Posted on July 11, 2018 at 7:27 pm
Some of my favorite ideas from his piece (SPOILER ALERT):
The quantum experience may affect Scott’s powers, possibly even time travel. Cassie and Luis may play important roles. So may Dr. Strange.
I know, this sounds like your daily horoscope. But read the piece — it’s grounded in a very thorough understanding of Marvel comics, characters, and the MCU.
And for more:
Posted on July 10, 2018 at 2:34 pm
How many times have women characters in movies been called “clever girls?” Well, here’s a remarkable compilation.
It’s an interesting compliment, because it’s praising and kind of diminishing at the same time, though in some of these cases there seem to be meta quote marks around it. I wonder why it is so prevalent, though.
Posted on July 8, 2018 at 3:14 pm
One of the best essays about film I’ve read this year is Roxana Hadadi’s “Amid the Latest Western Genre Resurgence, ‘Lean on Pete’ and ‘The Rider’ Challenge Cowboy Masculinity in the American West” in Pajiba. She discusses several recent movies, including “Logan,” HBO’s “Westworld,” and “Hell or High Water,” but focuses on “Lean on Pete” and “The Rider.” The Western has always been the quintessential representation of the American spirit of independence, isolation, adventure, arrogance, as well as a way to explore our nation’s deepest conflicts and history of brutality and racism. And, as with most movie stories over the past century, the stories have almost always been about men and from their point of view. Hadadi writes:
The American experience has long been linked to the masculinity of the solitary cowboy, pushing the limits of the frontier. But what happens when there is nowhere left to go?
…Which brings us to Lean on Pete and The Rider, two films that also fit into the Western genre but are less about what the New West represents and more about what it actually is….These are stories about boys on the cusp of being men, each of whom is attempting to navigate selfhood in situations of poverty and desolation, in places where the cowboy code was once enough but isn’t anymore. Where so many Westerns focus on exploring (and romanticizing) the destructive ways that masculinity manifests, Lean on Pete and The Rider are concerned with what happens when those stereotypical markers—violence, sex, and lawlessness—are not only stripped away but are never the right choice at all. If you reject what it is to be a cowboy but you exist in the shadow of that figure, who are you?
You won’t read a better, wiser, or more goregously written essay on film this year.
Posted on June 27, 2018 at 9:41 am
This is a fascinating look at the difference between the way the script for “Sleepless in Seattle” looked on the page and the way it finally appeared on the screen. We don’t know how many of these changes were intentional and how many were slips of the tongue or amended by the actors because they felt more natural.
Posted on June 10, 2018 at 11:45 am
2017 was a good year for women in film, with “Wonder Woman” directed by Patty Jenkins and “Beauty and the Beast” in the top 10 for box office. 2018 looks even better, with “Oceans 8” doing better than its male-led predecessors with a very strong $41 million opening weekend.
Also worth noting:
The Washington Post’s The Lily, which focuses on news stories about and of interest to women, has a very good piece on upcoming movies and television shows with strong female characters. Recommendations on television include “Dietland,” “Claws,” “American Woman,” and the second season of “GLOW.”
And in movies, “The Spy Who Dumped Me,” “Crazy Rich Asians,” “Woman Walks Ahead,” “Whitney,” and “Brain on Fire.”
And Slate’s Lena Wilson says that horror movies have reached “the age of the monster girl.”
This year and the last in particular have seen a number of releases featuring monstrous young women. Cory Finley’s Thoroughbreds and Julia Ducournau’s Raw both found widespread critical success, while features like The Lure, The Blackcoat’s Daughter, Wildling, and Tribeca premiere The Dark feature lesser-known violent ladies. Regardless of Rotten Tomatoes score, each of the protagonists in these movies are girls with uncontrollable bloodlust, whether psychological (the sociopaths of Thoroughbreds and The Blackcoat’s Daughter) or physical (the flesh cravers of Wildling and Raw). None of these movies have overtly political plots, but it’s hard to dismiss the social implications of a spate of girls-bite-back films in the era of Trump.
