Remembering 2018, My Thirteenth Year Of Blogging (Part Two)

For years, I thought I had properly ejected my Kingston flash drive.  Any time I would get that message that files were in use, I clicked past the warning and it always said it was safe to remove.  Then I would pull it out.

As I found out the hard way, it was never safe to remove your flash drive in this manner.  My dumb 7-year mistake caught up with me big time when I discovered one memorable winter night all my files had been corrupted and couldn’t be retrieved.  This was scarier than any horror film I’d seen this year.  All that writing, some pictures, some uninstalled programs, important writing research, gone.

Or so I thought.  Thanks to a couple of free online data retriever programs, most of the writing and a few photos but none of the other stuff was safely recovered and saved again.  Phew!  I’m hoping at some point to retrieve more of my lost data, if possible.

So, what was the problem?  Whenever I open a Word file and then close it, Windows keeps the program active.  All I had to do was close a particular process that makes this happen, then click to eject which doesn’t produce a warning at all.  It only says you can now remove your device no problem.

In summary, you can’t safely eject your flash drive if the CVH-EXE *32 process is still active.  Close that before you proceed.  Hard lesson learned.

But that wasn’t my most embarrassing personal moment.

Just days before I worked my eighth Canadian election in early June, my second as an information assistant, I was trying to kill a flying black bug that had landed high up on my bedroom wall.  I couldn’t reach it from where I stood so I took this green step stool and placed it on this step that divides my two rooms in my family’s house.  When I climbed up to the top, I didn’t realize how unsturdy it was.  In a matter of seconds, the chair went one way and I landed hard on my thigh the other way.  It produced the biggest, purplest bruise I ever had.  I should’ve taken a picture and done a piece about it.  It looked like a tattoo of a distant planet.

Pressing on it was painful and it would take several weeks before it would finally heal.  Undeterred by the bump, I resolved myself to kill this goddamn bug.  I climbed the step stool one more time, very cautiously, and accomplished my mission.  Later on that summer, another bug landed on the wall.  And once again I climbed.  I didn’t fall and the pest was exterminated.  I got this now.

Speaking of bugs and pests, it wasn’t a great year for Donald Trump, what with all the investigations he’s currently facing for historic corruption.  In early January, Vanity Fair reporter Michael Wolff released his best-selling book Fire And Fury: Inside The Trump White House which pretty much confirmed what the press had been reporting for two and a half years.  I didn’t get a chance to read it until October.  Rather than do a proper review, I did a four-part series focusing on what I called its “curious moments”.

That same month, the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward unveiled Fear: Trump In The White House, another scathing bestseller that, like the Wolff tome, focused more on insider gossip than the damage the administration is doing to human rights and the environment.  It inspired a 6-part series that dove into its many revelations.

When I wasn’t trying to get my ISP to fix my bad dial-up connection to no avail (and being put on hold to listen to the same 4 tunes over and over for an hour, only 2 of which were catchy), I was having more issues with Twitter beyond not being able to link paste.

First, there was the brief warning about calling out Hulk Hogan for being a racist.  (I got a 12-hour limited ban which seemed to instantaneously disappear since I didn’t notice any restrictions whatsoever.)  Then, there was what happened on election night in America.

During the midterms, as I’ve done during previous elections, I tweeted and retweeted the results as they were coming in, as well as interesting observations from fellow users.  Apparently, I was overdoing this and Twitter suddenly locked my account which thankfully lasted for only a day.  After failing to get through that ridiculous test to unlock it, I complained through email and got back on again.  To their credit, they apologized twice and acknowledged that their algorithms mistook me for a bot.  As aggravated as all of us users get about the site (some more justifiably than others), I hate not having access.

In a year filled with disappointments and heartbreak, the Winter Olympics in South Korea were a delightful exception.  For us Canadians, it has become must see TV thanks to our incredible athletes who once again collectively delivered an astonishing performance capturing 29 medals, our greatest achievement thus far.  As usual, the games were so entertaining I had to write about it.  The semi-jokey Unofficial 2018 Winter Olympics Awards was the resulting effort.  Our tally was even more impressive when you consider we had no Golds in skiing, ice hockey or four-person curling.

Finally, let’s talk about movies, my number one passion.  I screened and graded close to 240 titles in 2018, my highest annual total since I start doing this back in the fall of 1990 when I was entering Grade 10 and looking for something different to write about for my school publications.  While I didn’t see as many good films (21 compared to 41 in 2017), I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to continue to play much needed catch-up after that eight-year period between 2006 and 2014 where I barely assessed anything.

Like 2017, out of the 40-something reviews posted here, most were about horror movies.

The best was Room 237, a fascinatingly loony documentary about the many conspiracy theories surrounding Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining.  What was the worst?  Probably Hide And Go Shriek, a long forgotten slasher film set in a closed furniture store.  There’s a good reason no one remembers it.

In between were more disappointments like Martin, the puzzling, overrated George A. Martin misfire, Winchester, It’s Alive, and Warm Bodies.  Some horror films are so bad, you have to write about them.  Hide And Seek, Shutter, White Of The Eye, Warlock: The Armageddon, Jeepers Creepers 3, Bad Moon, A Woman’s Torment and Crawlspace all failed to achieve true terror with their often convoluted concepts.

The Car, featuring a young James Brolin two years before he starred in The Amityville Horror, might be the silliest possession movie ever made.  The barely seen Spellbinder, featuring a young, glamourous Kelly Preston, is one of the most predictable.  The original Flatliners is well-acted and has an intriguing premise, but nearly 30 years after I first saw it at the cinema, it lacks genuine scares now.  The First Purge is easily the best of the Purge movies thanks to two breakout performances but it hasn’t resolved the problems that plagued its far worse predecessors.

Poor Morris Chestnut.  How far he has fallen since Boyz N The Hood.  In both The Perfect Guy and When The Bough Breaks, he is targeted by a psycho who either has feelings for him or unrequited lust for his leading lady.  He only survives in one.  He deserves better than signing on for these mostly routine thrillers.

Which leads us to The Snowman.  This slow-moving sludge got carved up by the critics and was almost completely ignored by moviegoers, killing any future plans for sequels.  Having finally screened it, this is not a shocker.  I didn’t think it was as bad as some reviewers asserted, but certainly not worth a two-hour investment.

The torturous Death Wish was remade and felt very out of place in this era of low crime and unnecessary police violence.  The deluded Kick-Ass even more so.  Vin Diesel can thank his lucky stars that the lucrative franchises he abandoned nearly 20 years ago have since welcomed him back but if this means more obnoxious dreck like XXX: Return Of Xander Cage, then count me out.

In this post-9/11 era, propaganda actioners like Olympus Has Fallen and its follow-up London Has Fallen have become the unfortunate norm.  The sooner we end the war on Muslims, the better.

Volcano is no better than Dante’s Peak and Just Cause wastes the talents of Ed Harris, Sean Connery and Laurence Fishburne.

Now I didn’t just subject myself to terrible horror films, crime stories and action thrillers.  There were also godawful comedies.

I don’t know what happened to Eddie Murphy but A Thousand Words might be the worst film he’s ever made.  No wonder it was delayed for nearly half a decade.  Although it has its fans, Bad Words exposes Jason Bateman’s biggest ongoing problem as an actor:  his unfunny smarminess.  I never thought I would see him in anything worse than Teen Wolf Too.  I stand corrected.

