Scanners

When “Scanners” debuted in 1981, it was quite the talk of the schoolyard. “My big brother’s girlfriend’s cousin went to a midnight showing! A guy’s head really blows up! This girl at the theater ran out screaming!” Lord knows my mom would never let me see a weirdo Canadian horror film like that. When I finally viewed it decades later, I wish I’d seen it when I was 15. Corporate-weaponized mind readers (who somehow never know when someone’s sneaking up on them) trying to blow each other’s brains out (so to speak) required a little too much suspension of disbelief.

A Fighting Man

I could tell “A Fighting Man” (2014) was filmed in Canada. The trees didn’t look American. Like Canada, this film is quieter and less interesting, but in an acceptable sort of way. It’s a cliché boxing movie about a washed-up pug with one last chance for redemption. Or something, I couldn’t tell for sure what. The script was trying so hard to be self-consciously profound, it made me cringe, remembering back to when I was an obliviously crappy 22-year-old fiction writer. Ever wondered what an exact 5 was on a 1-10 movie quality scale? Then go see “A Fighting Man.”