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Movie Review: Up

*This is a guest review from Travis Eisenbise.

If Pixar shit into a bucket, it would still be box office gold. Fifteen years ago Pixar catapulted itself into a movie-making monopoly with Toy Story. Since then they’ve continued to rehash the same predictable (and often adorable) story lines about the secret lives of bugs, monsters, cars, rats, and superheroes. They are the main reason movie theatre parking lots continue to fill up with dented minivans and half-crushed McDonald’s milkshake containers. But still, no matter how annoyingly formulaic their stories are, I am a sucker for them. Confession: I was in line to see Up before many ten-year-olds in my neighborhood and am not ashamed to say that I cut right in the middle of a group of 15 kids to make sure I got better seats than they did. I have also been known to hush children during Pixar films. I’m that guy.

Up came in the aftermath of Wall-E (last year’s Oscar winner for Best Animated film), though Up takes a decidedly safer route. At Pixar, like most movie houses, there are A and B movies. The A movies at Pixar are written and directed by Andrew Stanton (Wall-E, Finding Nemo, Toy Story) and Brad Bird (Ratatouille, The Incredibles). Up is a B movie (only produced by Stanton and Bird), and pulls out many Pixar tricks to throw something together in time for a summer release date (Pixar Trick #1: Summer release date).

Up tells the story of widower, Carl Fredricksen (voiced by Ed Asner). The movie begins with Carl as child, donning explorer goggles, and ogling over a film about his explorer idol, Charles Muntz (voiced by Christopher Plummer). Muntz, the captain of The Spirit of Adventure (PT #2: Name everything with vague, idyllic names), claims he’s found a new beast in a far-off part of South America. When scientists debunk Muntz’s discovery as a fabrication, Muntz floats off back into the wild to prove the scientific community wrong. Carl, still a boy, travels home from the theatre and is stopped by Ellie, a young, rambunctious child with, let’s face it, WAY cooler explorer garb than Carl. She inducts him into her own explorer club and within a 5-minute musical montage they are married, live their life together, save money for a future trip they never take, and lose a child. (PT #3: Emotional montage where characters gaze at each other instead of speak.) Ultimately Ellie dies, leaving Carl alone and curmudgeonly.

Insert Pixar dilemma: Pixar has a girl problem. I don’t want to dwell too much on this, as the blogosphere has already run Pixar through the dirt (as it should). Noted in Linda Holmes’ blog on NPR, after 15 years of movie making, Pixar has yet to create a story with a female lead. Ellie is the only female voice in this entire movie and she is dead and gone within the first ten minutes. She’s not even allowed an actual voice as an adult. (see PT: #3). The entire story is told by a male octogenarian and a boy, Russell (voiced by Jordan Nagai), who is seventy years Carl’s junior, and who—instead of being a real-world boy scout—is a Wilderness Explorer (see PT: #2). It is devastating to watch this movie in a theatre of mothers and young girls who are forced to stretch their own experiences into the identities of these stock male characters. (PT #4: Employ an inordinate amount of male writers.)

There is a mother bird character that is quirky and loves chocolate, flitters around on the screen as the comic relief, and who, as the film progresses, becomes the desire of Muntz in order to prove to the scientific community that he’s not crazy. But even this bird’s identity is wrapped up in her overly compelling (sarcasm) storyline to return to her bird babies. When she is returned, the world apparently rights itself on its axis and all sense of justice is restored. (PT #5 – Everything in Pixarland turns out alright in the end.) But enough is enough. Fifteen years with no female leads is an embarrassment. I’m sure all the male writers at Pixar (see PT #4) might have noticed what a shame it was had they not been so busy shooting their wads into each others’ over-inflated male-dominated story lines.

Enough about wad-shooting; here’s a quick summary. When Carl faces eviction from encroaching developers, instead of being taken to Shady Oaks retirement home, he fills his house with thousands of balloons and (much like Australia’s Danny Deckchair) takes to the sky. (PT #6 – Shiny, colorful screenshots make the best advertisements.) While in the air, Carl realizes that Russell is with him. The goal is to get the house to Paradise Falls (see PT #2), so that Carl can fulfill a life-long promise he had with his dead (mute) wife, Ellie. They land on the wrong side of the falls and spend much of the movie carrying the house (PT #7: Every character has some burden they have to overcome.) to the opposite side of the rocky crag. They encounter talking dogs (PT #8: Every animal can talk.) that use them to catch the mother-beast-bird thing. Chaos ensues, dreams are crushed, lives are rebuilt (see PT #7), and Muntz falls off the dirigible to his death. (PT #9: Kill off the bad guy.)

Up is a kid’s movie, but because we live in a world where movie writing/directing are 99.9999999% dominated by men, Up is set in a man’s world. It’s a boy’s story, for boys, about boys, where mute girls die off early. But for all the times I cringed at Up’s blatant disregard for women, I will say that I practically drooled on myself because the movie was so damned visually stunning. (see PT #6). When those balloons come out of Carl’s chimney and his house begins to lift off the ground, I think it doesn’t matter who is in the movie theatre, everyone’s mouth is open and everyone is ready for the ride. Pixar has a pulse on what makes a good movie, and they are artistically capable of pulling it off, but they rely on storylines that readily neglect female roles. (PT#10: No female leads.) As far as I’m concerned, they can toss that trick in the trash.

