Heroine Content

Blood: The Last Vampire (2009)

2009-11-02T19:17:46Z

The live action Blood: The Last Vampire was released on Blu-Ray October 20th. It was never released in theaters in Austin, and I did not manage to see it when I went to Chicago in July, so I felt like I had been waiting a loooong time for that red Netflix envelope to show up in my mailbox.

The film is set in Japan during the Vietnamese War. South Korean actor Gianna Jun plays Saya, a vampire-human hybrid whose mission in life is killing the demon who destroyed her father. Onigen, the demon, is played by Koyuki, who is Japanese. Aiding Saya in her pursuit is Alice McKee (played by white actor Allison Miller), the daughter of a military base commander whose run-in with the shadowy organization Saya collaborates with does not turn out well for anyone.

So far, that's already a big bunch of differences from the original animated film Blood: The Last Vampire, made in 2000. The introduction of Onigen gives us another powerful woman of color. Unfortunately, though, for most of the film she is just the scary thing in the background. Pretty, young, skinny, white Alice replaces the character of the grownup, plump, Japanese nurse who becomes Saya's unwitting accomplice in the animated film. To me, it's an obvious effort to make the film more American, sexy, and accessible than casting the Japanese equivalent of Kathy Bates. (Now that I think about it, Qiu Yuen from Kung Fu Hustle would have been awesome in this movie.) Alice does a lot more than the character she replaced, but I was put off by the remodeling of the role.

Overall, many of the things that I liked about the animated film suffered a similar fate. Eerie pale little girl who doesn't talk and levitates before turning into a demon becomes trash-talking, bitchy high school girl with a sword. Three terrifying and possibly unstoppable demons become hordes of fairly disposable demon-looking people chasing Saya and Alice down alleys. The creepy, almost breathtaking reveal of Saya's past at the end of the first film does not happen. Instead we are given cues early on as to her nature. Everything is more and bigger, but in the process becomes more prosaic. In the animated film, I got the enjoyable feeling that there were far bigger things going on and we only caught a glimpse. Not so much in the live action film.

To turn a 48 minute animated film into a feature length movie requires adding, so there is plenty of additional subplot and extra characters. The implied shadowy organization from the animated film becomes The Council, with lots of white male personnel. The Council's front as CIA operatives does necessitate them sounding American when they talk, but despite the historical setting of the film, I would have appreciated a tiny nod to people who speak American English being not just white and male. (Especially since in the animated film, one of the guys was black.) We also spend time with Alice's father and his staff, all of whom are white. One of the demons is an instructor at the school, and he's played by black British actor Colin Salmon. Saya's guardian from her childhood, Kato, is played by Japanese actor Yasuaki Kurata, and Onigen's henchman is played by another Japanese actor, who I am having the most difficult time identifying from the IMDB credits.

The animated film felt like it was about an event that happened to two women, since the third main character was a man who functioned mostly as Saya's sidekick. The live action film feels different. We spend so much time away from either Saya or Alice, and there are so many male speaking roles. But Saya is a strong, fierce character, and the film is paced very well. Watching the "Behind the Stunts" feature on the disk gave me a lot of respect for Gianna Jun, too. This was her first action film, and she spent a ton of time in a harness doing wire work and most or all of her own stunts. It easily passes the Bechdel test since Saya and Alice spend a lot of their time talking about demon killing. Neither character is particularly sexualized, and there is no romantic plot or subplot. Alice does scream. A lot. Eventually, though, she gets useful.

This iteration of the Blood story is a straight up action film, though, not dark and haunting like the animated film. Saya is more of a person than an enigma, and even when she battles Onigen her fights don't have that desperate quality that characterizes her fights with the demons in the animated film.

Due to the two women of color as lead and big bad adversary, both of whom kick ass, the casting of three men of color in speaking roles, and the fact that Alice's character finally stops screaming and does something useful, I'm giving this three stars. I wish I hadn't seen the animated predecessor first, so I wouldn't have kept comparing the two, or it might have scored higher.

Now where's my Saya action figure?

Whip It

2009-10-18T23:02:17Z

At Adventures of a Young Feminist, Laura writes "I'm not even going to try to pretend I didn't love this movie, because I did." You and me both, Laura. It's been a long time coming, my friends, but the Hollywood woman-hating machine has presented us with something that is both fun and not an insult to our collective intelligence. Whip It is really good.

Juno it-girl Ellen Page plays Bliss, a small-town Texas misfit stuck between her own quirkiness and her mother's (the amazing Marcia Gay Harden) insistence that she fulfill her potential as a beauty queen. She's sarcastic, confused, and disenfranchised, like any good teenager. The only person she seems to really connect with is her best friend Pash (Alia Shawkat). Then, she discovers derby.

The bulk of the movie takes the viewer through Bliss' discovery of and excellence in roller derby. She falls in love with it. However, it isn't presented as some sort of magic solution to all of her problems. As she builds new relationships with her teammates (an excellent collection: Kristen Wiig, Zoe Bell, Eve, and Drew Barrymore), her relationships with Pash and her parents fall apart. To complicate things, she also picks up a boyfriend at the derby, Oliver (Landon Pigg).

