Recently in 2 Stars: So Close

Thanks so much to Bonnie Norman of A Working Title for sharing her post about this film!

Trigger warning: This movie contains scenes of violence and rape. Also, Spoiler Alert for the book and movies.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a complicated story to break down. The book the movie is derived from is 480 pages long according to Amazon and that's a lot to try to condense into a movie; I'll be making a lot of comparisons to the book. (I haven't seen the original Swedish adaptation, but you can read two different reviews here on Heroine Content: Skye's and Grace's.) On the one hand, we have Mikael Blomkvist, played by Daniel Craig, a journalist recovering from a conviction of libel after botching a story against a major business tycoon published in the magazine Millenium. On the other, we have Lisbeth Salander, played by Rooney Mara, a young woman with a troubled past, a photographic memory, and a whip-smart intellect. A ward of the state since she was 12, she was declared mentally incompetent at 18 and is now under guardianship.

Lisbeth becomes involved in Mikael's story (and it really is his story) after first doing a background check on him for Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer) of the Vanger Corporation, in order for them to hire him for a special investigation into the long-ago disappearance of Henrik's favorite niece, Harriet Vanger. After Mikael hits a wall in his investigation he requests a research assistant, and Lisbeth is recommended. The two of them work together to uncover some long buried secrets of the Vanger family and find out what really happened to Harriet.

I did not like the opening credits of the film. The scenes of ink and women being hit and torn open into flowers was very off-puting and just icky. It had an almost James Bond feel to it, (perhaps a nod to Daniel Craig's other acting work?) but with a surreal quality that made it more nightmarish then sexy. Perhaps that was the point, but I think it set the tone for the rest of movie as women as victims being acted upon, rather than avengers meting out justice as Lisbeth has been touted. Lisbeth herself feels like an empty character. Her emotions and thoughts aren't clearly readable by the audience, so someone coming to this without having read the books won't get the same connections and background that I have. In the books it's made clear that she does not feel like a victim when bad things happen to her, and she quite rationally plots out ways to get back at those who have wronged her. Here, the thought process seems much less calculated, and I think the true sense of how Lisbeth's mind works is lost.

The much talked about rape scene with her guardian was very uncomfortable for me to watch but I think a rape scene should be uncomfortable for the audience. It isn't sexy, and it's clearly painful. We are not meant to be titillated. The fact that Lisbeth then turns the tables on her attacker is an interesting conundrum for me. I don't think rape is justified, ever, but in Lisbeth's mind, it is do unto others what has been done to you, because nobody else will ever do it for you. Nils Bjurman is a vile rapist, taking advantage of a situation where he has complete power over someone the state has deemed mentally incompetent. But I don't think it's right to condone her raping and violating him in return, even if he might have deserved retaliation of some kind. If we follow "An eye for an eye" we all end up blind. (They do not flash back to either scene even once in the film, it's one and done for both scenes.)

What else can I say about Lisbeth? If you haven't seen the official movie poster for the U.S. release, it's above. The poster I think misrepresents how Lisbeth is portrayed in the film, sort of a bait and switch. I don't think at any time Lisbeth comes off as the sexy leading lady. She seems much more like the bizarre eclectic goth girl, exotic and strange and possibly to be pitied. I don't think they did enough to imbue her with the bad-assness that is present in the books or seems to have been present in the Swedish version. Also, her blonde eyebrows against the black hair really bother me, and make her seem almost alien at times. Her character isn't as relatable or heroic as I'd hoped for, and that's disappointing to me.

The other female characters in this movie are so incidental to Mikael, even though it is full of them. The development of even the main focus of the mystery, Harriet, is barely touched on. And I have a serious problem with the resolution of her story. After finding out that Harriet's father and brother are serial rapists, torturers, and murderers, Mikael and Lisbeth realize that Harriet is in fact alive, and they track her down and confront her, eventually reuniting her with her uncle Henrik. In the books, Harriet escapes the cycle of incest and rape with the help of her cousin Anita, fleeing from the family island and eventually emigrating to Australia, where she falls in love with and marries a man who makes her very happy, has children with her, and makes her a full partner in his very successful ranching business.