Travis Eisenbise works at a non-profit environmental organization in New York City. His fiction and non-fiction have appeared in (super small) journals, so it’s okay that you’ve never heard of him. He lives in Brooklyn with his partner who likes to make bread in a bread robot.

Movie Review: ‘The Blind Side’

No. No to the over-abundant racial stereotypes showcased throughout the film. No to the kind-hearted southern woman as the Black man’s White Savior. No to the shallow, embarrassing, surface-level portrayal of class issues. No to the constant heavy-handed references to God and prayer and sexual morality. No to falling back on the tired tropes of wives as mommies and women as over-bearing and emasculating ball-busters. No to this film’s best picture nomination. Just … no.

imdb synopsis, as composed by Anonymous:

The Blind Side depicts the story of Michael Oher, a homeless African-American youngster from a broken home, taken in by the Touhys, a well-to-do white family who help him fulfill his potential. At the same time, Oher’s presence in the Touhys’ lives leads them to some insightful self-discoveries of their own.

Living in his new environment, the teen faces a completely different set of challenges to overcome. As a football player and student, Oher works hard and, with the help of his coaches and adopted family, becomes an All-American offensive left tackle.

The real synopsis, as composed by me:

The Blind Side depicts the story of a white woman who sees a Black man walking down the street in the rain. She tells her husband to stop the car, and he obliges—oh, his wife is just so crazy sometimes!—then, out of the goodness of her white heart, she allows him to spend the night in their offensively enormous home.

Unfortunately, she can’t sleep very well—the Black man might steal some of their very important shit! But the next day, when she sees that he’s folded his blankets and sheets nicely on the couch, she realizes that, hey, maybe all Black men really aren’t thieving thugs.

Then she saves his life.

There’s a way to tell a true story, and there’s a way to completely botch the shit out of a true story. Shit-botching, in this instance, might include basing the entire film around an upper-class white woman’s struggle to essentially reform a young Black man by taking him in, buying him clothes, getting him a tutor, teaching him how to tackle, and threatening to kill a group of young Black men he used to hang out with.

However, a filmmaker might consider, when telling the true story of Michael Oher’s struggles to overcome his amazing obstacles, to actually base the film on the true story of Michael Oher’s struggles to overcome his amazing obstacles.

Instead, we get Leigh Anne Tuohy (Sandra Bullock) as the adorable southern heroine. We get the white football coach’s unwillingness to stand by his Black player, until one day, he has a revelation on the field and screams at a referee for making yet another terrible call against Oher. The result? The viewer gets to cheer—not for Oher, mind you—but for the lesson the coach finally learned: racism is bad! Yay white people! We rock! This is all very problematic because the story, which should’ve been about Oher, plays from beginning to end like a manipulative montage of white guilt.

Basically, each white person learns a valuable lesson in this movie: Black people aren’t bad, as long as they’re reformed by upper-class white people.

While we have Oher, a soft-spoken, likable football player, we also have Oher’s former friends, a group of young Black men based entirely on stereotypes of inner-city gun-toters. In those scenes, Black men are the polar opposite of Oher, consistently sexually harassing women, waving guns around, starting fights, and generally looking all dangerous and shit. So when Tuohy confronts them for messing with Oher, the viewer can’t help but root for her; she’s merely protecting her adopted son after all.

As a result, the audience strongly identifies with an upper-class conservative white woman as she threatens a group of inner-city Black men. She says, “If you so much as set foot downtown you will be sorry. I’m in a prayer group with the D.A., I’m a member of the NRA, and I’m always packing.”

We’re meant to find that funny. I don’t find it funny. Because overall, the moral of that scene, and of this entire fake true story about Michael Oher, basically goes like this: White woman good. Black men bad. White woman make one black man good.

She even stands up to her upper-class white friends who also, as luck would have it, are based on the worst stereotypes of upper-class white women you can possibly imagine: cold, snobbish, morally superior, complete assholes who occasionally get together for lunch and discuss money or something. The scenes with these women serve one purpose: for them to act overtly racist so that Leigh Anne Tuohy can go all heroine on our asses again, telling off the women and leaving them alone and flabbergasted at the table. How dare she!

If you count those non-conversations about nothing as “conversations among women,” then I suppose this film technically passes the Bechdel Test. But the portrayal of women in this film? Embarrassing.

At first, I wanted to identify with Bullock, to see her as a strong, complicated female lead. But when I realized her character is nothing more than a vehicle for upper-middle-class white America to feel good about itself, well, that pretty much killed it for me.

To make matters worse, if possible, the filmmakers use Tuohy’s outspoken personality to emasculate men, especially the football coach. She’s overly feminine, too, which makes her outspokenness almost adorable, and, in turn, permitted. Even her husband has given up trying to argue with her, which is played as a cutesy marriage thing, where the emasculated husband does whatever his wife says because she’s all blunt and endearing.

And as a mommy, my god! What does she think she’s doing bringing a looming Black man into her home? What kind of mother would do that? These are the questions asked by the stereotypes-disguised-as-upper-class-white-women, and they jar Tuohy enough that she goes immediately into Good Mother mode, having a sit-down with her daughter to discuss Oher’s presence in their home. Maybe that’s fine, but where’s Daddy in this discussion?

