I wasn’t terribly interested in a bastardization of a classic, especially for the seemingly vacuous purpose of promoting “diversity”. But I didn’t have anything else going for me this weekend, so I decided to break down and see the new “Ghostbusters 2016” with the four women.

Some of the critics have not been kind to this re-do of the stellar classic from 1984. That original is considered by many to be perfection and should not be altered any more than a Mozart concerto. To quote Antonio Salieri: “Displace one note and there would be diminishment. Displace one phrase and the structure would fall. It seemed to me that I was hearing the voice of God”. Extremely reliable review “Rotten Tomatoes” audience ratings were pretty bad (49%).

It wasn’t awful but it wasn’t good either. It was just mediocre. The plot is hokey. The characters are developed as thinly retreaded caricatures of the 1984 film.  The four women compete with each other for the camera, especially Kate McKinnon (Steve McQueen was famous for this in his films). The endless CGI computer effects get tedious at the end. The director didn’t know when to quit.

I see this film as contentiously political as the current presidential race. The film industry is producing anything now that can be termed “diverse”and they’re stretching. The point of this film seems to be that there should be more women in film, then going back to feed on the past rather than moving into the future. They also appear to be trying to reverse some of the perceived sexist stereotypes of the original 1984 film, replacing the secretary with hunky Chris Hemsworth, making him the butt of reverse-sexist jokes, but it falls flat.

There are a few of the original cast in cameo roles. A half-hearted cameo from Bill Murray goes nowhere. The Ghostbusters uniform makes them look more like garbage collectors. Each gimmick is almost crafted to wait for a canned laughter.

Ghostbusters 2016 does nothing to innovate on what came 32 years before. It resembles a Saturday Night Live gimmick that went too long (and everyone knows SNL hasn’t been funny since 1973). I went home, clicked on the original 1984 Ghostbusters and marveled at the creativity and innovation that the 2016 version simply forged.

I give it 2 of 5 High Heels sticking to the floor. It’s marginally funny. Slightly better than a Scooby Doo episode.

—————————————–

A weekend EXTRA: Not a lot on TV these days now that most of the really good ones, including Game of Thrones (nominated for 23 Emmys) are on hiatus.

The one cable show that stands out is “The Night Of”, Sunday nights (HBO) at 9 pm. This one really, really promises to be a world-class winner. It’s set in New York City where a naïve kid of Pakistani heritage innocently drifts into a situation of increasing danger to him. Each step of the way offers very subtle clues to where this is going and it’s spellbinding. You get a scary sense of foreboding but you can’t quite put your finger on why.

The jaded, streetwise cops doing their job to perfection, the detective asking exactly the right questions that no one should ever answer without counsel, the street cameras detailing everything along the way, The truly frightening environment, the series of events that rush toward easy conclusions. And what will be best of all, the jaded lawyer casually passing by, looking with curiosity that slowly dawns to “what’s wrong with this picture”. John Turturro will be absolutely magnificent in this series.

It’s going to be truly great. http://www.refinery29.com/2016/07/116812/sofia-black-delia-interview-andrea-cornish-the-night-of-death

A bit of a departure from my usual film reviews. A film I VERY strongly recommend you never see. I’ll paint you a word picture of the interesting portions. The rest should be trashed.

This film got a lot of chatter at Cannes, a venue that spawns a lot of interesting independent films that would ordinarily never make it to theaters. This film sounded interesting and so I saw it in an afternoon showing. Towards the end, several people walked out in disgust, deservedly so. This director, Nicolas Winding Refn, worked an interesting concept, then let it degenerate to patently offensive visuals that weren’t needed and were seemingly placed for effect that backfired.

This is a film exploring the ruthless modeling industry, in which women really are shaped shaped into barren, soulless objects to generate interest for marketing of “things”.

Jesse, a maybe naïve 16-year-old orphan, runs away to the big city to pursue a career in modeling. “I can’t sing, dance or write……… but I’m “pretty” and I think I can make money from that”. She then proceeds to stand out from the other “pretty” young women as those in the business of finding and building models instantly see the quality of her being “it”. That quality that can’t be described but can be instantly discerned when viewed.