Book-Harriet is shown to be capable, healed, and happy, although she still feels the pain and emotional scars from her childhood. The U.S. movie shows Harriet alone and in hiding, leading a lonely life that seems almost cold. It seems to imply that the rape and abuse she suffered has tainted her life forever and she will never be the woman she could be. I prefer the book version of Harriet myself. I'm not sure why they made the change; perhaps they thought the addition of another foreign country would confuse the story even more for an American audience? I don't know how the Swedish film portrayed her, but I wish the U.S. version had stuck closer to the print version.

Two other female characters that received short shrift were Lisbeth's sometime lover, Miriam Wu (Elodie Yung), and Mikael's lover and editor of Millenium, Erika Berger (Robin Wright). Miriam plays a larger role later in the trilogy, but here she had one line and no connection was made between her and Lisbeth other than as a one night stand, unfortunately. She's also the only character of color, but considering Sweden has a 95% homogenous population that isn't really surprising. Elodie Yung is of French and Cambodian descent, while Miriam is I believe half Swedish and half Chinese.

Erika Berger is barely touched on at all, which is extremely unfortunate. She's a very competent and intelligent character, and is seen as much more capable than the sometimes flaky Mikael to actually handle the serious business of running an investigative magazine. It's also made to seem as though she and Mikael are carrying on a clandestine affair when she says she'll call her husband to tell him she's not coming home tonight, and that she has an unhappy marriage, as she makes a reference (after waking up to find Mikael not in bed) to usually only waking up in a cold bed at home. I once again must point out the book, where her husband is fully aware and approving of their relationship and Erika is seen as a woman with exceptional sexual appetite that she unashamedly satisfies with the love and support of her husband. I think perhaps the movie execs felt that U.S. audiences wouldn't be able to handle an open and successful and happy marriage.

Finally, one plot hole that seems glaring to me is the resolution of the case against Martin Vanger. He openly admits that he held women captive in his basement torture chamber and eventually killed them. The movie glosses over this fact after his explosive death, caused in part by Lisbeth after a brief chase scene. In the book, Mikael is determined to reveal the heinous crimes Martin and his father committed, but is convinced to remain silent by Henrik, on the grounds that it won't solve anything and will in fact harm Harriet. Against his own moral compass, Mikael agrees, but Lisbeth insists that the Vanger Corp make restitution to every woman's family they can track down, via the extensive records and videos Martin kept as sadistic mementos. The movie seems to completely forget about these women the minute the bad guy is dead, and that does them a disservice, leaving their stories unresolved and implying that they (and their families) don't matter now that they've been avenged. The effects of a crime don't disappear once the perpetrator is gone.

To recap: Even though the movie revolves around the abuse and eventual retaliation of women, the female characters are sidelined for the most part, with barely any lines or screen time. Lisbeth is an unsympathetic character whose original bad-assness is toned down or missing all-together. She's smart yes, but she's also weird and a little sad. Overall, I feel like this movie was so close, but just didn't deliver the same kind of umph that the book or Swedish adaptation are known for.

Posted by A Very Special Guest in 2 Stars: So Close
Permalink | Comments (0)

If you are expected great story-telling or a convincing plot from the fourth installment in a franchise of films based on an amusement park ride, I'm pretty sure you're going to be disappointed. That isn't what Pirates of the Caribbean 4: On Stranger Tides, or any of it prequels, offer. Personally, I'm OK with that--I don't watch these movies for their literary value--but if you're not, I'd definitely skip this one. It makes the previous installments seem absolutely well-told.

I've reviewed all three of the previous Pirates movies (Curse of the Black Pearl, Dead Man's Chest, and At World's End). Though I liked all three films, none of them received high marks for heroine content--the major female character, Keira Knightley's Elizabeth Swann, was a consistent disappointment, and Dead Man's Chest was horribly racist. On both counts, On Stranger Tides is a step in the right direction. But not a very big step.

Elizabeth Swann (and her husband, Will Turner) are gone. Instead, the role of Captain Jack Sparrow's sometimes-adversary-sometimes-collaborator is filled by Angelica Malon, played by Penélope Cruz. Angelica is a much different woman. When we meet her, she is impersonating Captain Jack Sparrow well enough to fool a crew of sailors, and she proves to be as good with a sword as Captain Jack himself in their initial duel. Throughout the course of the film, she shows herself to be, in many ways, a female version of Jack--manipulative, self-serving, and maybe even a little bit cruel, but definitely a complete character.