What I’m saying is this: I don’t know what the hell the Academy was thinking this year when it tossed up The Blind Side as a Best Picture contender, but remember, this is also the same group of people who awarded the Best Picture Oscar to Crash in 2005. Five years have passed—is it already time to recognize yet another racist film that blindly (ha) reinforces the exact stereotypes it attempts to rail against?

Movie Review: A Serious Man

*This is a guest post from writer Lesley Jenike.

“It sounds like you don’t know anything! Why even tell me the story,” math professor Larry Gopnik asks Rabbi #2 on his Job-like quest for spiritual understanding. Why even tell the story, indeed?

Critics’ consternation over A Serious Man as an odd change of pace is intriguing to say the least. Is this the kind of movie an Oscar winner makes? Is this Coen Brothers’ most autobiographical film? Have the mysterious Coens finally revealed themselves by creating, finally, an autobiographical film? And to top it all off, why did they make a movie without a single big-name actor?

It’s true. There’s something defiantly perplexing about the film, something rather intense about its silences, weird compositions, odd humor and cringe-worthy dialogue that’s frankly off-putting. Maybe that’s why I loved it.

The Coens are, in my book, among the most consistently innovative filmmakers working today. And I don’t mean “innovative” in the sense that, as directors, they splice and dice filmic conventions the way Baz Luhrmann or Danny Boyle do, for example. Rather, they’re consummate storytellers, fancy jump cuts be damned, and their stories, no matter how dark, how disconcerting, become somehow universal, funny, and true. What’s ultimately so disconcerting about this movie, however, is its skeptical take on the Judeo-Christian tradition of parable and storytelling as illustration and explanation. The Coen brothers are undermining their own profession here, their own modus operandi, and call into question narrative’s effectiveness in light of a chaotic universe and incomprehensible suffering. It’s a dangerous move but ultimately a rewarding one.

The film is loosely organized around a series of “fables,” dramatized and told second-hand, none of which reveal anything beyond the pointlessness.

The movie opens with a fable from a nineteenth century Jewish shtetl (all dialogue in Yiddish, no less) in which a husband invites what a wife believes to be a dybbuk into the house. The wife, in her ignorance, stabs the man to prove he’s a ghost. The man staggers out, bleeding, into the snow. So begins a cycle of misread signs and empty ritual not even a “serious man” can overcome. It’s no accident, Bitch Flicks readers, that trouble begins with a woman. This is probably the Coens’ most specifically Jewish movie and the Jewish narrative’s patriarchal power structure is immediately evident.

Cut to the late sixties. Larry Gopnik’s son is listening to Jefferson Airplane in Hebrew school. Faith seems strikingly empty. Dybbuks still appear but as sublimations. Women still ruin lives but by slowly emasculating their husbands.

Now, I don’t pretend to know the particulars of Jewish culture and the Jewish religion, but I do know that the struggle to maintain faith and tradition in an ever-increasingly secular, often hostile world is a recurring theme in Jewish film and literature, and A Serious Man is no different. Its long shots and odd angles emphasize otherness, strangeness and estrangement, even within the context of the familiar, i.e. Larry Gopnik’s middle class, suburban home. Larry’s “goy” neighbors, for example, radiate, from Larry’s point of view, a weirdness he finds fascinating and potentially dangerous. His son smokes pot and simultaneously studies the Torah for his upcoming bar mitzvah while watching some crappy late Sixties TV show. His daughter is flagrantly disrespectful; his wife tells him she’s leaving him for “a serious man,” a neighbor “tempts” him with her breasts and a joint, and a South Korean student bribes him for a passing grade: a series of events that undermines his sense of moral order and integrity. Larry’s world, in other words, is crumbling, and no illustrative story is going to help this time.

A Serious Man’s lack—lack of answers and its uncompromising lack of real narrative sense—is its brilliance. The Coens manage here to dissemble meaning without resorting to empty, surface-level tricks or rhetorical flourishes. In other words, this is a sophisticated film by a pair of filmmakers who’ve cut the crap and gotten down to the heart of the matter: God is not listening.

Lesley Jenike received her PhD from the University of Cincinnati in 2008. She currently teaches poetry writing, screenwriting, and literature classes at the Columbus College of Art and Design. Her book of poems is Ghost of Fashion (CustomWords, 2009).

Movie Review: The Hurt Locker

In the entire film, one woman appears–and she’s a wife and mother. She doesn’t have any conversations with other women about things other than men. The film is a Bechdel fail.

Bombs explode. Men work together. They play together. They bond. Action! Explosions! Male soldiers! Men! Triumph! Failure! What seems, on the surface, a movie that I wouldn’t seek out is the one I’m pulling for to win Best Picture.

Okay, I’ve only seen one of the other nominees, but I’m pretty sure about this: Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker is the film of the year. She is the director of the year.

Anyone reading this post is probably familiar with the movie, at the very least for the narrative of its director’s sex and, unfortunately, her relationship with another nominee in the same category. I want a woman to win the award for directing; in the history of the Academy Awards, only three women before Bigelow have ever been nominated (Lina Wertmüller for Seven Beauties, Jane Campion for The Piano, and Sofia Coppola for Lost in Translation). While I don’t want to lose focus on the how good the movie actually is by focusing exclusively on Bigelow’s sex, a few things need to be said.

