Interesting upcoming film

Learned about "Tiny Furniture" on Jezebel today... boy girl am I excited! This will be a good movie for me.

http://tinyfurniture.com/

Here's an interesting article about it and "Greenberg"

Did You Hear About the Morgans?

General feeling:

Pure and total crap.

I understand some people watch stupid romcoms and enjoy them. I know for some people it's a total guilty pleasure for them to turn off their brain and watch a cliché ridden formulaic piece of crap... who am I to judge? I like ninja movies.

I gave up on romcoms for good after trying to watch Sandra Bullock's "The Proposal" because a friend (you know who you are) suggested it. It was a mess: there was the Mexican character who was the stripper, the dude who worked at the store, AND the Priest (that craaazy Mexican!), the eagle that flies down and takes her cellphone, then the eagle steals the dog... hilarity ensues. I promised myself no more, but I actually felt like it would be silly for me to do a blog on female representation in movies and avoid the romcoms (movies made for  sold to women) so I cued up a free one online (I'm not paying for this shit) and watched it one lazy night while Mr. Reviewer played XBOX.

"Did You Hear About the Morgans?" a movie where Sarah Jessica Parker plays Carrie Bradshaw Meryl Morgan and Hugh Grant plays Hugh Grant Paul Morgan.

 
Female Representation:

Meryl is neurotic, she's baby crazy, successful, and a huge over-sharer who loves New York.
I was happy to see Peggy from Mad Men [Elisabeth Moss] playing Jackie Drake. Jackie, Meryl's assistant, is also, unsurprisingly, a neurotic character who's incredibly bossy.

Meryl is completely incapable of remaining calm and must be placated by her soon to be ex husband Paul. Seeing as Paul is played by Hugh Grant he obviously has a charming forced and annoying quip at the end of every frickin sentence. But he's the one who convinces Meryl to leave New York instead of being murdered. Thank goodness he does though, otherwise Meryl would be completely incapable of doing anything without freaking out... oh wait, she spends most of the movie freaking out. Luckily there's some rednecks cowboys to help them out in their new quaint and stupid town.
Unfortunately Jackie's character does something stupid and almost gets the Morgan's killed but luckily Paul bravely saves them both with help from the cowboy's. sigh... it really is that bad.

Weirdly there's also a character who does three jobs like the craaaazy Mexican in "The Proposal" but she's a dumb blond instead of a craaazy Mexican.

I realize this Carrie Bradshaw type character is a type of female who exists out there in the world, the high maintenance hot mess (the romcom regular), but where are all the leads that reflect the rest of the women (the low-medium maintenance folks). I guess chicks like me don't make as many opportunities for easy gags... if only I found those gags funny.

To be fair this movie makes EVERYONE look stupid.

Grade: facepalm

The Men Who Stare at Goats

General feeling:

Awesome, pure awesome!


Female Representation:

None... well almost. Ewan McGregor who plays Bob Wilton has a wife at the beginning of the film who leaves him but she's just a bit role.

It's a story that doesn't have women in it. Fine by me. The way I see it most movies don't have women in them: they usually just throw in some token girl to be the eye candy who generally has no depth of character anyway (talking about mainstream film here).

It's an awesome movie about men.

Grade: A boobless A+

"Ninja Assassin"

 General Feeling:

So I went out and rented Ninja Assassin starring Korean pop sensation Rain this week because not-so-deep-down I love movies with ninja moves and bloody battles. Let's begin by addressing the dialogue and acting... but really these are moot points, it is a ninja movie folks, don't expect an award winner. But if, like me, you can forgo seriousness to see a little ass kicking and a lot of gooey CGI blood then this might be the movie for you.

Female Representation:

What about female representation you ask? I must admit it was not bad. Don't get too excited, there were still a few thorns in my side but it's a ninja movie with gore and A LOT of severed limbs and it's far better than the kids movie I reviewed last week so I'm OK with it.

The film opens in a criminal's den with a few scattered women around the bad men, I initially thought "here we go, the booby, dazed women all over the men sequence is about to commence" and then it didn't. Besides the very chiseled Rain, the main character is Mika Coretti [Naomie Harris]. Mika is the typical female lead who is a capable, stubborn, smart woman who deep down is fragile and needs saving. There are a few groan inducing moments: She get's sexually harassed by her boss/colleague... and smiles, there's a whole segment about her dress size which is just weird, and at one point she says "I'm just a forensic researcher, I can't do anything by myself" [head/desk].

She has a few hero moments and saves the day, or rather, unleashes Rain to save the day. She saves him, he saves her, they all save everyone etc etc... There are other women in the movie too (a few): ninja boys AND girls are being trained for evil, there's a female ninja that challenges Rain at the beginning but gets picked off pretty quick.

