2019: A Year in Review

Like most years, 2019 seemed to pass by all too quickly, like KFC through your digestive tract. On their own, every moment seems so insubstantial, but each one bears the weight of each that preceded it, so that to examine one in any detail is to stare into that terrible abyss of all of the other moments that had to happen for that single one to come to pass. How many civilizations had to rise and fall, how many people had to die, how much cosmic chaos had to unfold just so that I could buy a couple more blu-rays or spend time at the finest amusement parks Canada has to offer?

The answer: a lot. I honour their memory in my own way and at my own pace, which is the only way one can, really. And so it is that I mark the passing of time with this rundown of some of my own personal memorable moments from 2019, that likely have no significance to anybody else in the universe.

The Joke's On You... We Are All Clowns: Some Days, It Just Seems to Rain Crazy

The door to Ryebone's apartment was slightly ajar when I arrived, and immediately the hairs on the back of my neck were standing on end. I didn't know what this omen boded, but I knew better than to let my guard down whenever he was involved. Carefully, I pushed open the door and closed it behind me as I entered the apartment into near total darkness. Almost immediately, I nearly tripped over a pile of empty beer bottles and the body of a semi-naked woman. After checking her pulse to make sure she was still alive (I'd learned my lesson the last time I found a body in Ryebone's apartment), I made my way further into what can only be described as a den of debauchery.

I flicked on the nearest light switch to find the place littered with an array of empty bottles and cans, pizza boxes, and bongs of such multitudinous shape and variety that it would put most head shops to shame. As I made my way into the living room, I found the heart of what was surely one of the last Great Banquets. Even more refuse cluttering nearly every available surface was all that remained of an extravagant feast of apparently nearly every type of alcohol and fast food imaginable. The only obviously clear path on the floor was between Rybone's couch and the bathroom.

Decoherece of Expectations. Into the Inevitable Beyond

We all aim to be the best possible version of ourselves, however we choose to define the specific benchmarks by which we measure our achievements and our character. Who we are is the sum total of the choices we make, and in the absence of an alternate reality that we could use as a control group, we have no idea whether those choices are the best possible considering the circumstances or, barring all alternatives, the least worst choice.

And no, this is not about that expired yogurt I ate from the back of the fridge this week for lunch. At least, not entirely. (Seriously, the expiry date is like the Pirate Code: it's more like guidelines. Right? RIGHT?)

Coherence is one of the best films of the last decade that you've probably never heard of and one of the greatest cinematic theses on this very topic. (The identity thing, not the yogurt thing.) In an era where blockbusters dominate the cultural conversation in terms of film, truly inventive, experimental, or otherwise deranged movies tend to get lost in the shuffle. Coherence (directed by James Ward Byrkit) is one of those films that falls into the latter category, a movie made for the love of the game rather than as another puzzle piece in cracking the formula for cranking out billion dollar films. Don't get me wrong; I love a crowd-pleasing blockbuster. I also love smaller movies that expect a little bit more out of their audiences, and require more engagement but also delve deeper into the human condition. Sometimes you crave the orgy; some nights you just want to cuddle.

Son of a Gunn: Checking the Urine Content of Your Local Digital Swimming Pool

So, you're a giant megacorporation and you've fired a talented director from one of your most profitable movie franchises based on a targeted campaign of hate from a real-life lewd, crude, rude, bag of pre-chewed food dude. What do you do? Trick question: If you're Disney, you can do whatever the fuck you want, completely unchecked by law, reason, or decency.

Last July, Disney fired director James Gunn from the Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. III film for some off-colour jokes he made on Twitter a decade previous. This was based largely on a malicious and converted effort led by Mike Cernovich, Internet troll, conspiracy theorist, men's rights activist, and all-around despicable human being.

A little less than a month ago, Walt Disney Studios chairman Alan Horn seemed to completely reverse course as Disney announced that they had rehired Gunn for the Guardians Vol. III gig. While this seems like a victory for James Gunn, audiences and fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and decency at large, I still can't help but feel like there are no real winners here.