War is a subject typically dominated by male voices. The Hurt Locker was written by a man. Its protagonists are men. But to make the mistake that war is a male subject is to make a classic sexist assumption. War is a universal subject. One need not be a man to create art about war, or to study texts of war (movies, books, paintings, etc.). In her Salon review, Stephanie Zacharek may put Bigelow’s accomplishment best:

She’s sympathetic toward her characters without coddling them or infantilizing them. Bigelow is an outsider looking in and she knows it, but that status also allows her some freedom. The guys in “The Hurt Locker” are human beings first and men second. The point, maybe, is that you don’t have to have a dick to understand what they’re going through.

We are all implicated in war. If women seem less likely to focus on war, our silence is implicated.

Do I want to see a female director lauded for a woman-centered film? Without question. But Kathryn Bigelow shouldn’t be blamed for making the kinds of movies she’s made for two decades. I didn’t see a woman-centered movie this year that was as powerful and well-made as this movie. And that is a problem.
In The Hurt Locker we have a close and careful character study of three men and their approaches to dealing with combat and their jobs on an elite IED diffusing team at the height of the war in Iraq. Sanborn (played by Anthony Mackie) is a rules man, relying on procedure to maintain his cool. William James (in an Oscar-nominated performance by Jeremy Renner) is the risk-taker, the cowboy figure we want to be the all-powerful hero, but who we quickly come to see is more than a little bit undone. Eldridge (Brian Geraghty) seems to be the youngest and least experienced member of the team; he’s terrified, skeptical, and, ultimately, the most likely to survive post-combat. At times the filmmaking is claustrophobic; we see the world as they see it–as they’ve been trained to see it. Every Iraqi is a potential enemy; even a child.

The Hurt Locker is a powerful anti-war film, which can almost get lost in the breathless action sequences. Its message is subtle but unmistakable: war utterly breaks you. The final scene of the film, which has been criticized for its ambiguity (we see James voluntarily back in action after a brief return home and a too-familiar scene representing shallow American excess), is actually a haunting, almost terrifying reminder of our implication in war. If you see James as a hero at the end of the movie, you haven’t understood a frame of the film you just watched. Yet the film teases us with a traditional genre representation of the hero. We want him to be a hero, only finding joy in the adrenaline rush of war, but he isn’t. He’s an empty shell of a person, nothing more than an animated suit heading toward…nothing. He’s walking off into the abyss. War has ripped out his humanity. This is what we do to our soldiers: we ask them to do the impossible in combat, and it destroys them.

Movie Review: Inglorious Basterds

*This is a guest post from the author of The Undomestic Goddess.

I saw Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds when it first came out and then again recently in the sweep of the Oscar season. I remember upon first viewing being surprised that, unlike all the posters and marketing would have you believe, Brad Pitt is not the hero of this story. In fact, it is an unassuming, quiet, doe-eyed Jewish girl, Shosanna (played by Melanie Laurent) who carries the film. Brad Pitt and his cronies just kinda happen to be there, bludgeoning and scalping people (this is, after all, a Tarantino flick), and faltering in their plans to sweep the Nazi regime, while Shosanna plots, schemes, threatens, and even fraternizes with the enemy in her mere disguise as a woman to bring the Third Reich to its knees. It is because no one expects her to plan such an attack that she is not viewed as a threat and able to get away with it. Shosanna’s womanhood is both her handicap and her ultimate weapon.

To recap: The film starts out in a brutally tense scene in the farmlands of France where the “Jew Hunter” (played brilliantly by Christopher Waltz) finds and kills a Jewish family in hiding, missing only the young Shosanna, who escapes (her bravery here foreshadowing her later triumph). We later see her fixing up the marquee of her own cinema (a woman owning a theater = YESSSS), which we’re told was left to her by her deceased aunt and uncle, who she presumably ran away to after leaving her murdered family. (It should also be said that she has a black man in her employ – in the still-racist 1940s – and they appear to be lovers. Bonus equality points and for seeking out a fulfilling relationship.) Here a young German soldier and war hero strikes up a conversation with her. Later we find out that a German propaganda film has been made about his exploits, and he wants her cinema to host the premiere. This means that all the Nazi higher-ups would be in her theater, including Hitler himself. And so she gets the brilliant idea to burn the theater down.

Meanwhile, Brad Pitt and his buddies also have their eyes set on blowing up the theater, but their plans don’t go as smoothly as Shosanna’s (again, men = suspicion). They rendezvous with the famous German actress (and undercover British agent) Bridget von Hammersmark (played by Diane Kruger), only to have it blow up in their faces. A note about Miss von Hammersmark: Out of the two main female characters, Shosanna and Bridget, she is the one with the overt sexuality, the typical female allure, the glamour of the movie star. And she is the one who gets into the most trouble. Even with her power of celebrity, she cannot overcome the politeness of womanhood to get herself (and her cohorts) out of a sticky situation with German soldiers in a bar, or out of a confrontation with a dangerous old friend (well, he is the “Jew Hunter,” and even my boyfriend remarked, “NO ONE says ‘no’ to an SS Officer”). Her femininity ends up to be her downfall, while Shosanna’s typically feminine silence offers her power.