The most memorable thing about 17 Again is Matthew Perry’s large noggin.  And after 30 years, Cocktail‘s painful sexism is undeniable.

Animated comedies fared no better.  I reviewed two this year:  the laughless Kung Fu Panda and The Last Unicorn, which was truly bizarre.  I can’t get over that three-titted vulture and that bosomy tree.  How many childhoods were tainted by this film, I wonder.

But there were bright spots.  I thoroughly enjoyed Jason Statham’s ass-kicking turn in The Transporter and I was absolutely delighted by all the mayhem in the amusing, genuinely thrilling Jurassic World.  There are wonderful, rare musical performances in Festival Express, and Rush: Beyond The Lighted Stage lovingly pays tribute to Canada’s greatest musical export.  They should expand it into a proper series because they left out a lot of important details and revelations.

I had never seen the original theatrical cut of Richard Donner’s Superman (just numerous director’s edits) so it was a treat to write about it.  (Too bad I barfed in my original promotional garbage can, bought at a grocery store and now tragically discarded, 18 years ago.)  After watching Superman & The Mole-Men and Man Of Steel, I decided to do a triple-review.  Bookending the 1978 blockbuster, I wasn’t nearly as fond of them, unfortunately.  Christopher Reeve is so sorely missed.

As we approach the beginning of 2019, despite all the sadness we’ve experienced, the frustration and anger we collectively felt throughout this monstrous year, goddamn it, let’s stay hopeful.  Let’s resolve to get things right, to straighten out, to smarten up, to fix what’s broken, to not feel powerless anymore and aim for greatness.

Special thanks, as always, to all my loyal Twitter and WordPress followers for reading, commenting and visiting.

Happy New Year, everybody!

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Monday, December 31, 2018
10:28 p.m.

Remembering 2018, My Thirteenth Year Of Blogging (Part One)

What a strange year this has been.  There’s no other way to put it, is there?

Then again, maybe strange isn’t a strong enough descriptor.  What about bizarre?  Or infuriating?  Or annoying?  Or apocalyptic?  (On Twitter, Buzzfeed’s Jason Leopold used “insane”.)  Maybe it can’t be summed up with one word.  Even a sentence or a paragraph wouldn’t suffice.

As the planet continues to heat up and Donald Trump increases his enemies list, there has been plenty to worry about as we all move towards an uncertain future fraught with more dangers and paranoia.

Mass shootings are at their highest levels in America in decades.  Every week or so, some angry man, usually white, obliterates innocent people, usually women, with automatic weaponry or even their car.  The body count goes up but politicians refuse to solve the problem.

Despite hundreds of prominent men (and a few women) being called out for abusive behaviour by countless victims both famous and powerless, far less have actually paid any kind of longterm price for their criminal actions.  Yes, Cosby got pinched, with Weinstein and Spacey likely to follow.  But hey, there’s James Franco back on TV.  Ditto Dev Schulman, the host of MTV’s Catfish.  And wait a second, isn’t that Sophia Bush posing like a fool on Instagram with Ryan Seacrest, the guy who grabbed his stylist by the pussy?  I thought she was against guys who did that.

With fascism now controlling Brazil and parts of Europe, the ongoing global war against journalists and whistleblowers raging uncontrollably, endless police brutality, political corruption and the ongoing genocides against the stateless Rohingya, the blockaded Palestinians and the starving Yemenis, 2018 has been ugly and destructive.

And yet, incredibly, it hasn’t been all bad.  Eritrea and Ethiopia re-established diplomatic ties after years of violent tension.  Since the Winter Olympics in February, North and South Korea have been in talks to finally end the Korean War, the first real sign of peace in the peninsula in decades.  And neoliberalism is being soundly rejected by pissed off global citizens hungry for an alternative to austerity and authoritarianism.

As for this website, well, let’s just say this wasn’t the greatest year.

Hits have plummeted.  After reaching a peak of nearly 40000 in both 2015 and 2016, The Writings Of Dennis Earl was viewed slightly more than half of that total.  As recently as 2016, I was still getting about 30000 annual hits.

What happened?  Well, for one, my tweets are no longer automatically published on Facebook, a policy that went into effect a few months ago.  And I have a sinking suspicion that when people do Google searches, my pieces are not coming up in the first few pages anymore.

Then again, it’s been three years since I last blogged for The Huffington Post, which greatly raised my profile in 2014.  While I still have close to 750 Twitter followers (it was 800 before dozens were mysteriously dropped from my list during one of several purges this year), I have less than 200 website followers.  And in recent years, with more time spent screening and grading movies than writing, interest has clearly dwindled.

It’s time to change that.  For a while, I’ve been thinking of experimenting with new ideas and concepts.  I’ve long thought about doing short fiction and have even had the idea of posting a novel chapter by chapter in this space.  I miss doing entertainment history pieces, too.  I haven’t quite figured out what to do exactly just yet but I’m hopeful that mixing it up will improve readership numbers, something I had taken for granted these last couple of years.

I didn’t write nearly as many poems this year as in the past.  But as always, they were more inspired by reality than fantasy.  Or in one case, both.

On January 2nd, I was shocked to receive a Direct Message from porn star Desirae Spencer.  I’ve had a massive crush on her for years and was delighted that she wrote such thoughtful, complimentary things about me and my writing.  Her life is fascinating.  There is so much more to her than her insatiable sexuality.  There is a kindness that extends beyond her interactions with me.  I wrote her a long reply but sadly, didn’t receive one in return.  I guess there was a part of me that was hoping we would exchange private messages throughout the year beyond the occasional public tweets we’ve continued to send each other.  That said, it’s really cool that she’s a Twitter follower and we do still chat briefly from time to time.

There was a gallery I remember seeing online years ago of her having sex with a guy in her kitchen.  That inspired A Banquet Of Desire where I imagined myself in his place.  I don’t know if she’s seen it.  I was too shy to point it out to her when it was first posted.

Almost a week after that, I had a falling out with someone I used to respect on Twitter.  She’s a prominent activist who has done exemplary work combating violence against women.  But I’ve always been annoyed with her White Feminism, particularly her stubborn support of Hillary Clinton.  The Point was inspired by a testy exchange we had over Natalie Portman.  When I complained that she cared more about her fashion than her Zionist politics, her response inspired the poem’s opening line, which became a mantra for the start of all the remaining verses.  This proved to be the end.  I unfollowed and muted her shortly thereafter.  We haven’t spoken since.

I’m a big fan of Queens Of The Stone Age and I really love the song Villains Of Circumstance from their last album.  I had the melody in my head when I wrote Lost At Sea.  If you sing the poem like a verse from that song, it should fit.

When I feel angry or sad, I can get very obsessive in my own head.  That obsessiveness can lead to thinking about terrible moments in my life that for some reason I have to relive intensely for up to a week before I move on and calm down.

I used to go to this gameroom on Facebook where this guy kept insulting me and smearing me.  I’ve written poems about him before because they can be cathartic.  I hadn’t thought about him in a long time so when this ghastly memory resurfaced in my mind for some reason this past summer, I decided to smack him down one last time.

The result was Why Do You Hate Me?  I was curious if he was still on the site (I’ve blocked him for a decade) and sure enough, he is.  He changed his screen name to something stupid which is directly acknowledged in the poem.  It wasn’t until I imagined him being dumped into a giant vat of acid that I was finally able to let go and move on.