Unfortunately, my generally positive feelings towards Angelica are mediated by two things: First, the film insists on a history between her and Jack, during which he found her in a convent, about to take her vows, and deflowered her. Could have lived without that. Secondly, it slowly comes to light that Angelica's actions, at first self-motivated, are at least partially directed by a not-quite-believable family allegiance. This isn't bad, in and of itself, but I would have liked it better if she'd simply been, like Jack, selfish.

The bigger issue than Angelica is the film's only other female character, the mermaid Syrena (Astrid Berges-Frisbey). Though she does come through at an important moment at the end, Syrena is an unmitigated disaster. It was as if the filmmakers were concerned that Angelica was just too good a female character and had to offer Syrena to balance her. Syrena spends nearly the entirety of the movie captured, in bondage, and in need of saving. And through most of it, she's also naked.

I thought a lot about what I wanted to write about racial issues in this film, and I'm honestly still not sure what to say. The only Black characters in the film were Blackbeard's hulking zombified gunners. Didn't like that at all. However, one thing this film had the none of the previous Pirates films did was a major character of color. That is, if you consider Penélope Cruz an actress of color. Cruz is Spanish, as is her character. Syrena, too, was a Spanish character (I guess--it's difficult to assign nationality to a mermaid) played by a Spanish actress. The Spanish soldiers featured in the film were also played by Spanish actors. In the context of the film, wherein the Spanish characters were clearly intended to be construed as "other" to the British cast, I think it's fair to consider these characters, and their casting, as a win in the non-racist category. Given the absolutely embarrassing racism of this franchise's second film, I found this pleasantly surprising.

It's hard to justify more than a single star for this movie--it's just nothing groundbreaking. However, given my single-star ranking of Dead Man's Chest and two star rankings of Curse of the Black Pearl and At World's End, I'm going to go ahead and give this one two stars. On feminist and anti-racist grounds, it was at least as good, and probably better, than the first and third films.

Posted by Grace in 2 Stars: So Close
Permalink | Comments (0)

Oh, Priest. You had scary vampires. You had a woman of color, Maggie Q (Polish-Irish-Vietnamese), kicking ass. You had Karl Urban who was awesome in Red.

Why, oh why, did you have to be so terrible?

I really tried to work with you. I could get behind Paul Bettany as the main character, a vampire-slaying church soldier in the post-apocalypse. Your casting diversity was Maggie Q as another priest-warrior plus lots of background characters, but that's further than many films get. Q's character is great, she's an equal partner in the ass-kicking and fighting vampires wouldn't be the same without her. Plus, you had enough budget that the special effects didn't grate on the eyes.

But what the hell was with the, um, "plot"? Was it screenwriter Cory Goodman? Or did he write a fantastic script that was butchered in the editing process? Did cutting it down to 87 minutes require removing all the parts that would make any of the following make sense:

• After the vampire war, Priests were removed from military service. The Church did not want them spreading unease among the people, so instead of serving the Church in the dark recesses of the scriptorium or something, they were sent out to live and work amongst the general populace. And to make sure they were not a continuing threat, they were allowed to keep their badass motorcycles.
• An experienced vampire tracker would look at two or three yards worth of tracks, determine the direction they're heading, and then drive in that direction at approximately TWO HUNDRED MILES AN HOUR because obviously, vampires would never change direction.
• Maggie Q's character has an important assignment - blow up the train tracks! The best way to do this? Set a bunch of charges and then wait for some bad guys to show up and wreck everything!

And the... character development, I guess one could call it? Horrible. Clumsy. In the second half of the film, Maggie Q and Paul Bettany have one of the more heartbreaking, quiet, unrequited (?) love scenes I've witnessed in a movie. If only it hadn't been preceded by a scene in the first half of the film where Q's character appears and essentially throws up a bunch of personal confession that honestly would have been better as voiceover. (I never thought I would say something like that, but voiceover would actually have been BETTER.) These are extremely reserved people!

Unlike the town sheriff who could have added a Beavis-like "huh huh" after suddenly asking "So, can Priests have relations?" of someone he has known for approximately 6 seconds. Cam Gigandet, you need better people. You're supposed to be the sidekick who proves himself, or something? Instead you're just incompetent. And desperately lacking in both judgment and social skills.

This post could probably be infinitely long, because I have so much to lament about this movie. But I will limit myself to two more topics: the Damsel in Distress and the Ninja.