But while Shosanna is able to complete her scheme, her projected sexuality gets her into trouble, too. The German’s soldiers’ aggression and sexual advances leaves her with no choice but to shoot him, and in a moment of presumed “feminine” weakness, feels sorry for what she has done, goes to check on him, and gets shot herself. I really hate the two actions done by the women in the moments before their respective deaths. I can’t agree that Shosanna, so cool and calculated and plotting (typically cinematic male characteristics) would have regretted saving her own life by shooting an enemy soldier and in who she never really had any interest in the first place. And I hate the fact that Bridget, already sensing that the SS Officer has found her out, allows herself to be escorted into an empty (ie “where no one can hear you scream”) room with him. While the female characters are not perfect, this just illustrates how each could not overcome their second-class status in the male-dominated Nazi regime.

But in the end, Shosanna is our real hero. By her edits of the propaganda film, her face is the last the Nazis see as the theater burns. As the movie ends, we learn that the Jew Hunter will get credit for the theater burning and the end of the war, but we really know that this time, it took the cunning of a woman to fell the most evil of men.

Amanda ReCupido is a writer and arts publicist living in New York City. She is the author of the blog The Undomestic Goddess and can be found on Twitter at @TheUndomestic.

Movie Review: Precious, Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire

*This guest post also appears on Gender Across Borders.

Last week, I saw the much-anticipated film Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire. And I haven’t stopped thinking about it all week. Not because I’m in shock, though the film does depict a number of truly horrific and violent situations. And not because I’m blinded by completely uncritical love, because the film is far from perfect, and I recognize that. The reason Precious has stuck with me is because it is, by all accounts, an extremely well-made film. The acting is tremendous and the visuals feel authentic. And, best of all, the film is filled with strong, nuanced, and interesting female characters. In a time when women are often relegated to forgettable romantic comedies and bit parts in “male-centric” films, and when plus-sized women and women of color barely star in mainstream films at all, Precious is a welcomed break from typical multiplex fare.

I want to start by addressing the criticisms of Precious, because many of them are valid. The material is bleak — at times, perhaps, too bleak. Considering the lack of decent portrayals of people of color in film today, do we really need another film that highlights all the most negative things that might happen to a young woman of color?

From Racialicious:

So when I found out Push was being adapted for the silver screen, I cringed at the prospect of revisiting Precious’s bleakly rendered world. I dreaded watching in technicolor all the awful things I’d imagined while reading. And I reeeally didn’t want to return to the hollowness that haunted the ending. What possible reason would Hollywood have for further dramatizing an existence as heinous as Precious’s?

It was certainly something to think about. Black American dramas have the tendency to pull their viewers into dark corners and assault them. The grittiest ripped-from-the-headlines realities and the woes so commonplace the news doesn’t bother covering them at all bogart their way into our fiction. Push will be no exception and I wasn’t sure if I should be pleased about that.

And, at the same time, the response to the film, though overwhelmingly positive, has tended to be superficial. As Latoya writes:

While Precious puts forth an array of issues, these are not engaged with by the reviewers. Is it because of the heaviness of the subject matter? Perhaps. But I find it interesting that I have seen more discussion of Mariah Carey appearing without make-up than any discussion of the underlying issues in the film.

Finally, there is the significant issue of colorism. Though Precious Jones has dark skin, the women of color who help her have light skin. While this is problematic all on its own, it’s even more of an issue when one considers that this casting doesn’t actually reflect the character descriptions in the book Push. Feministing has more:

In the book, the description of Blue Rain, the half-messiah, half-educator that delivers Precious from the bondage of illiteracy and abuse is as follows: “She dark, got nice face, big eyes, and…long dreadlocky hair.” (39-40) This character in the movie is played by Paula Patton, a light-skinned African American woman with straightened hair. By no means do I doubt the talent of Patton, but it means something that the directors chose to cast one of the most central characters of the film against Sapphire’s original description.

None of these issues can be ignored in discussing this film. And, sadly, these are the problems that will prevent Precious from being a great film, rather than just a very good film. In particular, I wonder why the decision to cast Paula Patton and Mariah Carey was made. While both women deliver fantastic performances, it’s hard to believe that there weren’t any actresses of equal talent who fit more closely to Sapphire’s descriptions. Though I haven’t read Push, it is my understanding that Blu Rain (the character played by Patton) is meant to be the positive embodiment of everything Precious dislikes in herself and her mother. The casting of a light-skinned woman makes this point much less clear, and it’s disappointing that Lee Daniels and the others involved in the casting of Precious didn’t do more to be true to Sapphire’s intents.

All that being said — Precious is still a very, very good film. Both Gabourey Sidibe and Mo’Nique deliver career-defining performances; this was Sidibe’s first film, and I hope we’ll be seeing much more of her in the coming years. And all of the female characters, including Precious, her mother, Blu Rain, Mrs. Weiss (a social worker, played by Carey), and the other girls in Precious’ GED class, are well developed and complicated. For instance, though Precious’ mother is characterized as a villain, I don’t think she can be seen in such polarizing terms. Though she commits horrible acts of violence and abuse against Precious throughout the film, we learn that there’s more to her than meets the eye and that her actions (as horrifying as they may be) are motivated by her own fears and insecurities. She may be a villain, to some degree, but she isn’t evil — much like Precious, she’s a victim of her own circumstances, and she is forced to make difficult choices. A similar character in another film may be depicted as completely one-dimensional, but Mo’Nique’s performance shows us that there is more to this woman — and to all of the women in the film, for that matter — than what initially appears on the surface.

