First things first. Chak De! India is not about women. Chak De! India is about a man trying to redeem himself on the eyes of his country. There's a reason that the poster says "Shahrukh Khan and His Team of 16 Girls."

To be fair, though, Bollywood operates under a strict quota system where half of all films must star Shahrukh Khan. I suspect that when they were working on the concept for this movie, there was a Shakrukh Khan crisis. Someone said "Hey, we have this great idea for a movie about the Indian women's field hockey team going to the world championships!" Then someone else said "Please tell me they need a coach so we can cast Shahrukh Khan! Otherwise we're never going to make the quota!"

(Alternately, they just borrowed the formula from American team sports movies in which a down and out coach tries to regain his former glory by leading the underdogs to victory. But I like my version better.)

So as you're watching Chak De! India, you basically have to push the Shahrukh Khan-ness to the side. He plays the inspirational leader who is helping these young women figure out how to be team players, which in the sports movie formula means that he plays a lot of mind games and always knows what's best for them even when they don't. His high-falutin' speeches about being a good team player also collapse spectacularly when they need to kick Korea's ass and the only player who can do it is an unrepentant saboteur. And you especially have to ignore the part where he goes to SLAP one of the players, but stops short, and no one seems to have a problem with that. WTF?

At this point, you may be saying "So why did you give it three stars? It sounds horrible!"

Basically, I watched the other half of the movie. The part that actually IS about the women.

Oh. My. Word. These women are incredible. Love them! They don't make any speeches about how trying hard is enough, how they have grown as people and athletes and that's what really matters, etc. They want to WIN, dammit. They are the best players in India, but the distance between that and becoming world champions is huge - especially when you're dealing with a lot of sexist crap. The sport's officials think the team is a joke, and tell the women that their real place is in the kitchen.

Things are no better on the personal front. Vidya's husband wants her to schedule her training around family social events, though he and his family benefit from her apartment and job that come to her because she's a national level athlete. Preeti's famous cricket-playing boyfriend wants her to stop playing and be a proper little wifey. Koumal's father scolds her for playing at all. The pivotal "now they're a team" scene takes place in a mall, where they get together to beat up some guys who are cat-calling two of the players.

None of this is a revolutionary expose of gender issues, but it doesn't come off as trite because the women's feelings are so real and nuanced. Vidya isn't just torn by the demands placed on her, she's also weary and wistful. Preeti is ambitious for herself, hurt by her boyfriend's lack of support, but also excited about dating a famous athlete. Koumal goes for the cheeky grin and pursuit of excellence route instead of fighting with her father.

There are several other characters on the team whose personalities are distinct. None of them struck me as stereotypes. It isn't a team made up of "the nice one," "the backstabber," "the big sister," etc. It's made up of women. As you start to know them, you really get behind them as they struggle to find their places in the team and excel.

I'm not qualified to analyze the race and ethnicity issues with any knowledge of how someone from India would perceive them, but I can describe how it appeared to me. The coach places a high value on Indian unity; the women are expected to play for their country, not their state. However, incidents occur over and over that highlight how divided the country is. A couple of the players from a more remote part of India, who have light skin, are harassed by passing young men with lascivious comments about how they're vanilla instead of chocolate. Then, one of the field hockey officials assumes they don't speak Hindi. One comments sarcastically about how it feels to be treated as an outsider in your own country. Some of the players also make racist remarks about two of the players, who are from an area known for its jungles. Language barriers arise multiple times for various players until they start working together as a team to help each other.

So I got the sense that the film reflects current tensions, but encourages people to "rise above" the divisions of state and ethnicity and come together as Indians. From my standpoint, I liked how the racist incidents were treated by the filmmakers as ridiculous and wrong. There was a lot of eye rolling in response. However, I have no idea how that strikes people from various groups within India. Is it something they aspire to? Do they feel like they're being erased in the call for unity? I know enough to feel like there may be some dangerous territory here.

If it weren't for the near-slap, and my suspicions about the unity theme, I would give this four stars. It was a ball to watch, and I totally recommend it, so it gets three stars. Add it to your Netflix queue today! Seriously.

Posted by Skye in 3 Stars: Strong Contenders
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What better for Valentine's Day than a romantic little love story? About bank robbers.

I've been wanting for a while to review some older films here at Heroine Content, and one that always comes up is 1967's Bonnie and Clyde (directed by Arthur Penn, who also did Alice's Restaurant and Little Big Man). Starring a young and handsome Warren Beatty as Clyde Barrow and an even younger and more handsome Faye Dunaway as Bonnie Parker, the movie tells the tale of the notorious class avenging bank robbers from the 1930s. The film is not totally concerned with historical accuracy, but more with a romantic take on the relationship between Bonnie and Clyde and a fun take on their crimes.

And it is both fun and romantic, but what really blew my mind was Bonnie. Faye Dunaway missed her calling when she wasn't an action heroine for the rest of her career. Her Bonnie is fearless, fun loving, incredibly stylish, and overtly and unabashedly sexual. Her gun-toting and complete willingness to shoot is impressive, but her creativity and spirit are what put her over the top. She also walks a fine line of being sexual yet unexploited that almost never happens in films now, much less in the 60s. Yes, the film begins with a totally unnecessary nude scene of her, but it is so easily redeemed by everything afterwards.

It isn't just Bonnie that surprised me, but the interaction between her and Clyde. One of the major tensions in their relationship, from the beginning of the film, is Bonnie's desire for sex and Clyde's unwillingness/inability to have sex with her. This isn't just mentioned once and dropped--it's an issue throughout, about which Bonnie chides Clyde more than once. When the two finally do have sex, it becomes clear that while Bonnie has sexual experience, Clyde has none. She even tells him afterwards that he did well, in much the voice a teacher would use towards a young student. I am hard-pressed to find another example of a film that handles a heterosexual relationship this way without portraying the more experienced woman as some kind of a "cougar." (For comparison, I am reminded instantly of The Graduate, which was released the same year.)

It's too bad, then, that the other gender portrayals in the film don't have any of the depth of Faye Dunaway's Bonnie Parker. The other major female role, Blanche, Clyde's brother Buck's wife and the only unwitting member of the Barrow Gang, is played by Estelle Parsons (whom you'll likely remember as Roseanne's mom, Bev, on Roseanne). She is unbelievably irritating, always complaining and screaming, and the only member of the gang who not only never participates in any robberies, but won't even pick up a gun in self-defense. She also ends up being essential to Bonnie and Clyde's downfall, first for failure to carry her own money and then because she can't keep her mouth shut. She's not just an awful character (she's really no more irritating than Gene Hackman's Buck), but she's a completely stereotypically awful woman. And maybe this only serves to show more clearly how incredibly cool Bonnie is, but it still bugs me.

There is nothing truly revolutionary about gender roles in Bonnie and Clyde. The gang is named after the man and he is more or less in charge. However, particularly given that the film was made in 1967, Bonnie is allowed to be a much bigger and more developed character, and a much more complete (anti)hero than most female characters. Watching the film I was surprised that Faye Dunaway's Bonnie Parker hasn't reached a more iconic status. I'm not sure our current crop of heroines could have existed without her.

Race in Bonnie and Clyde is about what you would expect for a film made in 1967 about the 1930s. The major characters are all white. There is a scene early on where Bonnie and Clyde are talking to an evicted sharecropper and the sharecropper has a Black "hired man" with him, who is treated more or less respectfully, but that's the only instance of anyone non-white I can remember in the film.

I am giving Bonnie and Clyde three stars. I think it is an important movie in the history of female action heroes, and a damn good film in and of itself.

Posted by Grace in 3 Stars: Strong Contenders
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Long long ago, in a state far far away (Massachusetts), I was discussing Run Lola Run with someone who had seen it in a theater. He and I waxed enthusiastic about the concept, the editing, and the performance by Franka Potente. Then he told me what happened while he was watching it. Halfway through, the guy sitting behind him exclaimed, in a surprised tone of voice:

"Damn, that bitch just won't stop running!"

Well, yes.

Run Lola Run shows us the events that take place in roughly 20 minutes. Lola receives a phone call from her somewhat whiny boyfriend Manni, who has just managed to misplace 100,000 marks while completing a triangular trade of some kind involving cars, diamonds, and cash. The man to whom Manni was taking the money is not going to be pleased. Unless Lola figures something out, Manni is going to rob a store to get the money. Given how well his life of crime is going so far, that's not likely to end well.

So Lola comes up with a plan, and starts to run. Watching her run, I can't imagine why it's supposed to be an insult to tell someone that they run like a girl. In a slightly grungy tank top, pants, and boots, Lola takes off down the stairs and across town to save Manni's life. I don't know how much running Potente had to do to make this film, but Lola always looks strong and powerful as she's running. She's never out of breath and never has to stop because of a stitch in her side or a broken heel. She's desperate for the money, but she's not just flinging herself down the street. She's fast and measured in her strides. And yes, she just won't stop running.