There are several remarkable things about this movie. The first is that it focuses almost completely on relationships between women. Bliss and Oliver's relationship is featured to some degree, but it has none of the complication or importance of the ones between Bliss and Pash, Bliss and her mother, or even Bliss and her new teammates. They could have left the entire boyfriend thing out, but even with it in, it didn't get too much in the way of what was really important.

The second thing I found really fantastic was that the film took on the issue of aging in women. It was addressed in Bliss' interaction with her mom, who had been a beauty pageant queen in her youth as well, but it's even more prevalent in Bliss' rivalry with another skater, Iron Maven (Juliette Lewis). I've wondered how the generational gap is going to play out in roller derby as younger women (like Bliss) start to take advantage of what those a decade or more older (like Maven) have built, and I haven't see anything about it anywhere else, so I was thrilled they addressed it in Whip It.

The third thing I loved was the relationship between Bliss and her father (Daniel Stern). Dad's a good old boy, but he loves his family, and his eventual pride in Bliss' accomplishments on the track tears me up. Dads of girls tend to get a pretty short shrift on film--I can't think of the last really good and realistic father-daughter relationship I've seen--so this is a unique and welcome feature of the film.

The final thing worth mentioning is Bliss herself. I liked Ellen Page in Juno, but this is way better. Bliss is a real teenager--she's fucked up and she's awkward and she's not always right, but she's trying and learning and growing. Plus she's a roller derby badass. She's a heroine.

The movie is not particularly racially diverse. Bliss has one Black teammate, Rosa Sparks (Eve). She's the only person of color in the derby, from what I can tell. Having seen the actual Austin roller derby, I think this is an oversight. Where are the Latina skaters? There is one Latino cast member--Birdman, who works with Bliss and Pash (Ecuadorian actor Carlo Alban), but there really should be some more women of color skating. If the filmmakers had used some of the real Austin derby to fill in their scenes, they'd have had that. Plus it would have improved the skating.

Even though I would have liked to see Latina skaters, I'm still giving Whip It four stars. It's a near perfect girl power movie, skating right into the same place in my heart where A League of Their Own lives.

Jennifer's Body

2009-10-11T02:01:34Z

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.

The movie tries to be a farce. The idea--teenage hottie becomes literal man-eater--could be, if handled correctly, very amusing and even a biting (pun intended) indictment of horror film culture and high school and whatever else one felt like indicting. But this movie isn't funny, and it the only thing it indicts is Cody's ability to write believable dialogue. Or construct a compelling plot.

A Flick Filosopher, Maryann writes :

Cody has been saying all sorts of things to anyone who will listen about how Jennifer's Body is supposed to be some sort of allegory about adolescent girls, from their bitchiness to their best friends to their disordered eating. But all that's here are a few placeholders, points in the story at which some allegory could have been inserted later.

This is exactly the problem. The potential for farce, for allegory, really for anything even a little bit interesting, is here, but nothing ever comes from it. I can't help but think about how the same plot would be handled by smart writers, and it's a beautiful thing. Which just makes this complete failure all the more depressing.

The single bright spot in this dismal film (the way it's shot is dismal, too--half of it is too dark to see) is Amanda Seyfried. As Needy, Jennifer's put-upon best friend, and the film's eventual heroine, Seyfried has the honor of being the only person in the entire cast who can act (which those of us who know her from Big Love already knew). I know I'm supposed to have been impressed by Amy Sedaris' turn as Needy's mom, but I wasn't. Seyfried was quite literally the only member of the cast who shouldn't have her Actor's Guild card yanked. She also has the film's only really funny line, which I won't ruin for you, in case you do happen to see this awful movie.

I could go on and on about how bad this was, and list out all the things it completely fails to do, but that would waste everybody's time. I agree, for the most part, with nearly everybody who has already reviewed this everywhere else on the Internet. It sucked. Don't see it. No redeeming qualities. No stars.

What's Coming Up in 2010?

2009-09-23T15:26:06Z

I thought I'd take a look ahead at 2010 and see what may be coming down the pike. IMDB's list of action films slated for 2010 is undoubtedly a hazy look into the future, but I did find some items of interest while going through it. Here are some notes, and I'll probably check the list again late this year to see what else has emerged. If you know of anything I missed, let me know!

Films with a scheduled release date:

The Book of Eli, January 15th: Post-apocalyptic. I think I saw a woman wearing a sword in the trailer, so I'm putting it on the list. Here's the official site with the trailer.
Takers, February 19th: Bank robbery film, Zoe Saldana is in the cast, no idea what her role is but I'm hopeful.
Legend of the Red Reaper, March 10th: "For a thousand years, the Reapers guarded mankind from the demons that wait in the dark. Now, at the beginning of a new age, the Reapers are betrayed and slaughtered. Only one Reaper remains - Red, and she's out to exact revenge." Here's a really terrible trailer on YouTube. I like it when the blood spatters on the camera lens. Does anyone use the term C-Movie?
Clash of the Titans, March 26th: With all the goddesses around, here's hoping at least one of them is actually badass.
Iron Man 2, May 7th: Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow.
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, May 28th: A prince and a princess (theoretically) working together to save the world. No sign of the princess in the trailer on YouTube, though. [Update 9.24 - see Zahra's comment below about the race issues here.]
Broken Blade, June 4th: There's a hint of a female assassin in the brief plot summary for this one.
Resident Evil: Afterlife, August 27th: I can't imagine this series is going to get better on Heroine Content criteria.
Red Dawn, September 24th: Remake of the 1984 film.