Another strength is the way in which Precious handles its subject matter. Certainly, all of the issues addressed in the film — including (but not limited to) rape, incest, teen pregnancy, poverty and illiteracy — have been addressed before by other films, and when addressing such topics, it’s all too easy to come off sounding preachy or melodramatic. Precious does not fall in to this trap. Precious addresses these topics honestly and directly, never undermining the horror of it all but still making it clear that these are real aspects of life, and that they aren’t death sentences. Though the character Precious is forced to deal with a huge number of issues that no young woman should ever need to face, the audience is not supposed to pity her. Precious is too strong a character for that. Though the film ends on an ambiguous note, I left the theatre confident that she would go on and do well in life, because I had just spent the past two hours watching her face incredible odds and constantly surviving them with grace. We don’t want to see Precious experience all of the terrible situations she encounters, but we never fear or doubt her. She is clear-headed and determined, and she is a fantastic role model for all young women, from all walks of life. And we ultimately feel empathy, not pity, for her.

If you haven’t had an opportunity to see Precious, I highly recommend checking it out. It’s a flawed film, and it’s not something that will appeal to everyone. But for all its faults, Precious remains a strong film that addresses a wide variety of issues that need to be discussed candidly in film more often. And, if nothing else, it’s bound to be one of the most feminist movies you see this year.

Carrie Polansky is one of the Editors of Gender Across Borders. She graduated from Emerson College in 2008 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Visual and Media Arts (and a minor in Women’s and Gender Studies). Today, she works for an LGBT nonprofit organization in NYC and continues to be passionate about media and feminism.

Movie Review: Avatar

Away we go! This is the first of ten reviews of Best Picture Oscar nominees leading up to the awards ceremony Sunday, March 7th.

*This guest post also appears on the Stilwell Film blog.

Admittedly, Avatar isn’t my thing, I’m not big on James Cameron or any alien films (not only his), I’ve never been interested in Star Wars or Star Trek (though I have seen enough of both franchises to hold a conversation), so I wasn’t planning on watching Avatar at any point in my life. However, this afternoon, I changed my mind when a free screening became available to me. With my original plans canceled and a spare two and a half hours available, I tucked into James Cameron’s latest film.

Well, Avatar wasn’t what I thought it would be, but it wasn’t any better. I spent most of the first half of the movie developing alternate titles ending with “in space.” “Pocahontas in Space,” “Dances with Wolves in Space,” and “Titanic in Space” all sprang to mind. For the most part, it seems Cameron has taken plots from various other films, thrown them together, dyed it blue, and placed it on the fictitious planet, Pandora, to create a science-fiction retelling of the Pocahontas mythos.

In this version, instead of John Smith, it is Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), the wheel chair bound ex-marine who takes over his dead twin’s avatar mission, and falls in love with the Na’vi people, specifically, the clan leader’s daughter, Neytiri (Zoe Saldana). He begins as an undercover spy, trying to learn about the Pandora natives’ culture to help the visiting Earthlings’ military and big businesses. However, as all stories like this go, he falls in love and is torn between the two worlds and races. The plot is laid out in the previews, and if you need help, Cameron lays the foreshadowing on thick throughout the film, but then the plot isn’t why most people are seeing this film, is it?

Special effects wise, the film is pretty fascinating. What more can one say? Seeing this on the big screen and in 3D probably would have held my attention more, but, alas, my free screening wasn’t at such a high standard. Would I sit through it again if I could get a free ticket to the 3D IMAX experience? No, but if you’re debating seeing it, definitely splurge and get your full money’s worth.

As much as I would like to sit through a movie like this and enjoy it for what it is (ground-breaking sci-fi entertainment that will go down in history), I simply can’t. James Cameron’s attempt to create a more spiritual, natural, and peaceful society leaves me annoyed that once again this idea is filtered through a white, Western, male member of a patriarchal society. Some theorists will consider Cameron’s Alien trilogy feminist, because of Sigourney Weaver’s empowered Ripley (legend says it was written to be asexual–with casting deciding the character’s sex), but she still has to prove her femininity and womanliness by saving cats and small children. I fear that many feminists will laud Avatar as well–for creating a world where the people worship a female entity (“Eywa”), because the Clan leader’s female mate/wife is as powerful as him, and since the female lead is as empowered as Ripley. However, like Ripley, Neytiri too has her feminine trappings, as her power can be explained away through her heritage.

When Neytiri first meets Sully, she commands the other warriors to stand down and allow her to take him to their leader–who happens to be her father. The warriors listen and obey her, but is it because she is a powerful woman, or because her father and mother are leaders among the Na’vi? Does she earn her power or inherit it? Similarly, in the legend of Pocahontas,* would John Smith have been saved if it was by any other girl in the village, or because it was the Chief’s daughter who saved him? Furthermore, to add to Neytiri’s street cred, her great-grandfather was Toruk Makto, a legendary Na’vi leader, basically giving her a birth right to power and respect among her people. For those who don’t believe it, I ask, would Sully have survived his first night among the Na’vi if the one speaking for him was any other woman and not the daughter of the clan leader and shaman (or would that be sha-lady in this case)?

