Dearly Departed (The Year in Review 2021)

It is, perhaps, an odd synchronicity that 2021's best new pop cultural creations deal so frequently with loss and the absence of loved ones. 

On TV, a group of teens grapples with the death of their friend, while a perennially-delayed adaptation finally delivers on its vision of a deadly global virus. (Like I said, synchronicity.) Over on what, in any other year, would have been the big screen, a widow is haunted by her departed husband, while a theatre director reels from a devastating loss. Happily, pure escapism remains the case for video games, with space raccoons, space llamas, and other assorted oddballs dominating our consoles - though I'm not sure what it says that the funniest game of the year is also a divorce simulator.

FILM

THE NIGHT HOUSE is a masterclass in horror filmmaking: tense and atmospheric, with impeccably timed jump scares, interesting practical effects, and judicious use of CGI. It's also intelligent, brilliantly acted by Rebecca Hall as a grieving widow, and absolutely terrifying. I fear-cried during this movie, and it's been a long time since I did that. Like other great horror films before it, it operates at both a literal level - things that go bump in the night - and the metaphorical - what does it mean to be haunted by the loss of a loved one?

An hallucinogenic fever dream, THE GREEN KNIGHT resolutely refuses to abide by genre conventions, operating simultaneously as a medieval fantasy, fairy tale, psycho-sexual drama, and pagan horror (again, not unlike a certain horror film). Dev Patel stars in this revisionist take on the fabled Sir Gawain, Knight of the Round Table, whose foolhardy bravery sets him on a quest to confront the title character. Eerie detours, from a magic mushroom trip to a visit from a ghostly princess, keep the film, and viewers, consistently off-balance.

A worthy addition to the "Movie-Named-After-Song-But-It's-Not-A-Musical" cinematic universe, DRIVE MY CAR is an intelligent, moving adaptation of the Haruki Murakami short story of the same name. Following a compelling and rather unexpected prologue, this three-hour film expands into an exploration of grief, love, despair, and hope, all situated within the framing device of a troupe of actors rehearsing Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya." Highly literary, in the best possible sense. (And no, the song doesn't even make the soundtrack.)

TV

By the time the needle drops on Redbone's 1974 classic "Come and Get Your Love" in Episode 5 of RESERVATION DOGS, this Indigenous-centric series has long-since earned the right to play the favourites. Redbone was, of course, the first massively successful Indigenous-led rock band, and there's a decent argument that Dogs broke a similar cultural barrier on TV this year. The series follows a group of Indigenous teenagers reeling from the death of their friend, albeit with quick tongues and a keen sense of humour. Dark themes abound, but it's the goodheartedness, the laugh-out-loud jokes, and the lived-in atmosphere that make this dramedy one of the more interesting debuts in recent years.

Whoever said the woke aren't funny hasn't spent much time in RUTHERFORD FALLS, the heartwarming new comedy from the minds behind The Office and Superstore. Like Reservation Dogs, with which it shares an overlapping cast, Indigenous communities are front and centre, in this case the fictional Minishonka Nation which neighbours the title town. Unlike Dogs, this fits more in the classic sitcom mould, following a nerdy museum owner (Ed Helms) and his best friend, an aspiring Indigenous historian (Jana Schmieding) as they're drawn into a halfway-meaningful, halfway-absurd dispute over their communities' shared future. Politically astute jibes - the scene with the clueless white lawyer doubling down on a misappropriated term is one of the funniest of the year - are paired with an honest, forthright understanding of the legacy of colonialism and the challenges facing Indigenous communities.

I have yet to see a perfect Brian K. Vaughan adaptation, but Y: THE LAST MAN does an admirable job of translating the early issues of the award-winning comic book to the small screen. Unfortunately, its subject matter - a global virus kills every Y-chromosome-carrying organism on the planet, save one amateur escape artist and his pet monkey - is probably what doomed it to a single season. As it is, we're blessed with ten tightly-packed episodes featuring excellent performances from actors well-known (Diane Lane as the newly-installed, first-ever female president) and up-and-coming (Jess Salguiero, as the president's chief of staff, and Elliot Fletcher, as a trans man trying to navigate a female-dominated landscape, are standouts). Oh, and Ampersand the monkey is adorable. 

GAMING

The perennial underdog does it again, with the below-the-radar GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY arriving as the best and funniest superhero game in years. While relying a bit too much on its MCU inspiration, the great writing, interesting plot, and wonderful characters will have you laughing out loud throughout. Y may have TV's cutest monkey, but GotG has not one, not two, but three ridiculously entertaining animal sidekicks, including history's greatest Space Llama.