As the film progresses, she's not afraid to pick up a gun if necessary. It's not because she's violent, it's because she's about action, not hesitation. Do I understand why she's in love with Manni? No. He's a twit. But she loves him, so she's not going to stop until he's safe.

Did I mention she also has a scream that shatters glass?

I don't know German cinema from a hole in the wall, but apparently they have entire movies with no people of color in them just like we do here. So the filmmakers get a demerit for diversity in casting, but we're also spared any jarring negative stereotypes. (It's a lemons and lemonade thing, work with me here...)

Run Lola Run may not be an action movie in the purest sense. There is no combat or competition, unless you count racing against the clock. However, it is a movie about an unstoppable woman in action, and it's damn beautiful to watch her go. It doesn't quite rise to mythic level, but I give it a solid three stars.

Posted by Skye in 3 Stars: Strong Contenders
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Continuing my trend of sports film reviews, I recently caught Dare to Dream on HBO. Dare to Dream is a documentary about the U.S. Women's National Soccer Team. Specifically, it follows the team through the careers of the five players who are most known for making it famous: Julie Foudy, Brandi Chastain, Kristine Lilly, Joy Fawcett, and Mia Hamm. These women played together on the U.S. National Team for 17 years (Kristine Lilly is still playing), and the film follows both their soccer struggles and successes and their personal struggles and successes through that time.

The film is comprised mainly of archival footage of games and interviews, and of original interviews with the key players and their coaches. When the five key players (known as the "91ers" in honor of their first World Cup victory in 1991) started with the National Team in the early 1980s, they were all in their teens, and the team was traveling coach, not getting paid, and playing for crowds composed mostly of friends and family. Together, along with a changing cast of teammates, they played through four World Cups and three Olympic games, not only winning both kinds of championships, but also bringing respect to women's soccer, and women's sports in general.

The movie's high points include the "stars" demanding payment for Olympic medals similar to what is given to male soccer players, and the discussion of how Mia Hamm became a national sports and media figure. Another thing the film does will is balance its look at the players' personal lives with their professional lives as soccer players. In particular, the segment on Joy Fawcett's decision to have children while playing, and to bring them on the road with her, was fascinating, if slightly unbelievable (back in training three weeks after giving birth? for real?).

The film's weaknesses, and the reasons it gets only three stars even though it's a great story generally well told, are twofold. First, it turns a nearly blind eye to race, which is hardly fair given that all of the players it features are white. There is one major African-American figure on the U.S. women's team, goalkeeper Brianna Scurry, who has been playing on the team since the early 1990s. While she is interviewed for this film, no mention is ever made of her race or of why the stars are all white. To make matters worse, the players' attitudes towards their international opponents, particularly the Norwegian team, referred to as the "Nordic Bitches," border on racist at points.

The other major problem is the film's insistence on being cheery and painting a picture that is, perhaps, more positive than it should be. While I heartily agree that the progress made by the U.S. National Soccer Team, and particularly by the 91ers, should not be underestimated, equal respect in sports in not a battle women have yet won, and sometimes the film makes it seem otherwise. At one point near the end, one of the National Team's younger players is trying to get across how much the older players have done for her, and she basically says "men and women in sports are equal now." Um...no. While it is absolutely true that the 91ers and women like them made it possible for women to be paid professional athletes, they haven't totally evened the playing field. Not by a long shot. This misinformed outlook, combined with the film's quick glossing over the huge blow that was the rapid demise of the Women's United Soccer Association, made it just a little bit too cheery for my pessimistic tastes.

Posted by Grace in 3 Stars: Strong Contenders
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As I have mentioned before, Sarah Connor, as played by Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, is pretty much the pinnacle of action heroines in my eyes. It doesn't get any better than her, or at least it hasn't yet. So I was understandably skeptical about the role and the story being changed for television for Fox's new show, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. I specifically declined to watch the original pilot circulated on the Internet, waiting for Fox to air the premiere and hoping against hope that it wouldn't suck.

It was on last night and the night before, and I didn't think it sucked at all.

Some other viewers, particularly those who did view the pilot, thought that Fox dumbed down Sarah's character (now played, with amazing gravitas, by Lena Headey, who rocked as Queen Gorgo in 300) for a television audience. Charlie Anders at i09 wrote:

The original pilot which circulated nine months ago showed her character as a non-stop hardass. Her only weakness was an excess of paranoia and rage, which threatened to drive her son away. The televised pilot adds a new scene, where Summer Glau is stitching up Sarah Connor's wounds. Lena Headey, as Connor, whimpers and says that she can't keep running or she'll lose her mind. And her son will leave her. It feels as though the network wrote saying, "Have her show more weakness." And you can bet those moments of weakness will be written into future episodes as well.

Even without seeing the pilot, I think Anders is probably right--Sarah is more confused, less angry, and more "motherly" on television than she was on film (at least on film in T2-- nobody wants to talk about that first one). But as yet this doesn't really bother me. I think these elements of Sarah's character work, especially given that she has had some time in between crises at the point in which the Chronicles begin. And maybe my reading is different than everybody else's, but much as I loved T2 Sarah, I didn't necessarily think she was mentally stable. What does bother me, however, is that so far Sarah hasn't been asked to do much physically on the show. She wields a shotgun and takes a bullet, but she doesn't do much physical fighting, and we certainly don't see her doing chin-ups. Whether this is a limitation of Headey as an actress (I doubt it) or (more likely) of the script of the show remains to be seen, but I am willing to give it more than just the premiere episode to find out, and to allow the problem to be corrected.

The big positive surprise of the show for me wasn't Sarah, though. It was Cameron (whose name is said to be a nod to Alien director John Cameron), the terminator sent back from the future to protect John (i.e. the Schwarzenegger role in T2) who caught my attention. She is played by Summer Glau (River from Serenity and Firefly), and she is awesome. Not only is it a joy to watch her fight (which we knew from her time in the Whedonverse), but watching her do the "machine-trying-to-adapt-to-humanity" thing Schwarzenegger made famous is great as well. She can do everything he did, with regards to gently questioning the artifices of humanity, but she adds an extra element, due to being in a female human form. Near the end of the premiere, she asks repeatedly "Why are diamonds a girl's best friend?" while looking puzzledly at what to her is just a shiny rock. It's one of my favorite moments.

The fact that the "good terminator" in the series is female also gives way to the possibility of interaction between Sarah and (at least a stand in for) another woman, which is something I found sorely lacking in T2. When a naked (because they just jumped time) Cameron stops a car full of jeering frat boy types and kicks their asses in order to steal their clothes, the camera focuses for a second on Sarah and you see her give the slightest hint of a smile. That moment alone is worth watching it for me.

None of this is to say the show is without flaws. John Connor, as played by Heroes veteran Thomas Dekker, bugs me a whole lot (then again, T2's Edward Furlong John didn't do much for me either). I so far have no impression whatever of James Ellison, the FBI agent after Sarah (played by Richard T. Jones), and that doesn't bode all that well (especially given that he is the sole permanent character of color on the show). I was irritated as hell by the Hispanic racial stereotyping director David Nutter (who has a long list of previous credits, including episodes of Entourage, The Sopranos, and ER) felt compelled to include in the second half of the premiere, particularly the snarling pit bulls. These things, as well as the not-as-badass-as-she-could-be Sarah, will knock a star off the premiere episodes for sure. But I am still going to give it three stars, which is honestly about two more than I expected.

The next episode will air on Fox next Monday, January 21, at 9/8C.

Posted by Grace in 3 Stars: Strong Contenders
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Watching Sam Raimi's film The Quick and the Dead was an unusual experience for me. It is that very rarest of gems, a movie that meets my expectations and is everything I want it to be. In this case, what I wanted it to be, and what it is, is a truly subversive female western.

The Quick and the Dead is the story of a female gunslinger, known as "The Lady," played by Sharon Stone. The Lady comes into a Wild West town to enter a quick draw contest. She says she's there for the cash, but it is clear early on that there is more to it, and we find out after a bit that she's avenging the death of her father, a marshal, at the hands of the town's overlord and the contest's reigning champion, Herod (Gene Hackman). She was forced to not only watch but participate in her dad's murder when she was a child, and she hasn't really gotten over it.

On her path to being able to kill Herod, The Lady beds the pretty blonde (Leonardo DiCaprio), saves the life of the redeemed outlaw (Russell Crowe), and redresses sexism in several forms, from shooting the gunslinger who harasses the bar maid in the groin to knocking a stool out from under a man who assumes she's a whore. She's also given great quips, responding to "I need a woman" with "you need a bath," and "you wanna play poker with me little lady?" with "looks like you're having a pretty good time playing with yourself." And to top that off, she can hold her own with her fists as well as with her gun.