The Damsel in Distress is the young, skinny, pretty white girl whose kidnapping sparks all the action here. Thank goodness that young women living in frontier wastelands that are troubled by bandits grow up feisty, tough, and with formidable self-defense skills. Oh, wait...

The Ninja is played by Arnold Chon, and like Gigandet, he needs to fire his people immediately. Or, we need to fire most of Hollywood because they can't stop portraying Asian martial artists as complete stereotypes. What is with the 20 second long fucking around with your ninjonics and your weapon thing and your kung-fu movie vocalizations? Did they keep recruiting Priests after the war, because honestly, I can't see you living through the first five minutes of a confrontation with a vampire. Oh, wait...

Here's what I have to say in Priest's defense: It looks cool. And I laughed. A lot. Of course, that's probably not the reaction they were hoping for.

I should probably give this 1 star for Typical because of the Ninja, and the redshirt problem with some of the Priests who are not played by Paul Bettany. But because of Maqqie Q, and the significant effort they made to cast Priests and Church leaders with some diversity, it feels more like "So Close." Two stars.

p.s. To town sheriff, who is so pissed off that the Priest is going to kill the Damsel if she's infected: What's your plan? PENICILLIN?

Posted by Skye in 2 Stars: So Close
Permalink | Comments (9)

Mamoru Oshii, the director of Avalon, also directed Ghost in the Shell and Assault Girls. These fine cinematic experiences were rated three and four stars respectively, by me.

I wish I could do the same for Avalon.

Avalon tells a story about the game that preceded the one we see in Assault Girls. Malgorzata Foremniak plays Ash, one of the top Warrior players in the Avalon game. She's the first player we see, running through an urban battlefield. I liked Foremniak as Ash. She looked to be about in her mid thirties, with dark circles under her eyes. I'm not going to argue that she represents some brave new frontier of casting women as leads who are not young and culturally approved as attractive, but she was not Megan Fox. You can tell the difference also because Foremniak can act.

(I'm not sure why she has to get in the VR chair in her underwear to play the game, but if many female superhero comic book characters got the body coverage from their costumes that Ash does from her underwear alone, I'd have a lot less to complain about.)

Ash is a strong and cunning character throughout the film. Her character isn't betrayed with a flimsy romantic subplot or a damsel in distress moment. She's motivated by personal achievement, but another side of her character is also developed. She's not just a piece for the filmmaker to move around in the film. She's great raw material for a Heroine Content four star film.

Unfortunately, Avalon desperately needed to be half an hour shorter. It just would. not. end. Yes, we get it, Ash plays the game a lot! She almost doesn't do anything else! (Granted it's how she earns a living.) Yes, we get it, there's a woman singing about the island of Avalon in some deep and symbolic way! For like fifteen minutes! NOW WILL SOMETHING PLEASE HAPPEN!?!

What would probably have been meaningful and full of rich detail in Ghost in the Shell was exceedingly dull here. I thought it was just me, because I was a little tired when we sat down to watch it, but no. I have independent observer agreement that this film desperately needed an editor. The independent observer said "You know I like some Russian films, and all I'm saying is that when nothing happens for half an hour in a Tarkovsky film, it's interesting."

Assault Girls is about 40 minutes shorter than Avalon, and I remember both of us saying "well, we're not sure what else needed to be in there." Answer judging from its predecessor Avalon? Nothing. So if Netflix says "Oh, you liked Ghost in the Shell and Assault Girls, so you will probably like Avalon," THEY LIE.

Two stars anyway, 'cause of Ash, but I can't give it any more.

Posted by Skye in 2 Stars: So Close
Permalink | Comments (0)

I found a Blu-Ray copy of the original anime Blood: The Last Vampire at one of the soon-to-be-closed Borders. I was skeptical that the Blu-Ray would improve our viewing experience, and my skepticism was well-founded. However, the acquisition gave me an excuse to re-watch the film, so all's well that ends well.

Blood: The Last Vampire is one of my favorite films in the women in action genre. It takes place in 1966 Japan over about 24 hours in the life of Saya, one of the "originals," a female Asian demon-hunter with a sword. The organization that supports / controls her (it's unclear) enrolls Saya under cover in a high school on a U.S. military base because they believe demons have infiltrated the school. Which of course is true, and requires a bunch of violence to resolve. Luckily, Saya is more than capable of meting out punishment to demonkind.