There are two telling scenes. The first is then Jesse gets a photo session with a top model photographer, an appropriately weird guy who takes one look at her and clears the room for a “closed session” (to photograph her nude). Jesse has zero experience with men, much less extremely powerful men who know how to manipulate women to suit the camera. Jesse (played by 18 year old knockout beauty Elle Fanning who doesn’t have much experience with such men either) shows genuine and absolutely stunning emotional response of a young girl entering a universe she has no conception of. These emotions paint her face as he paints her body for the camera.

The second is a scene of about a dozen veteran, drop dead beautiful young women sitting around a big room in their underwear, shapely legs elegantly crossed in 6 inch heels waiting to be called to parade themselves in front of a bored fashion designer for a spot in his show. The designer barely notices most of them, his female assistant dismissing them with a laconic “thank you”. Jesse steps in front and at first glance his jaw literally drops. He can’t take his eyes off her. It’s fascinating to watch.

But in the end, Jesse succumbs to the dehumanizing, defeminizing monstrosity that is the modeling industry, predatory males on every level and the icy scorn of the soulless “also ran” vixens. By mid-film, Jesse has been expertly shaped away from humanity. She makes being bought and sold as a product seem exhilarating, which explains why the lesser players, beautiful that they may be, but not with the “it” factor get inevitably rejected.

The first half of this film would have made an excellent HBO drama, discarding the explicit and extremely offensive scenes that follow. Repulsive even to me and I thought I’d seem them all. These scenes do not add to the director’s original vision at all and simply ruin the film, guaranteeing extremely bad word-of-mouth, including mine, and poor box office showing. Exactly what his reward should be. This would have been a better film had it been directed by David Lynch.

I give this offensive film two ratings:

For the film, 0 of 5 glaring neon makeups

For the selected concepts: 5 of 5 flawless, flawed beauties.

NOT recommended by me. If it comes up eventually on HBO, watch the first half then trash it.

I freely admit I went to see this film for little other reason than I like George Clooney and I’ve pretty much liked everything he’s done in the past. I knew little else about this film. As it turned out, I wish I’d watched a re-run of Ocean’s 12 (2004) for free.

The film industry is now exploiting the various ills of society that make headlines and so generates public interest. Movies that are “inspired” by real events, which means that they’re free form interpretations, not of the accuracy thereof, but of the directors’ vision of what might sell tickets. A perfect example is “Concussion” (2016), “based on” real events but otherwise depicting extraneous dramatic license. Steve Jobs”(2015) a masterful portrayal of fiction “inspired by” a real person. The same film would be as interesting about a completely fictional character.

“Money Monster” was designed to explore the greed of money managers indulging risky gambling with someone else’s money, then diverting the blame to computer errors. Interesting premise and bankable actors, but it fails dismally. The blame is unclear. I’d put most of it on the director Jodie Foster who simply let her vision run out of control, leading to a mish-mash of impossible, unbelievable loosely-connected scenarios leading to a ridiculous conclusion. None of this could have actually happened, nor would it have progressed as it did to the nonsense conclusion.

“Money Monster” purports to dredge the “greed decade” of the 80’s up to the new Millennium audience to point out these things are still happening. But as George Burns said: “It’s been done”, and it’s been done better with “The Big Short” (2015). Unfortunately, “Money Monster” only succeeds in showing that the film medium generated a free form fantasy, like a Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote cartoon featuring the voices of A-List actors. A logical disconnect between reality and fantasy.

This is a film not to waste the price of admission on. I give it a 2 out of 5 odd shots fired here and there. Wait for it to land in your supermarket bin.

One good quip though: “He’s a pig in a prom dress!”. Haven’t heard that one before

A very interesting film, but not for the usual reasons.

I think the writers sat down for a brainstorming session and decided on a novel and interesting screenplay. What if the memory from a dying man could be transferred to another for the purpose of mining it for needed and necessary information. Sort of like a less involuted “Inception” (2010). Maybe a variation on the theme of “Face Off” (1997), John Travolta & Nick Cage switching faces (and personalities).