I’ll leave you with that to ponder, while I try to work out the symbolism of taming a wild animal by penetrating it with your mystical hair, and end this review on a generally positive note. The first two-thirds are fairly entertaining, but the large battle scenes were just that–large battle scenes. Perhaps at an IMAX or in 3D I wouldn’t have lost focus, but I simply wasn’t interested and played on my phone instead. A lot of people will see this and love it, but if science fiction, action, and special effect-laden films aren’t your cup of tea, you probably won’t leave the theater an Avatar fan.

Director and Writer: James Cameron
Starring: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver
Rated: PG-13
162 minutes
Avatar is nominated for nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Visual Effects, Sound Editing, Sound, Original Score, Editing, Director, Cinematography, and Art Direction. It also won the Golden Globes award for Best Picture-Drama and Best Director.

*I refer to the story of Pocahontas as legend and myth, because it is questionable how much of John Smith’s accounts are exaggerated, not to mention that he was also rescued by a Turkish princess when captured in what is now Hungary. The stories are similar, so the question is: Did John Smith make a habit of being rescued by pre-teen girls or did he blend the two together for his own benefit?

Elizabeth Tiller is a PhD student researching femme fatales in European cinema. Last year, she founded Stilwell Film, a non-profit that provides free outdoor film screenings to southern Johnson County, Kansas during July. In her spare time, she plays rugby, frequents karaoke nights, and watches high quality films like The Blue Lagoon.

Today’s Must-Reads

We’ve been pretty quiet recently here at Bitch Flicks, as life sometimes gets in the way of blogging. However, we think you really need to check out the always fabulous Melissa Silverstein today over at Women and Hollywood about how awful 2009 was for women in the business. Here’s a (depressing) snippet:

Women writers make up only 8%. That means that 92% of the films are written from a male perspective.

And here’s another article, about this year’s Best Picture Oscar nominations and their utter failure of the Bechdel Test, from True/Slant. A preview:

But as much social harm as excluding half the population from being fully realized fictional characters does, I’d say it does even greater damage to movies as an art form. Think about it. Any screenwriter/director/producer that can’t think of anything more for a woman to do than be a girlfriend, wife, mother, or kidnapped daughter is probably going to lack imagination in other areas as well.

What We Owe to Buffy

Without any question, Buffy revolutionized the role of women on television, more even than Mary Tyler Moore or Cagney and Lacey or Murphy Brown or Ally McBeal. If you look at female heroes (as opposed to hapless heroines–I have always thought that the definition of heroine should be “endangered female in need of rescue by male hero”) in the history of TV, you will be astonished at how few there are prior to the nineties. You have Annie Oakley in the fifties and Emma Peel on The Avengers in the sixties, and to a degree Wonder Woman (who spent a great deal of her time worrying about impressing her boss Col. Steve Trevor) and The Bionic Woman (the weaker spin off to The Six Million Dollar Man). This all changed in the nineties, first with Dana Scully on The X-Files and then with Xena. But the former, as competent as she was as an FBI professional, was not sufficiently iconic to change TV, while the latter, sufficiently iconic, was too cartoonish to inspire future female heroes. Buffy was the turning point. You can write the history of female heroes on TV as Before Buffy and After Buffy. It is not a coincidence that most of the female heroes on TV arose in the wake of the little blonde vampire slayer. Look at the roster: Aeryn Sun (Farscape), Max (Dark Angel), Sydney Bristow (Alias), Kate Austin (Lost), Kara “Starbuck” Thrace (along with a plethora of other strong women on Battlestar Galactica), Olivia Dunham (Fringe), Sarah Connor and Cameron (Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles), Veronica Mars, and an almost uncountable number of lesser characters. Buffy made TV safe for strong women. This isn’t art, but it is the content of art. Buffy guaranteed that TV as art would make a place for heroic women.

Can Anybody Make a Movie for Women?

NANCY MEYERS may be a singular figure in Hollywood — may, in fact, be the most powerful female writer-director-producer currently working (not that there’s much competition) — but that doesn’t appear to give the 60-year-old blonde a whole lot of social clout. On a Monday evening in late October, for instance, it didn’t stop the owner of Vincenti, a small, much-in-demand Italian eatery in Brentwood, from asking Meyers whether she would mind switching tables come 8 p.m. True, ours was a prime corner booth, and the owner, a fierce-looking woman with coal-black hair who would fit nicely into a Fellini film, assured Meyers that she was only being asked this favor because the person who requested the table was an investor in the restaurant. (He turned out to be Howard Weitzman, a lawyer whose clients have included O. J. Simpson and Michael Jackson.) But it still gave me pause. You know, the whole sexual-politics thing rearing its timeworn, fractious head: a powerful man trumps any woman. (“When you describe how influential I am in Hollywood,” Meyers ruefully observed to me, “say we were thrown out of our booth.”)

Independent Spirit Award Nominations

You can also read a more comprehensive list of the nominees here. Also, check out our reviews of Two Lovers and 500 Days of Summer, and our previews of Humpday, Everlasting Moments, and Precious.

JOHN CASSAVETES AWARD

BEST FEATURE

BEST DIRECTOR

Coen Bros., Lee Daniels, Cary Fukunaga, James Gray, Michael Hoffman

BEST FIRST FEATURE

BEST DOCUMENTARY

BEST FOREIGN FILM

BEST SCREENPLAY

BEST FIRST SCREENPLAY

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

Director Spotlight: Allison Anders

Welcome to our first installment of Director Spotlight, where we explore the biographies and filmographies of an often overlooked group: women film directors.