Watching Blood: The Last Vampire the first time was possibly the creepiest 48 minutes of my entertainment life. The creep factor has faded with successive viewings, since I know what's going to happen next. It's still a spare, haunting, tense film, though. The film's creators are restrained when hinting at the larger battle, the conspiracy and the entities that surround Saya and yet leave her entirely alone. All of the elements tell you "there's something big here, there's so much backstory, and we're only going to give you a glimpse." Youki Kudoh's voice acting of Saya is outstanding. During a battle late in the film, Saya calls out "SWORD!" as she's about to fall prey to one of the demons. The mix of desperation, need, strength, and exhaustion in that one word never ceases to amaze me. The note of exhaustion seems bigger than just that moment, feeding back into the feeling of larger-than-life forces moving in the night.

Saya travels with David and Louis, a couple of handlers / minders / support staff from an unnamed organization. They both sound like U.S. Americans, respectively white and African-American. David is obviously the alpha dog, having to read Louis the riot act and bring him up to speed. David and Saya are the heart of the film. He will do anything to protect and help her, though it makes her seem even more alien and isolated, since his actions seem motivated by her utility - and his fear of her.

The school nurse, a middle-aged Japanese woman, is unwittingly dragged along Saya's trail of destruction. In 2009's live action adaptation, she's replaced by a perky young American teenager so the audience can have someone to identify with. Not so here. The nurse spends most of her time screaming. She's the bewildered onlooker, never understanding what the heck she's stumbled into, even at the end when Saya's true nature is revealed. Whatever the big thing was that swept through her life that night, it's gone now, leaving no explanations behind. If the audience is meant to identify with anyone in this film, I think it's supposed to be David. Saya's too prickly, she's too distant - and identifying with David means we're supporting her, but we also see her as unpredictable and deadly, someone to be managed.

This time around, I spent a lot of time looking at the background characters. Early in the film, we see a conversation among several women who make a living through prostitution outside the military base. The prostitutes are wearing full-length coats, because it's cold outside. Granted, this is supposed to be a period piece set in 1966, but I appreciated the lack of exploitation for exploitation's sake here. And while one of their friends seems to have fallen victim to the demons, so do two white U.S. high school students on the military base and also two U.S. soldiers, one white and one African-American. We didn't see this conversation and these characters so early because they were going to be picked off as victims. They're just the locals, discussing the local happenings.

In that conversation, the only character not wearing a coat is the local bartender, Mama-San - who I'm pretty sure is supposed to be a trans and/or queer character. Most people would probably describe Mama-San as "a man in makeup and a kimono." Since we don't get any information about the character, I hate to jump to labels. (And if Mama-San were a real person, it wouldn't be any of my business anyway.) The film is so short and tightly constructed, there would barely have been any room for even one joke at this character's expense, but there aren't any. I liked that.

Unfortunately, things don't go so well for the African-American characters. There are two with speaking parts: Louis, the handler, and an unnamed male U.S. soldier. (Which, come to think of it, put this film ahead of many we've reviewed here for casting diversity.) Louis gets schooled by David early on, and he doesn't get a lot of time later to make up for it, but I felt like he had potential. However, the soldier is a mess. As Daniel Blak puts it at Afro-Punk: "big lipped, 1940's WWII guard." He's drawn so out of line with the rest of the animation. It's an appalling racist stereotype. What made this even more bizarre to me was the comparison of this character to Louis and to the rest of the background African-American characters, including the jazz musicians that Blak also mentions in his post. They look perfectly normal! As pointed out on TV Tropes, the solder is also an example of Black Dude Dies First, making this a Fail all around.

I want to give Blood: The Last Vampire four stars. But if I have to cover my eyes and shake my head to avoid your horrible caricatures of Black men, then you lose points. It's hard for me to decide how many. It's films like this when I wonder if we should split the ratings, so the heroine and the overall film can get different ones. Saya gets four, the rest of the film gets zero?

I guess that means two stars. So close... if not for the racism? I have so much love for this film, I hate to do it. But that gives it the same rating as the Tomb Raider films, another one of my painfully split reviews - yay girl power, boo colonialism. So let's go with that.

Posted by Skye in 2 Stars: So Close
Permalink | Comments (2)

Here's another guest post by Patrick, who most recently brought us a review of The Incredibles. Without further ado...

Michelle Yeoh is awesome. That's why I picked up Reign of Assassins. I was only slightly disappointed.

