Tag: 2000s movies

Movie Review: Let the Right One In

Let the Right One In. Starring Kare Hedebrant, Lina Leandersson, Per Ragnar, Henrik Dahl, Karin Bergquist, Peter Carlberg, and Ika Nord. Written by John Ajvide Lindqvist. Directed by Tomas Alfredson.

I want to describe Let the Right One In as a vampire love story, but that wouldn’t nearly do it justice. That description wouldn’t, however, be entirely inaccurate either. The movie’s protagonist is a twelve-year-old boy named Oskar who lives in the Stockholm suburb of Blackeberg in 1982. We first encounter him pretending to defend himself against the school bullies who constantly berate him, but the reality is he doesn’t yet know how to stand up to them. Instead, he collects newspaper clippings of violent crimes and secretly files them away in a notebook, almost as revenge-fantasies. He sleeps with a knife and carries it with him everywhere, and the night he stands outside in the freezing cold, stabbing a tree while calling it “piggy” (the school bullies’ nickname for him), he encounters Eli.

Eli appears out of nowhere behind their shared apartment building, watching Oskar. She’s got wide, creepy eyes, and Oskar tells her she smells funny. He also wonders why she isn’t cold, since she’s wearing only a t-shirt and standing in the snow barefoot. These questions hardly get resolved; when he asks her why she isn’t cold, she says, “I guess I’ve forgotten how.” They both leave their first meeting declaring that they don’t want to be friends, and that declaration more or less showcases just how “other” each of the characters feels—it’s easier to remain alone than to risk yet another person’s contempt.

It isn’t clear whether Hakan, the man who lives with Eli, is her father or her familiar. (In vampire myth, a familiar is a human who wishes to become a vampire by signing with the vampires through a blood oath.) Regardless, Hakan acts as Eli’s caretaker by slinking through the streets of Blackeberg in the middle of the night in search of a human to drain for blood. In each of his attempts, he screws up, and it provides several instances of black comedy in the film. But when Hakan can’t get the blood Eli needs to survive, she’s forced to go find it herself.

Watching such a small girl ravenously and violently latch onto a man who attempts to help her (she calls out to him, pretending she’s hurt, then buries her face and teeth into his neck), well, I jumped in my seat. It’s scary. And just as the audience begins to understand that, omg, she really is a vampire! she breaks her victim’s neck and leans over him sadly, almost apologetically, creating one of the many beautiful scene juxtapositions in the film, first exposing Eli as animal, then immediately highlighting her humanity. She kills because she needs to kill, not because she wants to.

From this moment on, the movie tackles several themes, one of which is violence, specifically the kid-on-kid violence Oskar experiences at the hands of his classmates, and how that plays against the vampire-on-human violence Eli’s responsible for. What does it say, for instance, that Eli, a killer by definition, experiences remorse for a necessary act of violence, while a group of young boys, most notably the leader of the pack, gets off on torturing and humiliating Oskar? As Eli and Oskar’s friendship develops, Eli ultimately convinces Oskar to stand up to the school bullies, and the consequences of his actions set the stage for the film’s finale.

At times, while watching the wonderful chemistry between the two young actors onscreen, it almost seemed as if the vampirism were a subplot rather than the main focus. The movie wants, after all, to tell us something about childhood, how lonely and alienated a child can feel, and how important it is to feel connected to someone. They toy with the idea of a romantic relationship somewhat—Oskar asks Eli “to go steady”—and she agrees, if it means keeping everything the same. This pretend-romance illustrates two things. One, that Oskar’s tale is a coming-of-age story, and two, that while Eli lives in the body of a twelve-year-old, she has in fact been “twelve” for quite a long time.

Without giving too much away, it’s important to mention both characters’ androgyny. When Eli says at the beginning of the film, “I’m not a girl,” we naturally assume she means she’s a vampire. Is it possible she means something else? And if so, how does that change the dynamic of their interactions? A brief screen shot of Eli’s scarred genitalia forces us to ask these questions. Ultimately, the shot reminds us that Eli will forever remain as she is, an outcast in a child’s body, while Oskar will grow up, perhaps even grow out of his current status as “other.”

Let the Right One In takes a story about a vampire and makes it sweet, and in the end, takes that sweetness and turns it right on its head. Many people won’t read the ending as so dark, and I can see how one might even interpret it as a happy ending. But everything that comes before: Eli’s incessant quest for blood, Oskar’s increasing reliance on her strength and approval, their shared loneliness, and each character’s saving of the other’s life (both literally and metaphorically), frames the final scene (and possibly the entire film) as much more sinister than sweet.

One has to wonder if Oskar has any real idea about what’s in store for him by running away with Eli. In the end, Eli needs a new familiar, a human who will actively kill for her. While I believe Eli consciously manipulates Oskar by playing on his vulnerability, I don’t necessarily think Oskar, as naïve as he may come across to Eli, is unaware of Eli’s plan for him. It’s an exchange of sorts, and it’s about need—Oskar’s need to feel unconditionally accepted by someone, and Eli’s very practical need for blood. But it’s the film’s interrogation of “the monster within the human,” that works so well, ultimately positioning the weak, fear-based (and sympathetic) hero as the monster, a transformation that Oskar, unlike Eli, accepts willingly.