Supernova: Of Combustion and Cosmic Matter on the Big Stage

A Star Is Born is a story that seems destined to be retold as long as a single Hollywood producer has even a single dollar left to their name. It makes a certain kind of sense; like most people, people in Hollywood like to talk about themselves. There's a reason movies like The Artist and Birdman tend to get a lot of recognition come awards season, and it's the same reason the dicks of every man you know get a lot of extra attention on lonely Friday nights at home alone. The masturbatory urge isn't self-destructive or antisocial, rather it is as comforting in its familiarity as it is reassuring in its final, inevitable result.

Each iteration of A Star is Born is built on a foundation of anxieties unique to Hollywood and the entertainment industry in general. The 2018 version follows the same mould as its previous versions as far as basic plot points go: a male music superstar, Jackson Maine (Bradley Cooper), mumbling his way through life one sold out show after another has a chance encounter with an struggling, female singer, Ally (Lady Gaga), they fall in love, he helps catapult her to success, their relationship goes through a rough patch, his own star begins to fade, he dies tragically,  and she moves forward through the grief while honouring his legacy.

At a surface level, A Star is Born is a romantic drama, but at its heart, it's a retelling and reinforcement of a core part of Hollywood mythology. In an industry and a profession where success is as fleeting and as fickle as it is difficult to attain in the first place, it makes a certain kind of sense that fame would be integral to its lore.

Total Recall and Other Tall Tales. Reality is as Reality Does... When is an Alien Artifact Not an Alien Artifact?

Paul Verhoeven's movies are almost as well-known by this point for being chronically misunderstood as they are for their over-the-top violence and sex and their underlying subversive social commentary. His storytelling style is perhaps one of the most unique in the history of film, and it is both the most significant factor in understanding the core messages of his films and the largest hindrance. This is not the fault of Verhoeven, but more of a testament to the failure of educational systems to truly instill a foundation of media literacy in audiences at large.

The films of Paul Verhoeven are almost paradoxical in their execution; they simultaneously revel in and rebel against the actual literal content being shown on screen. On the one hand, they can be enjoyed by audiences at face value for the sheer visceral absurdity of the whole spectacle, but for all of their ultraviolent bluster, their core messages are almost always the exact opposite of (or at least vastly different from) what you might assume they would be considering the subject matter. The thing that causes so much confusion among audiences in understanding Verhoeven's films goes beyond the normal complexities that can be involved in decoding various garden varieties of irony and satire; his work is simultaneously completely obvious but intentionally cryptic. It's like being invited into somebody's house for dinner while standing there watching a wrecking crew demolishing that same house. The intention is genuine, but the execution is enigmatic.

Yours, Enemy Mine, and Ours

Enemy Mine tells the heartwarming story of how Dennis Quaid overcomes space racism in either the not-too-distant or incredibly distant future. I'm not sure exactly, and the film isn't too big on specifics of chronology. The movie is truly an artifact of its time, that time being the 1980s. In fact, if one were to describe the genre of Enemy Mine, it would be "The 1980s", with "drama," and "science fiction" close second- and third-place finishers.  It was the kind of one-shot, high-concept sci-fi story that wouldn't get made today without studio interference insisting on a shared universe or a movie trilogy or decent editing.

I'm not going to argue that Enemy Mine is some masterwork of cinema, though. I love this film dearly, but by god, there are a lot of elements in terms of editing, writing, and special effects that are either glaringly, objectively bad, or have not aged well at all. Especially considering that the director, Wolfgang Petersen, had just come off of a career high with the critically acclaimed submarine war drama Das Boot, something just doesn't add up. I mean, this is the guy who is also known for other big budget films like Air Force One and Troy that were well-made films.

Under the Gunn: Disney and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Decision

By now, you've most likely heard the tragic tale of the firing of James Gunn as Disney decided to go in a different direction with the director of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3. It's a tale as old as time: man begins his film career with low-budget, ultra-violent films and develops fan following, that same man makes some off-colour jokes on Twitter involving paedophilia, years later that man is hired by a giant megacorporation to direct a movie starring a lesser-known pantheon of comic book characters that fits into a larger cinematic universe, after making that megacorporation a shitload of money an angry, belligerent Internet troll digs up those old jokes, the megacorporation - who was already well aware of those jokes - summarily fires that director to get out ahead of a controversy that doesn't even exist. Classic.

