John C. Reilly – Bitch Flicks

‘Life After Beth’ and the Trouble With Absent Presence

Poster for Life After Beth — Poster for *Life After Beth*

Horror-comedy Life After Beth is the kind of movie that’s very easy to explain.

Girl dumps Boy, Girl dies and comes back as a zombie with no memory of the break-up, Boy continues to date her even though he’s a little afraid of her.

But there’s not a lot else. Even the titular character is scarcely more than a name. After sitting through the slim 89 minutes of I Heart Huckabees writer Jeff Baena’s directorial debut, I’m still left wondering who Beth is. And what did she care about besides her boyfriend and sex?

Aubrey Plaza plays the dear departed Beth Slocum, cut down by a snake bite during a solo hike, leaving behind her stalker ex-boyfriend, Zach (Dane DeHaan). Zach hasn’t taken her death very well. He dresses in black and ignores his parents and brother, preferring to spend time with Beth’s grieving parents (John C. Reilly and Molly Shannon) who treat him like a son. When the Slocums stop contacting him, he stalks and spies on them to find out why. Quickly, he discovers they have been hiding Beth, who has mysteriously returned from the grave, unaware of her own death.

A scheme is hatched. Beth’s parents will continue to cherish “the miracle” of her resurrection and Zach will get his girlfriend back and have a second chance to get it right and take her dancing and on hikes like she always wanted. Keeping Beth a secret is crucial, they will continue to hid her return and keep her in the dark about what had happened to her. But her sudden fits of rage, rotting body, and crazy strength make things difficult.

From Beth’s perspective this would make an intriguing premise; she is confused, strange things are happening to her body, things she can’t control, and that’s the stuff horror movies are made of. Yet, despite her lone presence in the title, the poster, and Plaza’s top billing, the film is never about Beth. The story belongs to Zach.

Beth’s all-consuming lust for Zach is painted as monstrous

Though Plaza gives a committed physical performance, clearly having a ball in monster make-up, it’s really all she’s given to do. She isn’t even given much room to be funny in the supposed comedy. It’s as if Plaza has been cast in a feature length sketch-show, playing all manner of stereotypical “girlfriends from hell.” For a good while she’s the horny girlfriend who needs to be reminded not to rip her boyfriend’s clothes off at any opportunity, then she plays the jealous girlfriend who’s convinced any women her boyfriend talks to is sleeping with him, after that she’s briefly Linda Blair in The Exorcist, before finally ending the film as a rabid dog biting at anything that gets too close. I imagine it on Saturday Night Live: first a short musical theme, “The Girlfriend from Hell,” then Plaza making a snarky comment to her boyfriend and vomiting pea soup all over him.

But who was she when she was alive? What does Zach love so much about Beth that he couldn’t get over her, it had to have been more than just her potential to act as a sex robot. What kind of memories do her parents cherish about her?
None of these questions is answered.

To make a film that centers around a death, that death has to mean something to the audience. There are many ways to do this, from the inherently sad (child deaths) to the anguished (and unbefitting of a comedy) mental breakdown of the surviving characters. The main problem with Life After Beth is that the titular character never once felt like a real person, a once living girl who happened to be named Beth. Instead, she felt like a construct invented by writer and quickly named for a catchy title. All she is is a girl named Beth, no more fleshed out in the finished film than she would be in a rough plot line, this guy’s girlfriend and this couple’s daughter. She matters to people but she never achieves personhood herself and so is difficult to care about.

Beth and Zach finally go on the hike they always wanted

While the film opens with a brief glimpse of a scared (still living) Beth lost in the woods and looking for cell service, this is all we see of her. As we are never allowed to know Beth; her presence as a zombie is robbed of any sense of irony or tragedy, which would make it entertaining to watch. The short grief narrative the film opens with only serves to remind us that these stories are about absence. Even when Beth returns, she is absent, a dead girl given a flesh and blood presence, yet never a voice. Throughout the film, Beth is fetishized as a dead girl, and in one scene, Zach masturbates with a scarf she had left behind.

Zach keeps Beth’s scarf and uses it to masterbate — Zach keeps Beth’s scarf and uses it to masturbate

Beth’s constant desire for Zach is meant as a source of humour, notably as she pops out of the roof to ask him to go for a hike. Though he was originally the one obsessively in love with her, even stalking her family, she is seen as the pathetic one. Her lust is uncontrollable and as it morphs into murderous and cannibalistic impulses, and the high female libido is painted as monstrous. Moreover, the destruction of the attractive female body is intended as a source of dark comedy and Beth is de-personified to the point where, when she finally dies again, it’s with Zach shooting her in the head to put her down, again like a rabid dog.