But (yawn), let’s not get too technically accurate as to the process no one knows what the process is and filmgoers don’t care anyway. Skipping over the ‘Sci’ part of “Sci-Fi” is an acceptable expediency because a strong story line trumps all.

So lets consider a neurophysiologist has played around with memory transfer in rats, then finding someone who wouldn’t mind subjecting himself (forced) to the highly experimental process (A jailed sociopath??), then see what he might remember about some details that might save the world.

Now, technically it might be possible to do this, but it would entail uploading the bits of information on transfer-RNA that (probably) constitute “memory” into a supercomputer then downloading it all to a “freshly erased human brain. No, not this week, but remember that what sits on my desk is more computer power that existed in the world 70 years ago. In another 70 years Moore’s Law suggests it will be possible if someone cares to do it, and I know people that do.

The initial chase of the spy carrying the details is much like the great TV advertisement where the mother calls her son who’s running from multiple assailants to let him know that the squirrels are back in the attic and “your father won’t call the exterminators….says it’s personal this time”, as the villains close in.

It’s never explained what mission the nearly dead spy was on, nor why Jericho (Kevin Costner), a violent prisoner with “a total lack of empathy” was selected to be the recipient. Tommy Lee Jones as the doctor looks clinically depressed most of the time. Gary Oldman gets the overacting award for finding inopportune moments to shout at everyone

For all intensive practical purposes, “Criminal” is a bad film. It’s writers absorbed two decades of pedestrian sci-fi movies, assiduously collected and replicated all their worst attributes. Further, putting world-class actors Gary Oldman and Tommy Lee Jones in the same film with incredibly insipid dialog is a crime against nature. If any interest in the subject matter, the film version of “Flowers for Algernon” (Charly- 1968) is the gold standard and won an Oscar for Cliff Robertson.

HOWEVER……..there is one saving grace for this otherwise terrible film, and that’s Kevin Costner. He’s not getting stellar reviews but ignore that. His performance in this film is EXCEPTIONAL. He brings an icy interpretation to this truly uncompensated sociopath. He goes about the business of sociopathy with chilling efficiency, then as another personality slowly infiltrates his being, exhibits a convincing confusion and bewilderment. The infiltration of childhood innocence into the being of a cold-blooded sociopath is well done by Costner.

No, don’t spend good money to see “Criminal” on the big screen bur definitely see it when it comes on HBO or the Torrents. Costner’s performance is riveting. He has an extensive history of taking on roles he thinks he can do justice to, caring nothing for reviews. This is one of those roles and one of the times that reviews aren’t germane.

I give “Criminal” two of five felonious haircuts (but Kevin Costner a solid 4 of 5 fingers-to-nose)

David Crippen, MD, FCCM
Department of Critical Care Medicine
Administrative Assistant- Pat Kretzmer 412 647 8410

“The Edge… there is no honest way to explain it
because the only people who really know where
it is are those who’ve gone over it”.

Dr. Hunter S. Thompson

“Eye in the Sky”, starring Helen Mirren and the late Alan Rickman, was dropped into Pittsburgh theaters this weekend with no fanfare and virtually no advance marketing previews. I had never heard of it before watching Helen Mirren on Charlie Rose a few nights ago. Both talked about the film extensively and showed several clips. It sounded quite interesting and so I saw it today.

I’m glad I did. This film is an absolute gem of filmmaking. 93% on rotten tomatoes.

The plot involves the classic human dilemma of having to choose the lesser of two available evils within a finite time limit and with the potential for “collateral damage”. Opinions from the military who know the “right” thing to do for maximum benefit and civilian oversight bureaucrats who desire to dilute the consequences of either decision by involving more bureaucrats at higher administrative levels.