Black Snake Moan: A Review in Conversation

Welcome to the first installment of a new feature on Bitch Flicks: Reviews in Conversation. We take a movie that’s worth talking about, and do just that.

“This is some revolutionary shit. We’re tying up white women in Mississippi.” –John Singleton, on filming Black Snake Moan in the South

Why does the revolution necessitate wholesale exploitation of women?

Since Black Snake Moan was one of the initial movies (along with Hustle & Flow…maybe we should officially thank Craig Brewer for the inspiration) that made us want to start this site, it’s fitting that we discuss the movie in our first Review in Conversation segment.

Here’s the IMDb summary:

In Mississippi, the former blues man Lazarus is in crisis, missing his wife that has just left him. He finds the town slut and nymphomaniac Rae dumped on the road nearby his little farm, drugged, beaten and almost dead. Lazarus brings her home, giving medicine and nursing and nourishing her like a father, keeping her chained to control her heat. When her boyfriend Ronnie is discharged from the army due to his anxiety issue, he misunderstands the relationship of Lazarus and Rae, and tries to kill him. (Claudio Carvalho)

Before I address the film’s atrocious sexism, which the above summary characterizes well, I’d like to say what I love about BSM. The music, first and foremost, is outstanding. Brewer calls this a movie about the blues, and I’d like to take that a step further and say the movie is the blues. Or it tries to be, at least. The movie and its story are too small, conflicted, and tone-deaf to achieve greatness. It tries to be the blues and ends up being a blues music video, where Lazarus (Samuel L. Jackson) is the tortured and tired star, and Rae (Christina Ricci) is the video vixen, shaking her ass for the camera.

This is a movie that I want to love. It’s gritty, unique, and aware of class and race—a rare combination. However, there is no female perspective in the movie. Is it really too much to ask for a sharp film to also be sharp about gender? Is it right for a film like BSM to claim gender as a theme, while not really exploring women at all? Rae is the only female character (brief appearances by Lazarus’ wife, Rae’s mother, and a kind pharmacist easily fit into the angel/monster dichotomy), but she isn’t quite a real person. What is wrong with her? She is talked about as a nymphomaniac, and has strange, demonic fits of desire, but she’s really a victim of rape and abuse. Lazarus, whose trauma is that his wife aborted his baby and left for his younger brother, takes it upon himself to “cure” her by chaining her to a radiator. Even if the movie isn’t to be taken literally (but as a metaphor of sorts), why are the other characters so human and she so other, so animal?

Response by Stephanie R.

I, too, fell in love with the music in this film. It complements the key themes—race and class, as you mentioned, religion, and I’d also take it a step further to include sex. The scenes with Ricci shaking her ass for the camera are wonderfully sexy, and I found myself wavering back and forth during those scenes, wondering, is this just another female character being exploited by the camera? Or, is this a female character finally owning her sexuality?

Early on, she’s portrayed as a woman who’s at the mercy of her untamable sexual desires, and I didn’t ever get the feeling that she enjoyed them. She’s often shown squirming around on the ground, rubbing her hands all over her body, and moaning, like she’s struggling to fend off an attack. It’s at that point that she must find someone, anyone to screw, in order to make that feeling go away.

Later though, after Lazarus “cures” her by wrapping a giant chain around her waist and attaching it to a radiator, Rae is allowed to enter society again, showing up at a bar with Lazarus, drinking, rubbing up against everyone on the dance floor while Lazarus watches her from the stage, almost approvingly. What’s going on here? I truly want to read this as much more complicated than a man giving a woman permission to flaunt her sexuality, and I think it is.

But I also can’t help getting a little unnerved by the frivolity with which her sexuality is treated earlier in the film, when she’s portrayed as nothing more than the town whore. (At one point, the local mechanic says, “It’s already noon, Rae. Do you think those shorts should still be on?”) And when she’s described as “having the sickness” by another character (meaning nymphomania), it’s impossible not to think about the double-standard we still hold for men and women, especially when it comes to sexual desires.

As you mentioned, she is portrayed as “other,” often animalistic in her sexual conquests. Since I don’t think a film like this would work at all if a man were the one with the sexual “disease” (it’s natural for men to have uncontrollable sex drives, after all) then what does one make of using the myth of nymphomania to drive the plot? (See Peter Green’s “All Sexed Up,” a review of Carol Groneman’s 2000 book Nymphomania: A History, for a brief discussion of the myth.)

Response by Amber L.

I agree that the scene in the bar was very sexy, and I think I agree with what you said about that being a moment of Rae owning her sexuality. I think we’re supposed to understand that scene as a very important moment in which both characters are owning something that they’d lost—or lost control of. For whatever reason, Lazarus had lost his music (and I suspect it had to do with his wilting marriage), and Rae had lost control of her sexuality. However, that scene was exhilarating, and I think it has to do with reclamation and individual victory.

But back to the way gender and sex intersect. If nymphomania is itself largely fictitious, the strange way Rae’s fits were portrayed—moments in the film that were suspended between fear and comedy—reveals some of the ideological confusion of the film. If not for her nearly-naked body, battered and bruised and constantly displayed, I might have more sympathy for the film’s motivations. Add that to Rae’s moment of catharsis where she beats the shit out of her mother with a mop handle (for allowing Rae to be raped, either by her father or another male figure in her home), and we see women destroyed by sex who we’re supposed to sympathize with.