Another unwanted memory reemerged last month when I once again wondered if I did the right thing ghosting an older woman I almost met for sex over a decade ago.  (A 13 and a half year slump will do that to you.)  Like my Facebook bully, I had already written about her obliquely numerous times in the past but never had I told the whole story.

You Never Really Wanted Me In Your Bed is the longest, most epic poem I’ve ever penned:  104 lines in 26 verses.  After years of still having doubts, I now realize what a horrible mistake I avoided by not meeting her in person.  We had nothing in common.  I wasn’t comfortable with her.  And at that time, she had so many personal problems, that was the primary reason I was hesitant to take things further.  Her situation, being an angry divorcee with possible addiction problems and confused about what she really wanted, was just too toxic to handle.  I hope she’s in a better place today.  God knows I am by finally accepting this was never going to work.

January was an odd month for me.  Besides connecting with lovely Desirae and the falling out with the activist on Twitter, I had a problem with Amazon.  My best friend of over 30 years once again bought me a gift card for Christmas to use for the site and as before, I ordered four CDs I desperately wanted.  Three came as scheduled.  It was the fourth one that was a no-show.

I really wanted The Best Of OMD, a 30-year-old compilation I could never find in stores.  So when I spotted it really cheap on Amazon.ca, I was thrilled.  There’s this cool thing where you can track your package to see when it will arrive at your house.  The problem was after the order was placed and it left the warehouse where it was stored, there were no further updates.  It was supposed to arrive on a certain date which came and went without a delivery.

What Happened To The Best Of OMD CD I Ordered From Amazon.ca?  We’ll never know.  Thankfully, Amazon has excellent customer service.  I ordered the last copy of The Best Of OMD they had at an even cheaper rate because they gave me $5 off my next purchase and it arrived by courier in just 2 days.  Whoever got the first copy I ordered, I hope you love the music as much as I do.  It really is a terrific collection of old school techno pop hits.

At the start of the year, I had all kinds of ridiculous freak-out moments like this.  For about two weeks or so, I couldn’t cut and paste hyperlinks on my tweets on Internet Explorer.  I figured my computer wasn’t up-to-date which led me to discovering that Windows Update had stopped working for almost two months.  7 important updates weren’t able to come through automatically as before.  I had to manually update them, a process that would continue for other updates for most of the year.  Not that big of a deal but very time consuming because I would get constant error messages before getting the opportunity to download.  I had to unlock Windows Update with the Windows 7 Troubleshooter before I could even check for updates and that sometimes took days.

Then Internet Explorer stopped working altogether.  Opening it up led to crash after crash after crash.  Sometimes, nothing would happen at all.  The good folks at Norton Support gave me an extra month on my Norton Security and during the tweet linking problem in January, I finally downloaded Firefox which gave me a back-up browser.  Eventually the link pasting issue somehow resolved itself.  But then, I went back on Firefox for three months starting in late May while trying to troubleshoot solutions for IE.

I uninstalled/reinstalled.  I cleared my cache.  I reset my settings.  I tried troubleshooters.  Nothing seemed to work.  I talked to Microsoft Support.  They couldn’t help me.  But they did suggest I ask for help on the Microsoft Community Support site which I promptly signed up for.  A very kind gentleman gave me ideas on how to proceed and in the end, he told me Norton Security was likely the culprit based on the files he asked me to send him.

After going back to Norton Support, there was the terrifying suggestion of uninstalling NS to see if that was the issue with IE.  Indeed, I had forgotten the incident three years ago when everybody’s Norton product stopped working because there was an update bug that fucked up Internet Explorer.  It was only after a patch was released that everything was back to normal again.  This time, though, it was just me.

After being reassured NS would be safely reinstalled without losing any of my protected days, I gave them the go-ahead and voila!  Not only was IE11 working perfectly again, Windows Update would eventually go back to doing automatic updates as before, although in the interim I did manually update a couple of times just in case.

But now my comp was temporarily unprotected.  Unfortunately, during a live chat session, the Norton Support person who had uninstalled my NS disappeared and never came back.  The next day, a second person couldn’t figure out how to reinstall the program and they buggered off never to return.  It took a third person to finally get NS back up and running.  I had to do a few days of updating before it was completely secure again.  During this process, IE annoyingly reverted back to crashing upon opening.

In the end, the solution to fixing Internet Explorer was ridiculously simple.  (The Microsoft Community Support guy who was helping me sent me a helpful link.)  I had to update Norton through the Live Update function until everything was up-to-date, restart the computer and try getting back on the browser.  (I had thought I tried this before and for whatever reason, it didn’t work then.)  Even though it takes up to 4 tries sometimes (but usually just 2 or 3), I’m able to get back on again, thankfully.

Here’s the current situation:  I click the “e” and nothing happens.  I give it a few minutes before clicking it again when either it finally opens up or I have to repeat the process 1 or 2 more times before it opens up.  A minor inconvenience compared to earlier when it could take as much as an hour or longer to get it working again.  And that’s only when it was working at all.

Curiously, that was not the most terrifying computer issue I had in 2018.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Monday, December 31, 2018
8:23 p.m.

Standout Moments From 2018 – Part Two (The Bad)

1. The murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.  For years, he was a longtime confidant and unapologetic spokesman for the House of Saud.  Then, in 2016, he publicly criticized then-Presidential candidate Donald Trump, a fateful decision that so angered Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman that Khashoggi was effectively censored.  He never appeared in the Saudi Arabian media ever again.  Relocating to America, he began to turn on MBS, writing critical column after critical column.  While visiting the Saudi Arabian embassy in Istanbul, Turkey to obtain a marriage license, he was tortured and cut into pieces by goons hired by MBS to take him out.  His remains have never been found.  Although there was some political fallout and boycotting by numerous major companies and celebrities, MBS was never punished for ordering the hit.

2. Anthony Bourdain, the host of CNN’s Parts Unknown, killed himself.

3. Donald Trump’s horrendously cruel child separation policy for refugee families.  Chaotically implemented, it has already traumatized innocent people desperate to escape the dangers of their own countries, dangers directly caused by successive American governments, not to mention the preventable deaths of 2 young children.  White supremacy and capitalism go hand in hand.

4. The California wildfires.  Climate change is the apocalypse.

5. Steel City Video closed after 30 successful years in business.  The Hamilton, Ontario stable supplied me with so many movies over the decades I lost count.  I wonder who bought all their porn.

6. Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed as a Supreme Court Justice despite his dishonest, belligerent testimony and numerous accusations of sexual harassment and assault by women, including Christine Blasey Ford, the only victim allowed to appear during a hearing.  We learned nothing from Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill.

7. Gina Haspel became the new CIA Director.  Torture cover-ups get you promotions in the Trump Administration.

8. Hulk Hogan was welcomed back to the WWE three years after being exposed as an anti-Black racist.  He hasn’t changed.

9. The Toronto van attack.

10. Prince Harry’s wedding.  Who gives a shit?

11. Kraftwerk were once again not inducted into The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame.  The band’s massive widespread influence led to the phenomenal rise of EDM and Hip Hop, the top two genres in modern popular music.  So, why do they continue to be disrespected?

12. Life Of The Party.  The worst film of the year.  Melissa McCarthy is the new Chris Farley, wasting her career on dumb, insulting slapstick.