“Death from the sky” (Photo) is a very different concept than that of Col. Kilgore and the 1st Air Cav in Vietnam. It was up close and personal. This film vividly shows how modern warfare has become increasingly remote and technological, encompassing remote operatives executing extraordinarily specific objectives. Incredibly clear, focused vision technology from over 20,000 feet in the air and miniature camera that can fit and function inside flying cockroach-sized appliances flying around rooms without notice.

As a bit of an aside, one of the characters in “Eye in the Sky” is a British national named Susan Danford who married Arabic radical and became radicalized herself, adopting the name Ayesha AL-Hady. She was listed in the “most wanted” list of terrorists. Unclear if this is a real person, but there is precedent in American radical political history.

Black radical Joanne Chesimard was a member of the original Black Panther Party (BPP) in the mid-1960s, eventually migrating to the more violent Black Liberation Army (BLA) around 1971. She changed her name to an African version, Assata Shakur (See Photo). She was involved in numerous felonies and the killings of several State Troopers, eventually caught in 1973 and after numerous trials, sentenced to life imprisonment in 1977.

In 1979 she escaped from prison in a daring jailbreak aided by the BLA and was secreted out of the country to Cuba where she resides to this day. She continues to spew rather outdated radical diatribe on a website bearing her name. In 2013, she was added to the “Most Wanted Terrorist List”, the first woman to be listed. The FBI continues to classify her as a “domestic terrorist” and continues to offer a $1 million reward for assistance in her capture. One wonders if she might be a target of a similar action as described in this film if she could be accurately located.

“Eye in the Sky” offers no particular political message, partisan or otherwise, just a thoughtful film about the consequences of increasingly impersonal and long-distance warfare. An absolute nail-biter of a thriller playing out in real time with edge-of-your-seat suspense on every link of the chain.

Quick aside factoids: Senior female officers in the British Army are referred to as “Mum”. The fatigue clothing worn by the American Air Force officers in Nevada appear to be authentic “Tiger Stripes” like I wore in Vietnam. We bartered them from the ROK (Republic of South Korea) troops. Usual US Army issue jungle gear stood out like a sore thumb in the bush. The tigers were nearly invisible (see photo taken by me on a LLRP in 1969). Keep your eye out for the resourceful Kenyan agent played by Somalian actor Barkhad Abdi last seen in “Captain Phillips” (2013).

I give it 5 (yes FIVE) of 5 deaths from above. A MUST SEE

First and foremost, this amazing film holds some unexpected surprises along with what was highly touted in the pre-release reviews. The biggest surprise was the performance of Tom Hardy, one of the very best emerging stars. I really think Hardy’s performance exceeds the otherwise wonderful showing of Leonardo DiCaprio, who has little dialog, mostly non-verbal interpretation. Hardy is in the running for Supporting Actor but might be a long shot because of his famous reluctance to promote himself. In my opinion, of the many reasons to see this wonderful film, Tom Hardy is a top draw.

The second surprise in this film is the absolutely incredible cinematography by camera genius Emmanuel Lubezki. I don’t believe I have seen anything in the league of this photography since the old days of David Lean using antiquated technology.

This is definitely a “Director’s Film”. Alejandro Iñárritu through his cinematographer Lubezki decided to make the conditions of this story exactly as they would have been in the original circumstances. He set the environment exactly as he wanted it, then hired the best actors in the world and set them free to interpret the basic story within that environment. Lubezki used only natural light for every single scene, which means that under the circumstances, filming was only possible a few hours a day creating an incredibly immersive and visceral setting

Shot in lower Argentina and Canada, every single scene of revenant was filmed in brutally freezing conditions, putting the actors through an incredible wringer. There were no scenes with outside lighting. The bear bite scene was, however, said to be CGI provided by Lucas. It is incredibly real.

In the past, trust in a director has resulted in tough conditions for actors to get it right. In his quest for perfection, Stanley Kubrick put Malcolm McDowell through cracked ribs, scratched corneas and a broken nose in the famous face-in-the-pasta scene for Clockwork Orange (1971). On a Charlie Rose interview, vegetarian Leonardo DiCaprio said he had to eat a chunk of raw buffalo liver, learn to shoot a musket, build a fire from scratch, speak two Native American languages and study ancient healing techniques. DiCaprio calls Revenant the most arduous performance of his career.