The final topic I want to bring up is religion. We can’t deny the role Christianity plays in the film. From the name of the main character to the supporting cast (which includes a preacher), the issue of faith (and a very certain brand of faith) comes up again and again. If the movie is a metaphor for “anxiety, fear, and unconditional love,” according to Brewer himself, then religion is the element that holds it all together. The instantiations of religion, however, are clunky at best; the radiator is God, the chain is faith, et cetera. I don’t really know where to go from here, except to acknowledge the large role of religion, although it plays out in hackneyed ways.

Response by Stephanie R

While I would like to see both characters in this film actually achieve some level of reclamation and individual victory, I think it fails for the most part, but the film especially fails Rae. She remains “chained” in a metaphorical sense, even in the final scenes. I don’t believe her character discovers much, or achieves much of an arc; she remains, for me, completely static. In fact, the film pretty much uses her as a vehicle to showcase the success of Lazarus, (which is yet another example of female exploitation that Brewer has either no awareness of or no desire to address).

I was left feeling no hope for Rae in that final scene—she’s imprisoned, (in a stuffy car, surrounded by semi-trucks) stuck in a relationship with a man who’s essentially a child needing to be coddled, with only the memory of her radiator-chain to keep her from jumping from the vehicle and fucking her way across the interstate. But Lazarus has his music again. He’s managed to overcome his anger about his wife leaving him, and he’s even got a nice new chick to look after him. See how chaining up a white woman in Mississippi can revolutionize an entire worldview?

The truth is I never gave a shit about Rae. I could’ve cared for her, if Brewer hadn’t used her sexuality against her—it’s filmed as if the abuse she suffers is deserved. (See what you get when you go around whoring yourself? Tsk, tsk.) By the time we get to know her character, when, as you mentioned, she divulges her history of sexual abuse, then beats the shit out of her mother with a mop handle, it’s way too late for sympathy. By that point, Brewer has already managed to turn a young woman’s sexuality into a cross between sketch comedy and porn, where nothing about it feels real.

In that moment of catharsis with her mother, I found myself detached. Instead of sympathizing with Rae and coming to some kind of realization myself, I just rolled my eyes at the ridiculous, clichéd consequences of her abuse—girl gets raped by father-figure while mother does nothing to stop it, girl develops low self-esteem, girl becomes town slut, girl develops a fictional sex disease, girl gets chained to radiator by religious black man. Wait, what? Ah religion, how you never cease to reinforce the second-class citizenship of women, perpetually punishing them for their godless desire to fuck.

So Rae is possessed by an evil sex demon, and, at one freaky moment, Lazarus’s ex-wife. Lazarus and his brother are Cain and Abel. There’s adultery, lust, preachers, fire-and-brimstone, bible passages, and judgmental townsfolk. Basically, the religious themes receive the same clichéd treatment as women’s sexuality. Rae is pretty much “saved” by Lazarus, and Lazarus pretty much gets his shit together and “rises from the dead” (as Lazarus in the bible).

And, after this conversation, I’m starting to wonder if I’m the problem, if I made the mistake of taking this film seriously, when what it really wants to be is one big sensationalist metaphor. A metaphor for what, though? I’ll conclude with something Brewer says in an interview.

“I’m not writing from a place of progress. I’m not writing a movie that I want people to necessarily intellectualize. And I think that really messes with people who feel that they need to make a statement against this, and they don’t quite know what it is they’re against. Because man alive, you look at this imagery on this poster, and I’m so obviously banging this drum. It’s like, you really believe that I believe this? That women need to be chained up? Can we not think metaphorically once race and gender are introduced?”

Rent Black Snake Moan from Netflix
Read Carol Groseman’s article, “Nymphomania: The Historical Construction of Female Sexuality,” published in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society
Read the Salon.com interview with Craig Brewer

A Few Good Women

In honor of Veteran’s Day, I thought I’d highlight female veterans and some movies featuring female soldiers.

The news about female vets has been plentiful as of late, and none of it particularly good or encouraging. More female veterans than ever are homeless, and government-sponsored housing is in short supply, according to the Air Force Times.

The homeless female veteran is a relatively new phenomenon because only recently have so many women — more than 190,000 in Iraq and Afghanistan alone — been serving in the military, said Todd DePastino, a historian at Waynesburg University who wrote a book on the history of homelessness.

The number of homeless female veterans have gone up — from 3 percent of all homeless veterans a decade ago to 5 percent, the VA says.

“It’s a national embarrassment,” said Paul Rieckhoff, executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.

Last March, Salon.com published an article titled “The Private War of Women Soldiers” about widespread sexual assault in the military, which has currently serving women refusing to leave their cots at night for fear of being raped on their way to the latrines. Columbia professor Helen Benedict also writes of the intensity of dealing with Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSD) from combat and sexual assault.

Not everyone realizes how different the Iraq war is for women than any other American war in history. More than 160,500 American female soldiers have served in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Middle East since the war began in 2003, which means one in seven soldiers is a woman. Women now make up 15 percent of active duty forces, four times more than in the 1991 Gulf War. At least 450 women have been wounded in Iraq, and 71 have died — more female casualties and deaths than in the Korean, Vietnam and first Gulf Wars combined. And women are fighting in combat.

