very large rocks) but the scene we need is (inevitably) in the hospital. Our poor patient has suffered terribly and is covered with bandages. The only part of them exposed is the left eye. When a sweet-looking nurse arrives, momentarily we think all will be well. But when she says ‘Just lie still. I’m going to give you something to make you feel even better’ and produces the mega-syringe, we know what’s about to happen.
Lesson learned Being stabbed in the eye by a crazed nurse with a 9cm needle is a rare occurrence these days. The American healthcare reforms have largely eliminated homicidal maniacs pretending to be medics. Rest easy.
FIRE IN THE SKY (1993)
Last one. You’ve done so well. The final test comes with the last fifteen minutes of this 1993 science fiction horror yarn based on an alleged true story. It’s Arizona, there are loggers and there’s a UFO. Main logger guy is abducted but released after apparently undergoing a session with the aliens that makes Potters Bluff look like Notting Hill. Abattoir-loving spacemen with tortoise heads cover him with a membrane, then reach for their handyman selection of clamps, drills and chisels. Just as logger guy is thinking he might get away with a little extra-terrestrial Botox, the galaxy’s biggest drill descends from the ceiling. It is mounted with – you guessed it – an enormous needle, and it is heading straight for his right eye. There’s a deafening clanging that fills the room and logger guy gets his Gloucester-in-King-Lear moment.
Lesson learned All things considered, it isn’t that different to flying Ryanair.
LAUGHING GAS
Movies to Tickle the Funny Bone
Downbeat endings may be ‘artistically valid’, but there are times when an audience just wants to laugh. On those occasions when only Dr Giggles will do (though not Dr Giggles, the terrible slasher movie), Doctors Kermode and Mayo prescribe . . .
LAUREL AND HARDY IN THE MUSIC BOX (1932)
‘Get that piano out of that box!’
BUSTER KEATON IN THE GENERAL (1926)
Keaton loads a cannon which promptly takes aim at him in one of silent cinema’s most celebrated runaway train gags.
GENE WILDER’S ‘FRONKENSTEEN’ AND MARTY FELDMAN’S IGOR IN YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN (1974)
‘Tonight we shall ascend into the heavens, we shall mock the earthquake, we shall command the thunders, and penetrate into the very womb of impervious nature herself!’
WOODY ALLEN AND DIANE KEATON IN ANNIE HALL (1977)
‘I think what we got on our hands is a dead shark.’
EAR, NOSE & THROAT
Anyone who has been to a multiplex in recent years will know that two things have gone up: ticket prices and volume. Going to see a major blockbuster in a big cinema is now as loud as going to a Motörhead concert – Mad Max: Fury Road cleaned most of the wax out of the Movie Doctors’ ears. In our own version of an ENT clinic, we offer advice about tinnitus, nose jobs and how to choose a good dentist. No need to thank us – it’s all part of the service.
EARACHE
How the Movies Can Cure Your Tinnitus
Strictly speaking, tinnitus is not an illness, it’s a condition. There are no measurable symptoms but the constant ringing in the ears – a pulsing, never-ending, clangorous, nerve-shredding interference – should be familiar to cinemagoers who have experienced the aural sensation of any Michael Bay film. The effects can vary from mild (The Lionel Ritchie Collection, 2003) to total-pain-in-the-ass (Transformers, 2007).
As a youth you may have strayed too close to the front of a concert and stood unnervingly near to the speaker stack – you paid the price. Later you may have turned your headphones up beyond the European recommended limits – you coped with the consequences of your foolishness. You may have witnessed a party of five-year-old boys just after the Haribo kicked in and just before the entertainer (not to be confused with The Entertainer, the 1960 Laurence Olivier movie or ‘The Entertainer’ from the soundtrack to The Sting (1973)). The aftermath was with you for days.
Prescribing films for tinnitus is a tricky task. Silent movies are a disaster (although, as Dr Kermode is constantly reminding us, ‘silent cinema was never silent – actually, it was quite noisy’). Gentle, softly spoken movies won’t work either, as everything will take place with the seemingly incessant chirruping of a thousand crickets in the background.
What is needed is a big, thumping, flamboyant film to distract and console. This might appear counter-intuitive: why go see a noisy movie if tinnitus is your problem?
Here’s the answer: YOLO. There is no cure for tinnitus so you might as well forget it for a while and take in some meaningful noise instead. There is good noise and bad noise. The Movie Doctors have selected these films for having the right kind of noise. The coolest headphones are noise-cancelling headphones. These films are head noise-cancelling films.
INTERSTELLAR (2014)
A film you don’t hear with your ears. Bypassing that buzzing in your head, you hear Interstellar with your chest. You feel it in your diaphragm (this won’t work if you’re watching it on a phone. Or if you are using any fewer than the 1,000 speakers per channel system recommended by your local IMAX/THX/Dolby dealer.
When it was first released, some viewers complained about the sound, arguing that they couldn’t hear the dialogue above all the effects and Hans Zimmer’s score. This isn’t tinnitus, this is idiocy (see ‘Films for Idiots’ below). Director Christopher Nolan has said that he and sound designer Richard King mixed the movie over a six-month period, using dialogue as a sound effect. You are not supposed to hear what Matthew McConaughey is saying. It’s the Tom Waits school of enunciation. And anyway, what’s a little ringing in the ears compared with the time-warping bedlam of inter-universe space travel?
ALADDIN (1992)
A riot of flamboyant distraction which will quieten your infuriating, roaring head for all of its ninety minutes’ running time. Magic carpets, silk pantaloons, palaces, jewellery, curly slippers, treasure, the world’s grumpiest parrot, the Sphinx, singing, bazaars and dastardly moustaches – what more does your tired and noisy brain need?
The big, dazzling, fabulous star is of course the genie, as played by Robin Williams. It doesn’t really matter that the other characters