In this light, there is something disturbing about seeing her tied up and chained to washing machine for the last act. In order to handle her, Beth must be trapped and contained, with her boyfriend, a person she had tried to break up with, in complete control and possession of her. The situation continues to be horrific for Beth, but but her character’s zombification means she is no longer a person with a perspective of her own. When Zach finally apologizes for how he treated her as a living person, she’s no longer there and the apology is more for him than her.

As she becomes less human, Beth is kept captive and watched over by Zach

Parts of the Life After Beth reminded me of 2012’s Ruby Sparks, another film about a girlfriend who exists only as a male fantasy and to tell us something about him. However, Ruby Sparks, whether successful or not, played with this idea to expose something troubling about the stories we tell in our culture. Life After Beth makes no such commentary. Sure Zach needs to come to terms with his girlfriend’s death but Beth’s return didn’t do much to change this central fact. Throughout the film he vacillates between refusing to give her up and feeling burdened by her presence. Narratively, the film would have worked better if Beth’s resurrection occurred because Zach made a selfish wish, as would have given both him and Beth room to grow.

Toward the end, the film changes gears completely, as people everywhere begin returning from the dead. This larger zombie apocalypse creates a rift in the narrative, and expects us to shift gears, stop caring about Beth and Zach, and start caring about the fates of Zach’s family and their fight to survive.

Plaza pays an unusual physical role and is allowed to be unattractive

As much as I disliked this movie, I can’t imagine how insufferable it would be without Aubrey Plaza as Beth. She’s obviously enjoying herself, playing a role so different from anything she’s done before, and it’s enjoyable to watch that. There’s definitely some fun in the role of Beth, which allows Plaza to be monstrous and unattractive.

Life After Beth tries to be a romantic comedy and a zombie movie, yet forgets how to deliver either laughs or scares. There are a few bright spots: Mrs. Slocum feeding her hands to her monster-daughter and Beth tumbling down a hill with a stove strapped to her back, but they are few and far between. The running gag, of zombies liking smooth jazz, is one of those touches that seems hilarious on paper but cloying when translated to the screen.

It’s always great to see fresh twists on old stories, but we can’t forget what made the old stories great in the first place. With no build-up of the relationship and no reason for the resurrection, there’s nothing left to care about.

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Elizabeth Kiy is a Canadian writer and journalist living in Toronto, Ontario.

Classic Literature Film Adaptations Week: ‘We Need to Talk About Kevin’

Official movie poster for We Need to Talk About Kevin

This is a guest post by Amanda Lyons and is cross-posted with permission from her blog Mrs Meow Says.

You know how I said in my review of Into the Wild that it was one of the most recent books I’ve read that disturbed me? We Need to Talk About Kevin is the most recent book I’ve read that disturbed me.

The reason for this (apart from the obvious fact that it’s about a child psychopath that you know is going to do something very, very bad, thus every event, every word is soaked in a weighty, dull dread) is that if you are a woman who is ambivalent about having children, Kevin represents your absolute worst nightmare, the zero sum of all your fears of what could happen once you’ve heaved a child from your bloody body.

Tilda Swinton and John C. Reilly in We Need to Talk About Kevin

It’s a fascinating and minutely detailed account from Eva Katchadourian of her mothering of Kevin. It’s also an examination of her own soul and an attempt to parse what she may and may not be responsible for during the long build up to the ultimate flowering of Kevin’s violence.

Eva is a very cerebral person, and accordingly Kevin is a very cerebral book, following Eva’s long monologue (confession?) to her absent husband as she makes a hard and painful analysis of what has happened. In a wider sense, it is also an examination of the cultural notion of a mother’s guilt for the actions of her children—Eva is punished by her community for the crimes of her son and ends up living almost as a fugitive from her old life. She is wracked by guilt and horror, analysing events and their lead-up with painful clarity.