Best of all, The Lady has no romantic interest in either of the two "available" men that are thrown at her (DiCaprio and Crowe), nor does she stick around after the dust clears. Rather, she tosses her dad's marshal badge at the still-standing Crowe, declares "the laws is back in town," and rides off. I half expected a kid to run after her, yelling "Shane! Come back Shane!" What a wonderful reversal.

If only The Quick and the Dead was as conscious of race as of gender. Sadly, it is populated with typical western racial stereotypes, and it's not 100% clear whether they are supposed to be making a point or whether they're being played for laughs. The worst is Native American "Spotted Horse," who declares that no bullet can kill him and keeps getting up "magically" after he's shot (until one goes directly through his forehead). There are also an uncomfortable number of nameless sombrero-wearing Mexican peasants watching the gunfights. I realize that racial politics would muddle a straightforward revenge story, but it's impossible to talk about a Western land baron without getting in to the lives of the people he's stolen the land from, and when they aren't even mentioned and none of them are actual characters, it comes off as nothing so much as caricaturization.

At the end of the day, I give The Quick and the Dead three stars. The heroine content in it is flawless. Sharon Stone is an unmitigated bad ass, and she's not even a mommy. Were I ranking it solely on this scale, it would surely get four. However, I have to delete one star for the sub-standard racial portrayals, particularly the nearly-invisible Mexicans and the stereotyped Native American.

Posted by Grace in 3 Stars: Strong Contenders
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Let's say you live in a big tenement building called Pig Sty Alley, and some punk wanna-be gangsters come along and try to intimidate you. Unfortunately, they end up pissing off the Axe Gang, a horde of criminals with slick choreographed dance moves, nice suits, and a bad habit of chopping up their enemies. Now the Axe Gang thinks you're connected with the punks and they want you dead.

Who do you turn to? Sure, there's the Kung Fu Master who dazzles with wooden staffs. There's the Master who sends gangsters flying with his powerful punches, iron bracelets around his wrists. There's also the Master who knocks down bad guys with the 12 Kicks of the Tam School.

When the going gets tough, though, it's going to be up to a middle-aged chain-smoking landlady in a nightgown (and her philandering husband) to take on the Axe Gang until the ultimate Kung Fu Master finally gets his act together.

Landlady (her only name in the film) is pretty damn awesome. You think your Kung Fu is pretty good? Oh, please. One minute of her Lion's Roar and you'll be crying like a baby. And when she tag-teams with her husband, also a Master, they'll pretty much destroy you AND your 200 well-dressed tap-dancing axe-wielding followers. Heck, you'll have to break a madman called The Beast out of prison just to have a chance against them.

Aside from her general ass-kicking ability, I loved the fact that Landlady isn't your typical action heroine. When we first meet her, she's bossy, mean, wears her hair in rollers, and doesn't look like she has a makeup crew following her around. Even when she reveals more of her humanity, she isn't transformed into a nymph-like glamor girl. She's just a person. She may also be the oldest character we've reviewed yet at Heroine Content. Qiu Yuen, who plays Landlady, is definitely the oldest female actor. Her biography on Kung Fu Cinema states that she was born in 1950, had not been in a film since 1985, and she had recently become a grandmother when she went to the audition for Kung Fu Hustle.

I also appreciated the fact that she's a more realistic body size than many of the female actors we see in American movies... until I saw this in an interview with director Steven Chow in Kung Fu Magazine:

Now to me, all landladies need to be fat; it's just what they look like in Hong Kong. And so I asked her to put on weight, and she did, somewhere between 30-40 pounds. It wasn't easy for her, and I put her on a high protein diet like the Sumo wrestlers. She ate a whole lot of food. And now, after the film, she has thinned down.

The stereotyping evident in this quote makes me wish I hadn't found it. Without it, Landlady is a great antidote to the Charlie's Angels style of action heroines. With it, she's practically another side of the same coin where female characters are defined by their appearance. It's also consistent with some of the "comedy" in the film, which relies on abusing characters who are deemed by other characters to be ugly, fat, or gay. There are plenty of other jokes in the movie, and much funnier ones than that. Even though it may be predictable in comedy, it's unnecessary and mean-spirited.

Overall, I give Kung Fu Hustle three stars. I would have given the film four stars for Landlady herself, especially because she is treated as an equal by the male characters. Watching her fight together with her husband as a team is profoundly gratifying. However, I'm taking one star away for the juvenile humor that plays off stereotypes. I do highly recommend the film, despite the mixed review. Just roll your eyes ahead of time so you get it out of the way.

Posted by Skye in 3 Stars: Strong Contenders
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Continuing the trend of movies about female athletes started with boxing films and Rollergirls last month, I had high hopes for the documentary The Heart of the Game.The film follows a Seattle high school girls' basketball team, the Roosevelt Rough Riders, through seven seasons in the late 1990s and early 2000s, culminating, somewhat expectedly, in a state championship. In specific, it focuses on the team's unlikely coach, tax professor Bill Resler, and its star in the last few years, Darnellia Russel.

In terms of gender, the film does a good job. Even all these years after Title 9, high school girls' sports occupy a precarious position, and are often taken far less seriously than the sports played by boys. It is clear, however, that is not the case with the Roosevelt team, at least not once they start winning. Resler himself gives no indication that he'd prefer to coach boys, or that he'd take boys more seriously. As for the players, it is absolutely clear that they take themselves seriously on the court and consider themselves real basketball players. In the film's best segment, the players meet a 90+ year old woman who coached basketball in the 1920s, when girls were allowed no contact, couldn't dribble more than three times, and wore skirts on the court. It provides for a pretty touching "we've come a long way, baby" moment.

Racially, the movie is a bit more complicated. Darnellia attends the mostly-white Roosevelt High School even though she lives closer to their rival school, the mostly-black Garfield, because her mother thinks her chances of "getting into trouble" will be lower at Roosevelt. It's clear that she's uncomfortable being one of a few black players on her team, but this issue isn't much explored (though it is alluded to). Her close friends are at Garfield, and this doesn't seem to change even though she spends five years at Roosevelt. When the two schools meet up in their grudge games, culminating in the state championship battle, it is hard not to notice that what you are watching is basically a white team versus a black team, and the film makers should have paid more attention to that. The film's biggest flaw is the level to which is backs away from racial analysis of a situation that is clearly racially fraught.

In part, this failure to provide in-depth racial analysis comes from the filmmaker's decision to focus on two character studies (Bill's and Darnellia's), rather than a more comprehensive picture of the team as a whole. The movie starts out seeming to be about the team, and, to a lesser extent, about Bill, but the second half of it is pretty much Darnellia's story, moving from the heartbreaking upset she and the team faced in the playoffs during her junior year and her subsequent dropping out of school, to her pregnancy and the birth of her daughter, her re-enrollment, and finally her fight to be allowed to play a senior season. While this is all interesting, and done respectfully, I would have preferred a more broad-based story.

There are two books that tell very similar stories to this film. The first, Counting Coup, tells the story of a basketball team on an Indian reservation. While it focuses on that teams start, Sharon, as much if not more than The Heart of the Game focuses on Darnellia, it still manages to present a cohesive picture of the rest of the team and the culture in which they are playing, including the numerous racial tensions. The other, In These Girls, Hope is a Muscle is also a more general story, though it all but ignores the racial tension of the New England team it follows. Both would be excellent reads for anybody who likes this movie (and visa versa).

There is nothing offensive about The Heart of the Game, and there are definitely moments of brilliance, but ultimately it says less than I think it could. In terms of both gender and race, the filmmaker shies away from making strong statements or going in-depth, in favor of presenting a feel-good story. Though the viewer is invested in seeing Darnellia be allowed to play basketball her senior year, she is not led to think about the racist and sexist reasons she would be disallowed from playing. This lessens the quality of the film, and is the reason I am giving it three stars rather than four.

Posted by Grace in 3 Stars: Strong Contenders
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When Rollergirls was on A&E last year, I watched it with great interest and mostly joy. I wrote about it on my blog several times. I thought it was problematic, certainly, but ultimately feminist.

So when I set about to watch it again to review it for Heroine Content, I was skeptical. I really didn't want my Heroine Content-eyes, which are more and more open to sexism and racism, to see things my original eyes had not.

I'm happy to say that for the most part, they didn't. Upon the second watching, I still found Rollergirls to be mostly a very pro-woman show. It didn't do as good a job with race, but it wasn't totally whitewashed either.