Officially, the Pentagon prohibits women from serving in ground combat units such as the infantry, citing their lack of upper-body strength and a reluctance to put girls and mothers in harm’s way. But mention this ban to any female soldier in Iraq and she will scoff.

“Of course we were in combat!” said Laura Naylor, 25, who served with the Army Combat Military Police in Baghdad from 2003-04. “We were interchangeable with the infantry. They came to our police stations and helped pull security, and we helped them search houses and search people. That’s how it is in Iraq.”

Women are fighting in ground combat because there is no choice. This is a war with no front lines or safe zones, no hiding from in-flying mortars, car and roadside bombs, and not enough soldiers. As a result, women are coming home with missing limbs, mutilating wounds and severe trauma, just like the men.

With the surge of women serving in the military, there doesn’t seem to be a correlative rise in female soldiers depicted in film. Here are a few movies featuring female soldiers. All plot summaries are from IMDb.

Courage Under Fire (1996)

The pilot of a rescue copter, Captain Karen Walden, died shortly before her helicopter crew was rescued after it crashed in Desert Storm. It first appears that she made a spectacular rescue of a downed helicopter crew, then held her own crew together to fight off the Iraqis after her copter crashed. LT Colonel Serling, who is struggling with his own demons from Desert Storm is assigned to investigate and award her the Medal of Honor. But some conflicting accounts from her crew and soldiers in the area, cause him to be question whether she deserves it. Written by Brian W Martz {B.Martz@Genie.com}

Rent Courage Under Fire from Netflix

A Few Good Men (1992)

In this dramatic courtroom thriller, Lt. Daniel Kaffee, a Navy lawyer who has never seen the inside of the courtroom, defends two stubborn Marines who have been accused of murdering a colleague. Kaffee is known as being lazy and had arranged for a plea bargain. Downey’s Aunt Ginny appoints Cmdr. Galloway to represent him. Also on the legal staff is Lt. Sam Weinberg. The team rounds up many facts and Kaffee is discovering that he is really cut out for trial work. The defense is originally based upon the fact that PFC Santiago, the victim, was given a “CODE RED”. Santiago was basically a screw-up. At Gitmo, screw-ups aren’t tolerated. Especially by Col. Nathan Jessup. In Cuba, Jessup and two senior officers try to give all the help they can, but Kaffee knows something’s fishy. In the conclusion of the film, the fireworks are set off by a confrontation between Jessup and Kaffee. Written by Matt Curtolo {curt@epix.net}

Rent A Few Good Men from Netflix

G.I. Jane (1997)

When a crusading chairperson of the military budget committee pressures the would be Navy secretary to begin full gender integration of the service, he offers the chance for a test case for a female trainee in the elite Navy SEALS commando force. Lt. Jordan O’Niel is given the assignment, but no one expects her to succeed in an inhumanly punishing regime that has a standard 60% dropout rate for men. However, O’Niel is determined to prove everyone wrong. Written by Kenneth Chisholm {kchishol@execulink.com}

Rent G.I. Jane from Netflix

Home of the Brave (2006)

The day after they get the word they’ll go home in two weeks, a group of soldiers from Spokane are ambushed in an Iraqi city. Back stateside we follow four of them – a surgeon who saw too much, a teacher who’s a single mom and who lost a hand in the ambush, an infantry man whose best friend died that day, and a soldier who keeps reliving the moment he killed a civilian woman. Each of the four has come home changed, each feels dislocation. Group therapy, V.A. services, halting gestures from family and colleagues, and regular flashbacks keep the war front and center in their minds. They’re angry, touchy, and explosive: can a warrior find peace back home? Written by {jhailey@hotmail.com}

Rent Home of the Brave from Netflix

Lioness (2008)

Lioness presents the untold story of the first group of women soldiers in US history to be sent into direct ground combat, in violation of official policy. Told through intimate accounts, journal excerpts, archive footage, as well as interviews with military commanders, the film follows five women who served together for a year in Iraq. With captivating detail, this probing documentary reveals the unexpected course of events that began with using US women soldiers to defuse tensions with local civilians, but resulted in the women’s fighting in some of the bloodiest counter-insurgency battles of the war. Together the women’s candid narratives and scenes from their lives back home form a portrait of the emotional and psychological effects of war from a female point of view. Lioness is the first film to bridge the gap between perception and reality of the role women in the military are playing in Iraq, capturing an historical turning point for American society.

Read an interview with filmmakers Meg McLagan and Daria Sommers.

_____________

Have we missed some good ones? Compared with the problems female vets face, most of these movies feel like token representations. Demi Moore actually won a Razzie for Worst Actress in G.I. Jane. I’ve left out the many depictions of female soldiers in science fiction films and TV shows (Starbuck from Battlestar Gallactica immediately comes to mind), perhaps unfairly. Tell us movies we’ve left out in the comments section.

Elizabeth Banks on a Porno

The number two movie at the box office this past weekend was Kevin Smith’s comedy Zack and Miri Make a Porno. Classically-trained actress, Elizabeth Banks, calls the role the best she’s ever played, and enthuses that director Kevin Smith “actually put a woman’s name in the title of a movie.”