But it is soon very clear that though Eva is aware very early on that something is “wrong” with Kevin, she is isolated both by Kevin’s insidious nature and her very role as a mother—and is utterly powerless to do anything about it. Her All-American, trad values-craving husband Franklin coerces her into moving away from her beloved New York to an extravagantly ugly house in the suburbs for the sake of their “family.” Every time she tries to raise her concerns about Kevin, he is disbelieving, and disapproving—he is easily manipulated by his savvy child; because he is not Kevin’s primary caregiver, he only sees what Kevin wants him to see. On top of this, he is a devotee at the shrine of the inviolable nuclear family and refuses to acknowledge anything that could endanger this dream. Instead, he equates Eva’s misgivings with what he perceives as her untrustworthy wanderlust which he fears will take her away from him.

Tilda Swinton glaring

And this is what was so terrifying to me about Kevin—its worst-case scenario of motherhood. The woman enslaved, powerless, first by the very presence of the baby growing inside her and then trapped in the four walls of the home, slave to a psychopathic child who is the ultimate tyrant. Disbelieved by her partner, having to cope alone, cut off from the socially accepted positive experience of motherhood. Forced to nurture a child that has nothing but hate and contempt for you.

And yet, in a lot of ways Eva and Kevin are very alike. This is why Kevin knows it’s easier to get around Dad, but not around Mum—because she understands him in a way Dad never can. Kevin embodies the darker elements of Eva that she herself is unaware of until she starts her minute analysis in the aftermath of his arrest. This feeds her sense of guilt—but also her understanding of him, and her eventual coming to terms with his nature.

Shriver has obviously done her homework. Her construction of Kevin’s childhood reminded me very much of undiagnosed schizophrenic Nancy Spungen’s in her mother’s memoir And I Don’t Want to Live This Life. And when I read this NY Times article about child psychopaths, I thought right away of Kevin and how much the behaviour of the children in it echoed his. It also made me think of Lionel Dahmer’s memoir and how he searched for the answer to Jeffrey’s crimes in his parenting, the dark twists in his own personality and the ways in which he and his son were alike.

Tilda Swinton looking uneasy

We Need to Talk About Kevin is a dark and disturbing, dread-filled book. It consumed my thoughts while I was reading it and terrorised my brain. There are imperfections that mar its surface, the main one being some narrative trickery that I won’t reveal as it’s something of a spoiler. But I will say that I thought it was a bit gimmicky and a slight betrayal of the reader.

This aside, though, it’s an amazing book: painful, scary, intelligent, and unforgettable.

So when I heard there was a film coming out, I thought, “Crikey! Good luck!”

This is because, as with The Hunger Games, We Need to Talk About Kevin is narrated as an internal monologue. Recreating the same effect in a film is very difficult, if not impossible, to do. But the distinctive voice of Eva Katchadourian is essential to the story, is the story.

However, there was one very positive factor—the film was directed by Lynne Ramsay, who is absolutely fantastic. Her films are always creative, individual, and beautifully made.

Tilda Swinton and tomato soup

But hearing about the casting of Tilda Swinton gave me some pause. Don’t get me wrong—I love me some SWINTON. She is astonishingly awesome. I also really liked her interview with W Magazine about the film, in which she said:

It’s every pregnant woman’s nightmare to give birth to the devil. And every mother worries that she won’t connect to her children. When I had my children, my manager asked me what project I wanted to work on next. I said, “Something Greek, perhaps Medea.” Nobody quite understood what I meant, what I was feeling…

You have twins, who are now 13. Did you worry about becoming a mother?

When I first saw the twins, I really liked them. And, at the same time, there was a ghost over my shoulder saying, What if I hadn’t liked them? Kevin spoke to that feeling. It is that nightmare scenario: What if you don’t feel that connection to your children? There’s no preparation for having children. In Kevin, the woman I play is in mourning for her past life, and yet she looks at this dark, nihilistic kid and knows exactly where he comes from. He isn’t foreign to her; she sees herself. And that is, quite literally, revolting to her.

Predictably the gossip rags were like, “WTF! Bitch be crazy!” but I thought she nailed the hammer on the head (or whatever that saying is). She understood the book perfectly, and it was obvious that Eva Katchadourian was in safe hands.

And of course, she is fantastic in the film. She is such a great actress, so lacking in vanity and unafraid to plunge into whatever is needed for a role. It’s just, that … well, Eva is of Armenian descent. And this is quite important in the books. She’s olivey and dark, and Swinton is a long cool glass of milk.

Tilda Swinton and John C. Reilly and balloons in We Need to Talk About Kevin

Obviously these things can be rectified by certain techniques, and duly Swinton’s hair was dyed, and I’m pretty sure they made her wear dark contacts, an attention to detail which I appreciate.