Rollergirls is a "reality show" about the TXRD Lonestar Rollergirls. The show follows the league, focusing on a few specific women, through their 2005 season. Both the lives of the women outside the derby (their jobs, love lives, friendships, families, health, etc.) and the bouts (roller derby matches) themselves get screen time, and the show dedicates quite a bit of its focus to the relationships between the women in the derby. One of the many things I love about the show is that women are very much the primary focus--there are a few guys in it, mostly the women's partners, but they are very secondary characters.

I also love the women themselves. Though the show veers into clear docu-drama territory more than once, you still get what I think it a fairly realistic idea of these women, and they are tough, conflicted, bitchy, wonderful. They are real women, not two-dimensional female character stereotypes. They fight. They work. They skate. And they run their own lives.

When I originally reviewed Rollergirls on my personal blog, I wrote:

Maybe it's stupid to get that serious about something like roller derby, but I honestly don't think it is. We are trained to take men's organizations and interests, including and especially their sports, seriously, but not women's. And make no mistake, these women are athletes. I can't even fucking stand up on skates, and I know they're athletes. And general badasses, too. What the group of women involved in TXRD have done, in terms of business, in terms of athletics, and in terms of building a truly woman-run organization, impresses the hell out of me.

My second watching confirmed that opinion. Although there are clear critiques that can be made of the blatant sexuality of the derby and the skaters, and of the cattiness that the show focuses on at times, at the end I'm left feeling like the enterprise is very, very pro-woman. At one point, early on, one of the skaters describes being a roller girl as being a superhero, and I can totally see that. Another way to say it would be that it's being a heroine.

Racially, the show and the derby itself are again problematic. The league in the show has one team called the "Putas del Fuego," a team which often dresses up in an imitation of Mexican gangs and a few of whom have Spanish slang names (such as "Chola"). Like slurs for women, racial slurs are not off limits here, so you have to make of that what you will. For me, the fact that several members of the league are clearly Latina helps. I am bothered by the lack of any African-American rollergirls during the filming of the show (though I know there is at least one in the league now).

Another possible criticism of the show is that all of the featured skaters are thin. This does bother me, especially since it's clear that there are skaters in the league, crowd favorites and high scorers like Smarty Pants, who are not thin.

What the show loses for me in sizeism it makes up for in class sensitivity, though. It is wonderful, for once, to see working class and pink-collar women on television, living their lives. A few of the rollergirls have professional jobs (Lux is a nurse, Sister Mary Jane is a teacher), but most of them don't. Punky Bruiser works two jobs, waitressing and selling clothes at The Gap. Hades Lady works at a convenience store. Lunatic and Venis Envy have office jobs. Catalac is a stay at home mom with a laboring husband, and she mentions their seasonal financial woes. It is clear from the outset both that these women are supporting themselves and struggling and that their jobs do not define them. We see far too little of that on TV.

All in all, Rollergirls is a show worth watching. It's definitely not perfect, and if you are especially sensitive to conflict, catty behavior, or violence, you aren't going to like it. I give it three stars, however, for taking on sexism, racism, and classism in ways that are way more than the usual. While it doesn't always succeed, it makes a valiant effort, and I definitely think that is worthwhile.

Posted by Grace in 3 Stars: Strong Contenders
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I'm doing NaBloPoMo at my personal blog, posting a list each day. In keeping with that pattern, I hereby present a series of lists that make up my review of the movie The Replacement Killers.

Reasons I really, really like Mira Sorvino's character:

• She never panics. Ever. Instead, she gets pissed off. Much more satisfying.
• She yells when she fights.
• Her boots are made for walking. And running. And climbing fire escape ladders.
• She follows directions when appropriate, instead of endangering herself and everyone else by not listening.
• No chick fight.
• No hesitation about shooting the bad guys.

Quotes that make her awesome:

• In response to a cop's assessment of her criminal record: "I've always considered myself a feminist pioneer."
• "You are the second guy today to assume that I need, want, or will accept help. I won't."
• "When the gun is in my hand, we're going to have this conversation again."

Objects she uses to fight with during the course of the film:

• Gun
• Scissors
• Glass ashtray
• Van

Ways she's objectified by the filmmakers:

• She can't seem to wear any clothing that covers her bra.
• Close-up shots of her stomach and crotch as she's changing clothes.
• Including what's basically a missionary sex position when Chow Yun-Fat takes the gun away from her. (Granted, she grabbed the gun right after he put her dislocated knee back in, which is wicked tough. And then she grabs the aforementioned ashtray...)
• Her girly-girl look on the movie poster. What's up with that?

Roles available for Asian actors in this film:

• Assassin
• Mobster
• Buddhist Monk
• Gee, that's it...

Things I wonder about:

• Why Mira Sorvino and Chow Yun-Fat don't get together. They obviously develop a deep emotional connection, and his last gesture to her can be read as romantic. See my review of Drop Zone for discussion of why the two of them not getting it on can be a bad thing.
• Why Mira Sorvino didn't get another action role after this film. Did it not gross well enough? Did the execs not find her convincing?

Concluding thoughts:

• Worth seeing just for the gunfight in the car wash.
• Not on par with Tank Girl or Aliens, since Sorvino's character is the follower.
• I might have given it four stars anyway due to Chow Yun-Fat's presence if they'd even included one non-white actor as anything other than the three stereotypical roles listed above. Instead, it gets three.

Posted by Skye in 3 Stars: Strong Contenders
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Sometime in 1992 or 1993, somewhere in Hollywood, someone had a thought: What if we made a movie like Point Break, except with skydiving instead of surfing? Somehow, this individual managed to convince his or her colleagues that this was a good idea, and Drop Zone was born.

Though comparing a movie to Point Break is not the most generous way to start a review, I do really like Drop Zone. It's fun, and I think it's held up well in the 13 years since I last saw it. Aside from a joke about dating "Mongolian feminists" near the beginning, it's also one of those films you can watch without being horrified by sexism and racism at every turn.

First, take the main characters. Wesley Snipes plays Pete Nessip, a federal marshal tracking down the skydiving hoodlums who killed his brother. Yancy Butler, who went on to play Sara Pezzini in the Witchblade television series, plays a professional skydiver named Jessie Crossman who helps Nessip because her ex-boyfriend was one of the hoodlums but ended up on their bad side. Both characters are fully developed human beings, with strengths and weaknesses. Nessip is a strong, tough guy, but he also has a sense of humor and even silliness. Crossman is known for being wild and has a history of trouble with the law, but she's also a loyal friend and skilled athlete.

Yancy Butler's Crossman is one of my favorite characters I've reviewed thus far on Heroine Content. She's sexy, but not dressed like a backup singer for a 1980s hair metal band. She has a sense of humor but she's not comic relief. And hey, she jumps out of planes. In fact, she throws Nessip out of a plane without a parachute. He rewards her with a punch that knocks her down, and she laughs. She decides to work with him for her own reasons. He respects her skills and her knowledge even though he's a federal marshal and she has a probation officer. She's never bait or the weak link, and though she gets stuck with the girl fight at the end, it's not a girl fight I would want to be anywhere near. I don't think she achieves the icon status of Sarah Connor, Ripley, or Tank Girl, but she's a credit to action heroines everywhere.

Neither Snipes nor Butler were apparently supposed to be in the movie as it was originally conceived. The part of Nessip was for Steven Segall, and the part of Crossman was written for a man. Wikipedia's entry on Drop Zone contains the following bit of trivia, unsourced:

The fact that the two main characters — Nessip (who is African American) and Crossman (who is white) — are not linked romantically is contrary to Hollywood plot conventions. This might hint at the reluctance of the producers to stage an interracial romance, but the part of Crossman was originally written for a man.

When I went looking for additional information, I found a review of Shanghai Noon by George Wu that also noted this in passing:

When the stars of Hollywood pictures are not white as with Chow Yun Fat in The Replacement Killers and Wesley Snipes in Drop Zone and they get partnered with women of different ethnicity who would expectedly be the love interest, ala Speed, they strangely do not connect.

I had really appreciated the platonic nature of the relationship between Nessip and Crossman in the movie while watching it. It was such a relief to see a man and a woman working on something together, but not ending up all googly-eyed. I don't think the romance thing should never happen in a movie, but it's a cliche at this point and it should be used sparingly.

Having read the comments above, though, I now wonder where the lack of googly eyes came from. Sensible writers who didn't feel the need to insert romance just because a man and a woman were on the same screen? It was too late to re-tool the script for love when they made Crossman a woman? Racism that reared its ugly head when the switch was made from Segall to Snipes?

If it is racism, which I believe it may be given Wu's comment about seeing a pattern, what would fix it? For a lot of the movies I review here, it's easy to identify what I would change about that particular movie to make it less sexist or racist. But for Drop Zone, I don't particularly want Nessip and Crossman to connect romantically and reinforce the cliche. I think I can keep liking the fact that there isn't a love connection here, while acknowledging that it may very well have happened for a bad reason. The solution isn't to change this one film, it's to have a variety within the genre. Sometimes they fall in love, sometimes they don't, without any unwritten rules that decide that outcome based on the race or ethnicity of the actors involved.