Films without a scheduled release date:

Agustina: "Agustina de Aragón, (1786 - 1857) was a famous Spanish heroine who defended Spain during the Spanish War of Independence. First as a civilian and later as a professional officer in the Spanish Army." Adapted from a graphic novel, here's the official site.
Armed Robbery: Lesbian lovers rob a bank and run for the border.
Arena: "A group of soldiers find themselves transported to a strange, terrain-shifting landscape where they must fight the best warriors from different eras and histories in a gladiatorial, kill-or-be-killed battle." Surely there's a woman in here somewhere.
Dead in the Head: Bounty hunters and zombies. one of the bounty hunters, known as The Babe (haaaack) is played by a woman.
Her Vietnam: A nurse serving in Vietnam when her base is attacked.
Jennifer Government: "Welcome to paradise! The world is run by American corporations [...] Jennifer Government, a legendary agent with a barcode tattoo, is the consumer watchdog from hell." I know i read the book, but for the life of me I can't remember anything about it.
Kick-Ass: Superhero movie (kind of), adapted from the comic book written by Mark Millar who also wrote Wanted. Chloe Moretz plays "Hit Girl." You can find io9's coverage here. I suspect this one will be a bit much for me.
Kungfused: Some kind of action comedy, there are a lot of women in the cast.
Maximum Ride: "Six kids who are pretty normal - except that they're 98 percent human and 2 percent bird. They grew up in a lab, living like rats in cages, but now they're free." Adapted from a young adult science fiction / fantasy series.
Opponent: Alien crash lands in junkyard, owner of junkyard offers a reward for someone to kill it, mayhem ensues. A lot of women in the cast.
Red Sonja: Still shows a release date of 2010, although news reports say filming won't start until then. The posters are horrifying.
Roadkill: Female assassin is mentioned in the plot description. Supposedly an action comedy, the guy who directed Blue Crush is slated to direct.
Sin-Jin: No information, just a couple of visuals on the IMDB page that I find intriguing. Chinese film.
The Assassin: Taiwanese film about a female assassin in eighth century China who wants to retire.
The Story of Bonnie and Clyde: Hilary Duff leads. Oh my.
Witchblade: The television show almost came together for me, we'll see if the film ever appears.

Whiteout

2009-09-15T17:24:16Z

I saw Whiteout by myself, in a nearly empty theater, in the afternoon. My perfect film-viewing experience. I'm likely giving it a more positive review than it's getting in most forums, and that may be why.

Whiteout's main character is U.S. Marshall Carrie Stetko, played by Kate Beckinsale. That would make her the heroine (it also makes her the only woman in the film). Her first scene, for absolutely no plot-driven reason, features her stripping out of full cold weather gear and taking a shower. Not exactly an auspicious beginning.

It does get better. The beginning shower scene is very much in the same vein as Sigourney Weaver's stripping down to her underwear at the end of Alien--a single gratuitous moment for a character who is otherwise nearly completely sexless. Beckinsale spends the majority of the film in her parka. She is, after all, at the South Pole, and she's working. She's the law in these parts, and she's got murders to solve. No argument from me there--there isn't a ton of physical fighting, but Marshall Stetko does her job, puts herself at risk to keep other safe, and performs in a generally admirable way. I just wish she could have done it without the survivor flashbacks from the botched job that sent her to the South Pole in the first place. Without those moments, she'd have been cool and competent--something like Ripley, or even a bit like Frances McDormand's Marge from Fargo. With them, she's not entirely trustworthy and seems just a second away from needing rescue.

To her credit, though, Stetko never ends up having to be rescued. Though three men assist her, at various times, it's always her show. The male characters by whom she's surrounded respect her and even defer to her. She is also blessedly without either children or a romantic relationship to motivate her. In a really welcome change, Stetko is a heroine because (gasp!) that's her job. A very gender-neutral reason, I'd think. All in all, Marshall Stetko is a pretty good heroine.

On the race front, Whiteout is pretty... well, white. There is one major character of color, pilot Delfy (played by African-American actor Colombus Short). He's a good character--performs his job well, doesn't play into a lot of Black stereotypes. There is only one of him, but this movie's got a pretty small cast, so I'd give this one a pass on race, if it weren't for the Russians.

The Russians are what start it all. The film begins (before even Kate Beckinsale in her underwear) with a planeload of Russians in the 1950s, killing one another and crashing their plane over some sort of mysterious treasure. But first, they drink vodka and say "yah" a lot. Seriously, It's Boris and Natasha level ridiculous.

If I'd skipped the first five minutes or so of this film, I'd probably have given it four stars. No slapstick Russians and no Marshall Stetko stripping and I'd have been hard-pressed to find an HC flaws here. That isn't to say it's a great movie--it's got a pretty thin plot and it's a little bit boring. Given that, and those first five minutes that I did have to sit through, I'm going with three stars.