Yeah, but he also put the word “porno” as the title’s direct object.

Read the LA Times interview with Banks, titled “Actress Elizabeth Banks is as versatile as they’ll let her be.”

About Banks, Smith says “She’s got that ‘guy’s girl’ thing going for her, so she can roll with dudes and be funny, but scrape that away and you realize this chick is way better than an R-rated comedy.”

I’ve heard the movie is funny and sweet, but I can’t help but to be skeptical of a celebration of this role, particularly with the bizarre and sexist statements that pop up in the very positive article.

Banks, like many actors in Hollywood, struggles with her desire to be taken seriously and do important work, but to be successful, too.

“You can go be in a female-driven indie and make two cents and maybe get an Independent Spirit Award, but then you can’t pay your car lease,” she says. “So Vince Vaughn makes movies, he needs a girl to be in it with him, it might be me.”

Ripley’s Pick: Rachel Getting Married

Welcome to our new feature, “Ripley’s Pick of the Week.” Each week, we’ll showcase a film that passes Ripley’s Rule, aka The Bechdel Rule.

Ripley’s Pick of the Week

Rachel Getting Married. Starring Anne Hathaway, Rosemarie DeWitt, Bill Irwin, Tunde Adebimpe, and Debra Winger. Written by Jenny Lumet. Directed by Jonathan Demme.


Rachel Getting Married isn’t your typical wedding movie. The film takes place over the course of a weekend, where the audience watches Rachel’s wedding unfold, complete with uncomfortable wedding speeches, recovering addicts, and live music playing in the background at all times. But the film isn’t about Rachel’s wedding—it’s about the awkward and often heartbreaking family dynamics at play, particularly among Rachel (Rosemarie DeWitt), her perpetually-rehabbed-since-adolescence sister Kym (Anne Hathaway), and their absent mother Abby, played (amazingly) by Debra Winger.
The film centers around Kym, fresh out of rehab in time for her sister’s wedding. (Interestingly, it isn’t clear whether she’s let out of rehab only to attend the wedding, or if she’s out for good, which lends an uncomfortable urgency to the weekend.) When she shows up at home, in the typical heavy black eyeliner and choppy haircut reserved especially for onscreen female addicts, it’s immediately obvious that her family views her as out of control and unpredictable—for good reason. She demands to be the maid of honor. She references her twelve-step program during her rehearsal-dinner speech. She seduces the best man (who she initially meets in a Narcotics Anonymous meeting) in the first fifteen minutes of the movie.
If Kym encapsulates the bad-girl cliché, Rachel embodies the opposite. She’s sweet, in love, studying Psychiatry, and even her future in-laws describe her as an angel. Rachel’s earnestness, particularly in the scenes with her fiancé and her mother (it’s clear she craves her mother’s love and approval), works well juxtaposed with Kym’s constant biting sarcasm. While Kym seems to steal the attention of her parents by playing up her wildness and forcing them to acknowledge her, Rachel seeks it more sincerely, for instance by subtly letting her mother know she’d like her to contribute more than just the flower arrangements to her wedding ceremony.
What’s great about the film though, is that the characters prove to be much more complicated than this. The audience recognizes from the beginning that something isn’t quite right with this family—why is Kym in and out of rehab? Why do their divorced parents feel so awkward around each other? And why does Abby seem so obviously uncomfortable around her daughters, especially Kym? It’s not long before Kym, in her NA meeting, reveals the family tragedy haunting their family. The scene works well, and Hathaway is brilliant here, because, in Kym’s telling of the tragedy, we begin to see her vulnerability, and the audience gains a broader understanding of the guilt, sadness, even the self-loathing that each family member struggles with.

Rachel’s and Kym’s father Paul (Bill Irwin) shouldn’t be left out of the discussion, as he has an integral role, obsessing over Kym’s whereabouts, her safety, her health. Because of this, he’s often the catalyst for arguments between Rachel and Kym—Rachel despises that Kym has always taken up his attention, and Kym can’t stand Rachel’s over-analysis. Ultimately though, the film fascinated me because of its treatment of the female characters and how they interact with one another. There’s no sentimentality here; in fact, the realness of their interactions makes for seriously uncomfortable viewing. But it’s the kind of uncomfortable viewing I couldn’t recommend more highly.

Watch the trailer here.

Movie Review: Baby Mama

Just to put it out there, I love Tina Fey. Who doesn’t right now, with her Emmy-winning TV series 30 Rock returning soon, and her riotously funny return to Saturday Night Live as Sarah Palin? If you haven’t yet seen Baby Mama, starring (but not written by) Fey and Amy Poehler, rent it. It’s funny, it’s smart, and–as a bonus–it’s one of the few movies that passes the Bechdel Test.

Baby Mama opens with a monologue from Kate (Tina Fey) that states a central problem for women who value both work and family, and it’s worth quoting here at length:

I did everything that I was supposed to do. I didn’t cry in meetings, I didn’t wear short skirts, I put up with the weird upper-management guys that kiss you on the mouth at Christmas. Is it fair that to be the youngest VP in my company I will be the oldest mom at preschool? Not really, but that’s part of the deal. I made a choice. Some women got pregnant; I got promotions. And I still aspire to meet someone, and fall in love, and get married, but that is a very high risk scenario. And I want a baby now. I’m 37.