The rest of the casting in Drop Zone isn't perfect, and it's better for white women than for people of color. Within twenty minutes of the film opening, we meet not only Crossman, but another female skydiver and a female pilot, both of whom have speaking parts. Women don't quite have equal representation among major characters, but Crossman is not The Only One. Unfortunately, Nessip is. The scenes at both a skydivers' bar and a pre-jump meeting both have a decent number of people of color in the crowd, but after Nessip's brother (Malcolm Jamal-Warner) is killed early on, there's just one guy with a speaking role.

I give Drop Zone three stars, though, because Jessie Crossman is a fabulous heroine and Pete Nessip is written and played far beyond the stereotype of cop or thug (in a cop suit). Definitely a strong contender.

Posted by Skye in 3 Stars: Strong Contenders
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The Heroic Trio is a Hong Kong martial arts film about three women who band together to stop a villain from abducting male infants in an effort to find and/or create China's next emperor. I don't know that I would call it a good movie. To my eyes, the wirework is pretty bad and the overall look is cheesy for a film made in 1993.

However, I was impressed with the three heroines. Each of the three stars plays a very distinct character, and by distinct I don't just mean hairstyles. They are developed characters who can't be easily reduced to stereotypes. Michelle Yeoh starts out on the Bad Guy's side, but struggles with her conscience and her love for both the man she's supposed to betray and her long-lost sister. Anita Mui is the city's defender, but keeps her secret identity under wraps from her policeman husband. Maggie Cheung's character Mercy, short for Mercenary, is all about money and fun, and if what she's doing involves a gun and a motorcycle then so much the better.

Though the plot and action were sometimes bizarre, the movie was refreshingly free of the most annoying action heroine cliches. I didn't see a lot of damsel in distress, lingerie or shower scenes, or gratuitous torture. The focus is more on the shifting allegiances among the three women. And rather than tell a story about shallow sisterhood or petty jealousy, the film's creators instead tell a story about characters with complex motivations who respond to each other differently as the story progresses.

None of the three women are exactly dressed to repel the male gaze, and for some reason none of them can seem to keep their bras from showing out from under their clothes. But when my brain went looking for an American equivalent to use as a comparison, I came up with Charlie's Angels - and the women in The Heroic Trio came out way ahead. Any unrealistic elements in their outfits were more a fantasy element, such as long capes, than a sexy element. I did forget to check out their shoes, though, and for that I apologize.

I don't know enough about Hong Kong cinema, Hong Kong, or China and any race/ethnicity issues within those cultures to speak to any racism that might be lurking within the film. Heck, I don't even know enough to determine whether everyone in the film is Chinese or whether more than one ethnic group within China is represented. I did find it somewhat amusing, though, that my gut feeling was "Hey, this is great, a bunch of actors from Asia in an action movie and they're not all cast as ninjas or kung fu experts." Gee, do you really think that in Hong Kong that's as much of a risk as it is with an American movie? I'm so trained to be suspicious!

I will give The Heroic Trio 3 stars for heroine content, the same rating as I gave So Close. Ensemble action movies with more than one heroine are few and far between, and this one does treat its heroines right. I don't know if I'd recommend you see it unless you're into the genre, but with a beer or two it might be worth checking out.

Posted by Skye in 3 Stars: Strong Contenders
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First, let me put my history and allegiances on the table: I didn't watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer when it was first aired (1997-2003). I watched the entire series on DVD over the space of the last few weeks. I've been through every episode at least once and many twice (so far). I do not believe the show deteriorated when it moved to the UPN (season six); I unmitigatedly loved it from start to finish, but thought it was actually better in the later seasons.

All that being said, I've never seen anything on television so in need of feminist and anti-racist analysis as Buffy. The show gives a whole new meaning to the phrase, "so close but so far away."

There is a LOT of analysis on Buffy floating around out there. Multiple books, endless websites, some lay, some scholarly, some quite good, some less so. I can't claim to have read all of it, though I've read a fair bit. If I miss major points that other people have addressed (and I am sure I will) please attribute it to ignorance and not intent. There is a lot of there there in Buffy, and I am by necessity only scratching the surface.

First, then, race. All of the major characters in the Buffyverse, up until the season seven addition of Robin Wood (D.B. Woodside), are white. The line of slayers and potential slayers is shown to be diverse, starting the Aboriginal first slayer, moving through the Chinese and African-American slayers shown in Spike's memories, and culminating in Islander slayer Kendra in season two and the mixed group of potential slayers in season seven. However, none of these non-white slayers are real characters--the only one besides Buffy who gets any real screen time is Faith, and she's an American white girl. The other supporting roles filled by people of color are few and far between (Giles' friend Olivia, Riley's friend Forrest) and have little impact on the story.

Jackie Esmonde wrote: "Whether people of colour appear as charity cases, entertainment, plot devices, or foes, they are portrayed as expendable once they outgrow their utility to white folks." This is, unfortunately, true. There is a sense of non-white/Christian othering in some episodes of Buffy that makes me distinctly uncomfortable. It comes up first in the second season, when we meet the vengeful Angelus-cursing Gypsies, moves into the third season's Mr. Trick, and continues with the clear Jewishness of season six villain Warren, the demon Sweet in the musical episode, and the not-quite-likable nature of season seven's two Black characters, Robin and Rona (Indigo, who is quite possibly the most annoying Buffy character ever). While I would not go so far as to call any of these things out and out racist in and of themselves, the existence of all of them, in conjunction with the overwhelming whiteness of the show's major players, leaves quite a bit to be desired when it comes to racial equity. (For a more metaphorical perspective on race in Buffy, check out this article by Naomi Alderman and Annette Seidel-Arpaci.)

Buffy's complex relationship to feminism and (ug) "girl power" is probably the most widely written-about subtopic in all of Buffy-studies. It has been hotly debated for years. I think there are very legitimate points on both sides of this argument. It is easy, for those of us who are or have been immersed in Buffy, to forget how very radical the basic premise of the show actually is--in a world of supernatural bad assness, the biggest baddest bad ass is a little blonde woman. She doesn't get saved, she saves. Over and over again. That may be basic, but it's also big, and has to be kept in mind when leveling feminist critique at the show.

The super strength of Buffy herself is really just the base of the feminist iceberg on Buffy, though. The show consistently presents women in positions of great strength and power, both for the good and the bad (think not just of Buffy and Willow, but also of season two Drusilla, season four Maggie, and season five Glory). These women are not only strong; they are markedly stronger than the men around them (not just Xander, but also Giles, Riley, and even Angel and Spike). This, to my mind, is where Buffy creator Joss Whedon gets really brave. It's one thing to show women who are strong, but quite another to show women who are strongest. In particular, the interaction between Buffy and Riley calls attention to male intolerance of self-sufficient and even heroic women, which is really notable.

Feminism in Buffy goes beyond strong female characters, though, pervading many of the plots of individual episodes and the narrative arc of the entire show. In episodes like "Ted" and "Reptile Boy," Buffy takes on specific threats to women (a misogynist father-figure and a frat house, respectively) and crushes them. Later, misogyny is presented as a season-long villain in the forms of season six's Warren and season seven's Caleb. Buffy's adversarial relationship with the patriarchal Watcher's Council, and the history and tradition of slayerhood itself, and her ultimate triumph over both institutions, is a series-long theme that speaks feminist volumes.

But even though Buffy is arguably the most feminist thing I've ever seen on TV, it's far from perfect. There are countless legitimate arguments for Buffy's anti-feminism, more than I could ever address here, so I'll just talk about two of the major ones. The first, and the one I find the most powerful, is more about the world behind Buffy than about Buffy itself. The show is populated with thin, traditionally pretty white women, and as it got more acclaimed, the women got thinner, particularly Buffy herself (Sarah Michelle Gellar). This is hardly Hollywood news--we've watched it happen in show after show--but that doesn't make it any less infuriating, or any more feminist. It gets hard to believe we've gotten anywhere when we're forced to watch our heroines physically disappear before our eyes.

Another common critique of the show's feminism has to do with Buffy's relationships with men, and in particular her sexual relationship with Spike (James Marsters) in season six and the aftermath in season seven. The relationship is violent, even brutal, and their season six interactions culminate in Spike attempting to rape Buffy in "Seeing Red." Many feminists object to Buffy ever having had a relationship with Spike, a soulless vampire who spent the previous season stalking her, as well as to the violent nature of the relationship and especially to the attempted rape. Even those who object to none of the above often object to Buffy's embrace of the newly-souled Spike in season seven, after he tried to rape her.

This feminist doesn't object to any of these things.