Editing on 09/17/09: As Skye suggested in the comments, I'm knocking this film down to two stars after learning (thank you Jysella!) that Sharpe was a woman in the book on which this film was based. There was just no reason to make Sharpe a man in the film. I cannot tell you how much better this movie would have been has Lily Sharpe been retained.

Linky Goodness: September 9th

2009-09-09T14:21:37Z

A few tidbits to share with y'all today.

Obviously we're behind on this one, but the Avatar teaser trailer is up at the official site. I am afraid of the CGI. (Hat tip to The Park Bench for the link, check out their blog if you haven't.)

One of my favorite new discoveries is Mary Robinette Kowal's Reel Fantasy blog over at AMC. I particularly liked Off With Her Head? Why Fantasy Hates Good Queens and The Worst-Dressed Women Warriors in Fantasy.

I disagree with his rejection of Lara Croft (while accepting some of his criticisms), but I Miss Sarah Connor is a good piece over at new blog The Guy's Guide to Feminism.

Real life "Stiletto Spy School" for women. Hmm. (Hat tip to guest poster d for this one and the next.)

Thanks to Entrepreneur Goddess for uploading video of this panel to YouTube: "Comic Con 2009. Sigourney Weaver, Elizabeth Mitchell, Zoe Saldana, Eliza Dushku on being female and breaking the glass ceiling in the entertainment world." I think Zoe Saldana is amazingly generous in her comments about how sexism isn't "on purpose" and "education" is the solution. You can find additional recordings of this panel as you're viewing this one. YouTube is magic that way. Or dangerous. I can't tell.

Skinny vs. Strong: Who Wins? at The Great Fitness Experiment. So interesting to read while thinking about casting of women in action films.

Faux Action Girl at Television Tropes and Idioms.

From 2001: Badass girls on film: Is it a good thing when women beat the crap out of men at the movies? by Gina Arnold in Salon.

Red Sonja (1985)

2009-08-31T14:32:27Z

I have seen Conan The Barbarian several times, but somehow I had never seen Red Sonja. Now that I have, I'm really not sure how to rate it. My grasp of Arnold Schwarzennegger's acting career is shaky, so I was stunned to find out this film was made in 1985. I wouldn't have guessed 1960, but 1985 seems so... modern, for a film with such blatant anti-feminist content. (Perhaps I should brush up on my feminist history again, there's probably a good explanation and I'm just not connecting the dots.)

The premise of the film offers an opportunity for something very feminist, especially since few women had picked up swords in leading roles before Brigitte Nielsen portrayed Sonja. But here's my summary of Sonja's origin story. Notice anything problematic?

There was once a woman named Sonja. The Evil Queen Gedren (Sandahl Bergman) made a Lesbian Pass at Sonja, who was rightfully disgusted. So the Evil Lesbian Queen had her family murdered and Sonja raped (complete with a shot of her grimacing face and the assailant's bobbing shoulder). Sonja then received great physical strength from "the spirits" and learned how to fight so she could pursue revenge.

How different would it have been like this?

There was once a very strong and capable woman named Sonja. She ran a farm with her family, and an Evil Queen wanted them to pay higher taxes. Sonja refused, so the Evil Queen had her family murdered and her farm destroyed. Sonja then spent several years learning how to fight so she could pursue revenge and free the people of her land from the tyranny of the Evil Queen.

(If she were that cool, though, Nielsen might have gotten top billing in her own movie instead of coming in second after Arnold.)

(And the origin story would be just like one typically written for a man.)

Sonja does become a fearsome fighter, but she's continually rescued by Arnold. She's also constantly told things like "you must learn to like men a little better" and "hatred of men in a lovely young woman could be your downfall." The end of the film reinforces the continual theme that without the love of a man, a woman is nothing. Sonja and Arnold are fighting, and if she loses, she basically has to date him. "Why does she fight so hard?" an observer asks, "She doesn't want to win."

Compared to the other women in the film, though, Sonja is a model of self-determination, wisdom, and strength. The Queen is a megalomaniacal idiot, not a grim and determined adversary, and her sexual orientation is portrayed as part of her moral decay. Sonja's sister is in a female warrior cult that prays to the "God of Gods." They're good fighters, and they defend themselves well against overwhelming odds, but when they're captured and thrown into a pit in their own temple, they just cry, beg, and moan. No shouts of defiance, no angry promises of vengeance from their god. Just tears and wails, instead of using the secret escape route they should have built in when they designed the darn thing.

Despite what the screenwriters do to Sonja, though - making her by turns unfulfilled spinster, damsel and distress, and even surrogate mommy - there is something to like here. Nielsen's Sonja is a woman on a mission. She is tough, she has no patience for fools, and she doesn't take crap from anyone. Nielsen is dressed in the traditional "I'll be fighting people with swords but we wouldn't want to cover my skin" type of costume, but it almost seems like she just doesn't have time to indulge in any exhibitionism. She has some important REVENGE to commit, people!

If only the filmmakers could stop shaking their heads and murmuring "poor dear, someday she'll get over this anti-man thing and settle down."

Unsurprisingly, this film had a number of other issues. I don't know exactly how to explain it, but I was unconfortable watching the white woman schooling the Asian child (played by Ernie Reyes. Jr., who is of Filipino descent) in combat techniques and philosophy that she learned from Asian men. The only fat character is a clumsy, subservient servant with a heart of gold for the child he follows.