Here is an excerpt from the AMC biography on Allison Anders:

The hardships encountered and overcome by director Allison Anders are often reflected in the grittiness and strength of her female characters, a quality that lends her stories a tough but refreshing honesty. Anders cares about her characters, but she refuses to give them falsely happy endings and this refusal distinguishes her from other directors of so-called women’s films who make their movies into little more than celluloid Hallmark cards. Anders’ approach to this kind of storytelling has given her distinction in the film industry and she continues to make films that challenge conventional attitudes toward both women and films about women.

Born November 16, 1954, in Ashland, KY, Anders had an upbringing that was nothing if not traumatic. At the age of five, she, her mother, and four sisters were abandoned by her father, and were forced into an unstable, itinerant lifestyle. At the age of 12, Anders was raped and then endured abuse from her stepfather, who at one point threatened her with a gun. Anders suffered a mental breakdown when she was 15 years old, after her mother took her daughters to Los Angeles to escape further abuse. Following time in psychiatric wards, later in foster homes and jail, Anders ventured back to Kentucky, then moved to London with the man who would father her daughter.

Be sure to read her entire biography here. You can also check out several interviews with Anders where she discusses her childhood and the making of her films in great detail here, here, and here.

***

Border Radio: 1987

Starring Chris D. and Chris Shearer

Independent Film Quarterly critic Todd Konrad summarizes the film as follows:

Chris D plays Jeff, an underground singer-songwriter who along with his bandmate Dean (played by Doe) and hanger-on Chris (played by Chris Spencer), rob a local rock club of both money and drugs. In order to avoid retribution from the club owner and his henchmen, Jeff escapes across the border to Mexico where he hides out to let the heat die down. Left in the lurch is Jeff’s wife Luanna and their young daughter Devon (played respectively by Anders’ real life sister and daughter, Luanna and Devon Anders). In order to keep things together, Luanna, a local rock journalist, is left to play detective in order to figure out exactly what happened to send Jeff away. The hope being that she will find a way to bring her man back from across the border and fix whatever problems he may have incurred in doing so.

***

Gas Food Lodging: 1992
Starring Brooke Adams, Ione Skye, Fairuza Balk, and James Brolin

In her New York Times Critics’ Pick Review, Janet Maslin writes:

Imagine “The Last Picture Show” shot in color and shaped by a rueful feminine perspective, in a place where women are hopelessly anchored while the men drift through like tumbleweed. The becalmed town of Laramie, N.M., is the setting in which Nora (Brooke Adams), a hard-working waitress with a knowing, generous grin, has tried to bring up her two unruly daughters.

***

Mi Vida Loca (aka My Crazy Life): 1993
Starring Angel Aviles, Seidy Lopez, Devine, Monica Lutton, and Christina Solis

Check out the New York Times, where Caryn James opens her review with:

In “Mi Vida Loca My Crazy Life,” Allison Anders tries what few directors would have had the interest or intelligence to think of. She looks beyond the surface of the lives of Hispanic girl gangs and attempts to create a deeper portrait of young women in the Echo Park section of Los Angeles. They use gang names, like Sad Girl, Mousie and Whisper. And though violence is part of their lives, they are likely to be teen-age mothers struggling to get by.

***

Four Rooms (segment “The Missing Ingredient”): 1995
Starring Sammi Davis, Valeria Golino, Madonna, Ione Skye, and Lily Taylor

This film was widely panned by critics. Four directors participated, and each director created their own segment. Anders wrote and directed “The Missing Ingredient,” about which James Berardinelli of reelviews.net writes:

The story—what little there is—revolves around a witches’ coven trying to resurrect the spirit of a stripper. All the ingredients (mother’s milk, virgin’s blood, sweat of five men’s thighs, and a year’s tears) are ready except for a sperm sample. Since witch Eva (Ione Skye) failed in her assignment to bring this vital component of the mixture, she is charged with seducing Ted and getting what she needs from him.

***

Grace of My Heart: 1996
Starring Illeana Douglas, Sissy Boyd, Christina Pickles, and Jill Sobule

Time Out Magazine writes:

Loosely inspired by the life of Carole King, this is a light, feminist take on 15 years of pop: hits and Ms, if you will. It begins with a bright, peppy tone, pastiching the nascent rock’n’roll scene with an affectionate smile and perfect pitch—the Larry Klein-produced soundtrack is spot on. But it’s not all kitsch nostalgia: the period coincides with great social changes, particularly regarding the role of women, a recurrent Anders theme. Sharp cameos include Patsy Kensit’s rival songwriter and Bridget Fonda’s teen songbird with a secret love.

***

Sugar Town: 1999
Starring Jade Gordon, John Taylor, Michael Des Barres, and Martin Kemp

David Ansen at Newsweek writes:

It isn’t easy growing old in the land of youth and beauty. It’s even harder if you’re a rock-and-roller who hasn’t had a hit in decades, or a sexy leading lady now being offered parts as Christina Ricci’s mother. “Sugar Town,” an agreeably scruffy L.A. satire co-written and directed by Allison Anders and Kurt Voss, is filled with sharp, funny snapshots of the hustlers, has-beens, recovering junkies and Topanga Canyon earth mothers on the fringes of the Hollywood music biz.