Gaming auteur Suda51 remains bizarre as ever in the inexplicably Nintendo-approved NO MORE HEROES III. The latest, and possibly last, in the off-the-fourth-wall action-adventure series, NMHIII is funny and exciting, with off-brand lightsabers and exploding technicolour pixels galore. That said, it's so bizarre - there's a giant pink puff monster that shouts "Adrian!", Rocky-style - that it may not be for all tastes. Boisonberry!

IT TAKES TWO to sabotage a teammate, a philosophy this game takes to heart. A full-blooded co-op adventure game with a humourous bent, its best laughs come not from the painfully leaden script, but from the ability to spoil your partner's progress at any turn. Even though it means your own progress is halted, there's nothing funnier than pulling a literal rug out from under your teammate (you play as feuding spouses) and watching them plummet, Looney Tunes-style, to the ground. And then doing it again after you swear this time you'll be nice. There were quite a few contenders, but It Takes Two is the funniest game of the year.

CANCON AWARDS 2021

I normally reserve this space for overlooked Canuck titles, but it so happens that a lot of 2021's best productions are Canadian or Canadian-adjacent. Much of the Rutherford Falls and Reservations Dogs casts were drawn from First Nations across Canada, while Y: The Last Man was filmed in Toronto and Guardians of the Galaxy developed by Eidos Montréal. 

That leaves only Mass Effect: Legendary Edition, the recent HD re-release of the beloved series, to celebrate as this year's recipient of the Four Winds Seven Seas CanCon Maple Award. As it happens, I've written about Mass Effect on this blog before, albeit a decade(!!) ago. Back then, I called it the greatest Canadian video game of all time. Revisiting it now, so many years (and one very controversial finale) later, I stand by that assessment. 

Time has done little to dull Mass Effect's complex, layered "consequence" system, which tracks player decisions big and small in order to dictate the turns of its three-game narrative. Yes, the main story beats remain the same across all playthroughs, but what's fascinating is how each Commander Shepard's experience is uniquely tailored to the choices you, the player, make. Mass Effect 3 (which had yet to release when I wrote my original ode to the series) remembers important details, like who you fell in love with in Mass Effect 1, but it also remembers that one time you insulted that one journalist in Mass Effect 2. That's something no other video game series has ever accomplished, before or since. I'm Four Winds Seven Seas, and this is my favourite video game on the Canada.

Odd Couples (The Year in Review 2020)

In a year where lockdown threw us into unusual social configurations - "support bubbles", anyone? - there's a good chance you spent a significant amount of time hunkered down with one person - a relative, a friend, a roommate (hopefully a tidy one!) - in front of your favourite streaming service or gaming console. A similar phenomenon played out on those very screens, as a remarkable number of the year's best creations featured pairs of people thrust together by circumstance and forced to make the best of it. From a pair of ragtag bakers, to a pothead detective and his sidekick, to a couple of small-town radio geeks, this was a year for close friendships and odd couplings - right down to the best co-operative video game I've played in a long time. Here, then, are my picks for the best of an otherwise not-best year.

FILM

I have a soft spot for FIRST COW, the last movie I had tickets for before #2020 shut down my favourite cinema (and, uh, all the other ones). That said, this intimate character study, about a pair of hardscrabble travellers trying to eke out a living at a 19th century trading outpost, is ideal home viewing. John Magaro and Orion Lee, neither of whom you have heard of, put in fine performances as Cookie and Lu, friends who steal milk from a rich man's dairy cow in order to kickstart their very small-time bakery business. That director Kelly Reichardt is able to craft such a moving and at times tense drama out of these seemingly small stakes is testament to her feel for this milieu, previously visited in her seminal Meek's Cutoff.

While THE VAST OF NIGHT plays like a lost Twilight Zone episode (replete with opening voiceover and fake TV distortion effects), it owes just as much to classic space invader cinema. In particular, Vast works as a kind of unofficial remake of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, even as it's set about twenty years earlier, in the 1950s apple-pie-and-sock-hop USA that Encounters director Steven Spielberg actually grew up in. Like a certain other Spielberg classic, Vast does an incredible job of raising tension despite showing little, if any, of the alien threat that may or may not be menacing a small town. The film's period-accurate lingo, and charming fascination with old-school technology - just check out those deliberately long takes of phone operators working the lines, or characters winding up audio reels - only add to the feel that this was a labour of love.

Some may knock the moral posturing of THE TRIAL OF THE CHICAGO 7, Aaron Sorkin's righteously angry account of the events surrounding the 1968 Chicago Democratic National Convention. But to write it off as liberal fan service misses the point: sometimes it's fun to see the good guys win, especially when they make fools of the bad guys - in this case, the combined weight of a racist, conservative, U.S. justice system - in the process. Sacha Baron Cohen and Jeremy Strong, as a kind of pothead Laurel and Hardy version of Yippie cofounders Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, are the best parts of a wonderful ensemble cast. And while it's billed as a drama, 7 is also one of the most consistently funny movies of the past year.