This might have been okay, if I didn’t feel so uneasy about the casting of the other central characters as well. John C. Reilly, I love you, so please forgive me for this, but I imagined Franklin as handsome (I think he’s actually described as such in the book)—albeit in a ruddy, slightly chunky sort of way, but handsome nonetheless. Not only did Reilly not at all correspond with how I thought Franklin should look, but I just completely could not buy he and Swinton as a couple, no matter how hard I tried. He didn’t do a bad job, but I just did not believe it. And there wasn’t a lot of chemistry between them to help the situation out, either.

And then we arrive at the titular Kevin himself. With Kevin, I had the opposite problem: he is described as being quite good-looking in the books. But movie-Kevin goes beyond this; he looks like an underwear model. Ladies and gentlemen I present to you, Ezra Miller:

Ezra Miller, star of We Need to Talk About Kevin

Once again, though, I must praise their attention to detail. Kevin clearly has zits in some of the shots, and he is wearing the too-small clothes that Shriver describes in the books. But he is just so ridiculously gorgeous that I couldn’t help snorting in the theatre at the sight of him. It’s also impossible to believe that he sprung from the loins of John C. Reilly and Tilda Swinton. So some suspension of disbelief issues there.

These issues aside, however, Ramsay makes a solid effort of adapting this story for film. She doesn’t try to oversimplify the story, nor does she bang you over the head with detailed explanation, which I really appreciated. The attention to detail that I’ve mentioned several times earlier shows respect for and a real dedication to the source material. Her technique is as exquisite as her previous films, and I love that the movie isn’t overly shiny looking like so many American movies—she doesn’t try to gloss over the ugly bits.

However, it’s impossible to overcome the central problem—the way the story is told in the book just can’t be replicated in a film. But I also found that having read the book, there was just no tension in the story and the characters didn’t quite gel enough for me to get pulled into their story anyway. It’s a well-made film, but I’ll have to declare the winner unequivocally: BOOK.

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Amanda Lyons is a writer from Middle Earth (AKA New Zealand). By day she writes on finance, by night whatever takes her fancy at http://mrsmeowssays.blogspot.co.nz/.

‘Wreck-It Ralph’ Is Flawed, But Still Pretty Feminist

By Myrna Waldron

Wreck-It Ralph Movie Poster

I’m an animation geek. You probably know that by now. I also have played video games pretty much my entire life. (I read comic books and play DnD too, I’m basically der Ubergeek) So when I heard that Walt Disney Pictures were releasing a Roger Rabbit inspired movie about video games that would feature cameos from real video game characters, AND directed by Rich Moore, a veteran animation director from Futurama (my favourite show), I just about died. Wreck-It Ralph is one of three movies I was anticipating in 2012, the other two being The Hunger Games (meh) and The Hobbit (stay tuned). And, thank goodness, I wasn’t disappointed. Now, mind you, it’s not a perfect film. There were a lot of things I would have liked to have been done differently. But I was pleasantly surprised not only for the love letter to video games, but how Disney is slowly making progress towards some real representation of feminism. Here’s why.

SPOILERS FOLLOW HERE. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THE MOVIE YET, DO NOT READ FURTHER.

I tend to hate movie trailers, as I find them either to misrepresent the film, or spoil stuff I’d rather be surprised on. (How many times has a film put its best jokes in the trailer, leaving only the so-so ones unspoiled?) It must suck for filmmakers to watch their films be marketed so deceptively. So what I noticed with the trailers for Wreck-It Ralph is that they made it seem that the film was entirely about the two male protagonists, Ralph and Felix, and the video game cameos. The two female protagonists, Vanellope von Schweetz and Sgt. Calhoun, have maybe a few seconds of dialogue in each trailer, though at least it’s obvious Vanellope is meant to be a major character. The trailers do misrepresent the film in this case, since there are four protagonists and one villain, and the cameos are just that: cameos. Seriously, marketers, would you knock it off with trying to conceal that films sometimes have women in them? I promise you, a film will not instantly fail if the Girl Alarm goes off. It’s ridiculously stupid that The Princess & The Frog was considered a failure just because it didn’t make as much as Alvin & The Chipmunks: The Squeakquel did, and the blame was placed on Tiana being a woman. It made over $260 million! THAT’S NOT A FAILURE! You know what IS a failure? A MOVIE WITH THE WORD ‘SQUEAKQUEL’ IN THE TITLE. Anyway. Moving on.