I will summarize the plot of the film as best as I can because much of it is told in flashbacks that aren't announced as flashbacks, and with the added difficulty of different actors playing the main characters. The film is the story of Drizzle, first played by Kelly Lin, one of the major assassins of the Dark Stone: their leader is the Wheel King (Xueqi Wang) and the other known assassins are the Magician (Leon Dai) and Lei Bin (Shawn Yue) - and there are many faceless ninja-type followers, too. The Dark Stone is out to get the mummified corpse of a holy monk - legend says that you can learn kung-fu from the mummy. The corpse was split in two, and at the beginning of the movie Drizzle flees with one half and quite a lot of silver.

Drizzle intends to use the mummy for personal power, but then meets Wisdom, a buddhist monk who defeats her in battle but sacrifices his own life so she would have another chance at hers. She decides to change her life and looks up a surgeon who changes her appearance along with it, turning Kelly Lin into Michelle Yeoh. In her new life, Drizzle falls in love with and marries a lowly courier (Woo-sund Jung), and all could be well if not for the unfortunate day when the two happen to be in a bank as it gets robbed. Drizzle has to use her kung-fu, and just like that the Dark Stone catches up to her, complete with her replacement, Turquoise (Barbie Hsu).

As a general comment, Reign of Assassins is filled with soap opera elements of unlikely coincidences and tragic resolutions, all in the guise of karma - the film shows what a buddhist culture looks like. With the purposeful thunderstorms and all the karma going around, it does feel similar to Christian films like, say, The Book of Eli, so if you have a low tolerance for this (or for kung fu hitting acupuncture points and herbal teas producing multiple offspring), just be aware this film contains it.

But what this site is about is neither buddhism nor Traditional Chinese Medicine, so how do the women fare? Well, Drizzle is pretty great, actually. She does get turned to the path of good by Wisdom, i.e. a man, and there is a scene where she is badly hurt and protected by a man, as well, but that didn't lessen my enjoyment of her character. Both Michelle Yeoh and Kelly Lin kick several asses, and Yeoh even weathers her old neighbor's attempts at hooking her up with seemingly every bachelor around. And yes, she wins the final fight by copying how Wisdom beat her, which makes her just a little less awesome.

My true problem with the film, however, is with Turquoise. Drizzle's courtship to the courier consists of a few times standing under a roof while it's raining, and just like that they're married - I don't even think you see them kiss. Turqoise, on the other hand, is evil, which we know because she's always sneering, and because she is overtly sexual. In the beginning, we learn she murdered her fiancé and his parents because she didn't want to marry him. I loved that nod towards personal freedom before it became clear that she is supposed to be clearly wrong in defying tradition. She later says the only reason why she killed her husband is because he was impotent, and because the Wheel King is a eunuch (he's only killing people to get the monk's mummy and regenerate his genitals), he buries her alive. Which seems to be okay with the film, while at the same time it makes the deaths of the other two major assassins a lot more tragic - one even gets to go home to his family before dying of blood loss.

So we have a fairly good female character in Drizzle, who nevertheless adheres to tradition, and a fairly reprehensible character with Turquoise, making it hard to judge this film on a whole. Which pretty much sums up the whole experience: there are fantastic moments here, but also scenes where I was bored silly. Some scenes are played seriously, and others seem to come right out of a pulp novel.

The best scene either way happens pretty early on, where Drizzle defeats some assassins sent after her: these assassins are comprised of an elderly couple, a younger couple, and a young boy, making this one of the most age-diverse fight scenes I have ever seen (outside of Hot Fuzz).

Still, in the end, Reign of Assassins punishes anyone who challenged the status quo, and if you behave, you might get a little freedom, but also have to be a doting wife who cooks and mends shoes, and seriously: Michelle Yeoh is far too awesome for that.

2 Stars: So Close

Posted by A Very Special Guest in 2 Stars: So Close
Permalink | Comments (0)

First things first. YOU'RE WELCOME for the picture of Van Damme's pretty face. I know you were waiting eagerly for this day. (Also, I'm glad the whole "heart attack" story was apparently a rumor, hoax, or whatever and Mr. Van Damme is fine. I owned a VHS copy of Cyborg when I was much younger, so I have a sentimental attachment here.)

Now let's begin.

