The radical notion that women like good movies
Written by MaxThornton. Warning: spoilers are invoked herein, and they’ll swallow your soul! I try not to look forward to things; I’ve been hurt toomany timesbefore. But I couldn’t help feeling just alittle excitement for the Evil Deadremake, tempered though it was with trepidation. Almost certainly not true, if you’re the kind of person who … Continue reading “Where Is My Girl Ash?: On "Evil Dead" 2013”
The Evil Dead movies are some of my all-time favorites. I love them the way you can only really love something you first saw in your teens: with nostalgia, delight, and fierce ardor. Just looking at this makes me incoherent with happiness. ;aksdjf. So I have a lot of complicated feelings about the forthcoming remake. … Continue reading “A Walkthrough of the New ‘Evil Dead’ Trailer”
‘Ouija: Origin of Evil’ may be a prequel, but it is first and foremost a tragic character piece. One in which a previously strong family dynamic is torn apart when malicious forces use Alice’s grief to manipulate her.
Alice Lowe’s ‘Prevenge’ is in some ways a modernized version of ‘Rosemary’s Baby.’ … Throughout the course of history, and especially in Trump’s America, baby always comes first. Our government cares more about fetuses than it does about living, breathing women. This chills me to the core more than a scary movie ever could.
In a world where female characters in television are hated for minor flaws (compared to that of their spouses, anyways), I think it’s fantastic that Daredevil asks us to root for this woman whose flaws are on par with many other male anti-heroes. … This is yet another example why women and people of color need to tell their own stories. If Elodie Yung hadn’t fought for and included more layers to Elektra, she could very well have been a one-dimensional villain, a negative to female characters of color rather than a positive.
Ultimately, we are left to conclude that Elektra’s characterization is not based in specific motivations, but in a dangerous, unseemly destiny that shapes her will and revokes her agency. … This trope, in which women’s “destinies” obscure, erase, or negate their agency is one that can be found other places…
The newly released Marvel “superhero” movie ‘Deadpool’ is more of a self-aware, raunchy antihero flick that solidly earns its R rating with graphic violence, lots of dick jokes, and a sex scene montage. Basically, it’s a good time. While ‘Deadpool’ is entertaining, self-referential, self-effacing, and full of pop culture references, how does it measure up with its depiction of its female characters?
This season seems to present a large change in representational issues by including complex characters of color that we actually know something about and care for, presenting the couple of Aaron and Eric from the Alexandria community and self-pronounced lesbian Tara, and doing away with the innate equation of vagina equals do the laundry while the men go kill all the zombies.
As with the writers on ‘The Walking Dead,’ these writers haven’t yet proven they have any idea how to write strong roles for women. But if they ever figure it out, they’ve got the right actor for the job.
There’s a conservative bent to much horror, but this conflation of real-life police brutality and genuine tragedy with the killing of zombies crosses a line.
The new Netflix original series ‘Daredevil,’ about Marvel’s blind defense-attorney-by-day-vigilante-by-night Matt Murdock, surprised me. It’s extremely different from the other Marvel Studios properties. First, it has the “dark, edgy” tone normally associated with Warner Bros. DC movies, particularly the Nolan Batman films. Second, it is really, REALLY violent (like, graphic decapitations violent) in a way that Marvel’s PG-13 movies cannot be. Finally, ‘Daredevil’ is almost a complete disaster when it comes to its female characters. Marvel’s track record with female characters isn’t perfect, but I’ve come to expect much better than what we get here.
Many reviewers of ‘At the Devil’s Door’ compare it to ‘Rosemary’s Baby,’ and rightfully so: both films are masterpieces of pregnancy terror and the horror of unholy motherhood. But the women in these two stories have vastly different experiences accepting their roles as mothers of demonic spawn.
