God didn’t intend for us to play football.

Concussion

(2015)

(SPOILERS) I rated Kill the Messenger, scripted by Concussion writer-director Peter Landesman, who seems to be magpie-ing his way through a variety conspiracy-related material, expressing either an anti- (Parkland; one would almost think he was trying to be controversial in suggesting JFK’s assassination was purely, solely and entirely down to Lee Harvey Oswald) or pro- (Messenger, the upcoming Felt, where he goes to the well already partially explored in All the President’s Men, by throwing a light on Deep Throat). Here he covers pathologist Dr Bennet Omalu’s diagnosis of CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy) in NFL football players, and he’s aided by sterling work from a fine cast. Unfortunately, as both director and writer he rather lets the side down.

In terms of pluses, Will Smith offers an impressively immersive turn as the Nigerian-born Omalu, not so much because there’s anything particularly astonishing about the emotional journey (and the requisite love story with Gugu Mbatha-Raw is laborious Hollywood gloss, however much it may be based on fact), but because he abandons the usual Smith crutches of showboating charm and irrepressible charisma. It’s also just plain rewarding to see Smith rising to the challenge of peers who up his game, notably Alec Baldwin as the conscience-stricken former physician for the Pennsylvania Steelers and the ever-wonderful Albert Brooks as Omalu’s mentor. There’s a lovely little cameo from Eddie Marsan, and David Morse is strong as the former centre star whose suicide invites Omalu’s suspicions of something seriously awry with a game that habitually inflicts enormous damage on the brains of its players.

Omalu’s a real straight arrow, and a corpse whisperer (infuriating perhaps the most overtly hissable character in the movie, co-worker Mike O’Malley) who puts his money where his mouth is by funding vital tests himself. With his religious convictions, it’s perhaps surprising Concussion wasn’t sold to the faith-based crowd. Although, its negligible box office generally suggests a difficult movie for the real religious faithful, American Football fans themselves. And I’m suspect there’s enough crossover in competing fervours for it to be a problem case generally.

Landesman gets the conspiracy play down pat, aside from an obligatory, pedestrian “thriller” sequence in which pregnant Mbatha-Raw is pursued by persons unknown. The one-man-against-the-system nature of the case is solid movie material, from the dismissiveness of Omalu’s findings to the attempts by the NFL to whitewash the results of its nominally open, cards-on-the-table investigations, to the FBI bringing charges (eventually dropped) against Brooks’ character (although the timeline for this appears to have been jiggled in the picture’s favour to suggest a more express closing of ranks by the various powers-that-be).

Unfortunately, the director comes up looking rather crude and basic in other areas. An opening scene introducing Omalu’s diligence in a court case is borderline inept, as Landesman entirely distracts from the testimony by jumping around the delivery and intercutting random close-ups. It’s an attempt to underline the man’s attention to detail. but he succeeds only in kyboshing the intended representation of Omalu as a force to be reckoned with.

There are also many scenes in which the doctor needs a pep talk, stating that he doesn’t understand why people would behave this way (cover things up, not want to hear the truth), and being told the cynical reality, and that what he is doing is worthy. The most misjudged element is the “We’ve got another one” progression of the condition, though, which Landesman depicts as a virus on the loose; players break down, threaten their families or blow the brains out as punctuation points for Omalu’s dawning diligence. It’s histrionic, unfortunately, and it would have been better to entirely avoid this aspect, except as reported speech, than handling it in such a clumsy fashion.

Concussion would survive much better without these clichés, but Landesman seems intent on beating the viewer about the head to the point where any suggestion of subtlety and underplaying is lost. At one point a character draws an analogy between the denial of the NFL and that of the tobacco companies concerning the dangers of cigarettes, and a comparison might also be drawn between Concussion and Michael Mann’s big tobacco whistle-blower film The Insider. Landesman seems intent on tackling the kind of subject matter thoroughbred filmmakers like Mann and Oliver Stone have run with to great acclaim. Unfortunately, so far, he’s only revealed himself to be in the little leagues.

Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.

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She writes Twilight fan fiction.

Vampire Academy (2014)
My willingness to give writer Daniel Waters some slack on the grounds of early glories sometimes pays off (Sex and Death 101) and sometimes, as with this messy and indistinct Young Adult adaptation, it doesn’t. If Vampire Academy plods along as a less than innovative smart-mouthed Buffy rip-off that might be because, if you added vampires to Heathers, you would probably get something not so far from the world of Joss Whedon. Unfortunately inspiration is a low ebb throughout, not helped any by tepid direction from Daniel’s sometimes-reliable brother Mark and a couple of hopelessly plankish leads who do their best to dampen down any wit that occasionally attempts to surface.

I can only presume there’s a never-ending pile of Young Adult fiction poised for big screen failure, all of it comprising multi-novel storylines just begging for a moment in the Sun. Every time an adaptation crashes and burns (and the odds are that they will) another one rises, hydra-like, hoping…

You’re never the same man twice.

The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970)
(SPOILERS) Roger Moore playing dual roles? It sounds like an unintentionally amusing prospect for audiences accustomed to the actor’s “Raise an eyebrow” method of acting. Consequently, this post-Saint pre-Bond role (in which he does offer some notable eyebrow acting) is more of a curiosity for the quality of Sir Rog’s performance than the out-there premise that can’t quite sustain the picture’s running time. It is telling that the same story was adapted for an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents 15 years earlier, since the uncanny idea at its core feels like a much better fit for a trim 50 minute anthology series.

Basil Dearden directs, and co-adapted the screenplay from Anthony Armstrong’s novel The Strange Case of Mr Pelham. Dearden started out with Ealing, helming several Will Hay pictures and a segment of Dead of Night (one might imagine a shortened version of this tale ending up there, or in any of the portmanteau horrors that arrived in the year…

‘Cos I’m the gringo who always delivers.

American Made (2017)
(SPOILERS) This is definitely more the sort of thing Tom Cruise should be doing, a movie that relies both on his boyish™ charm and at least has pretensions of ever so slightly pushing the envelope of standard multiplex fare, rather than desperately attaching himself to an impersonal franchise (The Mummy) or flailingly attempting to kick start one (Jack Reacher: Never Go Back); remember when Cruise wouldn’t even go near sequels (for about 20 years, The Color of Money aside, and then only the one series)? American Made is still victim to the tendency of his movies to feel superstar-fitted rather than remaining as punchy as they might be on paper (Made’s never quite as satirically sharp as it wants to be), but it at least doesn’t lead its audience by the nose.

Rejoice! The broken are the more evolved. Rejoice.

Split (2016)
(SPOILERS) M Night Shyamalan went from the toast of twist-based filmmaking to a one-trick pony to the object of abject ridicule in the space of only a couple of pictures: quite a feat. Along the way, I’ve managed to miss several of his pictures, including his last, The Visit, regarded as something of a re-locating of his footing in the low budget horror arena. Split continues that genre readjustment, another Blumhouse production, one that also manages to bridge the gap with the fare that made him famous. But it’s a thematically uneasy film, marrying shlock and serious subject matter in ways that don’t always quite gel.

Shyamalan has seized on a horror staple – nubile teenage girls in peril, prey to a psychotic antagonist – and, no doubt with the best intentions, attempted to warp it. But, in so doing, he has dragged in themes and threads from other, more meritable fare, with the consequence that, in the end, the conflicting positions rather subvert his attempts at subversion…

Two hundred thousand pounds, for this outstanding example of British pulchritude and learning.

The Avengers 4.18: The Girl From Auntie
I’ve mentioned that a few of these episodes have changed in my appreciation since I last watched the series, and The Girl from Auntie constitutes a very pronounced uptick. Indeed, I don’t know how I failed to rate highly the estimable Liz Fraser filling in for Diana Rigg – mostly absent, on holiday –for the proceedings (taking a not dissimilar amateur impostor-cum-sidekick role to Fenella Fielding in the earlier The Charmers). I could watch Fraser all day, and it’s only a shame this was her single appearance in the show.