All things considered, this is an absolutely amazing “must see” film, nominated for an astounding 12 Academy Awards, tying it with such classics as Ben-Hur, On the Waterfront and Gladiator. I don’t think there is any serious competition for the top four Oscars, but then it must be remembered that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences is pretty much populated by old white men (like me) with their accompanying biases. The AMPAS has been egregiously wrong in the past, as in 1963 when they robbed Peter O’Toole of his Oscar for “Lawrence of Arabia”. A theft that, had those responsible been discovered, they’d all still be in jail today. So we shall see what we shall see in February 2016.

I give this film a hearty FIVE of five gory bear bites.

Highly recommended by me. You will not see cinematography like this in any other contemporary film. Emmanuel Lubezki is in a class by himself. Somewhere David Lean is smiling.

It’s a temptation to add Quentin Tarantino to the hallowed roles of the world’s greatest film directors, but there are problems.

Quentin is not in the league of David Lean (“Lawrence of Arabia”- 1960 – “Dr. Zhivago”- 1965). Lean portrayed the most expansive interpretations of classic novels and historical notables ever filmed. If there’s any contemporary director comfortable at Lean’s table it’s definitely Alejandro Iñárritu, who has a virtual lock on an upcoming Academy Award.

No, I think the closest Tarantino will come to Lean is a to an amalgam of Bernardo Bertoluci and Stanley Kubrick. Tarantino’s films can be nicely compared to “Last Tango in Paris” (1976) and “Clockwork Orange” (1971). They are brilliant, luminous, intense, iconoclastic and they break molds.

And as I mentioned in earlier reviews, some directors allow actors to run their talent with minimal direction (Alejandro Iñárritu who concentrates on setting the environment for them to do so). Tarantino is not one on of those directors. He modulates every word that comes out of the actor’s mouths according to his vision of the scene. Brilliantly.

And BTW, the only actor that Tarantino trusts to do a scene any way he likes is Samuel L. Jackson, an actor that Tarantino has featured in seven of his eight films. Jackson is (as of 2011 Guinness Book) the second highest grossing actor of all time, paid an average of $68.2 million per film. Jackson has never won an Oscar.

Tarantino’s films are all innovative and creative but he has a flaw that I think holds him back from greatness That’s his affection for what Alex from “Clockwork Orange” would call “the old ultra-violence”. Tarantino’s films are reliably marinated in it, not just garden-variety shootings and stabbings, but creative visual interpretations of gory details.

I don’t think that “The Hateful Eight” is one of Tarantino’s best films. He goes way out of his way to spend money on ultra-wide 70 mm film that the audience can’t discern much if any difference from digital. The story line starts out interesting but quickly degenerates to a political diatribe on Civil War discrimination, then falls apart completely in the second half. A transformation that doesn’t really make much practical sense and is steeped in gratuitous, gory violence and sexual deviation prompting the audience to wonder if it adds much to the otherwise interesting story line.

That said, the film has excellent performances, especially by Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason-Leigh and Walton Goggins (from “Justified”). The original score by Ennio Morricone (Fistful of dollars- 1964 and “The Good, Bad and the Ugly”- 1966) is interesting. The story line, mostly the first half, is engaging, well photographed and typically creative, but not nearly in the league of “Pulp Fiction”- 1994

A major flaw I think is that here’s no detectable moral framework in any of these characters, if there was ever any design for such. Tarantino generated a mix of profoundly amoral characters working hard to distance themselves from any semblance of a moral compass. A study of random, desultory barbarity that occurs when all the rules of God and man are suspended. This is a recurring theme in his films culminating in this one that maybe cries out for some evolution. Unclear how interesting this mode will continue to be with future audiences as his reviews are starting to wane.

