The Year in Film 2009
It Wasn't Me. It was, uh, Aliens… Transformers… Terminators… Society… Capitalism… Guinea Pigs… The Pacific Ocean… A Preachy Cross-dresser.
I was just waking up as The Fourth Kind concluded. Yeah, yeah, aliens messed with Milla Jovovich, we swear! OK. I started contemplating my review, perhaps comparing alien encounters to pans: The first kind is sensory, perhaps a man shouting "that sucked!" at the end of Bright Star. The second kind is tangible proof, like a newspaper reading "Year One is the kind of comedy you might find funny if you were lacking the part of your brain that thinks." The third kind is contact, a critic walking directly up to Nicolas Cage and giving him the finger for Knowing. But The Fourth Kind — abduction. Kidnapping director Olatunde Osunsanmi and kicking him in the balls repeatedly for this effort. And a funny thing happened; the movie stopped being a movie and started being a treatise. The main character admitted she couldn't deal with her husband's suicide, so her mind morphed it into murder… but that in no way detracts from her believable, honest, forthright, and upstanding claim that her daughter was abducted by aliens.
And this is a true story.
Wow. I hate to be Joe Republican here. Scratch that; I hate to be Quincy Wadsworth Republican III posing as "Joe" Republican here, but where the Hell is the sense of personal responsibility? And looking around, there's a lot of personal responsibility missing from 2009 movies. Aliens did this, Romulans did that. Many, many unearthly villains this year. This is an epidemic. What are we trying to say? Aliens are pretty easy antagonists; you can point fingers forever and then pretend your metaphor was innocent. But I can't help wondering if our art is reflecting a societal hopelessness enshrouded in a desire to slough off responsibility on the nearest cyborg (read: Dick Cheney). Ok, maybe that's a stretch. But for fun, let's go over a partial 2009 E.T.us ex machina movie list of "It wasn't me. I'm just a victim here:"
| 2009 movie | What? | Why? |
|---|---|---|
| Monsters vs Aliens | Aliens come to destroy Earth. | Aliens are assholes. |
| Aliens in the Attic | Aliens mind-control the town's biggest dick en route to Earth enslavement. | Aliens are assholes. |
| The Fourth Kind | Aliens do a little abduction, make a little paralysis, get down tonight. | Aliens are assholes. |
| Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen | Giant alien robots wage their own war on Earth. Several die, others yawn. | Aliens with serious boundary issues are assholes. |
| The Box | Aliens offer choices that end in somebody dying. | Aliens testing humanity, in a most assholic fashion. |
| Knowing | Aliens act like dicks in order to "save" humanity. | Aliens are selective assholes, but have an altruistic motive. |
| The Unborn | Demon poseur acts like a jerk for generations. | Demons are assholes. |
| Paranormal Activity | Demon just can't find the right way to say "Hello". | Demons are assholes, but on a micro scale. |
| Star Trek | Pissed off Romulan destroys Vulcan; tries to destroy Earth. | Flimsy revenge premise. Mostly, this guy's an asshole. |
| Terminator Salvation | They're Terminators, what do you think? | Terminators are assholes. |
| Capitalism: A Love Story | Economy collapsed. | Capitalism. Not us or the people we elect. Capitalism. |
| Madea Goes to Jail | Loudmouth uses her car as a weapon and gets off on a technicality. | Because if justice prevails, this movie might have a moral center. |
| Obsessed | Hot woman won't leave married man alone. | Emotionally unstable vixens are assholes. |
| Taken | Daughter kidnapped in Europe. | Europeans are assholes. |
| Echelon Conspiracy | Sentient computer intelligence plays chess with humans. | Computers are assholes. Oh and something about national security, I think. |
| The Taking of Pelham 123 | Terrorists hijack subway. | Tattooed Travolta is an asshole. |
| Old Dogs | Drunk depressed guy fathers twins via a woman who is, apparently, easier than pre-Algebra. | "Friend" Travolta is an asshole, too. |
| The Time Traveler's Wife | Uncontrollable time travel screws with dude. | Time is an asshole. |