For a while, I thought I would give it no stars. Perhaps it was my horror seeing the posters for the new Red Sonja movie that Robert Rodriguez is producing that made me give Sonja herself a closer look.

She's trapped in a movie that stabs her in the back repeatedly and disrespects everybody but the glorious white man - but even in this film from almost 25 years ago, I don't think Red Sonja sets us back 20 years. I think it's more typical than anything - kernels of feminist empowerment sabotaged by filmmakers who think women are jokes. If I could rate the character and the film separately, I would, but unfortunately I'm going to rate the film itself and give it one star.

Stick It

2009-08-20T01:01:31Z

I did a mini-review of Stick It a while back, but since we've been searching for some positive vibes here lately at Heroine Content, I decided to re-watch it and pay more attention. I was so glad I did.

Stick It tells the story of Haley Graham (Missy Peregrym), a former Olympic-level gymnast who (for reasons unknown to anyone but Haley) walked off the team as they were poised to take gold. Collared by the cops after some good-spirited destruction of a vacant home, she is sentenced by the judge to return to gymnastics training or face jail time.

She's sent to a gym run by Burt Vickerman (Jeff Bridges), a gruff but kind coach who has a rep for injuries in his trainees. If you're sensing there may be a "wiser older man coaching a rebellious young woman so she can find her true potential while he redeems himself" theme coming up, you're right, and it includes all the elements you'd expect to find in a sports movie - lots of prescribed running, some pushing, some mockery. Haley doesn't get any breaks because she's a girl. She's expected to work her butt off, and so are the rest of her teammates. At one point, Haley's voiceover narration goes something like this: "Elite gymnastics is like the Navy SEALS, only harder."

Four of the five main gymnast characters have backgrounds that require physical strength, according to their IMDB.com biographies. Missy Peregrym played soccer, lacrosse, and field hockey in high school and also snowboards. Nikki SooHoo, who plays Wei Wei, is a dancer. Maddy Curley, who plays Mina, is a former college gymnast. Haley's nemesis and former teammate Tricia is played by Tarah Page, who ranked 18th in the Country on the U.S. National Women's Gymnastics Team in 2001. According to the commentary track and credits, the extras in the film who play gymnasts in the gym and at meets are high school, college, and even Olympic gymnasts. No worries here about casting scrawny little stick girls who don't look like they could even climb up onto a balance beam, let alone do a routine on one. And also according to the commentary track, there was a fairly punishing training regimen involved for these actors before filming even began.

I could have wished for more diversity amongst the cast. The only actor in a speaking role for whom no athletic background was described was Joanne, played by Vanessa Lengies - her mother is Egyptian. I can't find details of Nikki SooHoo's background, but she appears to be of Asian descent. Aside from these two actors - who granted are two of the four gymnasts with speaking roles in Haley's gym - it's basically a sea of white faces. If you're casting competitive gymnasts from the U.S. for many of your extras, this may reflect the population, but there were also plenty of extras shown at meets who simply walked by the camera dressed like gymnasts. It would have been nice to see the filmmakers take that opportunity to broaden our perspective. And while there were few adults in speaking roles, there were enough to provide some diversity there as well.

Where the movie really gets feminist to me is with Haley's development in the course of the film. One of her complaints in her rebellious stage is that competitive gymnastics is a rigged game. "It doesn't matter how well you do, it matters how well you follow their rules." One way to write her progression away from that rebellious stage and back into succeeding in gymnastics is to negate that truth. Instead, the script offers Haley the opportunity to add to that knowledge. It absolutely does matter how well you do, and then it ALSO matters how well you follow their rules. Haley gradually takes control of her own performance and her own life again as she works on her gymnastics.

Rather than submitting to the rule structure as one of those things you just have to live with, Haley and her teammates decide to take action when Mina is scored down on a perfect vault by judges who have a grudge against Vickerman. Haley's leadership qualities really come to the forefront as she figures out a plan and then works quickly with the help of her teammates to bring all of the competing gymnasts into a community. They turn the competition into a chance for individuals to excel and be appreciated by others who have worked just as hard as they have, letting the community judge instead of being judged from outside.

One of the other things I really appreciated about this film was the relationship between Haley and her two male friends. The three of them are just that - friends - which is refreshing in a Hollywood where it seems like any time a woman and a man are in the same room together, there must! be! sexual! tension! The two goofball guys really care about Haley and they support her no matter what. Their continued involvement in her life despite her re-entry into gymnastics is another sign that the filmmakers are letting Haley be both - angry teen and keen-eyed analyst of the gymnastics machine, hair-sprayed pretty girl gymnast and baggy-clothes-wearing street biker, competitive athlete and laid back friend.

If you've read the site for any length of time, you know that I've been looking for another film that makes me as happy as Aliens, Tank Girl, and Underworld on the Heroine Content. My friends, this does, and I'm giving it four stars. (When they start to make movies this good and cast women of color in the lead roles, we're just going to have to build a five star category.)

I will close by saying this: if you have never seen an Asian woman do a spinning headstand (or whatever the kids call it) on a balance beam while performing a gymnastics routine to hip hop, you have not lived.