TELEVISION

Alex Garland's 2018 Oscar Isaac dance-fest Ex Machina gets a spiritual sequel in DEVS, a near-future sci-fi thriller starring Sonoya Mizuno and Nick Offerman (and Sonoya Mizuno and Nick Offerman). Like its predecessor, Devs imagines the consequences of a revolutionary technological advance - in Machina, humanlike A.I.; in Devs, something far stranger - and those who dare to play with it. Although Devs's central conceit (no spoilers!) is infinitely less plausible than Machina's rogue AI, it still makes for an interesting and thoroughly entertaining thought experiment, especially when lead character Lily (Mizuno) comes face-to-face with herself and the choices she's made.

Cate Blanchett shepherded the Phyllis Schlafly bio-series MRS. AMERICA into existence, and her devotion to the woman, if not her politics, is on fine display in her starring role. Schlafly, who died in 2016, has long been derided/heralded - depending which side you're on - as the "first lady of the conservative movement", and Blanchett makes the most of this queen of anti-feminists in an unapologetic, largely unsympathetic performance that nevertheless succeeds in making Schlafly human. They say know your enemy: Schlafly's last published work was "The Case For Donald Trump".

GAMING

The only thing missing from GHOST OF TSUSHIMA is a virtual Toshiro Mifune, scratching his beard and gruffly barking orders at a gang of misfit rōnin. In his place, we get Jin Sakai, the title "Ghost", a samurai who betrays his honour code and embraces some historically dubious but highly entertaining stealth tactics more suitable for a ninja. While this heavily fictionalized 13th century waraji-and-kimono epic bears only passing resemblance to the real thing, you'll be too blown away by the photorealistic Japanese landscapes and brilliant swordplay to care.

Retro sequels are a dime-a-dozen these days (perhaps $0.25 a dozen is more accurate), but STREETS OF RAGE 4 stood out from the moment I got my hands on it. The co-operative gameplay is superb, and the graphics and soundtrack manage to simultaneously look modern but feel retro. Of course, the addition of unlockable 16-bit sprites and the original Streets soundtrack doesn't hurt either.

I loved Carrion, but there's only one 2020 video game that truly captures what it means to be an unstoppable horror movie killing machine, and that game is MANEATER, aka I, Jaws. As far as I'm concerned, Maneater is perfect: it lets you control a giant shark, it throws you into combat against killer crocodiles and one very angry Shamu, and you can most definitely eat yachts. Gloriously scientifically inaccurate and aggressively entertaining, it's the perfect game for anyone looking to blow off some of that 2020 steam.

COMPLEMENTARY CANADIAN CONTENT CHAMPION'S CHALICE (CRONENBERG EDITION)

Over the years, I've made a habit of closing out my annual reviews with my favourite Cancon creations. This time out, I'm slightly shaking things up with one regular award plus an honourary prize to my favourite Canadian cameo-maker of 2020, the one and only Mr. David Cronenberg.

Elevating what's been an otherwise terrible season of the worst Star Trek series (and yes, I've seen Enterprise), Cronenberg shows up for about three total scenes of Star Trek: Discovery, all while wearing his trademark glasses in a future where the need for prescription eyewear has long since been eradicated. (There's even a joke about it.) Rumour has it Cronenberg may join Michelle Yeoh on the long-gestating Section 31 spinoff series, to which I say: beam me up! (And yes, "long-gestating" is a body horror pun.)

Cronenberg is also the best part of Disappearance at Clifton Hill, a Niagara Falls-set neo-noir that ought to be a lot better, and weirder, than it actually is, given its plot of missing kids, kitschy Québécois tiger trainers, and a pathological liar who turns to scuba diving podcaster Cronenberg for investigative guidance. You can probably skip this one, or simply fast-forward to the Cronenberg scenes.

As for our regularly scheduled award, a nice big Maple Prize goes to vantablack comedy THE KID DETECTIVE, the year's other weirdsville Canadian neo-noir - only this one is actually good. Adam Brody stars in the title role, a former small-town celebrity who's still at it as a 30-something private investigator desperately trying to relive his glory years. This North Bay, Ontario-set film is so deadpan it's practically comatose, and while that might be a turn off for some, its played-so-straight-it-reverts-to-funny style will find an audience in anyone who loved Inherent Vice, Computer Chess, or the early/self-aware seasons of Riverdale. Three maple-flavoured doobies out of four.