The script has two writers, Jennifer Lee and Phil Johnston. Hooray! A female screenwriter! And you can tell, since the two female protagonists are really well written. Sgt. Calhoun is my particular favourite, because she does not fall into a traditional gender role. Yes, she dresses in the traditional white wedding gown and veil for her wedding scenes, but for the rest of the time, she’s a no-nonsense butt-kicker. There’s a lot of speculation that she’s based on the female version of Commander Shepard from the Mass Effect series, and I can definitely see where that’s coming from. According to TV Tropes, Sgt. Calhoun was originally written as a male character, but Rich Moore thought that would be too boring. And he’s right! Commander Shepard is famously a character you can play as either male or female, but most (enlightened) people feel that “FemShep” is the better written and better voiced character. What both characters have in common is that they are tomboyish military geniuses in positions of leadership (They also shoot aliens a lot too, that’s important), and this is important because most military games (and first person shooters) are so very masculinized. A woman being a leader, especially in a traditionally masculine field like the military, is subversive – how far video games and films have come, but how far they still have to go. But kudos to the film for bucking tradition.

Some racers from the Sugar Rush world at the starting line

Speaking of tomboys, Vanellope van Schweetz contrasts with her origin game, Sugar Rush, in a very interesting way. Now, notice that Sugar Rush is explicitly a game meant for girls – it’s pink, it’s cutesy, it’s got an almost entirely female roster of players. (King Candy being one of the few males, and not matching the other character designs, is your first clue that he doesn’t really belong there) I see the representation of Sugar Rush as an affectionate parody of how games for girls tend to be designed. My favourite console of all time is probably the Nintendo DS, and anyone who owned that system knows how frustrating many of the “shovelware” games were, most of which were cheaply made games meant for girl players. How can you tell they were for girls? Why, because they were about fashion, shopping, weddings, babysitting, cute pets, and cooking! (Gag.) Anyway, getting back to Sugar Rush, what sets this game apart from other traditional “girl games” is that it’s obviously meant to be really good. And I won’t lie, of all the original games written for this movie, Sugar Rush is the one I wanted to play the most. It’s also a little subversive in the gender role department in that it is a racing game. Some girls like cars too, whoda thunk it?

To get into Vanellope’s character, notice how very casual she is compared to the others. Her only real indication that she’s from a candy world is that she’s got a bunch of candy stuck in her hair. This is why she initially appears as an outcast – she’s not traditionally feminine like the others, nor is she explicitly candy-themed. But she loves racing just as much as the others, and not only (re)learns how to race, but how to manipulate her glitching to give her a distinct advantage. At the end, when it’s revealed she’s actually Princess Vanellope, the true ruler of Sugar Rush, she’s regenerated in a poofy pink dress and crown. It’s typical that a girly game like Sugar Rush WOULD have a Princess character. Then she does possibly the most subversive thing I’ve ever seen from a Disney film: She rejects the Princess label. She takes the dress off, saying that her tomboyish outfit with the green hoodie is the real her, and that she’d rather be President than Princess. Now what this is saying is that she’d rather be the leader based on her own merits, not on her birthright (or marriage). And that it’s pretty silly for her still to be a Princess when there’s obviously no King or Queen in the game. And think of it. A Disney film has a character who says she DOESN’T want to be a Disney Princess.

Ralph at the support meeting for video game villains

Another thing I liked in the film is that the gamer in the arcade is shown to be a young girl. Hell. Yeah. And not only that, she has a genuine interest in ALL the games in the arcade, not just the girly ones like Sugar Rush. In fact, she doesn’t even get to play it because there are two teenage boys hogging the game and planning to play it all day. Gee, teenage boys not letting a girl play a video game with them, where have I heard that before? Actually, come to think of it, teenage/adult males usurping entertainment explicitly meant for young girls, where have I heard THAT before? *coughcoughBroniescoughcough* But this same girl plays a retro game like Fix-It Felix Jr., and the modern FPS Hero’s Duty, in the same afternoon. This shows that female gamers play games of ALL types, not just the games designers (and their intended male customers) “think” we should be playing. And they make it clear that the female gamer is a regular at the arcade. How I wish there was an arcade near me that I could be a regular at. It was an obvious choice made by the filmmakers to have the gamer be depicted as female, and it’s such a breath of fresh air because almost every other media depicting video games almost always assumes that the player is male. We exist, people! Get over it already! (And while you’re at it, stop calling us Gamer Girls. The sexist moniker is one instance where alliteration is not welcome)