13. Raise Vibration by Lenny Kravitz.  We waited four years for this boring garbage?  The love revolution is putting us to sleep.

14. Roman Reigns announced he was once again diagnosed with leukemia, forcing him to forfeit the Universal Championship.  May he once again recover and live to Superman punch another day.

15. Twitter locked my account for a day because I was retweeting too much about the US midterm elections.  To their credit, they did apologize twice and let me back in.

16. Jian Ghomeshi’s self-serving essay.  He’s not a victim.  He’s a rapist.  He deserves his obscurity.

17. The Kurt Angle/Jason Jordan father/son angle.  Despite this nonsense leading to Jordan winning his first championship (the Raw tag titles with Seth Rollins), it did not get him over with the fans.  Then he got hurt.  Who’s pining for his return?

18. Kanye West’s ignorant statement on TMZ Live where he claimed that “slavery was a choice”.  He also briefly vouched for President Trump (which led to an embarrassing, meandering White House visit) and even wore his stupid Make America Great Again hat.  When he stops making hits, he’ll finally go away.

19. Blade Runner 2049 was not nominated for Best Picture.  One of the best sequels ever made.  The motion picture academy does not understand the importance of science fiction.

20. The Dynamite Kid died.  Shawn Michaels, CM Punk, Bret Hart, Dean Ambrose, Seth Rollins and a whole bunch of luchadores owe the British legend a huge debt of gratitude for making the small man larger than life in the squared circle.  If only his personal life was as honourable.

21. Doug Ford’s Conservatives won the Ontario election.  This doesn’t end well.

22. Mark Lamont Hill was fired from CNN for defending Palestinians and opposing Apartheid Israel’s illegal ongoing occupation during a speech at the UN.  Former AIPAC spokesman Wolf Blitzer wrote a whole book demonizing Arabs and Rick Santorum doesn’t believe Palestinians actually exist but their jobs are safe.  Racists are always protected by capitalism and white supremacy.

23. The uselessness of Primus Canada customer service.  Putting you on hold for an hour without talking to you.  Not taking responsibility for their slow-ass dial-up service which wasn’t always this slow and unstable connection that cuts in and out.  Pretending to solve the problem when nothing has changed.  A total waste of time.

24. George A. Romero died.  Night Of The Living Dead is still timely and relevant.

25. The Edmonton Oilers failed to qualify for the Stanley Cup Playoffs.  Again.

26. The cancellation of Ontario’s updated sex-ed curriculum and guaranteed basic income experiment by Doug Ford’s Conservative government, the latter of which he promised not to do.  He doesn’t care about the poor, LGBT folks, FN or people of colour.

27. Game Night.  Not scary enough to be a thriller.  Not funny enough to be a comedy.

28. Facebook ended its partnership with Twitter to allow users to send tweets to their profile page.  No wonder my hits are way down.

29. Serena Williams’ embarrassing temper tantrum during the US Open Final.  It took away from a historic victory for new champion Naomi Asaka, the first Asian-American woman to ever win the tournament.

30. Aretha Franklin died.

31. The draconian anti-sex trafficking bills FOSTA and SESTA became law.  Sex workers can no longer depend on the Internet to safely screen clients and police are having a much harder time catching actual sex traffickers.  The incoming House Democrats should repeal them both and decriminalize sex work.

32. All the mass shootings in America.  What’s it going to take to end toxic masculinity?

33. The Humboldt Broncos bus crash.  Preventable and horrifying.

34. Fire And Fury: Inside The Trump White House & Fear: Trump In The White House.  Too much gossip about a complicated idiot, not enough dissection of destructive policies and lifetime judicial appointments which are far more important.

35. Gitmo is still open.

36. The Canadian postal strike.  May it be resolved early in the new year.

37. Whistleblower Reality Winner was pressured into taking a plea deal rather than take her chances in court which could’ve led to a decades-long sentence.  She’ll serve five years for leaking to The Intercept.  Abolish the Espionage Act.

38. The Catholic Church child abuse cover-ups.  Thousands of victims in multiple parishes, not a lot of accountability or convictions.  Why does Pope Francis continue to delay structural reforms?

39. Jair Bolsonaro, the fascist homophobe and misogynist, once an outlier on the extreme right, was elected President of Brazil.  Oh, and he doesn’t believe in climate change so good-bye Amazon rainforest.

40. Nikolai Volkoff died.  No more stirring renditions of the Soviet National Anthem from the Croatian-born grappler and former world tag team champion.

41. The restoration of the Iran sanctions by President Trump.  They’ve always honoured the nuclear deal.  But the neocons in his administration are itching for war.  Bad news for world peace.

42. The WWE’s despicable association with the House of Saud.  First, there was the Greatest Royal Rumble which took place despite the atrocities in Yemen.  Then came Crown Jewel which went on as scheduled even after Jamal Khashoggi’s murder.  The show was hosted by the bigoted Hulk Hogan and featured Shawn Michaels in his first match in eight years.  So much for honouring a retirement storyline.  And so much for caring about human rights.

43. Ryan Seacrest didn’t get fired from his many jobs despite harassing and assaulting his former stylist who was fired for reporting him.  George Takei claimed exoneration after a questionable article written by an author who sang his praises in a book.  Michael Weatherly hasn’t lost his job playing Bull despite being caught on film harassing fired co-star Eliza Dushku and was actually defended by two women who worked with him on NCIS.  There are many other examples too numerous and depressing to mention.  The bottom line is this.  #MeToo hasn’t changed anything.

44. All the other bad films I saw released this year:  Mom And Dad, Unfriended: Dark Web, Day Of The Dead: Bloodline, Upgrade, The Endless, The First Purge, Death Wish, Winchester, Insidious: The Last Key, The Strangers: Prey At Night, Blumhouse’s Truth Or Dare, Fifty Shades Freed and Hotel Transylvania 3.

45. All the other awful movies I saw this year: Diary Of A Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul; Goon: Last Of The Enforcers; Failure To Launch; CHIPS; The Boss Baby; Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie; Uncle Buck; Hoodwinked; Blades Of Glory; Rough Night; Hide And Seek; Frankenweenie; The Ant Bully; A Return To Salem’s Lot; The Croods; Snatched; The House; Are We Done Yet; Missing In Action; Hitch; The Emoji Movie; A Million Ways To Die In The West; The Nut Job 2: Nutty By Nature; Shutter; Red; Red 2.

My Little Pony: The Movie (1986 & 2017); Society; Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie; Kick-Ass; Kick-Ass 2; Despicable Me; Despicable Me 2; Despicable Me 3; Minions; Cocktail; Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014); Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out Of The Shadows; The Bye Bye Man; The Smurfs; The Smurfs 2; Smurfs: The Lost Village; The Chipmunk Adventure; Alvin & The Chipmunks; Alvin & The Chipmunks: The Squeakquel; Alvin & The Chipmunks: Chipwrecked; Alvin & The Chipmunks: The Road Chip.

Amityville: The Awakening; Ducktales The Movie: Treasure Of The Lost Map; Sausage Party; The Peanuts Movie; A Boy Named Charlie Brown; Snoopy Come Home; Run For Your Life, Charlie Brown; Jigsaw; Kung Fu Panda; Kung Fu Panda 2; Kung Fu Panda 3; Mr. Peabody & Sherman; G.I. Joe: Retaliation; Middle School: The Worst Years Of My Life; The Brothers Grimsby; Keanu; The Interview; Delivery Man; 17 Again; When The Bough Breaks; Father Figures; A Thousand Words; Joe Versus The Volcano; Creepshow; Creepshow 2.

Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues (Super-Sized Version); Dead-End Drive-In; Strictly Business; Trailer Park Boys; Trailer Park Boys: Countdown To Liquor Day; Trailer Park Boys: Don’t Legalize It; Pete’s Dragon (1977); The Man; Jeepers Creepers 3; #Horror; But I’m A Cheerleader; Razorback; Bad Moon; Crawlspace; Seven Chances; The Garbage Pail Kids Movie; Warlock: The Armageddon; Repossessed; The SpongeBob Squarepants Movie; The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out Of Water; White Of The Eye; Summer School.

Hide And Go Shriek; Parents; Abbott And Costello Meet The Mummy; The Other Side Of The Door; A Woman’s Torment; Frankenhooker; 47 Meters Down; Children Of The Corn; Children Of The Corn II: The Final Sacrifice; The Car; Bad Words; Pitch Perfect; Pitch Perfect 2; Pitch Perfect 3; The Final Girls; Satanic; Office Christmas Party, The Star; Four Christmases; National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation; Red Heat; Zombie Strippers!, XXX: Return Of Xander Cage and Martin.

46. Margot Kidder committed suicide.  The definitive Lois Lane, a Bernie Sanders supporter and an all-round delightful character.  Mental illness is a cancer on our society, especially our creative community.

47. The whitewashing of John McCain and George H.W. Bush’s political record because they died.  War criminals don’t deserve penance or reputational protection from their millionaire friends in the media.  They deserve endless scorn and ridicule for all the innocent people they tortured and murdered.

48. The Twitter purge.  Leftists and sex workers need more protection from white supremacy and corporate censorship.

49. Premier Doug Ford used the Notwithstanding Clause of the Canadian Constitution to reduce Toronto City Council from 47 seats to 25.  Pure pettiness with surely more to come.

50. Dolores O’Riordan, Steven Bochco, Steven Hawking and John Mahoney all died.

51. Monday Night Raw & Smackdown Live.  Bad announcing, pitiful storylines, questionable political associations.  The highly hated Enzo Amore aside, they’re still protecting abusers and creeps that can draw.  I can spend these five hours every week doing something less offensive.

52. The ongoing persecution of Julian Assange and the restriction of his rights in the Ecuadorian Embassy.  Yes, he’s a maddening figure for many reasons but even he doesn’t deserve this torture.  Exposing government crimes is crucial for democracy to function.

53. The CIA torture report has still not been released.

54. Elizabeth Warren falsely claiming she’s part Indigenous.  Nope.  What you really are is cannon fodder for Donald Trump if you win the Democratic Presidential nomination in 2020.  Bernie can still win.

55. All the Facebook scandals.  Fuck Zuck.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Monday, December 31, 2018
8:04 p.m.

Standout Moments From 2018 – Part One (The Good)

1. Daniel Bryan was reinstated as an active professional wrestler and went on to win back the WWE Championship, a title he never lost four years ago.

2. The Clinton Affair, a stellar three-part A&E docuseries on former President Bill Clinton’s awful history of rape, abuse, harassment and imbalanced sexual relationships.  Monica Lewinsky candidly owns up to all the mistakes she made and comes off far better than the man who foolishly risked his legacy for side pussy.

3. A Quiet Place.  Clever and surprisingly poignant, an inventive take on the alien invasion genre.  The best use of silence since Signs.  For once, we get unsentimental characters with disabilities, flawed and temperamental, not inspirational saints.  The upcoming sequel has a lot to live up to.

4. The Democrats won back control of The House of Representatives.

5. Corporations can no longer through arbitration demand countries change laws interfering with their capitalistic ambitions, one of the few good things about the new USMCA trade agreement.

6. Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen were convicted.  Are Jared Kushner and Donald Trump Jr. next?

7. The easing of tensions between North & South Korea.  May it finally lead to the official end of the overlong Korean War.

8. Recreational marijuana is now legal in Canada.  Now stop arresting people for selling it without a license, legalize their shops, fix your supply issues, lower your prices and pardon/release everyone charged and convicted in the pointless Drug War.

9. CIA whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling was quietly released from prison.  He should never have been convicted in the first place.

10. Franz Ferdinand’s Always Ascending.  Still funky, still horny.

11. Croatia’s surprising run in the World Cup.  Despite being throttled by a determined France in the final match, the fact that they even made it this far, their best all-time showing, is inspiration for the next generation.

12. Jersey Shore: Family Vacation.  Skinny Vinnie.  Explanation face.  Angelina hasn’t gotten pounded in a long time.  French fry.  The Situation gets engaged.  Deena gets pregnant.  Sammi the love doll.  The missing wedding ring.  Twerking in Vegas.  Uncle Nino returns.  Ronnie’s psycho baby mama.  Ariana Sky. Vinnie’s sweet mother.  Ass cake.  Fighting, brawling, drinking, reconciling, roasting.  A show so action-packed and amusing, it had to be divided into two parts.  Funnier than most sitcoms.

13. The Great Return March.  Desperate Palestinian refugees in Gaza, determined to be recognized for their humanity and fed up with the illegal blockade, courageously protesting in the midst of fierce homicidal violence by Apartheid Israel.  They are heroes who deserve their freedom and dignity.

14. Albert Schultz was ousted by Soulpepper, the Canadian theatre troupe he co-founded after being accused of sexual harassment by multiple actresses who worked for the company.  He settled numerous lawsuits, as a result.

15. The remarkable rescue of a teenage soccer team stranded and trapped in a water-filled cave in Thailand.  Only one of the rescuers died in a tragic accident.  All the kids and their protective coach were safely retrieved and after a brief hospital stay, are now doing fine.

16. Bill Cosby was convicted of sexually assaulting Andrea Constand, the only entertainer in the #MeToo era to face any kind of genuine consequences for harming women.

17. Interpol’s Marauder.  Alternative rock isn’t dead yet.

18. CNN’s 1968.  A sprawling, four-part examination of one of the most influential years in American history.  A welcome expansion of the original Sixties episode that felt woefully incomplete.

19. The New York Times investigation into the Trump family’s long history of fraud in New York City.  It would’ve been nice to have done this, what, 20, 30 years ago when it would’ve mattered more.  There won’t be criminal charges because of the statute of limitations but by God, there should be plenty of lawsuits.  Overcharging seniors on fixed incomes is shameful.

20. Ronda Rousey’s electrifying debut at WrestleMania 34, in a mixed-tag match, no less.  Rousey and Kurt Angle defeated Triple H and Stephanie McMahon in a very entertaining 30-minute encounter that launched the former UFC Champion onto the short trek to a WWE World Championship.

21. All the other good & great movies I saw this year:  OJ: Made In America, Blade Runner 2049, Room 237, Akira (both English-language versions), Ghost In The Shell, Ghost In The Shell 2: Innocence, Pete’s Dragon (2016), Planet Of The Apes (1968), Night Of The Living Dead (1968), The Transporter, Suburbicon, The Ninth Gate, Before I Fall, Identity, Godzilla (2014), Festival Express, Rush: Beyond The Lighted Stage, The Abyss: Special Edition and Jurassic World.