By Jove, the natives are restless tonight.

The Avengers 4.17: Small Game for Big Hunters
I wonder if Death at Bargain Prices’ camping scene, suggestive of an exotic clime but based in a department store, was an inspiration for Small Game For Big Hunters’ more protracted excursion to the African country of Kalaya… in Hertfordshire. Gerry O’Hara, in his second of two episodes for the show again delivers on the atmosphere, making the most of Philip Levene’s teleplay.

Romulan ale should be illegal.

Star Trek: Nemesis (2002)
(SPOILERS) Out of the ST:NG movies, Star Trek: Nemesis seems to provoke the most outrage among fans, the reasons mostly appearing to boil down to continuity and character work. In the case of the former, while I can appreciate the beef, I’m not enough of an aficionado to get too worked up. In the case of the latter, well, the less of the strained inter-relationships between this bunch that make it to the screen, the better (director Stuart Baird reportedly cut more than fifty minutes from the picture, most of it relating to underscoring the crew, leading to a quip by Stewart that while an Actor’s Cut would include the excised footage, a Director’s one would probably be even shorter). Even being largely unswayed by such concerns, though, Nemesis isn’t very good. It wants to hit the same kind of dramatic high notes as The Wrath of Khan (naturally, it’s always bloody Khan) but repeatedly drifts into an out-of-tune dirge.

Old Boggy walks on Lammas Eve.

Jeeves and Wooster 2.5: Kidnapped (aka The Mysterious Stranger)
Kidnapped continues the saga of Chuffnell Hall. Having said of 2.4 that the best Wodehouse adaptations tend to stick closely to the text, this one is an exception that proves the rule, diverging significantly yet still scoring with its highly preposterous additions.

Jeeves: Tis old boggy. He be abroad tonight. He be heading for the railway station.
Gone are many of the imbroglios involving Stoker and Glossop (the estimable Roger Brierley), including the contesting of the former’s uncle’s will. Also gone, sadly, is the inebriated Brinkley throwing potatoes at Stoker, which surely would have been enormous fun. Instead, we concentrate on Bertie being locked aboard Stoker’s yacht in order to secure his marriage to Pauline (as per the novel), Chuffy tailing Pauline in disguise (so there’s a different/additional reason for Stoker to believe Bertie and she spent the night together, this time at a pub en route to Chufnell Hall) and …

Cally. Help us, Cally. Help Auron.

Blake's 7 3.7: Children of Auron

Roger Parkes goes a considerable way towards redeeming himself for the slop that was Voice from the Past with his second script for the series, and newcomer Andrew Morgan shows promise as a director that never really fulfilled itself in his work on Doctor Who (but was evident in Knights of God, the 1987 TV series featuring Gareth Thomas).

I think we’ve returned to Eden. Surely this is how the World once was in the beginning of time.

1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992)
Ridley Scott’s first historical epic (The Duellists was his first historical, and his first feature, but hardly an epic) is also one of his least remembered films. It bombed at the box office (as did the year’s other attempted cash-ins on the discovery of America, including Superman: The Movie producers the Salkinds’ Christopher Columbus: The Discovery) and met with a less than rapturous response from critics. Such shunning is undeserved, as 1492: Conquest of Paradise is a richer and more thought-provoking experience than both the avowedly lowbrow Gladiator and the re-evaluated-but-still-so-so director’s cut of Kingdom of Heaven. It may stand guilty of presenting an overly sympathetic portrait of Columbus, but it isn’t shy about pressing a critical stance on his legacy.

Sanchez: The truth is, that he now presides over a state of chaos, of degradation, and of madness. From the beginning, Columbus proved himself completely incapable of ruling these islands…

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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