Concussion (2016) - Movie Review

This film is about American football or, as we in Australia call it, 'Baby’s First Ball Sport'. All that padding, the overblown halftime shows, the terminology that makes calculus look straight forward by comparison; I don’t ‘get’ the point of most sports to begin with, but this especially. Or, at the very least, its sheer enormity in terms of deemed importance. Then again, that’s probably a side effect of growing up where the national sport (excluding cricket and outrunning the cassowary) is essentially the same thing only we don’t think little things like protective gear are necessary. Save for cups because, when given the option to protect only one head, only one in a million would choose a helmet. Anyway, long story short, this is going to be another one of those situations where I am going to be a bit more perplexed than the general populace about the importance of the film’s subject matter. Well, as far as the reason why the people involved are getting permanently injured, at least.

Everest (2015) - Movie Review

Way back when, long before YouTube put Andy Warhol’s words to their most logical extreme, great feats of physical endurance were usually carried out with some reward of societal achievement backing it: Swimming unfathomably long stretches of water, navigating ungodly deserts and scaling unimaginably high mountains; history has put a lot of weight behind the people who did these things first. Now, humanity seems to have stopped caring as much about discovering new frontiers to conquer (on Earth, at least) and now want to share the experience as much as possible. It could be argued that this idea of hosting events where these previously-superhuman feats are available to the everyman cheapen the challenge of the event itself, but there is a feeling of bringing the world closer together through collective experience that gives it some urgency. This is why the idea of scaling Mt. Everest, barring my own aversion to physical exercise, is weirdly appealing despite the very clear danger involved. Something tells me that the idea is going to be substantially less appealing after sitting through today’s subject.