22. John Kelly, Jim Mattis, Scott Pruitt, Jeff Sessions, Gary Cohn, Rex Tillerson and Ryan Zinke all exited The Trump Administration, most with tarnished reputations.  None will be missed.

23. Bruce MacArthur was finally arrested.  What took so long?

24. Les Moonves was tossed from CBS after numerous reports of him raping, harassing and retaliating against numerous women in the industry.  He was denied millions in compensation.  He should’ve never been elevated to such a powerful position.  Will he be prosecuted?

25. Virtue, the second CD from Julian Casablancas and The Voidz.  An eclectic mix of funk, punk, rock and soul from the leader of The Strokes.  The best album I heard all year featuring some of the prettiest melodies this decade.

26. Leah Remini – Scientology & The Aftermath.  More disheartening, gutwrenching revelations from former cult members.  When is the end coming for the diabolical Kerry Fraser doppelganger David Miscavige?

27. A suspect in the Golden State Killer case was finally arrested, one of the oldest cold cases in America.  Hopefully, he’s the guy.  We’ll find out soon enough.

28. The Parkland high school student protests against gun violence.  Someone has to challenge the NRA’s stranglehold on Congress.

29. Canada’s Paralympic Wheelchair Curling Team.  Going a brilliant 9 and 2 during the preliminary match-ups, this loveable fivesome of middle-aged athletes endeared an entire country with their touching back stories and Bronze medal victory.  They lost the fewest ends and won more ends than any other nation including the Gold-winning Chinese squad.

30. Roxy Music was inducted into The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.  About goddamn time.

31. Harvey Weinstein was arrested and charged with multiple counts of assault.  Even if he somehow survives, who would ever want to work with him again?

32. The J20 acquittals.  Protesting and journalism are not crimes.

33. Cesar Sayoc, the wannabe serial killer, was arrested after sending mail bombs to numerous high profile, public critics of President Trump.  Thankfully, no one was hurt or killed because they were intercepted in time.

34. The poorly attended Toronto show of the Bill & Hillary Clinton speaking tour.  Hundred dollar seats were slashed to single digits and that still didn’t attract more people.  Bernie would’ve won.

35. The Israel Lobby, the reportedly damning, undercover docuseries unaired by Al Jazeera, was leaked online and posted in full by The Electronic Intifada who did solid summary reporting on its revelations.  Why can’t we see this on Television?

36. The Canadian Olympic Team won 29 medals, the most ever for The Great White North.  If only we were as dominant in the summer games.

37. John Cena and Daniel Bryan refused to work the Crown Jewel event in Saudi Arabia and weren’t punished for taking a moral stand.  They should’ve boycotted The Greatest Royal Rumble, as well.

38. Lana Del Mar cancelled her gig in Apartheid Israel which greatly boosted the already thriving BDS movement, which makes Radiohead’s decision to go ahead with their performance last year even more unconscionable.

39. Alex Jones was kicked off of Facebook and Twitter after years of spreading misinformation and harming innocent people, like the parents of the slain kids in the horrific Sandy Hook Elementary School Massacre, which he absurdly and repeatedly declared “a hoax”.  Facing a slew of lawsuits, following an acrimonious divorce, his paranoid goose is cooked.

40. Kevin Spacey was arrested for molesting a teenager in 2016.  Not sure that weird Let Me Be Frank video was a good idea.

41. Kevin Owens & Sami Zayn vs. Daniel Bryan & Shane McMahon at WrestleMania 34.  A hot start, a very good match and a welcome return for the former American Dragon.

42. Eric Schneiderman was exposed as a violent misogynist and resigned as New York’s Attorney General.

43. Julia Salazar was elected to the New York State Senate.  She’s the only Democrat advocating for sex workers.  May she start a long overdue revolution in feminism.

44. Bad Witch by Nine Inch Nails.  Beneath the typically tuneful, noisy aggression, some surprising experimentation.  Who knew Trent Reznor could croon?

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Monday, December 31, 2018
7:42 p.m.

Jurassic World

Jurassic World is an “Oh, shit!” movie.  Practically every time something exciting or scary happens you cry, “Oh, shit!”  There’s at least a dozen of those moments throughout its thoroughly entertaining 2-hour running time.  There has to be because the plot isn’t exactly super surprising.

Years after the original Jurassic Park failed to launch because the dinosaurs successfully rebelled against their captivity, another large attraction, built on the same island and very close to the original site, has opened and thrived, despite the rather considerable expenses it takes to keep it running smoothly.

This time, the dinosaurs are much more docile and controllable.  Little kids can actually pet and ride some of the smaller ones.  There’s a ride called the Gyroscope.  One character describes it as riding in a giant hamster wheel.  Accurate.  Jimmy Fallon hosts a goofy video tutorial as you ride around observing the much bigger dinosaurs in this expansive and sweltering Costa Rican environment.  It’s something else.

There are indoor hologram dinos and even an underwater one that looks like a giant crocodile.  It jumps out of the water to feed in front of an audience that wouldn’t be out of place at Marineland.  Yes, they get soaked when it splashes back down.  And yes, the kid is right.  It is awesome.

There’s a revealing early scene where Bryce Dallas Howard, so lovely with her appropriate Cleopatra haircut, is giving a tour for some potential sponsors.  Profits are fine but below projections and expectations.  Having branded exhibits would ease their financial burden.  As she performs her walk-and-talk, she asserts that simply seeing these dinosaurs has become passé for visitors.  The magic is gone and so the company’s lab rats are creating bigger, scarier, louder, more exciting dinosaurs for the future.

At first, you think, is she serious?  The dinosaurs we already see look amazing, so detailed in all their CGI splendour.  Plus, there are over 21,000 people here in attendance who don’t look or sound disappointed at all.  But then you start to wonder if the movie is slyly referencing earlier chapters in this franchise in order to sell you on these updated dinos.  Well, really, they don’t need to do any sales pitch at all.  Just seeing these damn things is incredible.  You believe even though you know most of this was conjured up on a computer.  Jurassic Park is the better film but the effects, naturally with the progression of technology, have improved, which is impressive in itself.

In a few weeks, the park will open a brand new attraction.  The lab rats have created a brand new species which they’ve dubbed Indominus Rex.  You should see this thing.  It’s humongous and fucking scary.  And, as it turns out, incredibly intelligent.  This is where Chris Pratt, the dino whisperer, comes in.

There’s a good scene which proves to be an effective introduction for his character.  He’s training three young velociraptors to be cool with him and by God, they pay attention and listen.  That’s good news for the very tanned Vincent D’Onofrio who has a secret agenda.  He thinks Pratt’s technique can lead to the development of a new weapon for the military.  Yes, it’s a stupid idea which blows up in his face but the pay-off is so well done it’s doesn’t matter.

Pratt and Howard have a history.  They had a disastrous first date but it’s clear they still like each other.  She needs Pratt to make sure the I. Rex exhibit is safe and secure before the public is allowed to get a gander.  Spoiler alert:  it’s not safe and secure.

That sneaky animal lays a trap for its human captors and soon, it’s crunch time.  Can we be honest about the real reason we enjoy these movies?  It’s seeing human beings getting eaten.  I love the sound of dino teeth slicing through flesh and bone.  Call me a sicky but it’s fun to watch and hear.