The show's writers make it clear that Buffy's relationship with Spike in season six isn't healthy. It's not presented as a romantic ideal (though the sexiness of it isn't denied, either). The fact that many of the shows viewers saw it in a romantic light has much more to do with James Marsters' chiseled beauty (and acting chops) and with our cultural predisposition towards connecting sex and violence than with the storyline itself. Season six Buffy is depressed to the point of near collapse, completely disconnected from herself and her friends, numb. Her choice to enter into an unhealthy, violent, sadistic relationship makes sense in the context of the rest of her life, and it doesn't go unexamined by the show, even if it does go unexamined by some of the viewers.

We are past the point of needing perfect heroines who don't make mistakes. We deserve more. Buffy is not only a supernaturally strong evil-slaying superhero, she's also a woman moving through her late teens and early twenties--the most traumatic period I've lived through lately. It would be a disservice to her story and to the viewers of the show if she didn't make mistakes, some of them colossal. It doesn't, to my mind, make her anything less of a feminist icon; it just makes her a more relatable one.

There are moments of truly terrifying misogyny in Buffy. The sickening creation of the Franken-girlfriend in "Some Assembly Required," Warren's first appearance as a sexbot mastermind in "I Was Made to Love You" and the subsequent creation of the Buffybot, and (particularly) the Trio's brainwashing, attempted rape, and murder of Katrina in "Dead Things." However, I find the inclusion of these real-life monsters not anti-feminist, but illustrative of how committed to feminism the show really is. Misogo-geek fantasies of robotic girlfriends and hot chicks made compliant through mind control are not allowed to reign, but are instead called out as what they are--dangerous and disgusting objectification of women. Given the multitude of similar violence against women that passes through prime time unnoticed and uncommented on, I credit Buffy's creator and writers for bringing these things up and treating them like the demons they are.

Buffy is not a perfectly feminist show, and it is certainly not a perfectly anti-racist show. There are big problems with it, especially in regards to race, and those are worth acknowledging. At the same time, though, I think it's absolutely essential that we give Buffy her due respect for being the most feminist thing on contemporary network television. I'm giving the show three stars--I'd have given four for gender issues alone, but I am taking one off for the poor job it does with race.

Posted by Grace in 3 Stars: Strong Contenders
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In the early and mid 1990s, there were a whole spate of "ghetto movies," all of them sad and fierce stories featuring young black people (Juice, Boyz n the Hood, New Jack City, Menace II Society). Or, rather, featuring young black men. For the most part (and yes, there are some exceptions), these films included women only as mamas and hos. They were rarely full characters, but rather set pieces to enhance the lives of the young men on whom the films focused. In 1996, Friday director F. Gary Gray offered an antidote to this oversight in the form of Set it Off, a film about four young black women from the Los Angeles projects. Who rob banks.

Set It Off has the potential to be a great movie. The cast, with Jada Pinkett (not yet Smith), Kimberly Elise, Vivica A. Fox, and Queen Latifah in the major roles and small parts by Blair Underwood and John C. McGinley, is fantastic. The premise, that maybe women are trapped by racism and poverty and driven to violent and criminal acts too, is a long-time coming. And it's always fun to watch women rob banks. But the movie is sadly stilted, terribly written (Takashi Bufford, responsible also for Booty Call), and misses its calling as a heroine content classic.

But it's still worth watching. Like Bad Girls, part of what works for me about Set It Off is that it focuses on friendship between women. While there are romantic relationships in it (most notably that between Pinkett-Smith's character, Stony, and corporate banker Keith, but also that between Queen Latifah's Cleo and her girlfriend, Ursula), they take a clear backseat to the primary relationships, which are between the four friends.

I was also impressed with the non-stereotypical portrayal of the four women. Only one of the women is a mother. They all have jobs and none are on welfare. One is the provider for her teenage brother. One is a lesbian (and she is the only one who seems to be in a long-term relationship). With one unpleasant exception at the beginning of the film, none of them are shown selling their bodies or being abused by men. Though the women in the film are definitely suffering under systematic oppression, and they recognize it, they aren't written off as "oppressed women." Their problems are about being women, yes, but also about being black, and being poor, just like everyone else in their community, regardless of gender.

I just wish they were better criminals! I wanted to see this group of women become very successful professional bank robbers, rather than pulling only a few botched-up jobs. Other than Cleo's fairly professional-looking car thefts, none of the women seem very competent as robbers. This irritates me from the gender perspective, and also because it just makes the film feel kind of dumb.

A final thing that should be noted about Set It Off is that Queen Latifah's character, Cleo, is an out lesbian. She and her girlfriend, Ursula, are the only real "couple" in the film. Made the same year as mainstream lesbian film Bound, Set It Off presents Cleo in a much less exploitative way than the characters in Bound. You get the sense that Cleo is a lesbian for her own enjoyment, not for the (male) viewer's. I'm for that. I just wish the filmmakers had the good sense to treat her partner, Ursula, the same way. But they don't. Of all the women in the film, Ursula is the only one who is treated much like black women are often treated in movies--as ass-bearing, short-short wearing, non-speaking eye candy. She's shown dancing in a thong teddy and rubbing herself against the hood of a car. Even if it's for Queen Latifah's gaze and not a man's, that shit still doesn't sit real well with me.

Set it Off earns three stars, because it treats its main female characters so well and provides a response to the very male-centric 90s film concern with the ghetto. It doesn't get four, however, because Ursula is so badly done, and because dammit, I wanted to see these women and this plot be something great, rather than something half-assed.

Posted by Grace in 3 Stars: Strong Contenders
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Let's say you have an action movie where a man is the main character, and the woman in a supporting role is involved with him. Is it possible for the characters not to lapse into romantic cliches that turn the woman into a damsel in distress?

Apparently yes.

It's an overlooked movie, an overlooked role for Uma Thurman, and as movies go it's not the greatest, but 2003's Paycheck treats its heroine right. They don't doll her up. They don't wash out her personality. And she's all about using a wrench to beat the hell out of anything that gets in her way.

Thurman plays Dr. Rachel Porter, a biologist who works for a Big Corporation that ensnares Ben Affleck's character in its Evil Web of Doom. When Rachel meets Ben Affleck's Michael Jennings at a party early in the film, he's a jackass. You know that scene in the movies where the jackass guy hits on the woman who's too good for him, and she blows him off, but you can tell she secretly thinks it's cool to be treated like that?

Rachel doesn't.

Instead, she tells Michael exactly how he needs to improve his behavior if he wants to interact with her. On their next meeting, at the Big Corporation, she knocks him down another peg for good measure.

The next time we see them interact, she's smacking an imitation spy Rachel in the head with a heavy messenger bag in order to save Michael's butt.

In between, it seems that Michael and Rachel have fallen in love. He doesn't remember her, of course, since his profession is to reverse engineer technology under contract and have his memory erased at the end of each job. However, he seems to have changed a lot on an emotional level. The new Michael treats Rachel as an equal, not as a mark in a singles bar who should be impressed with his looks and his wealth.

The film's creators also treat Rachel as his equal, as she and Michael trade off protecting each other in the chaos that follows. When they're fleeing, she's one step ahead of him in figuring out the escape route. During a motorcycle chase, they split up to work as a team. He doesn't try to protect her, she doesn't cling to him. He says "I'll come back and get you." She says "See ya." Then she takes off to get the job done.

Don't get me wrong, Michael is the main character. During the climactic fight, he is the center of attention and Rachel is in a support role. However, Paycheck is a good example of how a woman in an action movie can be a secondary character without being dependent. Rachel is in a support role in that fight because the bad guys are trying to kill Michael, not because she is weak and incapable of fending for herself.

Michael finally does try to protect her by removing her from the action, but their relationship has been portrayed evenly up until that point. As a result, it rang true that this action was taken out of love, not paternalism, because the film's creators have so clearly demonstrated that she didn't need protecting. Similarly, Rachel's pain when she initially discovers that Michael does not remember their relationship felt to me like pain, not a plot device to reinforce Michael's desirability or her vulnerability. Even the Bad Guys know that she hasn't sold herself out in her relationship with Michael. "Rachel wouldn't be hurt if he hesitated," the imitator spy Rachel is advised, "She'd be impatient."

So Paycheck earns its stars for Uma Thurman kicking ass. Now here's the part where I note that I'm pretty sure there's only one person of color in this movie. His name is Joe Morton, and he has a minor role as a cop who stands out from his colleagues for having integrity. Before beginning this blog, I knew intellectually that people of color were underrepresented in movies. It is something different, however, to write review after review and make the same conclusion every time - particularly when there is no reason in the world that I can see to avoid casting more actors who happen to be people of color. Nothing in this movie, or in most of the movies I've reviewed here, is specific to a time and place that would require all the actors to be white for historical veracity.