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra

2009-08-11T02:31:39Z

I am waiting to be inspired again. I am waiting for another Ripley, another Tank Girl, another Selene. While I am waiting, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra is a perfectly acceptable way to pass the time.

Despite my misgivings about the ridiculous directorial decision to have Sienna Miller wear a padded bra to play The Baroness, I did indeed head to my local always-deserted-for-7pm-showings movie theater to see the transformation of one of my favorite childhood cartoons into a big budget action spectacle.

Now when I say "favorite childhood cartoons," I don't mean that I actually recall many details about the series. There was a team of good guys called G.I. Joe, there was a team of bad guys called Cobra, and that's about all I got. In this incarnation, G.I. Joe is an international military superforce that swoops down to save Our Hero, Duke (Channing Tatum), a regular military guy, just as he's about to lose some nasty nanomite warheads to an attack force headed up by his ex-honey. Ex-honey, Ana a.k.a The Baroness (Sienna Miller), turns out to be working for the team that officially turns into Cobra by the end of the film, and now we're all caught up, yes?

My husband declared G.I. Joe the best movie of the year until he remembered (a.k.a. I pointed out) that Watchmen came out in 2009. (Also recall that we don't get out to movies unless they are for Heroine Content, sad to say.) I have to admit, though, that it was a damn fine action film. Things blew up, the pace was good, and I never got bored or disengaged enough to spend time wondering about supply chain issues a la Terminator 4. The gadgets and weapons didn't seem cheesy, and they had fun with the movie without turning it into a farce. I enjoyed watching it.

But how does it rank on the Heroine Content scale?

Let's talk about racial diversity in casting first. Duke is our main character on the good guy side, so of course he's a white guy given how Hollywood works, but after his rescue by the Joes, he joins their Alpha team along with his colleague Ripcord (Marlon Wayans, African-American). The existing team is composed of Heavy Duty (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, British of African descent), Breaker (Saïd Taghmaoui, French, of Moroccan descent), Scarlett (Rachel Nichols, white), and Snake Eyes (Ray Parks, white, always wears a mask that covers all of his skin.) Heavy Duty is unquestionably in charge of the team. His boss, General Hawk, is played by Dennis Quaid.

So for large chunks of the film, we are following and rooting for a team that visually appears as 1 white guy, 2 black guys, 1 middle eastern guy, 1 white woman, and 1 guy in a mask. That's really not too shabby, even if the "funny black sidekick" role played by Wayans is a little tired.

It was interesting, though, to think about why that diversity exists in that team. It's because the G.I. Joe force is international. (It reminded me a lot of Wing Commander, a film I haven't had a chance to review yet here. Wing Commander was one of the first science fiction films I ever saw where I was struck by the display of non-Americans in the future in space.) It's like that thing where if I'm a white American and I learn another language, it's admirable, but in Texas being bilingual in Spanish and English because your parents speak Spanish at home is not celebrated. International diversity is awesome, domestic diversity not so much?

If my alternative is watching a team of all white guys, though, I welcome international diversity.

The bad guy side doesn't do as well on this kind of diversity, but they also don't have as many people. Byung-hun Lee plays Storm Shadow (ninja bad guy), and Brandon Soo Hoo plays him as a child in scenes from his past. Of the other bad guys, we only see The Baroness, McCullen (chief bad guy), and Rex a.k.a. The Doctor (evil scientist bad guy), all of whom are white, for the same length of time as we get with the Alpha team on the Joe side.

Moving on to the women, there were three characters used out of the source material, and all are white. Cover Girl (Karolina Kurkova) appears briefly and then meets a tragic end (during an invasion of the G.I. Joe base that severely damaged my respect for them as a military operation.) So we basically have Scarlett for Team Good and The Baroness for Team Bad. Scarlett is a brainy beauty ass-kicker with high standards. I thought they were setting her up to be a damsel in distress in her first fight scene, when she fell down and stayed down WAY more easily than the guys around her, but after that all was well on the fighting vs. saving front. The Baroness just about outruns and outfights Duke in their first encounter, and it's not until the end that her past history with Duke begins to weaken her character. For most of the film, she is all Bad.

Given, a film like G.I. Joe is not going to add to the diversity of female action heroines. The women are going to be skinny and typical sexy. However, I was surprised at the lack of much gratuitous... anything. The Baroness is definitely using her sex appeal for great injustice, and I did wonder why Scarlett graduated from college at 12 but couldn't finish zipping up her own (military uniform!) top, but strangely both of the leading female characters got progressively more dressed as the film went on. They also got more boyfriend-ed, which was depressingly predictable, but they did not spend most of their time on romantic issues. They had jobs to do, and they did them. They were not jokes, victims, or weak links.

(Of course, someone else watching it could feel completely differently.)

This review feels somewhat flat to me, and I think that's because in some way, the movie did too. I didn't really care about either Scarlett or The Baroness, which I wanted to, and that was disappointing. I feel like they were treated decently by the filmmakers, and they did some very cool stuff, but they didn't achieve full personhood. Unlike Duke, whom I did connect with, and may I just say that I love envisioning his character as the continuation of the rebellious street dancer he played in Step Up?

