by Thom Yee

Images courtesy of Universal Pictures and TriStar Pictures

There isn’t a day (and sometimes not even an hour) that goes by that I don’t wish I could go back and do things right.  That’s what makes time travel such a tantalizing thought and why I’m a firm believer that time travel can make any story better.  No matter how poorly rendered, no matter how inconsistently portrayed, no matter how broadly unnecessary, thematically disconnected or logically unfulfilling, time travel is just too compelling an idea to pass up.

Back to the Future is an exciting movie, but it’s propelled by and gains direct meaning from the ticking time bomb of getting Marty’s parents together before the lightning strikes the clock tower.  Superman the Movie makes less sense, but is still slightly more intriguing with the notion that Superman can reverse time by reversing the Earth’s rotation.  Even the Star Trek reboot would have been weaker without Spock Prime and the new timeline (though his presence in the sequel is perhaps the biggest symbol of what was wrong with that movie).

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by Grace Crawford

Images courtesy of Samuel Goldwyn Films, Red Hour Films, New Line Cinema, and 20th Century Fox.

I don’t have adventures. Last time I did, I ventured into northern Alberta with Boyfriend to explore a series of ghost towns. Most of them we couldn’t get into because of mining in the area, or they had been torn down years before. On top of that, it was “that time of the month” (focus, boys) and it was one of the worst times I’ve ever had. So basically we just gave up and hung out in Jasper for the rest of the day. And that was the biggest adventure I’ve ever had.

So when I say that I’m not a big adventure person, I think you’ll get a pretty good idea of what I mean. I prefer to live vicariously through other people’s adventures, whether it’s a movie, a TV show, or just a friend’s Facebook updates while they’re in exotic locales. And I think that’s something I have in common with the titular character in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.

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by Thom Yee

Images courtesy of The Weinstein Company and Macmillan

In the last few days before the Academy Awards — perhaps the most majestic, magical, pompous and circumstantial annual event of our times, a living monument of self-congratulations and extravagance — I managed to watch one more Best Picture nominee.  And it’s the quiet, British one.

With the possible exception of Nebraska, Philomena may be the least of this year’s Oscar nominees.  It’s one of the least talked about, one of the least mentioned, and it has one of the smallest stories.  There is no long con, no kidnapped ship captains, no artificial intelligences, or billions of dollars in stock fraud involved, and even in movie-obsessed circles, few will tell you that Philomena will win Best Picture.

And I’m not going to argue otherwise.

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by Thom Yee

All images courtesy of Paramount Pictures

“Anybody who tells you money is the root of all evil doesn’t fucking have any.”  From Ben Affleck’s throat to your ears (in another film inspired by the exploits of Jordan Belfort).

To frame it another way, wealthy or poor, empowered or enfeebled, everybody’s the hero of their own story.  And evil will always exist so long as people reckon themselves heroes.

Money isn’t the root of all evil.  Because evil’s always going to be there, money or not.

Money didn’t make you do the strange things you did in pursuit of a poorly defined goal.  Money didn’t make you take the roads you’ve taken to get you where you are today.  Money didn’t make you step on your parents’s throat(s), betray your best friends’s trust(s), leave your first wife, or abandon your first children.

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by Grace Crawford

All images courtesy of Walt Disney Studios.

Warning: spoilers ahead. No, seriously. I told you so.

You knew this was coming. I mean, my favourite movie is Tangled, for crying out loud. I love Disney movies. Yes, I’m a girl who was born in the early ‘90s; of course I love Disney movies. And I’m not just talking the animated ones, either. I even liked those ridiculous straight-to-DVD movies like Hatching Pete and High School Musical (although really, who are we kidding; that thing’s a gem).

But here’s the weird thing: I’ve never liked the princesses.

Cinderella gets treated like crap by her family and puts up with it until a handsome prince whisks her away from her tragically awful life and into the lap of luxury. Sleeping Beauty pricks her finger and is stuck in a coma for like two days (it’s actually something like a hundred years in the story, FYI) until a handsome prince whisks her away from her tragically comatose life and into… well, I guess she’s still a princess. Anyway. Ariel is sick of her life and ditches her family to marry a prince (because princes everywhere) even though she is literally sixteen years old and that’s barely legal.

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by Thom Yee

American Hustle images courtesy of Columbia Pictures

If there’s one part of my life that I’m actually happy about, it would have to be that I was never alive during any part of the seventies.  Plaid pants, shag carpets, quadrophonic sound, the empty leftovers of a previous decade that actually meant something, a meaningless, empty presidency after five straight years of Nixon-ian paranoia.  Looking back, it’s all a sensory overload in the worst kind of way:  the colours, the textures… the way things look like they must have smelled like… I’m glad I missed all that.  To be fair, I am kind of a fan of the Farrah Fawcett haircut (which looks like it must have taken forever to do), I do wear sideburns (but that’s mostly because of the inherent absurdity of Asian male facial hair), and I still think bell bottoms look awesome on a certain type of girl (though that type of girl tends to look awesome in almost anything).

And all of these are really broad generalizations.

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