Everything that Kate was supposed to do is a negation—she actually did nothing she wasn’t supposed to do: she didn’t get emotional, she didn’t inappropriately use her sexuality, she didn’t reprimand her superiors for inappropriate behavior. In other words, she put up with sexism and accepted the lies about women in the workplace, like “choice,” and “fairness.” She didn’t argue and she didn’t speak up for herself. She was a Yes Woman.

The beginning of the movie sets a high standard—and high hopes—for what follows. The initial joke here is that her monologue doesn’t address us—the audience—but a date. A first date. At the same time as give us our first laugh, she establishes her character as smart and ambitious, and still a woman who wants a child.

The plot of the movie is rather traditional, with a few twists, but it isn’t the plot that makes the movie so good. It’s the inherent critiques of male-dominated institutions that are subtle enough to avoid sounding topical or preachy, but strong and effective enough to reach the film’s smart viewers.

Real Life and Business

First is a critique—that runs throughout the movie—of the corporate business model. Kate’s sister, Caroline (Maura Tierney) first introduces the divide between “business” and “real life” when she chides Kate that “having a baby isn’t like opening one of your stores.” Caroline, who represents the perfect “mommy” in the movie, thinks that Kate’s approach to having a baby is too business-like.

Further, Chaffee Bicknell (Sigourney Weaver), who runs the surrogacy institute, refers to surrogacy as “outsourcing” and a “growth market,” and takes serious note of Kate’s joke about women in third-world countries carrying babies for wealthy women. Bicknell equates a nanny with a surrogate; a nanny takes care of your baby after it’s born, a surrogate takes care of your baby before it’s born. The ironic twist is that Bicknell is fertile to the point of absurdity, and didn’t start the business out of empathy, but simply for capitalist reasons.

This divide between “real life” and “business” is affirmed further by a conversation between Angie (Poehler) and her common law husband, Carl (Dax Shepard). In a scene where Carl refers to Kate as “Katie,” Angie defends her relationship with Kate (a plot twist, which I won’t reveal here, initiates the conversation). Carl tells Angie “You think you guys would be friends in real life? She’s a business lady. It’s just business.”

So what does this all add up to? Kate is, in fact, an unapologetic business lady. When love interest Rob (Greg Kinnear) warns her against “the man,” Kate thinks he means the cops when, in fact, he’s talking about rival smoothie makers Jamba Juice. “Jamba Juice is the man?” she asks. Kate, VP of operations for a corporate organic grocery, is also “the man.” It’s not clear, however, whether she’s aware of this fact, or how important the fact really is—to Kate and to the movie. The movie certainly critiques (and parodies) her corporate culture, but it still celebrates her success within it.

Hip Hop Culture

Critique of the hip hop industry comes from two subtle moments in the movie. In the first, we meet Kate’s doorman, Oscar (Romany Malco), singing along with his iPod to a song objectifying women. Oscar, for me, is probably the most troubling issue with the movie. Not only is he perpetually popping up in scenes, but his characterization reeks of stereotype and is a little cringe-worthy at times. He delivers some smart, funny lines, but doesn’t become a fully-realized character. Yet, viewers recognize a silly divide between the man he is and the music he consumes.

Not long after, Carl rummages through Kate’s media drawer and, dissatisfied, asks “Don’t you get down with rap?” Kate replies “Boy, somewhere in there I have an old Salt-N-Pepa CD.” While Kate name-checks some 90s hip hop that’s certainly more female-friendly than most of today’s fare, the implication is that she wouldn’t listen to music that she could, in no way, relate to. Or, it may simply show how out-of-touch she is with popular culture. The latter could certainly be the case, as an evening out with Angie shows how rarely Kate lets loose for a good time.

Men and Women, Talking

The movie’s men are all boyfriends, bosses, sidekicks—the standard roles for women in mainstream movies. While Kate’s boss, new-ager Barry, Carl, and Oscar are stereotypes, her love interest is a bit more round, even addressing gender during their first date. After Kate places a very specific Philly steak order, she says “I’m sorry. I’m a little overly thorough. Some people would say that I am bossy and controlling.” Rob replies “No, that’s just prejudice. They call you bossy and controlling ‘cause you’re a woman. But if you were a man doing the same stuff, you’d just be a dick.” The joke here is that he doesn’t say she’d be called “assertive” or the like; he actually insults her. While some enjoy this method of flirtation more than others, the recognition of a gender power dynamic is a cue for sympathetic viewers that he’s a smart match for Kate.

The real story of the movie isn’t the baby, of course, but the women. I love that about the movie. Kate and Angie fight, and are allowed real conflicts—in their own lives and with each other. There’s a nasty exchange of words between the two, where Kate reveals her classism, which had previously just shown up in comedic moments. A real friendship develops between them, and the movie is no less funny for it.

Movie Review: Juno

It took me a long time to see the film Juno. I was thrilled when Diablo Cody won the Oscar for Best Screenplay, but at the same time suspicious about her little movie being so lauded. To win an Oscar, the film must be saying the “right” things to the “right” people, a dynamic that rarely favors progressive thinking (see the movie Crash as a recent example). In other words, when too many people love a movie, there’s probably something wrong.