Now the park has a big-ass dinosaur problem.  It’s not unusual for Jurassic World to have uncooperative animals.  You simply tranq the bastards and everything’s fine again.  But we’re talking about the Indominous Rex here.  You could jab it with the largest needle filled with the world’s supply of heroin and it still wouldn’t slow down.  Predictably, the park’s security finds this out the hard way in a well-constructed action sequence.

Watching this inevitable calamity unfold in the control room, Pratt has only one piece of advice for Howard:

“Evacuate the island.”

Her response:

“We’d never open again.”

Honey, you shouldn’t have opened in the first place.

Ultimately realizing he’s right, she makes a stubborn compromise.  She authorizes the closure of all the rides and orders all tens of thousands of paying customers herded into the main area of the park.  That turns out not to be a very smart decision once the velociraptors get out of their greenhouse prison in yet another thrilling acting sequence.

On this disastrous day, Howard’s two nephews, who don’t get along too great and are bracing for their parents’ pending divorce, happen to show up and are in the Gyroscope when the evacuation order is announced.  They stupidly decide to ignore it and have their first memorably heartstopping encounter with the ferocious I. Rex.

Belatedly learning that they’re on their own after abandoning their park handler personally assigned by their aunt, Howard flies into a panic and teams with Pratt to go retrieve them.  Meanwhile, the I. Rex starts attacking the more civilized dinosaurs “for sport” and is getting closer and closer to the sweaty and oblivious patrons.

Jurassic World first arrived 14 years after the underappreciated Jurassic Park III which was a much needed improvement over the disappointingly uneven Lost World sequel.  I like this fourth film about as much as its predecessor, maybe even a bit more, when I think about it.  It’s funny, genuinely exciting and well acted.  Vincent D’Onofrio is given sharp, pointed dialogue as the heel and he downplays it all beautifully.  Even though you know exactly where this is all headed, it’s still fun.

I have to admit I haven’t been much of a Chris Pratt mark but he’s quite good as the dino whisperer.  I wasn’t expecting him to be so serious.  Normally cast as comic oddballs, his steely, deadpan performance opens up more dramatic opportunities for him in the future.  As for Bryce Dallas Howard I’ll watch the flame-haired vixen in anything and it’s nice to see her alternate between stoic businesswoman and maternal worrier with relative ease.  (I also enjoyed her work in the Pete’s Dragon remake, a film that absolutely gutted me.)  A special shout-out to cutie pie Judy Greer, Howard’s sister in the film, who oozes warmth and sympathy in her few on-screen scenes.

Jurassic World isn’t breaking any new ground, even within its own universe.  Once again, greedy capitalists put profits over common sense and belatedly discover that because of their irresponsible actions, they can kiss their multi-million dollar investment good-bye.  Oh, and expect a whole slew of lawsuits.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Monday, December 31, 2018
2:27 p.m.

Martin (1978)

George A. Romero’s Martin is strangely hesitant.  It wants to deviate from the typical vampire story, challenging some firmly established myths while wholeheartedly embracing others, and yet its lead character is conflicted about what he actually is, which inspires some questionable decision making on his part.

What he actually is is an ageless monster who we’re supposed to feel sorry for.  But we don’t.  And, come to think of it, he’s not remotely intimidating, anyway.

The movie begins on a train.  After playing a game of Solitaire, Martin (John Amplas) leaves his cabin and heads for the bathroom.  He rolls out a bunch of needles and liquid drugs.  As we’re about to discover, he has a thing for pretty, leggy brunettes.  Rather than just bite them while they’re awake, he knocks them out Cosby-style, undresses them, kisses them, then slices them open to feed.

Just before he does this to the pretty woman (Fran Middleton) in a nearby cabin, he imagines how the encounter will go.  It does not go as he imagines.  She’s not happy to see him.

Arriving in Pittsburgh, he is greeted by an elderly relative, Tateh Cuda (Lincoln Maazel), who looks like he’s auditioning to be the next Col. Sanders.  After another train ride and a very long walk to his oddly symmetrical house (which only becomes clear during the end credits), Cuda shows Martin to his room.  Then, he does something baffling.  He tells him he’s going to save his soul.  Afterwards, he’s going to kill him.  Huh?

In the meantime, Martin is forbidden from entering any of the other bedrooms, he can’t talk to Cuda’s daughter Christina (Christine Forrest, who later married Romero) nor can he attack anyone in this small, rundown Pennsylvania suburb.

Immediately after, Martin storms into Cuda’s room and removes the wreath of garlic on the door.  It has zero effect on him.  When Christina arrives, although he’s quiet in the interim, he does eventually open up to her with no consequences.  He becomes a delivery boy for Cuda at his tiny grocery store which leads him to another hottie, a desperate housewife named Abbie (Elayne Nadeau).  She’s upset about her philandering husband who we never see and feels very neglected.  She keeps hiring Martin for odd jobs as an excuse to keep seeing him.  Martin mostly listens which reminds her of her cat.  Really.

If Martin doesn’t taste human blood, he gets shaky.  Fairly quickly, he finds his next victim, another desperate housewife (Sara Venable).  He tracks down her address and arrives at her door posing as a deaf beggar.  All he has to do is wait for her husband to leave.

But when Martin makes his move and enters her bedroom, she’s naked with another man.

Meanwhile, Abbie’s lust cannot be denied.  Up to this point, Martin has never done anything sexually consensual in his life.  He finally offers himself to the lonely housewife who passes out on top of him when it’s over.  Nothing else is shown.

Cuda continually fails to “cure” Martin of his “sickness”.  History is repeating itself as we learn through black & white flashbacks.  He invites a nervous, old priest over to perform an exorcism but the guy is so unenthusiastic during his reading, even Satan himself would nod off.  Martin just runs away completely unfazed.  Cuda ties some bells to his door so he’ll know when his nephew is out of his room.  Martin finds an easy workaround.  He just climbs out a window.  During the scene where Martin barrels into his uncle’s bedroom, he allows him to place a crucifix right on his face.  No burns.  Martin’s so unafraid of Cuda, he even dresses up as Dracula to mock him.

With his attention now focused on Abbie, his married paramour, a distracted Martin suddenly reluctant to follow through on his criminal impulses starts calling into a local radio show he obsessively listens to.  Nicknamed “The Count”, he tries to dispel myths about vampires.  It’s not like the movies, he says.  There aren’t that many women in his life.  “There is no magic,” he repeatedly notes to his family.  He doesn’t even identify as a vampire despite being a young-looking 84-year-old.

When a grumpy customer at Cuda’s store starts giving him the business about being a lazy worker, he follows her but doesn’t attack her.  After being harassed by local bikers, he doesn’t pounce on them, either.  Why?  Is he actually transforming into a better person?  Please.  Passing on women altogether, he starts feasting on forgotten men instead.  Outside his family, only Abbie knows his secret.  Is that revelation too much for her to bear?

Martin was released 40 years ago, the same year as Romero’s follow-up to Night Of The Living Dead, Dawn Of The Dead.  Over the years, Martin has received surprisingly strong critical and industry support.  Romero himself has declared it his favourite film.  The praise is unjustified.  This film is boringly downcast.  It’s not terrifying, it’s not interesting, nor is it believable.

It doesn’t make any sense why Cuda doesn’t just bump off his nephew immediately.  He knows he’s up to no good.  He knows deep down he cannot change, despite setting silly, unenforceable ground rules and attempting ineffective religious techniques.  Is he that hard up for employees at his store?