What should have been a mere blip in the cultural radar turned into a full-on, foot-long shit sandwich with all the fixings. This whole crazy ride is extremely troubling for several reasons. Not only did a global corporation very publicly summarily dismiss somebody without any pretense of due process or the slightest evidence of forethought or careful consideration, they did it based on off colour remarks he made in his own free time in his private life. Even worse, Disney's decision to fire James Gunn seems to have been entirely based on the campaign of a well-known and admitted shit-disturbing troll who set out with the express purpose to specifically get Mr. Gunn fired, and shows no demonstrable proof that he actually believes that the director's jokes about rape or paedophelia were indicative of any actual real-world wrong-doing.

I Feel Like a Million Dollars, But Nobody's Picked up the Tab Yet... Amy Schumer is Better than Hitler, and So Can You

The Internet has proven to be a revolutionary force, not just in terms of communication on a global scale, but in terms of how it has impacted society as a whole. And while it has also made clear that very rarely can any significant cross-section of people agree on anything, even pizza toppings (I will never understand the hate for pineapple), there are a few general, truths (nearly) universally agreed upon that the Internet has illuminated:

1) We like watching people have sex. A lot.
2) Everybody is literally worse than Hitler.
3) People really seem to hate Amy Schumer.

Honestly, that last one never made a lot of sense to me. It always seemed that Amy Schumer, for whatever reason, has attracted a disproportionate amount of vitriol from the usual gang of (online) idiots. The only verifiable controversy that ever seemed to justify any level of ire was accusations of ripping off some jokes from other comedians, which seemed to fizzle out fairly quickly. The only thing that came to mind was that some of the misogyny that has somehow found a fertile environment in which to fester in the nether regions of the Internet had reared its ugly head, and Schumer was a woman working to be successful in a field traditionally dominated by men and was famous enough to draw the attention of adoring fans and unprincipled assholes alike. Upon further consideration of all of the plethora of evidence available from that self-same Internet, it then occurred to me that all of the vitriol directed at Amy Schumer wasn't because she was a woman and famous or a woman and a trailblazer.

It was simply because she was a woman.

Star Wars Episode III: The Sith, The Clones, and the Jedi

“A Kansas City Shuffle is when everybody looks right, you go left.” – Mr. Goodkat, Lucky Number Sleven

I remember going to the theatre to see Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith for the first time, and kind of being blown away by the opening sequence. I couldn’t shake the feeling that George Lucas had completely pulled the rug out from under the audience in the best of ways. As Lucas himself has pointed out, Star Wars and its subsequent sequels and prequels have always been essentially modern-day fairy tales with the requisite binary morality. Revenge of the Sith still falls along this spectrum, but if all of the previous Star Wars films were the sanitized Disney versions, then Revenge of the Sith is straight up, motherfucking Brothers Grimm. Revenge of the Sith is the version of Cinderella where her stepsisters cut off their own toes in order to have their feet fit the glass slipper only to be found out due to the copious amounts of blood easily visible in transparent footwear.

After two prequels worth of the typical Star Wars fare, Revenge of the Sith takes a dark turn early on that I don’t think a lot of people expected despite knowing where the story had to go. Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back is still hands down today the highest regarded film out of the saga among nearly any group of fans that you ask and is touted as being dark, but I think that Revenge of the Sith takes the mantle for the darkest entry any day of the week. The moment that indicated that this was going to be a different kind of Star Wars was the confrontation between Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) and Count Dooku (Christopher Lee) that ended in Anakin not just dismembering the good Count by cutting off both of his hands but then by brutally decapitating him once he is subdued and no longer a threat. Watching Dooku’s head bounce away like a tennis ball being chased by your pet nexu signalled a turning point in both the film and the series. In a film series that never shied away from casual dismemberment, there is something a lot more sinister here, something that “Oh shit” just doesn’t quite cover.