Aside from critical praise and popularity, the topic of teen pregnancy is rarely done without a hefty dose of morality. While we are in a peculiar cultural gray area on the subject—consider the cover of OK Magazine, featuring smiling teen mom Jamie Lynn Spears, or the Republican VP nominee’s pregnant teenage daughter—there seems to be an anti-choice undercurrent running through pregnancy plots, not to mention the culture at large.

The expectations I had going in were also based on reading commentary about the ultra-hip dialogue and soundtrack of the film. While certainly not negative in themselves, coupled with a controversial topic, these features could be enough to couch a conservative, anti-woman message in a hip, fresh film.

It turns out, however, that after an initial adjustment period to the dialogue (and a question about whether the film is set in the early ‘90s), Juno turns out to be planted in a feminist worldview, and is a film that teenagers, especially, ought to see. It was thoroughly enjoyable, funny and touching. I liked it so much that I watched it again, but when I started to write about it, what I liked about the movie became all the more confusing. I loved the music, although Juno MacGuff is way hipper than I was (or am), and I saw a representation that reminded me of myself at that age. I saw a paternal relationship that I never had and a familial openness that I’ve also never had. I saw characters who I wanted as my childhood friends and family.

And while in Juno we have a strong, unconventional female character—and a lead character, at that—the film itself was very, very safe. And I worry whether that’s a good thing. It’s certainly understandable for a first film. A Hollywood outsider would have a much more difficult time making an overtly progressive movie about teen pregnancy, but if she plays the politics safe, and if her own personality is enough of a draw, she just might make it.

I was worried when Juno visited the dumpy abortion clinic and met her pro-life classmate protesting in the parking lot, and I was worried by the very dumpiness of the clinic. I was struck by the notion that a clinic like that would look and feel much more sterile—even in the lobby, as far as Juno went. The thought of fingernails sent her running out of the building. A detail like “fingernails” made the abortion too real for Juno, a teenager, I suppose. Is this a good or bad thing? I don’t know.

Juno, in a rather nonchalant way, seeks permission of the baby’s father, her good friend Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera), for the abortion. Or, rather, she seeks his opinion; she seems to want him to resist her plans. But his lack of resistance causes her to make the following decisions on her own. This straddles the line somewhat. She wants to be told what to do, and rather than seeking out someone smarter and more experienced than she is, she asks the boy whose approval she’s still seeking.

Juno wants her baby to have the perfect family; one unlike her own, which her mother abandoned. Her family now consists of her father, her stepmother Bren (Allison Janney), and her half-sister Liberty Bell. Juno doesn’t have a bad deal going. Her folks are markedly working class (they’re both members of the labor class, a group that doesn’t see much Hollywood recognition; he’s an HVAC repairman, she’s a nail technician). Yet Juno imagines a perfect life to consist of two loving parents and a McMansion.Why would she seek out people of this particular class? Is this a case of Juno’s lack of class awareness or the film’s?

The film’s real progressive moment comes when Juno realizes that her idea of perfection isn’t perfect. She realizes that a father who doesn’t want to be there would be as bad as a mother who hadn’t wanted to be there. She sees that a father isn’t a necessity–or perhaps simply that two parents aren’t a necessity. Yet what does this all add up to mean? There’s certainly a moment of female solidarity (and this isn’t the only one, certainly, in the film), and a difficult decision that she makes independently. But, as with other conclusions I’ve made, I’m left with the question of “So what?”

The film does love all of its characters, which is a refreshing change for a high school flick. Juno’s best friend, Leah, is a cheerleader who exhibits some flaky, teenage qualities (her crush on the chubby, bearded, middle-aged math teacher takes a cliché and gives it a twist), but the film loves her nonetheless. Vanessa Loring (Jennifer Garner) is an obsessional, middle-class mommy blogger type, but we see that she would be a good mother, and the film cares for her. We even have sympathy for Mark (Jason Bateman) who, through his relationship with Juno, realizes that he and his wife no longer want the same thing (if they ever did). There are cringe-worthy moments with Mark and Juno, but none that damn him completely. It’s a rare film that gives us no bad guys, which is a large part of its charm.

It’s easy to want to live in a world like this, where a pregnant sixteen-year-old seems to get by pretty well, with her parents’ support and a relationship with her baby’s adoptive family. She has a sweet teenage love affair and doesn’t seem to struggle much. While teen angst is the stuff of Hollywood cliché, things just seemed too easy for Juno. I wish my teenage years could’ve been a bit more like Juno’s. Hell, I wish my life now could be.

The final question remains, though, about whether we should criticize a movie like Juno. Representations of role models for American girls tend to inhabit the poles; either young girls are encouraged to be the beautiful bimbo or the chaste Christian. This film has a strong personality (that masquerades as strong values—even an ethic) without being preachy or moralistic. That can’t inherently be a bad thing. Yet I find myself asking for more, wanting more–something that steps outside of the realm of safety. Perhaps Juno isn’t the film to give me more.

In all, I fear Juno suffers from the same postmodern condition afflicting so many films today. It strives for a non-message in order not to offend anyone, thus allowing anti-choice advocates to cheer the film as loudly as pro-choice feminists. There’s a problem here. If a film that almost universally passes as hip and progressive is so murky in its values and allegiance that we’re not really sure what to think of it, how can a truly hip and progressive film make it today?

