Be Kind, Please Rewind

He’s an Ear Drummer. He’s the…

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Week of Smarch 17, 2011

I play per-concussion. First up…

The Fighter

The best thing about being a boxer is that after retiring due to all those concussions, you’re primed for a career in the NHL.

Unfortunately, the aged boxer in this drama can’t ice-skate.

Sick of being a stepping-stone for other, better fighters, ‘Irish’ Mickey Ward (Mark Wahlberg) decides to make an honest go of it.

Trained in the shadow of his once triumphant, now strung-out older half-brother Dicky (Christian Bale) and mismanaged by his controlling mother Alice (Melissa Leo), Mickey goes nowhere.

It is not until he meets a fiery waitress (Amy Adams) that he decides to look out for his own best interest, and ditch his family.

Striking the perfect balance between great acting, superb directing and a terrific script, this true-life boxing bout packs a wallop.

Furthermore, unlike other man-on-man sports, boxing doesn’t end with the fighters on the ground with their heads cradled in each other’s crotches.  0

Hereafter

Receiving messages from the dead would be easier if everyone would just remember to die with their cell phone in their hand…oh wait, they do.

Unfortunately, the clairvoyant in this drama is incommunicado.

Believing that his gift to speak to the dead is a curse, a once famed psychic, now blue-collar worker, George (Matt Damon), retreats to a life of loneliness.

Meanwhile, a French journalist (Cécile de France) who survived a tsunami releases a book about her near death experience.

Elsewhere, a surviving twin (Frankie McLaren) seeks the service of charlatans in hopes of reaching his dead brother. 

Eventually, all three vastly different lives intersect.

A haphazard and somewhat tedious foray into the realm of spiritual and serendipitous occurrences, Hereafter is split between too smart and too dumb.

Besides, the only time strangers are likely to come together through spiritual means is when the same phone psychic rips them off.  0

***Belfast and the Furious***

Luck of the Irish

The reason the Irish are so lucky is because they bathe in the blood of Leprechauns.

And while it is unfortunate that this family-comedy doesn’t address the issue of exploiting wee folk, it does speak to their inexplicable good fortune.

When Kyle (Ryan Merriman)–star basketball player and luckiest kid in school–loses his lucky coin, he finds himself reverting into a leprechaun.

Informed by his mother that he is of little people linage, and that losing the charm means no more luck or human guise, Kyle and his grandfather (Henry Gibson) set out to reclaim the family heirloom from the impish faerie that stole it.

While this Disney Channel Original Movie is reminiscent of others like it, i.e. horrible acting, ridiculous dialogue and infantile plot, its shrewd manipulation of Irish stereotypes and fey folklore sets it apart.

Besides, becoming a leprechaun isn’t so bad – who needs all their limbs?

He’s a Leprechaun Artist. He's the...

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