So, in the end, I think this is an interesting film but deeply flawed because Tarantino is allowed to extol his own deepest human foibles as film noir. This hasn’t worked in the past for other Directors working their own political or quasi-religious passions (John Travolta in “Battlefield Earth”-2000, a mind-altering disaster). It’s unclear whether Tarantino’s previous reputation will fade somewhat as he alienates many audiences.

I’m giving “The Hateful Eight” three of five seizures at the end of a hangman’s rope.

Exceptional violence and brutishness. Unacceptable for most audiences unless Tarantino fanatics.

Unfortunately, this is a film that cannot be “reviewed” by examining the proceedings of the plot. To do so would give up spoilers almost from the beginning, so I’ll have to give you some ideas about it from a wider vantage.

Director George Lucas was on Charlie Rose the other day relating that he thought the Star Wars idea had been worked into the ground, which is why he sold it to JJ Abrams who thought he could resurrect it to a new generation of viewers. Of course, the generation thing would be about right since the original Star Wars IV opened in 1977. I was a resident at NYU and I stood in line like everyone else to see it at an uptown Manhattan theater. It’s been almost 40 years since the iconic first episode. The five others have been almost anticlimactic.

There really was a new generation waiting to see a resurgence of a franchise that unexpectedly changed the nature of how movies were made. Originally, Lucas was so sure the film would be a flop that he didn’t attend the premiere; went to Hawaii on vacation. The producers fully expected a mega-flop and were working on how to dump it overseas. To everyone’s surprise, Star Wars exploded at the box office and became the first film that made actors rich from the sale of franchised toys and baubles, more so than their salaries.

The problem was that just about every possible previous plot line was previously squeezed till it bled. It was unclear to Lucas what Abrams could do to make it fresh again.

The answer is “not much”.

Sold-out seats in every Pittsburgh theater notwithstanding, I was quite suspicious that this re-tread was not going to be terribly satisfying. The critics were kind on “Rotten Tomatoes” (94%), but I hasten to add that many of these critics were toddlers when the first Star Wars hit the street, so it was more or less a new phenomenon for them. In fact, this iteration is a variation on the original theme of “Star Wars IV: A new Hope” (1977) with upgraded characters plying the same basic premise. A new, upgraded cantina scene (filled with Republican Presidential Candidates), an upgraded Dearth Vader filling out a newly styled black outfit, a similar plot- saving the universe from an upgraded “death Star”. Along with a lot of plot spoilers I can’t tell you about.

JJ Abrams is a very strong director and has done good work along very popular happy themes (Lost, Super 8, Mission Impossible III and two new Star Trek films). He has a knack for bland entertainment, not so much for deep soul-searching films that leave the viewer exhausted at the end of the film. He is not Alejandro Iñárritu (The Revenant), Joel Cohen (No Country for Old Men), Ridley Scott (Bladerunner) or Quinton Tarantino (Pulp Fiction et al). His talent is not as deep, but spread out wider.

I think the main draw of the film is to see the three principal characters; Princess Leia, Han Solo and Luke Skywalker appear almost 40 years older. Myself, I was not terribly enthusiastic at seeing anyone, even me 40 years on. They all definitely looked old, and somewhat out of place with the rest of the youthful characters. Anachronisms put in place for the next generation to gawk at and remark how they appeared pretty much rode hard & put away wet.

JJ Abrams famously said he wanted to use more actual sets for the film and less CGI, but that would be expensive out of proportion to budget so most of the film is CGI with some real (leftover) desert dunes scenes from Tunisia. The entire film was carefully constructed toward the inevitable sequel, including some cliffhangers. Many, many questions from the previous series remain un-answered with this film.

“Star Wars: The Force Awakens” is not a failure, certainly not at the box office, but it isn’t nearly the blinding film apocalypse it’s made out to be by some. It will make a lot of money from a new generation of viewers that applaud the “Real Housewives of…….”, but it is not “Avatar” or “Titanic” by any means. The plot is a clone of a previous plot; the dialogue is silly enough that in previous sagas all the actors complained bitterly about it. The new characters are not as fresh as what came before.

I found “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” just OK, even in 3-D. I remain unimpressed at the massive hype surrounding it.

