Recently in No Stars: Setting Us Back 20 Years

I thought it was bad when I was seeing films that were adapted from video games. Then I saw Mutant Chronicles, which was adapted from a role playing game. So not good.

Mutant Chronicles takes place on some kind of 28th Century steampunk Earth that feels like it's an alternate World War II. Corporations rule the world and spend all their time fighting, until they are unlucky enough to break open an ancient machine from space that turns human beings into zombie mutants with primitive scimitars grafted to their right arms.

What's not to love?

Posted by Skye in No Stars: Setting Us Back 20 Years
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Jennifer's Body was not on my must-see film list. I saw the previews, was skeptical, and agreed to take it on because I love Heroine Content. Then I started reading other people's reviews--lots of mentions of Heathers, even a few of Buffy-implications that it was self-aware, if a bit thin, farce. I can handle that, I thought. I liked writer Diablo Cody's Juno well enough, and loved director Karyn Kusama's Girlfight (reviewed here). By the time I actually saw Jennifer's Body, I was almost excited about it.

That excitement was so very misplaced. This movie is terrible. The Willamette Week review called Jennifer's Body "Heathers as a Maxim photo spread," and I'd say even that is too kind. It's not just the stupid teenage sexuality that the film centers around that makes it so bad--I was expecting that. And it's not just the fact that Megan Fox (Jennifer) can't act at all, not even a little bit--I was expecting that, too. But that farce I was promised? It never showed up.

Posted by Grace in No Stars: Setting Us Back 20 Years
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I've long wanted to see 2004's Catwoman because it is so often cited, along with Elektra, as one of the low grossing films that has somehow magically ruined it for everyone who wants to see more strong women in action films. I say "magically" because as we know, rarely has a low grossing film with a man in the lead caused Hollywood to stop making that kind of movie.

After seeing it, I was almost willing to agree that if banning women from lead roles in action films could prevent a movie this bad from being made in the future, I was willing to accept that trade off. Then I watched the 1994 Street Fighter with Jean-Claude Van Damme and I realized this hypothetical deal would not protect me anyway.

My friends, the problem here is not that women can't lead an action film. The problem is that there aren't enough women leading action films for any of them to be this awful. Wooden dialogue, flimsy plot devices, wretched "acting" by both Halle Berry and Sharon Stone, and an atmosphere that's much more sexy dance music video than action film: that's what Catwoman offers us. That would be fine if there were five other good films in 2004 with women in action roles, but there weren't.

Posted by Skye in No Stars: Setting Us Back 20 Years
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If you wanted to create a film to show that Men Are Awesome! and Women Are Sexy!, you could not do much better than Bollywood action thriller Dhoom 2. It reminds me so much of a 1980's hair band album. Ninety percent of it is about how much men rock. Ten percent of it is the equivalent of the one slow love ballad on every Poison, Warrant, and Motley Crue album, designed specifically to convince the women in the audience that underneath that bad boy, party hearty, slap your ass exterior is a heart of gold just waiting for yoooouuuuuuuuu. And like the videos of songs on these albums, the women don't wear much clothing and they spend a lot of time "dancing."

Dhoom 2 is flashy, colorful, and it goes well with popcorn, but let's take a look at what else you're getting with your tasty concession stand treat. (Or your microwave in your kitchen treat, as the case may be.)

Posted by Skye in No Stars: Setting Us Back 20 Years
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Back in March, I gave Charlie's Angels two stars. These stars were given in spite of the massive gender and race problems the film had, based on the relationship between the Angels and Bosley, and in the relationship between the Angels themselves.

The film's sequel, Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, gets no stars. The relationship between the Angels is still more or less intact, but there is nothing else to recommend the film, and it is so sexist and so racist that I couldn't give it any stars even if there were.

Full Throttle starts with the Angels rescuing a federal agent being held hostage in Mongolia. The major features of this scene are as follows: 1) mindless hordes of Mongolians running around screaming and setting things on fire for no reason; 2) the first Angel we see, Alex (Lucy Lui), coming on to the scene out of hiding place in a wooden crate, black cat-suited ass and crotch first; and 3) Natalie (Cameron Diaz), dressed up as a Scandinavian tourist, riding a mechanical bull (possibly a mechanical yak) while shrieking "yah? yah?" over and over again.