The relationship between the male and female protagonists is also fairly interesting. Ralph and Vanellope are the two main leads, but explicitly do NOT have a romance. At any rate, he’s more than twice her age, so that’d be really gross. What they have is a platonic friendship that has a big brother-little sister dynamic. Hey, a platonic friendship between a male and a female, imagine that! Now, the second leads, Felix and Sgt. Calhoun, DO have a romance. But this is another interesting depiction of male/female relationships, because Felix is almost kind of feminine in contrast to the almost masculine Sgt. Calhoun. Once again, we get a rejection of traditional gender roles. What is also important is how their attraction to each other also defies tradition – Felix is attracted to her almost instantly, marveling at her “high definition” graphics. And, of course, Sgt. Calhoun does not meet the standard definition of beauty. (Apparently she has an impossible hourglass figure, but I didn’t notice it – I do not always have my feminist film critic goggles on) At any rate, Felix likes her anyway, AND appreciates her determination, resourcefulness and mastery of her job. She likes him because he’s kind and caring, and does not mind that she’s almost twice his size. Women dating shorter men is STILL a social taboo for some reason, as if a person’ height has anything to do with what kind of personality they have. So hey, well done once again, movie.

Ralph offers some Pac-Man food to homeless video game characters

Now as I mentioned earlier, the movie does have a few flaws. We don’t get a Bechdel Test pass, but there is some justification plotwise for this, since each pair of protagonists (Ralph and Vanellope, Felix and Sgt. Calhoun) has their own side story that run parallel to each other right up to the end. Of course, passing the Bechdel Test does not determine if a film is good (and vice versa), nor does it immediately indicate whether a film is feminist or not. EDIT: seaofkittens has rightly pointed out that Vanellope and the other racers (mostly Taffyta) DO have conversations during the second act and the finale. So we do get a Bechdel Test pass, hooray!

There are also no racial minorities in the main cast at all, we can only count some minor speaking parts – the black General at the end of the Hero’s Duty game, who only appears in one scene, and if we consider the cameo characters from Japanese games to be “minorities.” That’s kind of inexcusable, movie. This is unsurprising given that it’s a kid’s movie, but there’s also no LGBTQ representation in the movie’s characters. However, we do have LGBTQ representation in the cast via the casting of Jane Lynch as Sgt. Calhoun. (Who was obviously always meant to play her since she looks just like her) And, once again, the main character is a white guy. He’s technically not a human, but he’s still white and he’s still a dude. The script is original, but it’s not really funny. The only time I laughed out loud was the bit with the Oreos doing the Winkie chant from The Wizard of Oz. They also spent way too much time in the Sugar Rush game (something like 2/3rds of the movie) – I would have liked to see other game locales.
EDIT: A commenter reminded me that there is one scene in the 2nd act that is meant to be funny but is really very offensive. When Sgt. Calhoun and Felix are trapped in the quicksand, Felix persuades Calhoun to repeatedly hit him in order to make the Laffy Taffy vines laugh so hard they can be used to stretch out of the quicksand. Look, Disney, domestic abuse isn’t fucking funny. It doesn’t matter that he asked her to do it, it doesn’t matter that it’s a woman abusing a man (in fact, normalization of woman-on-man domestic abuse is a huge societal problem), and it doesn’t matter that he can instantly heal the effects. Your audience is young children, and they’re learning that a woman repeatedly physically abusing her soon-to-be-husband is not only acceptable, but funny. Don’t tell me that “woman beats the crap out of man” was the only possible solution to getting out of the quicksand.
Offensive domestic abuse jokes aside (let’s have a director’s cut excising that scene), it’s a very well made film, and fellow gamers like myself are basically going to geek out the entire time, so I do recommend it, albeit with some caution. Presuming that there will be a sequel, I really hope they include some minority characters in the cast next time, and never ever include a domestic abuse joke again. It’s 2012, we can do better than this.

Myrna Waldron is a feminist writer/blogger with a particular emphasis on all things nerdy. She lives in Toronto and has studied English and Film at York University. Myrna has a particular interest in the animation medium, having written extensively on American, Canadian and Japanese animation. She also has a passion for Sci-Fi & Fantasy literature, pop culture literature such as cartoons/comics, and the gaming subculture. She maintains a personal collection of blog posts, rants, essays and musings at The Soapboxing Geek, and tweets with reckless pottymouthed abandon at @SoapboxingGeek.