There are ways the film could have been improved. Despite the G.I. Joe commitment to international excellence, I found the casting of the extras in the Joe headquarters lacking. I would have to watch it again to double-check this, but I don't recall having the feeling "Oh hey, all colors of people." I may have been focused too hard on counting women, of whom I saw about three out of about 30+ extras. A little attention to detail here would have been nice.

I give it three stars because within the spectrum of movies we've reviewed here on Heroine Content, it does quite well for itself in casting and representation of women and people of color. It reminded me of Resident Evil on this front. It's not radically pushing the boundaries of dominant society, but it was impressive to see this many diverse characters treated seriously by the filmmakers - especially given the image that probably pops to mind when you think "G.I. Joe."

Chocolate

2009-08-03T16:04:31Z

I know almost nothing about martial arts movies. I don't think I've ever seen anything starring Bruce Lee. I know I haven't seen Prachya Pinkaew's apparently legendary Ong-bak. However, now that I've seen Pinkaew's newest offering, Chocolate, I feel compelled to search his other films out.

From the perspective of women kicking ass, Chocolate is nothing short of amazing. The protagonist, Zen (JeeJa Yanin) spends the majority of the movie running around kicking the asses of people (mostly men) twice her size and three or four times her age. She's flawless, brutal, and never loses. She repeatedly saves her male counterpart, Moom (Taphon Phopwandee), who never fights. And it is her, not her absent father Masashi (Hiroshi Abe), who eventually wins the big last battle.

Zen also has what I assume is intended to be an autism-spectrum disorder. She doesn't talk much, and when she does it is very simplistic. Her expressions tend towards blankness. She has obsessions. She has a pathological fear of houseflies. She actually reminds me, both when she's fighting and when she's not, of River from Serenity/Firefly. This could have been handled very, very badly.

Some critics think it was. BlogCritic Caballero Oscuro writes:

Pinkaew criminally uses Zen's autism as a flimsy plot device, trying to pass off her savant-like fighting ability as some kind of new "drunken master" style that actually caused this viewer more annoyance than entertainment. Zen has no formal martial arts training, but instead picks up her skills by watching old movies on TV. The basic setup of every fight is that Zen stumbles into a crime den looking like a strong gust of air would tip her over and sounding like an escapee from a mental ward, then proceeds to kick every ass in the place when her payment request is denied. Since the film isn't wall-to-wall fights, that leaves lots of screen time to be filled with Zen's grating character. There was absolutely no compelling reason to give the character a disability other than as some kind of sexist explanation of how a girl could fight so well. In reality, Jeeja trained for many months to get battle-ready for the film, but Pinkaew's fantasy construct leaves no room for her exceptional efforts.

I mostly disagree. Zen doesn't learn just from watching movies--she also lives next door to a kickboxing school, and she clearly spends hours watching the instruction and practicing. She strikes me less as a savant and more as a person whose brain causes her to become obsessive about things; fighting has become one of those things. This is, to my knowledge, a common component of autism-spectrum behavior. To my eye, the film didn't so much display Zen's autism as a handicap, but as a superpower. While it was not exactly believable, I don't find that to be a detriment in an action movie. I very much liked it.

It was the one step farther that I didn't like. At the film's climax, Zen fights another disabled savant, a boy who has some sort of convulsive disorder (maybe supposed to be epilepsy or cerebral palsy?). She is losing until she starts to mimic his movements. For me, this is where the film turns from a rather radical but positive comment on differing abilities to a farce. Their fight is also anti-climactic, and it's in the midst of this Kill Bill rip-off battle seen where Zen takes on at least 50 henchmen, which sort of cheapened the rest of the film for me in general.

Those are really my only complaints, though. Overall, Chocolate is an excellent action movie with one of the most fantastic protagonists I've seen in forever. Watching her fight is just so much fun. There is no romantic story line, save the background one between Zin's mother and father. This relationship also brings race and the stupidity of racism and national allegiances into the story, as Zen's mother is Thai and her father is Japanese. Zen is not motivated to her actions by a man or by her mothering instinct, but is instead collecting on debts owed to her own mother, who is sick and needs the money for treatment. Also, there is a mob of killer drag queens. How can that possibly be wrong?

I would love to give this movie four stars. If I hadn't found the palsied fighter at the end so very offensive, I would. As it is, it gets 3, and if we had a 3.5 option, I'd use that.

Rigged

2009-07-21T15:13:02Z

If you've been reading Heroine Content for long, you know that I have a thing for movies about female athletes, and a particular love for boxers. I'm picky, though--I gave Million Dollar Baby only one star, but I loved Girlfight and gave it full marks. Keep that in mind, as I am about to tell you a lot of nice things about a really bad film.

Rigged (also know as Fight Night, which is what the DVD I got from my RedBox was labeled) is the story of a shady underground boxing promoter, Michael Dublin (Chad Ortis) and a female underground boxer, Katherine (Kat) Parker (Rebecca Neuenswander). The two strike up a relationship based on mutual need and end up becoming friends as they work their way around the south for fights. Oh, and they also address issues from their pasts, blah blah blah. The story is really nothing impressive.

But these things are impressive:

First, Kat Parker KICKS ASS.