Movie Review: Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay

The movie picks up where the last one (Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle) left off, with Harold on his way to Amsterdam to meet up with the girl he fell in love with. Kumar tags along for the sheer excitement of being legally stoned for the first time in his life. But, because Kumar can’t wait until Amsterdam to toke up, he sneaks his smokeless bong invention onto the plane, which is mistaken by other passengers as a bomb.

Naturally, Harold and Kumar are accused of working together as a “North Korea and Al Qaeda alliance,” and they get shipped off to Guantanamo Bay. All this happens within the first 15 minutes of the film, and by the 20-minute mark, they’ve already escaped Guantanamo. The rest of the film follows their wandering across the United States, looking for a way to prove to the paranoid government that they aren’t, in fact, terrorists.

Because the first film was such an unexpected surprise in its intelligent dissection of both racial stereotypes and stoner culture (ha, seriously), I was excited about seeing the sequel. Unfortunately after sitting through most of the movie feeling somewhat uncomfortable, I left the theater entirely enraged.

To say this film is misogynistic is an understatement. What most upset me wasn’t merely that women were unnecessarily objectified (I can’t remember the last time I saw so much gratuitous nudity), or that women were basically one-dimensional morons (and were given some of the most ridiculous dialogue I’ve heard in awhile, which is saying a lot in the age of Judd Apatow).

What bothered me most was that I couldn’t help but laugh at and appreciate the subversive way the film deals with race; the writers manage to satirize traditional perceptions of racial groups by using stereotypes to reveal the ridiculousness of racial stereotypes (yeah, I just defined satire), but for some reason, the writers couldn’t manage to treat traditional stereotypes of women with the same care.

While the audience laughs with the characters when race is addressed (when an old white woman on a plane stares at Kumar in fear, he morphs into a terrorist right before her eyes, complete with full beard and turban), the audience laughs at the female “characters” (like when two prostitutes, confronted with the question, “Have you found the love of your life?” get all ditzy and say, “No, we’re whores!”). Welcome to the films of the millennium: if we’re talking about race, forget about gender (see also Black Snake Moan, Hustle & Flow, maybe even Borat).

Two of the more extreme examples of sexism in the movie are scenes involving gratuitous female nudity (“the bottomless party”) and clichéd portrayals of prostitutes in a brothel.

The Bottomless Party

You know you’re in for a real treat when Harold and Kumar show up at a pool party where all the women walk around completely naked—oh, except for their tops. When they enter their friend’s mansion, in hopes of getting some help in avoiding Guantanamo again (they’ve escaped by now), they’re confronted with an array of tanned women’s asses and barely-there pubic hair, and whose mouths are wide open. In similar reaction, the group of men sitting next to me in the theater couldn’t stop making comments (“yeah man, hit that, daaaaaamn, that’s what I’m talkin’ about”), and this scene lasted at least seven hours from my perspective.

My favorite part of the scene was when one of the women started to take her top off, and the host responded with something along the lines of, “What the hell do you think you’re doing? Put your top back on; I don’t know what kind of party you think this is … ” Of course, she rolled her eyes as if to say “silly me” and apologized while covering her breasts. The audience got a terrible kick out of that. Because, if you didn’t know, it’s hilarious to watch women walk around naked while men tell them what they can and can’t do with their bodies. Sure, in the final moments of the scene, Harold and Kumar pull down their pants, but then the camera cuts away. What, no cock-shot?

The Brothel

Neil Patrick Harris is gay in real life, so I’m still coming to terms with Neil Patrick Harris supposedly playing himself, when what he’s really doing is playing a heterosexual, drug-addicted character named Neil Patrick Harris. Regardless. Neil insists on taking Harold and Kumar to a brothel to get [insert several degrading comments about screwing women here]. Harold refuses, instead choosing to sit with a group of prostitutes, who he then complains to about his devolving friendship with Harold, while the prostitutes console him. (It’s unfortunate here that the writers rely so heavily on conventional clichés regarding “the hooker with a heart of gold” stereotype and the mother/whore fantasy.) Kumar, of course, takes two prostitutes into a room, while Neil goes through several choices before deciding on the one with the biggest breasts.

Kumar gets his girls to make out with each other, but then bursts into tears about his ex-girlfriend marrying some government-employed douchebag. So we’ve got two naked women sitting on either side of him, consoling him, helping him feel better about himself just after they’ve made out with each other—what more could a guy want? Is it just me, a feminazi audience member, who’s expecting too much? Maybe I’m over-analyzing. Maybe this is funny. They’re just whores after all. And Neil reminds us ever-so-subtly by literally branding his giant-breasted whore’s ass.

Throughout the film, the audience can’t help but be positioned as a collective participant in this sexism, and while I appreciated the intelligent discussion of post-9/11 race relations, I couldn’t help but hate the film’s mistreatment of women. The writers had many opportunities to complicate gender issues, and yet, as always seems to be the case in films geared toward male audiences, they chose to exploit the women instead, turning them into nothing but naked body parts; their only importance is the fulfillment of male desires. I hated that. And I hated how, when I got up to leave the theater, the group of men sitting next to me talked about needing to wait out their hard-ons before they could stand up to leave.