As the Angry Black Woman says, "Why is the universe so damn white?" If even a white girl like me is noticing, you really have a problem. Heck, people, it's speculative fiction. Speculate a little, why don't you? Speculate about what it would be like if you increased diversity in casting by even 20%. I bet it would amaze you.

So Paycheck gets three stars, because Uma Thurman is a strong heroine but the movie's not that great and Joe Morton must have been lonely. If you're a fan of Philip K. Dick, science fiction generally, or Uma Thurman bashing up things with a wrench, you might want to check it out.

Posted by Skye in 3 Stars: Strong Contenders
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p.. In case you've been under a rock, and for, I suppose, posterity, this is the deal with Grindhouse: it's a "double feature" of two films, Robert Rodriguez's "Planet Terror" and Quentin Tarantino's "Death Proof," with fake trailers at the beginning and between the features. The films share cast members and play off each other, but are also separate entities. However, the whole package pays homage to/makes fun of the "grindhouse," which is a beaten-down movie theater that plays double-bills of B movies. This would make the Rodriguez and Tarantino films, a zombie movie and a slasher flick/car movie, the B movies. Got it?

Good. Now that we're clear that these are supposed to be B movies, that they are hearkening back to and a parody of a specific kind of film, then we can skip all of the ways in which they are typically sexist. Yes, there are copious bare breasts and ass shots, women are called bitch all over the place, sexual violence is threatened (though, and I thought this was telling, never actually enacted) and the first film's credits roll over a go-go dancing Rose McGowan. If there is any chance of you enjoying Grindhouse, or finding anything about it to be subversive or interesting, you are going to have to consider these things part of the kitsch that Rodriguez and Tarantino are playing with and move on. If you don't think you can do that, don't see the movie(s), because you'll soon go crazy.

However, if you can do that, then I think you're in for some fairly badass heroine content.

Case in point: Rose McGowan. Anybody who saw the preview or poster for this film certainly noticed Rose McGowan as a character who has one leg replaced with an automatic weapon. I thought she looked pretty cool in the previews, but she is so much cooler in the film itself. There's one part where she is propelled over a wall and is basically flying in the air shooting bad guys with her leg. That's some ass kicking. And that's not even the best of it--earlier, when she's just got a table leg attached to her stump and not a machine gun, she breaks it off in would-be rapist Quentin Tarantino's eye. (Sidenote: why is Tarantino always cast as a sexual predator in Rodriguez's films? It's a little bit creepy.) A second later, when it looks as if a rapidly mutating to zombified grossness Tarantino is going to rape her anyway, her fellow female captive (and would-be rape victim) stops him with a well-tossed hypodermic needle. Again, bad ass, not only for the originality of hypos in a thigh holster, thrown by a woman with deadened hands, but also for women protecting each other and beating down their wanna-be rapists before clothes are ever shed.

On a larger scale, "Planet Terror" is great because McGowan's character is the one who leads the survivors. The major male characters all end up dead, and the women prevail.

So it is also with "Death Proof," though it doesn't seem that way for the first 45 minutes or so. The first segment, which follows a posse of "girls" made up of Vanessa Ferlito, Jordan Ladd, Rose McGowan (terrible in a blond wig), and Sydney Tamiia Poitier through an evening out in Austin, is flat-out boring. I got a little geeky thrill out of all the local places they shot, but the plot is just dumb, and when all it led up to was all of the "girls" being violently killed with no recourse, I was just about totally pissed off.

But Tarantino pulled through with the second part of his film, in which another group of young women, this time played by Rosario Dawson, Tracie Thoms, and incrediblebadassIamsoinlovewithher stuntwoman Zoe Bell (as herself--she did Uma's stunts in Kill Bill, among other things) are taken on by psycho Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell) and take him for a ride. The film's final scene, with the three of them circled around Mike kicking the shit out of him, was worth the previous three hours all by itself.

Grindhouse also does OK by race. In both films, the bad guys are white (Kurt Russell and Bruce Willis). In "Planet Terror," there is a fairly stereotypical Middle Eastern portrayal that I could have done without ("mad scientist" Abby, played by Naveen Andrews, who is actually British-Indian), but the major male protagonist is Hispanic (Freddy Rodriguez's Wray), and the focal female characters are two white women (Rose McGowan and Marley Shelton) and two Venezuelan women (twins Electra and Elise Avellan). Things are even better in "Death Proof", which starts two mixed-raced groups of women, the first featuring three white women (Rose McGowan and Jordan Ladd and Vanessa Ferlito) and a black woman (Sydney Tamiia Poitier), and the second featuring a black woman (Tracie Thoms) a Hispanic woman (Rosario Dawson) and a white New Zealander (Zoe Bell). I liked that both Rodriguez and Tarantino didn't feel held to whitewash their casts in order to make their films more closely resemble the B movies they were imitating, which were mostly white, or had very stereotypical minority characters. With the exception of scientist Abby, race had very little to do with the motivations or actions of any of the Grindhouse characters, and yet they were a multi-racial cast. I like that.

Ableism is also worth mentioning when discussing Grindhouse, specifically Rose McGowan's character, Cherry, in "Planet Terror." Before she loses her leg, there is nothing particularly special about Cherry--she's a miserable go-go dancer with what seems to be very little general hope. After losing her leg, though, circumstances conspire to force Cherry to become something amazing, both in terms of her physical prowess (shooting shit up with her leg) and in terms of her leadership (the end of the film shows her leading survivors of the zombie-plague to a new land). Losing a leg is never a disability for Cherry--it's quite the opposite. It may not be the most nuanced portrayal in the world (after all, we're still talking about a farcical B movie here), but I think that's cool.

So, aside from the obvious things I mentioned above that I consider part of the joke and am not going to talk about (unnecessary nudity and sexualization, constantly calling women bitches, etc.), what was wrong with Grindhouse? I honestly only had one real problem. In the second half of Tarantino's film, which I really liked otherwise, the three female leads are trying to get a fairly scary seeming dude to let them test drive his car, and in order to do it, they leave the fourth member of their group, a young woman in a cheerleader's outfit (she's supposed to be an actress) alone with the dude, as collateral of sorts. This bent me out of shape in all kinds of ways. Women just would not do that to each other, and I don't like it being portrayed. May be a small thing, but stuck with me enough that I'm knocking a star off for it.

Other commentary:

* Grindhouse, the Mo Movie Measure, and comic book covers at Lily Cain's LiveJournal
* Grindhouse and Feminism by the nappy robotrix at deadbrowalking
* Tarantino's Grindhouse: Did you like it? at Mad Melancholic Feminista
* That’s why it’s called go-go, not cry-cry by Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon

Posted by Grace in 3 Stars: Strong Contenders
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It's popular to look down on Resident Evil because it's a video game adaptation. I was prepared to write a negative review, even though I had seen it twice before and couldn't remember anything specific that I found objectionable.

After 100 minutes of gunfire, zombie dogs, and general mayhem, though, I don't have a lot to say. If you took an action movie, cast women and people of color as if that were just the normal way to do things, and then went on about your business, you would end up with something very much like this movie.

The two main characters are Milla Jovovich (white) and Michelle Rodriguez (Hispanic). They are the only two cast members on the posters, and their names are given prominence. For the latter half of the movie, they are almost 50% of the cast since everyone else has been chewed on or sliced up. They are both quite competent, and no one treats them badly or tries to protect them just because they're women. They don't spend time talking about their boyfriends or their makeup. They just thrash on some zombies. Beyond these two, the leader of the military unit is an African-American man and the medic is a woman, so the cast feels pretty well-rounded.

The only thing I can find to complain about is Milla's Jovovich's implausible near-nudity, which I guess must be written into all of her contracts: "Ms. Jovovich will also appear in one scene either completely or totally nude, when no other human being would actually be completely or totally nude in that situation, even in the movies." In Fifth Element it was that ridiculous bit about "thermal bandages." In Resident Evil, she's in a hospital, but instead of a gown she wears two pieces of paper tied together with string. I don't think I'll take off a whole star for that, since it's all of three minutes of screen time. I'll just sigh and shake my head a little.

So, yeah. It's not the revolution, but it's refreshingly free of racist and sexist garbage. If you're a fan of zombies and you like (or don't mind) some light gore, then you can probably enjoy this without the risk of ranting for an hour afterwards.

I give it three stars. It probably deserves four by Heroine Content criteria, but for some reason I just didn't bond with it the way I did with the other movies I've given four stars. So it gets three.

Wow, that was anti-climactic. Unlike the thing where Milla Jovovich launches off the wall and breaks the zombie dog's neck with a kick, which was totally awesome.