I give it three of five hoarse Dick Cheney Darth Vader voicings.

This is the second film demonstrating a disturbing trend previously observed in “American Sniper” (2014). The enhancement of an hour’s worth of facts to generate a two-hour movie. It’s disturbing because there are pretty glaring inaccuracies and embellishments, not identified as such, specifically created for dramatic effect. Like “American Sniper”, this is not a documentary; it’s a docudrama, with numerous liberties taken to make it more appealing to the box office, an understanding rigorously constructed by the film producers long before any film is made.

The bare bones story of Dr. Bennett Omalu, his “discovery” of chronic pathological brain changes in long-term football players at autopsy and his interaction with the National Football League (NFL) is all probably true and well documented as far as it goes. But the entire story would take less than an hour to tell and the dramatic value would not be sell-able to millions of fans, especially Pittsburgh Steeler fans unlikely to warm up to being lectured to about the game.

So embellishments of the facts of the case were dreamed up by producers to include characters that either didn’t exist (No record of Dr. Danny Sullivan’s abuse of Bennett) or the only reason for their inclusion is to appeal to the melodrama- a love interest that has nothing to do with the film’s theme. The FBI did raid Dr. Cyril Wecht’s office, but three months before Omalu published his research. Omalu did show up in court as a witness for Dr. Wecht’s prosecution and even made a bid for Wecht’s job (1). The scene of Omalu’s wife “followed” by a malevolent stalker, possibly leading to her miscarriage is said to be a figment of a producer’s imagination to stoke the dramatic intent of the story.

The family of former NFL player Dave Duerson considers the showing of a standoff between Duerson and Andre Waters, a former player whose application for benefits was denied by a retiree board (that included Duerson) to be fabricated (2). Waters committed suicide  at age 44, suggesting that Waters’ death could have been prevented if Duerson had been more compassionate with a fellow player. Dr. Joe Maroon’s portrait is said by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette to be ill-considered. “Once Dr. Maroon understood what we were dealing with, he really brought it to the NFL” (3)

These embellished facts have been spun into melodrama wherein this devastating brain pathology seems to reliably and predictably destroy players minds, eventually leading to higher than average suicide rates. But this isn’t exactly true if you look at the rest of the literature. There is very little if any convincing evidence to suggest footballers, as a group, suffer a higher suicide rate than the rest of the population (4). Other cites suggest that football players live longer than average, even as their traumatic risk factors are increased (5,6), and are not statistically subject to an epidemic of suicide (7,8).

The pathologic basis for “Chronic traumatic encephalopathy has been around for decades. It’s not a new term,” said William Stewart, a neuropathologist at Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow. Dr. Omalu neither discovered nor named the disease. “The only thing I would say that Bennet has done is that he identified it in an American footballer (9).”

None of the above is to suggest that repeated blows to the head don’t cause pathologic brain injury over time. This has never been disputed and all one has to do is observe Mohammed Ali to see the vivid results of it (10). And of course, a huge corporation (the NFL) making billions of dollars off an entertainment industry (Football) is not likely to embrace anything that threatens the money flow. The reaction to this research should never be dismissed, but this story embellishes the real “big picture” by the multi-billion dollar film industry for the same reason the NFL protects its multi-billion industry. It follows the money.

This film would have been a moderately interesting one-hour long documentary on PBS. But top-draw actors like Will Smith don’t do documentaries. The producers and director understood that such a documentary would be worthless at the box office so they simply used creative license create dramatic impressions for two hours, and they don’t advise the audience that the film is heavily influenced by that dramatic license. In response to critical reviews, the producers state: “The movie is emotionally and spiritually accurate all the way through”. This steaming line of bullshit allows many walk away thinking they’ve seen an authentic documentary.

Otherwise, the actors did a good job, particularly underrated actor David Morse.

It was an interesting drama but I must downgrade this film as it is intentionally disingenuous bordering on deceitful, and I cannot let that stand in an honest review.

It gets two of five extreme close-ups of Will Smiths mouth.

