters today are a little more concerned for their own safety – as well they should be – and do a better job of protecting themselves. But back in the 1980s, two men simply squared off and starting pounding on each other until one of them fell over.

One of the toughest fighters back then was Chris Nilan, who is the main focus of Gibney’s documentary. Nilan admits he wasn’t a great hockey player – he couldn’t skate very well, shoot very well, or pass very well. But what he could do was fight. He wasn’t afraid of anyone, and for years as a Montreal Canadian, he would go toe-to-toe with anyone who dared mess with one of his teammates. He got better at hockey over the years – his coaches and teammates helped him work on the fundamentals of the game, and he even scored 20 goals one year. He didn’t get “pretty” goals like Gretzky or Mario Lemieux, but you plant him in front of the net, he couldn’t be moved, and he'd whack in a rebound goal. If that sounds easy, you try it sometime.

But Nilan, like many former NHL tough guys – or enforcers or goons or whatever you want to call it – has had a rough time since leaving the NHL. The movie has an interview with Bob Probert – probably the most infamous of these guys from that era – and will later show his funeral. He died of a heart attack, after years of struggling with alcohol and drug abuse. He was only 45 years old. The autopsy also showed signs of brain damage – from all the concussions Probert got in his career as a result of fighting. The documentary features other tough guys – Nilan, Tony Twist, Marty McSorley and others list all their injuries and surgeries they had over the year to repair the damage to their bodies they inflicted on themselves and each other over the years.

What always strikes me when I see these enforcers interviewed is that they all seem like nice guys. You would think that guys whose job it is to beat people up game in and game out, would have a screw loose, or be violent, nasty people in their day-to-day lives, but for the most part, they aren’t. Nilan is filled with regret for some of the things he did outside of hockey – yes, there were some fights – but mainly it was his drug addiction (to painkillers) and alcoholism that he regrets. And these tough guys have a code – they don’t really want to hurt each other. They just want to fire up their team, or defend their teammates. The most telling example of this “code” comes not from Nilan, but another tough guy who says when he was fighting one time, his shoulder popped out of the joint and he let out an audible gasp of pain – the other fighter asked him what was wrong and when he told him the shoulder popped out, his opponent said “Okay, fight’s over” and stopped. Many of these guys became good friends after their playing days were over.

Fighting will probably always have a place in hockey. None of the fighters interviewed think it should be taken out of the game, and every time they do a poll of players in the NHL, the overwhelming majority think it has a place in the game (I believe the last one I saw was at 98% for fighting). But the debate around fighting in hockey has ramped up in recent years. Concerns about concussions are real – and how they affect the quality of life of players after their playing days can be horrific (not quite as bad as football players, but not good either). Many in the media want to take out “staged” fights, but leave non-staged ones in the game. If staged fights got eliminated, so would the jobs for these enforcers – because of the most part, all their fights are staged. Many see this as a good thing – after all, most enforcers aren’t very good hockey players – certainly not NHL level at anything other than fighting.

But to wrap up the fighting debate in the cloak of player safety, and go after just “staged” fights doesn’t make much sense to me. You can get a concussion or a major injury in a fight whether it’s staged or not. What the NHL needs to decide is if fighting has a place in the game or not – and then either let it go, knowing the risk the players are willingly taking, or eliminating it completely. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.

I know that most of this review has turned away from Gibney’s documentary and talked about fighting in hockey, but, well, that’s just the way it is. The Last Gladiators is a must see for all hockey fans. Seeing what Nilan and other tough guys have gone through since their glory days may well make them think twice before cheering on hockey fights. And the debate about fighting in hockey is real, and should be had – just like the debate about concussions in football must be had as well. As fans, we don’t really see hockey players as “people” – they are out there on the ice playing for our amusement – we cheer for them, or boo them, as we see fit, and when their playing days are done, for the most part, we don’t think of them ever again. What The Last Gladiators does is make us see Nilan, who always seemed like the toughest guy in the world on the ice, as a real person who has paid a hefty price. Only part of that is because of hockey, but undeniably hockey contributed to his demons. I still don’t really know what I think of fighting in hockey – as a kid, I loved it, but for the most part now when a fight breaks out, I yawn, and wait for the game to start again. The Last Gladiators is an essential addition to the debate about fighting in hockey.

The Best Films I Have Never Seen Before: It Came From Outer Space (1953)

The Best Films I Have Never Seen Before: It Came From Outer Space (1953)

It Came From Outer Space (1953)
Directed by: Jack Arnold.
Written by: Harry Essex based on the novel by Ray Bradbury.
Starring: Richard Carlson (John Putnam), Barbara Rush (Ellen Fields), Charles Drake (Sheriff Matt Warren), Joe Sawyer (Frank Daylon), Russell Johnson (George), Kathleen Hughes (June).

The 1950s were a golden age for Science Fiction in American film – especially the alien invasion movie. It really started in 1951, with the opposite films The Day the Earth Stood Still and The Thing From Another World. The Day the Earth Stood still told the story of a peaceful alien, coming to earth to warn them that their nuclear weapons were threatening not just their world, but other worlds as well. The Thing From Another World was about a creature thawed from the ice in Antarctica, who wanted nothing more than to kill humanity. Both films were reactions to the cold war, one indulging in fears of nuclear annihilation, the other in cold war paranoia. 1953’s It Came From Outer Space tries to indulge in both – and is surprisingly successful.

The film opens with something that looks like a meteor crash landing in the desert. Amateur star gazer, and aspiring writer John Putnam (Richard Carlson) and his girlfriend Ellen Fields (Barbara Rush) head out to see the crash site. There is a giant crater, and Putnam is the only one who risks going in. He sees not a meteor, but a spaceship and sees a door closing. But then a rock slide happens, burying the ship. When he tries to tell everyone the truth, they think he’s crazy. But he’s determined to not let the truth be buried. And when a few people around town start acting strangely – completely unlike themselves – others think that perhaps Putnam may in fact be right, and aliens have landed, and are inhabiting the bodies of those in town.

The story is similar, in ways, to Invasion of the Body Snatchers (who wouldn’t see the first screen adaptation for another three years at this point), with paranoia taking over. What if your neighbor is no longer your neighbor? Your husband no longer you husband? And worse, what if no one would believe you? These are classic sci fi tropes, and It Came From Outer Space handles them very well.

Yet, it is also different from many alien invasion movies, because it’s not really an invasion at all. The aliens don’t want to be here – they crashed. They think Putnam is the only one they can trust, and tell him that everyone will be fine – they just need time. Putnam has to try and stop the paranoia that starts infecting the town, especially the Sheriff (Charles Drake), who simply wants to kill the aliens. They are different, so they must be the enemy,

The film was directed by Jack Arnold, who made a few of the classic sci fi films of the 1950s. Alongside this one was The Creature from the Black Lagoon (more horror than sci fi) and The Incredible Shrinking Man. I haven’t seen those films, but his handling of It Came From Outer Space, makes me want to see those films as well. Apparently he – as well as Ray Bradbury who wrote the novel the movie was based on – never wanted to show the aliens in their true form, and I think that that instinct was probably correct. But the studio, who was making this film in 3-D, didn’t want that, and so the giant, iconic one eyed aliens of the film were born. They are effective in the movie, but I think that it would have been more effective to not show anything at all. But subtlety has never been Hollywood’s strong suit.

I don’t think It Came From Outer Space is quite as good as the best of the 1950s science fiction. It doesn’t have the same impact as The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Thing From Another World or War of the Worlds for example. Yet, it is still pretty damned good – and a must for lovers of the genre.