Posted by Skye in 3 Stars: Strong Contenders
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I first heard about D.E.B.S. in a post by lizzard on the Feminist SF blog. It had been too long since I saw a good lesbian romance, and this one had spies and supervillains, so I stuck it in my Netflix queue. The basic plot is as follows. High school girls are recruited through a secret test hidden in the S.A.T. to attend a secret school for spies. Amy, who got the highest score on the test in history, is part of a D.E.B.S. team assigned to spy on famous supervillain Lucy Diamond. Unfortunately for Amy's career, she falls for Lucy and must make a choice between the D.E.B.S. and her heart.

After reading the post where I saw it mentioned, my next source of information about the film was the DVD itself when it arrived. I'm glad I didn't look at the movie poster. The tag line "Crime fighting hotties with killer bodies" would probably have put me off, since I hadn't yet realized how much parody and camp was involved. I did frown a little bit at the poses struck by the leads in the photo on the DVD. The combination of schoolgirl outfit and come-hither body language spooked me.

These feelings were complicated by the fact that I didn't get a clear sense of how old these girls were supposed to be from the first few minutes of the movie. I'll admit that I probably have more of a "put some clothes on!" reaction to women I perceive as teenagers in movies than I do to women I perceive as adults. The D.E.B.S. are recruited through the S.A.T., which most folks take as juniors or seniors. The team in this film has been at school for a while, and they live in a building that looks like a sorority house. But if they're supposed to be (basically) college students, what's with the revealing plaid schoolgirl uniforms?

I finally settled with myself that it was part of the camp. But it highlighted how difficult it can be to untangle what's going on with sex and sexuality in movies. Who is this marketed to? Who made the decision to present the characters this way? Was it necessary for the plot, theme, or meaning of the film? Did the actors think it was a good idea? A necessary evil? Is this how they would choose to portray themselves and/or these characters if they could choose freely? If so, why would they choose that? What so they think it says? Or do they just like it because they like it, not because of how they feel others will react? And how does the audience perceive all of this?

As an audience member, how is my opinion shaped by what I know about the people who wrote and directed the movie, in addition to what I can see on the screen? Angela Robinson, who wrote and directed D.E.B.S., is African-American and a lesbian. How does that make the images different? In this case, it made me feel safer. I felt more confident that these images were not meant to hurt or degrade women, or made with disregard for the effect they would have on women. But that's a big assumption on my part, since I don't know Ms. Robinson personally, nor do I know how decisions about the film were made at the major studio that funded and released it.

Women in this movie occupy most of the important roles, including roles usually reserved for men. The head of the school, Mrs. Petrie, is a stern, competitive boss. The D.E.B.S. don't love her and look to her as a mother, nor does she act as such. She's a respected (and feared) authority figure. (So unlike Charlie's Angels.) The supervillain, Lucy Diamond, robs banks, blows stuff up, and generally acts like any other villain. She gets the same trappings as any supervillain - secret hideout, real weapons - and the same respect. Plus, she's a well-rounded character, not just a one-dimensional baddie. There's never a big deal made about the fact that Mrs. Petrie, Lucy, or the school full of D.E.B.S. are female. It's just normal that they would be doing what they do. That was quite refreshing.

The development of Amy's attraction to Lucy is also not that big of a deal, except for the ramifications it has for being part of the D.E.B.S. Amy's ex-boyfriend makes some lame comments about lesbianism, and Amy just rolls her eyes. She doesn't have to engage with it, it's not accorded any legitimacy. She doesn't go through an agony of identity confusion around her sexual orientation. Also refreshing. The world is not perfect and many people do have to struggle with these issues when they fall for someone of the same gender, but it's nice to see coming out stories that aren't about intense pain and social rejection.

Two of the four girls on the team are women of color. Max is played by Meagan Good, who was nominated for Outstanding Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role at the Black Movie Awards in 2005 for her performance. She is tough, motivated, and a good friend. Dominique is played by Devon Aoki, who is of Japanese, German, and English background. She doesn't have much of a personality, she just gets assigned characteristics: chain-smoking, sexually active, French. This role was a disappointment, since the other three girls on the team get enough space to develop and express some personality. Finding out more about Angela Robinson did make me wonder why the two romantic leads in this movie were both white. Did she feel constrained from having women of color play one or both of those roles? Or did it just happen that way?

Who knew a movie this silly (and I mean that in a good way) would provide so much food for thought?

Overall, I enjoyed it. Not one of the best movies I've ever seen, but far from the worst, and I would recommend it. I give it 3 stars.

Posted by Skye in 3 Stars: Strong Contenders
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Bandidas is a very, very silly film. It's a Robin Hood vigilante Mexican bank robber story, starring Salma Hayek as Sara, the wronged daughter of a rich Mexican bank owner, and Penelope Cruz as Maria, the wronged daughter of a poor Mexican farmer.

The not-particularly-important premise is that the henchman for a greedy American railroad company (played by Dwight Yoakam in particularly sleazy glory) comes to Mexico and cons Sara's father into some sort of bank partnership, then kills him and takes over his holdings. Once in control, he forces all of the farmers off their land to make way for the railroad. Sara, out to avenge her father's death, and Maria, out to get money to feed the displaced people, both come up with the idea to rob the local bank, where they run into each other. After seeing how much the people need, they decide to rob more banks and las bandidas are born.

In many ways, it's a fun little movie. The action is silly (Hayek's character is unable to shoot a gun without dissolving into nervous hiccups, so she throws knives), it has moments that are funny, and the good guys (and more importantly, good women) prevail. Steve Zahn has a particularly amusing turn as a scientific-method obsessed American detective dispatched to Mexico to help try to capture the bandidas who falls in with them instead. In terms of heroine content, though, it's not what it could be.

The major issue is that Hayek and Cruz provide much of the movie's comic relief by constantly fighting with each other. Early in the film, they have a scene that can't be called anything but a cat fight (complete with hair-pulling and ripped clothes) and things don't improve all that much from there. Once Quentin, Zahn's character, joins up with the women, they undermine their own success by fighting over him. So typical, and so unrealistic. Cruz and Hayek are competent, beautiful women with a mission. Zahn is a dorky, insecure scientist. Like they'd endanger their ability to save their country people for the sake of his skinny white butt! Also, in the Tomb Raider model, both Hayek's breasts and (especially) Cruz's are featured so prominently in the film that they ought to have separate billing. There is scene of them doing push-ups in a running stream (under the tutelage of their bank robbery instructor Bill, played by Sam Shepard) that seriously made me laugh out loud with its ridiculous porniness.

All that being said, Hayek's Sara and Cruz's Maria are still tough, funny characters who are robbing banks to feed the poor, and I'm into that. There are also moments of feminist brilliance, like late in the film when Sara triumphantly frees herself from her corset. Also, though Zahn's presence complicates things a bit, the real relationship development in the film is the friendship despite class boundaries between Sara and Maria. Given the sparseness of films focusing on female friendships in any real way, that's always good stuff.

The film doesn't do too badly with race, either. Though there are certainly some stereotypical depictions of Mexicans, the Mexicans are also consistently smarter and better people than the invading Americans. The casting of the lead roles is slightly off, as Cruz is not Mexican, but Spanish, but it's a lot closer than a lot of what comes of Hollywood, insisting on filling the roles of people of color with white actors, and the supporting Mexican cast is all actually Mexican. Though it is a light-hearted movie that doesn't make any major political pronouncements, the underlying premise of Mexican nationals (Hayek and Cruz) fighting against American invaders stealing their land is a good one, and it's brought to light on occasion, as when the bandidas are freed from their transport to the gallows by a mob of angry peasants, and Sara proclaims, "I might not know who I am but I know who I'm not, I'm not someone who lets her country down. Viva Mexico!" It's hokey, sure, but it's meant to be.

Bandidas was co-written by Luc Bessson, who also wrote The Messenger, The Fifth Element, and The Professional, and Robert Mark Kamen, who wrote the Karate Kid movies. It was directed by newbie directors Joachim Roenning and Espen Sandberg.

Overall, I'm going to give Bandidas three stars. It's a fun movie with fairly tough lead chicks and nothing that made me really seriously want to vomit. Cruz and Hayek both do a great job with their roles, showing a good deal of spunk and more brass than I'd have expected from Cruz. No, I didn't need to see them roll around on the floor pulling each other's hair, nor did I need to see constant cleavage, but the knife throwing, shot-gun shooting, and horse-riding tricks ultimately made up for it. Viva Bandidas.

Posted by Grace in 3 Stars: Strong Contenders
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If you were to make a list of action movies in which all the primary characters are women, how long would your list be? I'm not talking about the movies with only one woman, isolated in a sea of men. I'm talking about movies where there are multiple main characters, and they're all women. Or even a majority. How many are there?

While you're thinking about that, here are my thoughts on So Close (Chik yeung tin si). It's a 2002 Hong Kong action film starring three women. Qi Shu and Zhao Wei are high-tech assassin sisters Lin and Sue.