The really amazing part is that it doesn't get better from there.

Posted by Grace in No Stars: Setting Us Back 20 Years
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In his Guardian review of Wanted, Peter Bradshaw writes that the film "plays like a party political broadcast on behalf of the misogynist party." I don't disagree with this assessment--it's a truly, truly awful movie--but sadly I don't share Bradshaw's surprise at the film's misogyny.

Bradshaw goes on to write that in the film "womankind is represented by irrelevant sleek babes and obese comic foils, an ugly whorehouse aesthetic which really does sock over its contempt for femaleness very, very powerfully indeed." While this is true, it's hardly unusual. The film gives us three female characters--lead antihero Wes (James McAvoy) begins the movie with both a nagging, cheating girlfriend (Kristen Hager) and a bitchy, always-eating, "comically obese" boss (Lorna Scott), both of whom he resents and immediately ditches when he finds out his other options, coming back only to insult and humiliate them further, in case the viewer missed out on the hatred of them the first time. For the majority of the film, however, the only female character is Wes' assassin trainer, Fox (Angelina Jolie).

Posted by Grace in No Stars: Setting Us Back 20 Years
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No, this isn't an April Fool's joke. I actually watched it.

If a DVD has a ten minute selection called "Sexy Outtakes" (presumably for those who thought the five minute half-naked Pamela Anderson music video at the beginning of the movie was not long enough), then I think we all know why it was made.

Strangely, though, I didn't hate it as much as I thought I would. It gets no stars, 'cause it's just so horrifyingly exploitative of Pamela Anderson's body, which is really scary looking. I think I may have nightmares. However, Barb Wire the character is really quite competent. I would have been more impressed if her cover wasn't always stripper or hooker, but see previous comment about exploitation.

Also, it produced a good conversation with my husband:

Cody: I think I'd be annoyed with my boyfriend, if this is his idea of helping. Now I'm hanging from a crane over the ocean?

Me: On a car that's stuck to a forklift. With a Nazi on it.

The End.

Posted by Skye in No Stars: Setting Us Back 20 Years
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When I sat down to watch Blue Crush, I thought "What's the worst that could happen? Grace has been reviewing some sports movies and that's worked out all right. I'm sure it's going to be an excuse to show skinny women cavorting in skimpy bathing suits, but there could be some redeeming feminist content."

Oh, the naivete.

I can't remember any bathing suit problems because I could barely keep track of all the other things that were offending me. I hadn't even brought my usual notebook into the room when I turned it on, so I had to resort to sticky notes in a vain attempt to keep track of all the racist and sexist garbage.

Posted by Skye in No Stars: Setting Us Back 20 Years
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Friends, countrypeople, readers of this blog, I have an important question to pose today:

Was anyone out there actually scared of Kristanna Loken in Terminator 3?

Loken, as you know if you saw the film, plays the newest machine to be sent back in time for a final attempt at annihilating John Connor, the future leader of the human rebellion against the machines. She's allegedly the most advanced Terminator yet, completely deadly, a ruthless and unfeeling killing machine. She should be terrifying.

Posted by Skye in No Stars: Setting Us Back 20 Years
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A funny thing happened on my way to see Resident Evil: Extinction. I had a baby 10 days before it opened. Kind of threw a wrench in my plans to review it right when it came out so y'all would know whether to rush to the theater. So this evening, Cody and I bundled up our two month old baby and went to see this newest installment in the video game-turned-movie series.

I'm kidding! I would never take an infant to a movie without screening it first for sexist and racist content. Or without high-grade infant earplugs. We did go see the movie, though, with the help of a very brave grandmother who stayed with the baby despite being warned that he turns into a crankypants at the stroke of 6pm. (Did he do the crankypants act for her? Oh no, he slept the whole time we were gone. Don't we look like liars now?)

Posted by Skye in No Stars: Setting Us Back 20 Years
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