1.  http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2015/12/the_truth_about_will_smith_s_concussion_and_bennet_omalu.html

2. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/17/sports/football/concussion-movie-smears-dave-duerson-his-family-says.html?_r=0

3. http://www.post-gazette.com/ae/movies/2015/12/26/Former-Pittsburgh-Steelers-team-physician-Julian-Bailes-Concussion-movie-takes-few-detours-from-reality/stories/201512260025

4. http://www.breitbart.com/sports/2014/01/13/the-nfl-suicide-epidemic-myth/

5. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/09/sports/football/nfl-players-live-longer-than-men-in-general-population-study-says.html

6. http://www.ajconline.org/article/S0002-9149(11)03387-X/fulltext

7. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26449269

8. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25177413

9. https://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/2015/12/18/nfl-notebook-concussion-subject-bennet-omalu-role-disputed/uOxvpEMEV3g7Nlx24QPHFM/story.html

10. http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1991-06-20/news/9102240520_1_ban-boxing-muhammad-ali-parkinson

Director Ron Howard was interviewed by Charlie Rose recently and proclaimed his more or less newfound love for Computer Generated Interface (CGI). Ron goes way back before this technology and knows how difficult it is to create props for sets. Now he says he can take filmgoers places they could never have visited before. Technically perfect sets depicting virtually anything.

So in his film, “In the Heart of the Sea”, audiences get to see what Nantucket really looked like in 1820, what it looks like close up to harpoon a whale and how a 97 foot long whale could have demolished a full sized tall ship. True to form for all Howard films, the story line is impeccable and the cinematography is spectacular, given more perspective by gentle 3-D technology. Truly, this is a film that simply could not be filmed without CGI. “Bruce the shark” really is no more.

BTW, Director JJ Abrams is said to be spending millions of dollars creating the new “Star Wars” with minimal CGI and real sets. He thinks the visual impact will be radically different. We shall see soon.

As the story proceeds, young, unknown author Herman Melville (Ben Whishaw) tracks down Tom Nickerson (Brendan Gleeson), the only surviving crew member of whale ship “Essex”. The real 1820 destruction of a this whaling vessel by a murderously pissed off bull sperm whale and the events that follow. Melville feels that Nickerson’s personal account will inspire his next novel but after hearing the account over a drunken evening, he decides to use the story as an “inspiration” rather than writing a historical biography. What emerges is “Moby Dick”, one of the literary classics of all time.

This is the second film Howard has directed Chris Hemsworth (recalled from his barefoot emergency room entrance in “Rush” (2014), inciting instant estrogen storm). Hemsworth is a very underrated actor who did an excellent job in this film, appreciated by guys too.

Also, as I have mentioned in the past, there is a big difference in the visions of directors. Some (Alejandro González Iñárritu) hand over a loose plot, then mandate the actors to fully explore it according to their own vision. Others, specifically Ron Howard, (American Graffiti, Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind, Rush) presents his vision of the script and then directs the actors how to fulfill it. Expertly, I think.

The only problem with this film, if there is one, is that it explores a plot that really doesn’t pique the interest of most filmgoers. The CGI issue is a double-edged sword. The creativity aspect can be overwhelmed by its use to blitz viewers with pyrotechnic, gratuitous violence, something to which many have become accustomed and acclimatized. Sometimes it can’t save an otherwise pedestrian script.

The (other) reviews have not been stellar. One of the critics hit it hard: “The movie doesn’t know Dick.” The scenes of the big whale saving the crew are interesting, but if the whale is the most captivating screen presence, it should probably appear for more than a few minutes. The rest is a variation on the theme of “Lost” (TV Series) and “Cast Away” (2000).

I think it’s an entertaining film for the really outstanding cinematography and worth munching popcorn in a 3-D theater, but don’t expect much more.

I give it three of five whale tail slaps.

•  Eagerly Awaited, (end of December), “The Revenent” by Alejandro González Iñárritu. Underrated Leonardo DiCaprio and rapidly upcoming Tom Hardy promises to be very interesting.