I have watched so many bad, bad, bad movies for this blog, and as you can tell by the parenthetical above, even before that. 1994's Street Fighter was not ad bad as Cyborg, but it really was one of the worst I've seen for the blog. However, it was the kind of bad that made me laugh instead of making me think about how much I needed a drink. It was a refreshing change of pace.

The super-important, well developed plot of Street Fighter is exactly this: they made a video game into a movie where people fight.

On Team Good, we have Jean-Claude Van Damme (white) as Colonel Guile, Damian Chapa (white) as Ken, Byron Mann (Asian, not sure of his exact background) as Ryu, Ming-Na Wen (female and Chinese) as Chun-Li, Kylie Minogue (female and white) as Lt. Cammy, Grand L. Bush (African American) as Balrog, Peter Tuiasosopo (Samoan) as Honda (who is supposed to be Japanese), and Gregg Rainwater (Native American) as T. Hawk. Roshan Seth (Indian) is Dr. Dhalsim, basically a good guy who is held captive by Team Bad.

On Team Bad, we have Raul Julia (Puerto Rican) as General Bison, Wes Studi (Native American) as Sagat (who is supposed to be Thai), Andrew Bryniarski (white) as Zangief, Miguel A. Núñez Jr. (Afro-Puerto Rican) as Dee Jay (who is supposed to be Jamaican), and Jay Tavare (Native American) as Vega (who is supposed to be Spanish).

The casting follows the game (mostly), yes, but it makes me wonder about a few things:

If it weren't for cheesy low budget action films like this one, would people of color who want to be in (non-martial-arts) action films ever get speaking roles?

Are there casting calls that basically say "brown guy" because they know the general American public can't tell a Latino from a Native American from an Israeli?

Why doesn't this film "tip" for white male viewers into being a film that is "not about me" - does the presence of one or two white male leads suffice to make it "safe"?

Obviously the first two questions are somewhat rhetorical. Street Fighter is obviously not the best test case for the first question, because it's a product designed for people who are already familiar with a product that has some casting diversity - albeit a heavily stereotyped diversity. (So heavily stereotyped that I wonder if the diversity can actually be called a good thing.) I do wonder, though, why there's such a difference between the low budget films and the big budget films. If your movie has any possibility of making the big bucks, make sure you keep it white(r)?

I'm quite serious about the third question, though. There's a tipping point in online discussions where when the percentage of women involved gets high enough, men start perceiving the space as female dominated - and it's not even as high as 50%. So is there a similar tipping point in a film? If you made a Bruce Willis film and Bruce Willis was the only white guy, but he was the hero, would that be okay? But if he was the third most important good guy, and the first two good guys were black, would it become a "black movie" and white audiences would avoid it because they (ludicrously) believed they would have no one to identify with?

I'm honestly not sure the casting diversity is a win for people of color, since so many of the characters are so streeotyped. T. Hawk is short for Tomahawk, get it?! AHHHHH! Balrog and Honda are also played as jokes, which negates some of the value of the roles in my opinion. But moral fiber, competence, and depth of character seem to be spread evenly across characters of different ethnic backgrounds. Ryu has more ethics than his white buddy Ken, and Sagat (bad) is more of an actual person than Guile (good). Dee Jay (black) is the brain to (white) Zangief's brawn. That, at least, was highly appreciated by yours truly.

However, I can't give it 3 stars because it's not a Strong Contender. The women's roles are too weak. Yes, they put Chun-Li in that crazy outfit. No, there's never any likelihood that she's going to beat the Bad Guy. (That type of thing is reserved for Heroic White Men.) Cammy seems basically competent, and her outfit is WAY better than in the most recent version of the game, but she doesn't really do much. Both are portrayed as obviously inferior to Guile, the ultimate hero.

Team Good also just seems a little too white compared to Team Bad. It's a shame they didn't make a little extra effort given the diverse cast they brought together. The movie was never going to be good, but it could have been distinctive.

It's also a shame that Jean Claude Van Damme is allowed to talk. If they just had him look pretty and hit things, it would have been way better.

Two stars, which is more than I thought I was going to give it.

Posted by Skye in 2 Stars: So Close
Permalink | Comments (3)

Hello Heroine Content readers, here's another guest post by our stalwart guest blogger Patrick. Enjoy!

