Guest Post: Can ‘Hope Springs’ Launch a New Era of Smart, Accessible Movies About Women?

Meryl Streep in Hope Springs Guest post written by Molly McCaffrey originally published at I Will Not Diet. Cross-posted with permission. If you watch the movie trailer for Hope Springs, you’ll see a lot of comical moments set against the backdrop of some lighthearted happy music… …including Meryl Streep’s character telling her kids that she and … Continue reading “Guest Post: Can ‘Hope Springs’ Launch a New Era of Smart, Accessible Movies About Women?”

‘The One I Love’ and the World’s Strangest Marriage Retreat

If you’ve seen an ad or trailer for ‘The One I Love,’ you probably still don’t know much about it. After watching a trailer you’d think it’s a movie about a couple going in and out of doors. All of film’s advertising hinted at, but never revealed the Charlie Kaufman-esque twist at the heart of its story, telling intrigued audiences only that an amazing twist existed and that critics agreed that it would spoil the film to reveal it. Which is pretty odd, because the twist in question takes place only 20 minutes in. Right off the bat I should probably tell you I’m going to spoil this movie, mostly because I want to talk about it.

Film Directory

# 50/50 5 Broken Cameras 500 Days of Summer 45 Years The 40-Year-Old Virgin 4 Months 3 Weeks and 2 Days 9 to 5 1971 101 Dalmations 127 Hours 10 Days in a Madhouse 10,000 km 3 1/2 Minutes, Ten Bullets 300: Rise of an Empire 12 Years a Slave 28 Days Later A Abuse … Continue reading “Film Directory”

Call for Writers: Older Women in Film and TV

Call for Writers: Older Women in Film and TV “Once women passed childbearing age they could only be seen as  grotesque on some level.”  – Meryl Streep As female actresses age, their roles–in film and television–seem to rapidly diminish. In a 2012 interview with Vogue, Meryl Streep said that when she turned 40 in 1989, “I … Continue reading “Call for Writers: Older Women in Film and TV”

2013 Golden Globes Week: The Roundup

Cecil B. DeMille Award: presented to Jodie Foster “Cecil B. DeMille Award Recipient Jodie Foster: Credibility Over Celebrity” by Robin Hitchcock Lincoln: nominated for Best Picture, Drama; Best Director, Steven Spielberg; Best Actor, Drama, Daniel Day-Lewis; Best Supporting Actress, Sally Field; Best Supporting Actor, Tommy Lee Jones; Best Screenplay, Tony Kushner; Best Original Score, John … Continue reading “2013 Golden Globes Week: The Roundup”

2013 Golden Globe Nominees

Here’s the list for the main categories. If we’ve talked about them on Bitch Flicks, those pieces are hyperlinked. Movies Best Picture, Drama“Argo”“Django Unchained”“Life of Pi”“Lincoln”“Zero Dark Thirty”Best Picture, Musical or Comedy“The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel”“Les Misérables”“Moonrise Kindgom”“Salmon Fishing in the Yemen”“Silver Linings Playbook” Best DirectorBen Affleck, “Argo”Kathryn Bigelow, “Zero Dark Thirty”Ang Lee, “Life of … Continue reading “2013 Golden Globe Nominees”

The Love That’s Really Real: ‘American Psycho’ as Romantic Comedy

Although primarily a horror film, ‘American Psycho’ has a satiric backbone that appropriates codes from the romantic comedy genre to expose the absurdities of our gender ideals. Director and co-writer Mary Harron’s lens skewers the qualities we find appealing in romantic comedies as terrifying.

‘Sense and Sensibility’: Sister Saviors in Ang Lee’s Adaptation

On first glance, it may well appear that the film follows the usual trappings of the romance genre, in which the young women eventually marry the men that they love, who fortuitously possess more than ample funds to elevate them and their families from poverty, thereby “saving” them. …If we delve a little deeper into Lee’s adaptation it becomes clear that the sisters are not saved by the men they marry, but rather by each other, and multiple times throughout the story.

The Vietnam War Through a Teen Girl’s Eyes in ‘In Country’

Sam is an underrated, if not widely unknown 1980s heroine. She serves as a symbol for America’s 1980s attempt to reconcile with its most controversial war. The 1980s experienced a boom in Vietnam War films, as the temporal distance from the war allowed filmmakers to fully deconstruct the experience. Rarely is the locus of these films a woman.

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

Check out what we have been reading this week — and let us know what you have been reading/writing in the comments!

“Get Back In Your Kennels, Both of You”: The Bitchy Diversity of ‘The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert’

The traditional family is marked as a hostile space of enforced hypocrisy.

‘Mad Men’: Masculinity and the Don Draper Image

Upon viewing the series after knowing the show’s finale, we see that the Don Draper arc reflects a small change in gender perspectives during that era. The Don of Season 1 would never act as the Don in the Season 7 finale. We see that Mad Men was all about shattering the hyper-masculine Don Draper mythos that he built and trapped himself within.