On the other hand, it also doesn’t make any sense why Martin doesn’t eliminate his biggest threat.  Cuda has warned him he won’t hesitate to drive a stake through his heart when the opportunity finally arises.  Why should one foolish hesitation inspire another?

Besides penning the script and directing the film, Romero shows up on-screen as another priest.  He’s easily the best performer in Martin, likeable and natural.  As Gene Siskel would say, I never caught him acting.  But beyond that, this is tedious to sit through.  That distracting, misplaced musical score certainly doesn’t help.  Where’s John Carpenter when you need him?

As for the abrupt ending it’s meant to be tragically ironic, a heartbreaking misunderstanding.  What it really is is delayed justice without the pay-off.  But the person responsible for administering it has to answer for his own complicity.  Never invite a devil into a new world of temptation.  You’ll become one yourself.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Saturday, December 29, 2018
8:25 p.m.

Flatliners (1990)

I have this unusual test for a horror movie.   If you imagine all the scary bits removed, it should still work, either as a comedy, a drama, an action film or a love story.  When it isn’t frightening the absolute bejesus out of you, all its remaining scenes should still be entertaining.

A good number of titles pass this test:  the original Psycho, the original Halloween, The Shining, Sinister.  But many more fail it, like The Exorcist.  (Excise all those terrifying possession sequences and what do you have?  A dull drama.)

Paradoxically, Flatliners has the opposite problem.  It’s an unscary thriller with good dramatic and comedic scenes.  Ironically, it would’ve been a lot better without the horror.

If you’ve seen the much nastier and less philosophical 2017 remake, you know the original set-up.  A bunch of medical students are talked into performing a completely unethical experiment by an ambitious colleague.  In the newest version, tormented Ellen Page is the ringleader.  In this 1990 original, it’s the cocksure Kiefer Sutherland.

The movie opens with his famous line, “Today is a good day to die.”  By the end, he will express the opposite sentiment.  He could’ve expressed it much earlier, at the 41-minute mark, to be more precise, the moment when this movie starts losing its way, but let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves.

It takes Sutherland about 10 minutes or so of screen time to inevitably convince his classmates – the emotionally distant Julia Roberts, the shamelessly promiscious and very engaged William Baldwin, the atheist rulebreaker Kevin Bacon (with his bitchin’ hair) and the wisecracking, aspiring surgeon Oliver Platt – to participate, despite some initial reservations.

So, what exactly is the experiment?  It’s to see what it’s like to be dead for a short period of time before being medically revived.

Now, why are they doing this?  To answer a series of burning questions:  What happens when you die?  Is it painful?  What do you see?  What do you hear?  And is there an afterlife?

The experiments take place late at night in an abandoned area of a Catholic medical school in Chicago (one that’s being renovated and therefore conveniently isolated), a fitting location for a film about eternal, existential questioning.  Religious paintings and statues survey the scene, serving as an unheeded warning.

Sutherland decides to die for just a little over a minute before being resuscitated.  His experience is positive.  Lots of flying outside.  Then it’s Baldwin’s turn.  He goes a little longer.  All he sees are girls and women, and quite a few naked breasts, no different from his real life.  Then Bacon goes under.  And later, Julia Roberts.  Each one deciding to be flatlined a bit longer than the previous participant.  The more minutes they stay dead, the harder it is to revive them quickly.  They keep pushing the boundaries hoping to unlock more elusive secrets of death.

During its first 41 minutes, Flatliners is funny, intriguing, and well-acted.  Then Sutherland starts chasing down a dog he keeps seeing which leads him to a young boy in a hoodie.  And that’s when the movie starts to gradually fall apart.  Seeing a grown-ass man getting pummelled by someone maybe a third of his size isn’t scary.  It’s pathetic.  It isn’t until much later on that we start to understand what’s really going on.  Nope.  Still not scary.

Baldwin is engaged to Hope Davis.  They’re deeply in love.  But he has a dark secret.  He’s been surreptitiously recording every one of his sexual affairs with other women.  There are a lot of tapes in his collection.  He even leaves symbolic comments on the spines.  While watching his engagement video, he calls Davis regretting they weren’t married sooner.  He’s quietly worried he won’t survive his turn at the death experiment.  Unaware, Davis takes it as a false cue she needs to see him.  Yeah, don’t get a faster car or switch to a closer school, honey.  He’s not worth it.

Meanwhile, while taking the subway, Bacon gets repeatedly insulted by a young Black girl who suddenly appears out of nowhere and then vanishes once the train exits a tunnel.  And Roberts keeps getting surprise visits from her dead father, a troubled Vietnam vet.  What was he doing in the family bathroom before he shot himself?

Instead of telling the others about these bizarre incidents that keep happening to them the med students foolishly suffer in silence.  When Roberts keeps asking Sutherland what happened to his face, he’s too embarrassed to tell her the truth.  It takes about an hour before most of the participants finally open up and sheepishly admit that maybe this was a stupid idea after all.

Ironically, it isn’t.  Instead of proving religious concepts of eternal life, these death experiments have revealed something else entirely.  A temporary demise leading to a temporary purgatory, a place where your worst crimes are relived without the granting of absolution.  Each of the four students have unresolved guilt or anguish they thought they buried for good.  When Bacon makes the fateful decision to seek out someone he wronged from his childhood, it’s a turning point.

Sutherland can’t really do that, so in the final act, he decides to take one last plunge into the eternal darkness.  This greatly concerns his classmates who resolve to bring him back, regardless.  He’s very fortunate his sudden jerkiness doesn’t alienate them permanently.  If you ask me, he gets off rather easily.

Had Flatliners not insisted on being such a gentle horror film, it would’ve worked.  What I mean by gentle is the film’s lack of intensity.  Consider those scenes where Sutherland gets attacked by that kid.  They’re not brutal enough or believable.  None of the bullying sequences are as cruel and as harsh as they need to be to gut you.  Everything feels too tame and safe.  Director Joel Schumacher never sets the proper mood to deliver the appropriate emotional pay-offs.  It also takes too long to realize we’re seeing role reversals.  And once we do, we don’t care.  Once we know the full truth, most of these med students don’t deserve our support.

While it’s clever to have a freaked out William Baldwin see video snippets of his numerous paramours on TV screens and medical monitors reminding him of his archived perversions, we don’t feel his paranoia nor do we feel the least bit of sympathy for his dilemma.  When his story arc is resolved, it’s clear even the movie doesn’t like him.

As for Julia Roberts and her dead father, there’s a twist.  Unlike the men, she doesn’t need to be cleansed, another role reversal that doesn’t pay off like it should.

I’ve neglected to mention Oliver Platt, the only member of the team not to risk his life for science.  Besides having the good sense not to torture himself in this way, he’s very funny.  His cheeky mocking of Baldwin is more reliable than the horror scenes.  His scene-stealing turn deservedly elevated his profile.

Actually, all of the leading performances are good.  That’s not the movie’s problem.  Nor are the scenes where they debate and dissect their process and their findings.  That’s interesting.  No, what sinks this ship is a reluctance to truly terrify.  As it turns out, Joel Schumacher was the wrong person to direct this.  John Carpenter would’ve been a better choice.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Friday, December 28, 2018
2:46 a.m.