Search Results for: Shailene Woodley

Indie Spirit Best Supporting Female Nominee: Shailene Woodley in ‘The Descendants’

Shailene Woodley as Alexandra King in The Descendants This is a guest post from Martyna Przybysz. WARNING: SPOILERS! It’s almost disappointing to hear people discuss Payne’s new film The Descendants and not have them mention the absolute raw talent that Shailene Woodley is until much later in the conversation, almost in an ‘Oh yeah, she … Continue reading “Indie Spirit Best Supporting Female Nominee: Shailene Woodley in ‘The Descendants’”

‘The Revenant’ Should Be Left in the River to Drown

Don’t believe the hype. You have been conned. ‘The Revenant’ is a terrible film. … The second galling part of the film is its abhorrent treatment of Native peoples. It is at best mediocre, at worst condescending, and at all times unremarkable lazy recycled fodder. Almost every time Hugh has an interaction with a Native American person, they meet with disaster. … Can we see this whole movie from the Arikara tribe’s perspective? From Powaqa’s perspective? That would be an actual game changer.

When Women Are the Bad Guys in YA Dystopian Films

Unfortunately, I don’t think these four “cold, intelligent women” are illuminating “problematic mechanisms of power” at all. Rather, they are expressions of the persistent distrust of female authority in our current culture. These characters serve as a type of sexist shorthand for a society gone terribly, terribly wrong.

‘White Bird In A Blizzard’: A Storm of Crime, Carnality, and Coming of Age

For months, Kat idly notes her mother Eve’s increasingly odd behaviour, but is too busy falling in love and losing her virginity to care, until, suddenly, one day, Eve disappears without a trace. Kat assumes she ran away because she didn’t love them, and attempts to go on with her life, but a police investigation slowly begins circling her family. As an audience, we’ve been conditioned to see a movie with thriller or mystery elements in it as a thriller or mystery story. But Gregg Araki’s film, ‘White Bird in a Blizzard,’ is only part mystery, part coming of age story, and part haunted dreamscape, and refuses to be easily categorized as any of the above.

‘The Fault in Our Stars’ Gus Is the Manic Pixie Dream Boy Teenagers Deserve

I know, I know, you are tired of hearing about Manic Pixie Dream Girls. We feminist critics, we’re always Manic Pixie This, Bechdel Test That, Sexual Objectification of the Other Thing. And I’m tired of hearing about Manic Pixies too, but I’m even more tired of seeing them.

‘She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry’: An Incomplete Portrait of The Women’s Movement

When the young, hippie-ish movie star Shailene Woodley said in an interview that she wasn’t a feminist, many women pointed out that she didn’t seem to know what feminism was. Perhaps Woodley and other women of her generation (she is 22) don’t know what feminism is for the same reason fish don’t know what water is–because it’s all around them and has been for the entirety of their lives.

‘Our Song’: Teen Girls Of Color As Heroines of Their Own Lives

In the 90s and early 2000s we seemed on the cusp of a sea change in which a white male teenager wasn’t the default character audiences were supposed to identify with. While films about grown women had stars like Whitney Houston (in ‘The Bodyguard’) Angela Bassett (Oscar-nominated for ‘What’s Love Got To Do With It’) and a pre “J. Lo” Jennifer Lopez (in ‘Selena’), films about teenaged girls of color popped up too. Leslie Harris’s ‘Just Another Girl on the IRT’ was released in the early 90s. In 2000 writer-director Jim McKay’s gorgeous, melancholy ‘Our Song,’ about the friendship of three teenaged girls of color (which starred Kerry Washington–in her film debut) opened in theaters.

‘She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry’: An Incomplete Portrait of The Women’s Movement

When the young, hippie-ish movie star Shailene Woodley said in an interview that she wasn’t a feminist, a lot of women pointed out that she didn’t seem to know what feminism was. Perhaps Woodley and other women of her generation (she is 22) don’t know what feminism is for the same reason fish don’t know what water is–because it’s all around them and has been for the entirety of their lives.

‘Divergent’ is Not So Divergent But Still Crucial for Feminism

I’m hopeful that ‘Divergent,’ as the first installment of the series, is setting Tris up to be a memorable heroine in her own right in the following films. I’m hoping that ‘Divergent’ is the story of the forging of our heroine, the exploration of her talents, abilities, and heart and that the second and third films will show her learning from her experiences, becoming a leader, and inspiring others.

In Honor of ‘Veronica Mars’: A Spotlight on Father-Daughter Relationships

Mainly though, the movie’s release has reminded us of all the supposedly simple and universal the show portrayed so well, the things that shouldn’t be notable in today’s movies and TV, but somehow are: a platonic male-female relationship, a strong friendship between teen girls who never came to blows over looks or boys, a willingness to hold its heroine accountable for her flaws, and above all, an amazing father-daughter relationship.

Cute Old Ladies Who Talk Dirty in ‘Nebraska’ and ‘Philomena’

But Payne doesn’t seem to give much thought to Kate’s situation. In all but one scene Kate is called on to be testy and not much else. Even though we laugh as she chirps the cause of death of a late, but not lamented relative and we feel satisfied when she cusses out greedy members of Woody’s family, the character is more of an exclamation point than a person.