Be warned: If you are looking for a Bechdel test winner (explained in my first post from March 15th) you'll be disappointed, two women do not have the opportunity to have a conversation and I'm pretty sure, correct me if I'm wrong, there isn't even a shot that has two women in it.


Final Thoughts:

All in all this is a terrible movie, but also a terribly awesome movie! The story is not well written, well explained, well acted or well thought out but the severed limbs, buckets of blood, and ninja flips are fun. This isn't an awesome movie for female representation... but it isn't a terrible one either.

Grade: One bloody thumb-stump part way up

"Planet 51"

General feeling:

Last night I rented "Planet 51" with my boyfriend and was expecting a fun animated kids movie. We both got a few laughs out of it but it was nothing memorable and there were some disturbing things about it that made us feel concern considering the amount of kids that probably watched/will watch it.

Female representation:

The female character Neera [Jessica Biel] is not even worth talking about. She has a few lines here and there but has absolutely nothing to do with the progression of the story. The first time you see her is a slow motion shot of her walking out of her house with romantic music playing... because obviously you see her through the main character Lem's [Justin Long] eyes. Not only is she just the romantic interest but she is barely in the story at all. When astronaut Charles [Dwayne Johnson] says a few words to everyone at the end he only has "take care of him [Lem]" to say to Neera. She is the prize to be won and when she is won she is instantly at his side looking up at him with admiration ready to "take care of him".




While I'm not surprised that Neera is the love interest I am surprised that she has no other purpose in the film. I watched "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs" a few weeks ago, which was a far better female role, and I was expecting something similar... it is a kids movie after all and we are in 2010 now, I was hoping that little girls everywhere would be able to aspire to be something other than the male character (almost the only characters I ever identify with at all). In "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs" the female lead Sam (voiced by Anna Faris) was, of course a secondary character and the love interest, but she was a sort of everywoman that girls could identify with at least on some levels. Neera is the equivalent of a 'dumb blond' role who misunderstands Lem until the end when he makes good and wins her love back from the other guy.

Final thoughts:

Although the female lead was a disappointment to say the least, there was something else that I noticed that was far more disturbing. From beginning to end there is a theme of objectifying women gags. "Hahahaha, that's so funny he just sexually harassed that woman and she gives him hell for it in a squeaky nagging voice" wait... what?
From a bit character whistling at a 'sexy' centerfold, to Lem's dad saying of Neera "Take that hill soldier", to a security guard ogling a female passerby, to Dwayne Johnson's astronaut character trying to teach Lem to act aggressively to 'take his prize' in order to get Neera to like him, the disturbing representation of women as objects freaked me the fuck out. Why don't we just tell kids it's a laugh to treat women like meat, objects, prizes... talk to the girl in your class like that because it will be hilarious little boy, and little girls don't forget, boys will be boys.

WTF?

Grade: Epic Fail

Why...

I love movies. I love watching movies, talking about them, and studying them, but I'm sick of leaving a theater annoyed. If I'm going to spend my hard earned (and limited) money supply going to/renting a movie I feel that it's only fair that I'm represented.

Some of the most 'captivating' films are impossible for me to enjoy because the female characters are either peripheral or absolutely ridiculous. When I watch a film I want to be swept up and taken into a different world, I don't want constant and blatant reminders that the film I'm watching was not made for me.

This blog is an attempt to help others in the same boat and also a way for me to put my frustration into a productive place... reviews.

Some misconceptions about pro-feminist films:

1. Every female character needs to be a feminist
2. Female characters need to be idealized versions of women

The thing that bugs me the most about most movies is the difference in representation between male and female characters. The male hero or anti-hero is usually the 'everyman'. The Everyman is a character that all males can relate to; he is an ordinary character who reacts realistically to the events that happen around him.
The female (usually there is only one) character in most movies is an idealized version of women who's sole purpose is usually the everyman's love interest.

So we generally get the perfect, beautiful, wise and loving woman (The Madonna) or the purely evil bitch who often uses sex to manipulate (The Whore). Like all woman out there I can't relate to one or the other. The problem is generally the fact that the 'good' female character is so idealized and so perfect and the 'evil' character so evil and manipulative that no woman can relate to either of them in any real way.

The main female character doesn't need to be anything other than a regular girl... someone that every woman can relate to.

If you aren't going to have a representation of women that is at all realistic, that's perfectly fine, just don't put women in your films. Look at Snatch or Reservoir dogs; these are great movies with no women in them that I love to watch. I don't want to be represented just for representation sake... As they say: Do it right or don't do it at all.

Here's a great site with this information for a lot of films based on the Bechdel Test which became popularized through Alison Bechdel's 1985 comic strip called The Rule in the Comic "Dykes to Watch Out for"

That test is that a story must:
1. have more than one female character
2. who talk to each other
3. about something other than a man.

http://bechdel.nullium.net/

You would be shocked at how rarely this happens, or maybe you wouldn't...