In my opinion, there's not much that stimulates debate like a contentious statement. So I hope the following review will serve as stimulation in that vein. I am a big fan of Brad Bird - he directed three of my favorite animated films, and The Incredibles is one of them. Still, I don't think he or Pixar are perfect when it comes to the representation of women or people of color, and this review will contain quite a few criticisms (and some questions).

The Incredibles is the story of Bob Parr, a.k.a. Mr. Incredible, and his midlife-crisis. Bob used to be a superhero, but nowadays super-heroics are prohibited, and Bob slaves away in a dead-end insurance job... until a woman called Mirage shows up and gives him a giant robot to fight. Unfortunately, it's all a plan of Syndrome, a disgruntled fan of Mr. Incredible, to become a hero himself, kill all other superheroes, and in the end get rid of the idea of superheroes itself. Thankfully, Bob's family comes to the rescue, and together with his wife Elastigirl and their daughter Violet and son Dash (and old friend Frozone), the heroes save the world yet again.

First question, not that related to Heroine Content: do you feel it's a problem that many people get killed in this film?

Posted by A Very Special Guest in 2 Stars: So Close
Permalink | Comments (6)

Allright people, let's talk Scott Pilgrim.

On the one hand, we've got three ass-kicking ladies: Ramona, Knives, and Roxy. Ramona (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) carries something in her purse you totally wouldn't expect, and for those of you who haven't seen it, I'm not going to tell you. Knives (Ellen Wong) is a woman of color in the under 18 category and turns out to be way more fierce than you would expect, so that's cool. (Also, her name is KNIVES and no one seems to think that's the least bit strange.) Roxy (Mae Whitman) is basically the tough gal who's trying to stuff Scott Pilgrim in a trash can. We've also got one fabulous female musician, Kim (Alison Pill), who isn't kicking ass in the combat way but definitely gets the job done where percussion is involved. And then, we have at least THREE MORE female characters with names and speaking parts (Scott's sister Anna, acquaintance Julie, and ex-girlfreind Natalie/Envy).

I didn't realize how many regular action movies I'd been watching until I realized that a speaking cast of about 50% women felt like a luxury. Ouch.

On the other hand, I need y'all to give me a reality check on something.

For those who don't know, the plot is basically that Scott Pilgrim must vanquish Ramona's seven evil exes in order to date her. He defeats his six male opponents with a mixture of physical prowess, musical performance, determination, psychological manipulation, trickery, friendship, and self-respect.

Was I right to be super-annoyed that Scott defeats his one female opponent by essentially making her have an orgasm?

Because aside from that, I was having a damn good time watching this movie. Kieran Culkin as Scott's roommate Wallace was killing me, especially in his interactions with Scott's sister and her boyfriend. Ramona's clothes are lovely and if I were 10 years younger and lived somewhere with snow, I would immediately begin replicating her outfits. The plot is focused on Scott and his relationships with women, but the female characters aren't just plot devices. They each have a distinct personality and they're real, fleshed-out characters. Aside from Knives, three of the evil exes are men of color and there is a female drummer aside from Kim who looks Asian - not stellar diversity, but certainly something.

But there's that one fight scene between Scott and Roxy, and it left such a bad taste in my mouth. Roxy was so badass, but Scott won't hit a girl, so Ramona has to take over... and then give him the hint on how to defeat Roxy... which is to get her hot. And Ramona knows this because she messed around with Roxy during a phase. The lesbian/lesbians joke that you might have seen in the previews struck me as funny because it was a joke at Scott's expense about his own mind. The fight between Roxy and Scott didn't quite work out the same way.

Disappointingly, my gut feeling is that So Close is the best description, so I'm going with two stars. I had really looked forward to this one, but meh.

Anyone who saw it (or read it) feel differently? I haven't gotten far enough into the comic to see if this was a direct lift from print to screen.

Posted by Skye in 2 Stars: So Close
Permalink | Comments (10)

When the first scene of Salt featured Angelina Jolie in her underwear, being tortured by North Koreans, I felt my heart sink. I lectured myself sternly, though. After all, we've seen a few movies with terrible introductions turn out to be quite good. Have to give it a chance.

So I gave it a chance. But it's not very good. The plot is extraordinarily silly and convoluted--it reminded Mark of that episode of South Park about the plot to assassinate Hillary Clinton. For me, it seemed more Tom Clancy-esque. Like, if Tom Clancy had a really bad day. And got paid by the word.

Posted by Grace in 2 Stars: So Close
Permalink | Comments (6)