We see her lose a fight once, and it's because she was drugged. She's just an incredible badass. And, unlike what happens in Million Dollar Baby (and even, to some extent, in Girlfight), there is no stereotypical scary unsexed woman in the ring with her to serve as a juxtaposition to her sexy self. Why? She fights men. You never see her hit another woman in the film.

Secondly, Kat enters the film by beating the tar out of a large man wielding a club, then stealing a gun from another man, thus rescuing Dublin. Though he does rescue her, much later, it's in a much less valiant scene (he hits a guy with a folding chair).

Third, until the very end (which I will address in a minute), nobody tries to make Kat pretty or doll her up. She spends the majority of the movie in either sparring clothes of baggy shorts and a sports bra or in a tank top/jeans/combat boots combo. She is shaggy haired. She doesn't wear discernable makeup, and when she takes a hit, she gets a bruise.

Fourth, Kat largely dictates the terms of the relationship between the two main characters. At first, she wants nothing to do with Dublin. It's only when she's in jail for fighting illegally and out of other options that she begrudgingly accepts a partnership with him. And even then, she makes the rules. When he asks her to throw a fight, it's clear before he ever opens his mouth that she's not going to do it.

Finally, it is impressive that unlike Hilary Swank putting on muscle for Million Dollar Baby, Rebecca Neuenswander is the real deal. The Welsh actress is a Taekwondo world champion. She's not a bad actor (certainly the best one in a generally badly acted film), but she seems primarily an athlete.

Based on those criteria, I'd give this one four stars, even if it's just not a very good movie. Except...

The homophobia: Kat is a lesbian. This is made clear fairly early on. It's something she denies and is ashamed of, saying she just does weird stuff she she's drunk, or it's just a phase. If we saw her, as part of her growth in the film, come to accept her lesbianism, that would be great. Instead, the last scene shows her, made-up for the first time, in a dress, in what may be construed as a romantic relationship with Dublin. Fail.

The anti-Semitism: There is a running joke in the film that Dublin knows "Jewish Kung Fu," which is putting someone in a headlock and shaking them until the change comes out of their pockets. Ha ha. If Dublin's character was intended to read as Jewish himself, this could maybe be forgiven, but he doesn't. In fact, the entire cast is white-on-white. So fail again.

The final scene: After the end of the fight season, Kat and Dublin part ways, each to address his/her past. That's where it should have ended. Instead, a final scene showing them together, possibly romantically, is tacked on. This movie would have been so much better if that scene had just been left completely out.

Given those rather large drawbacks, I can't justify more than two stars for this one. It's too bad--it could have been much better with just a couple of small changes. Still, I'm hopeful about Neuenswander. I'll definitely be following her and hope to see her in something a little higher quality in the future.

Heroine Content: Now With A Comment Feed!

2009-07-19T14:07:17Z

Since the best part of doing this site is the comments from all of you, we've set up a comment feed you can subscribe to if you want to see what everyone else is saying. Try it out, let us know what you think! We went with a sitewide feed instead of per entry for now, since it shouldn't be super high volume.

Catwoman

2009-07-17T13:57:12Z

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.

The movie uses a similar Catwoman origin story to 1992's Batman Returns, where the oppressed woman is killed by her crooked boss and comes back to life better, faster, and stronger. But whereas Michelle Pfeiffer's Selina Kyle is downtrodden and miserable, Berry's Patience Phillips is just... what? A little shy? Working in a well paying job in a creative role and painting on the side at home, instead of being a full time artist? The object of a cute policeman's affection? Enjoying the blessing of close friends and a nice apartment? The worst things in her life are that her next door neighbors throw loud parties and her boss yells at people. Nothing in the setup shows me one reason in the world why she doesn't just a) move and b) find a new job. Her life is fine.

Once she is resurrected by some of the worst CGI I've ever seen, the newly minted Catwoman's experience of her powers is a mix of discovering new abilities and involuntary behaviors that make her look completely ridiculous. I couldn't help comparing her to Tobey Maguire's Spiderman. As I recall, the comedic moments that came along with his transition from geek to superhero were either his attempts to master his powers that failed (web don't work go boom), or his geeky teenage "I'm so badass" posing as he realizes what has happened. His "slip ups" are when he accidentally reveals his physical prowess... which is very different from compulsively eating 12 cans of tuna with your fingers.

As Patience becomes more Catwoman, she definitely changes. Her first incarnation is dressed more like Selene from Underworld. Yes, sexy, but not Pamela Anderson in Barb Wire sexy. In the ideal Heroine Content world, Catwoman could still be curvy, sexy, dangerous, and even skinny with big boobs. Those types of heroines are fine... as long as within the set of action films that have women kicking ass, there is a wide variety of other types of heroine as well. Unfortunately, that hasn't happened. Until it does, memo to Hollywood, WE DO NOT NEED ANY MORE "ACTION" HEROINES THAT DRESS LIKE HOOKERS. It's been done, and overdone, and while you're at it, can you have whoever designed the costume for this film FIRED? Seriously. It's just not possible to take her seriously when she's wearing a mess of fake bandoliers, a bra that looks barely held on by a string, and pants with "scratches" that pretend to show skin. Until after her jailbreak, the music for her fight scenes is dance music, not fight music. This is not an action movie, people. It's a music video with a woman pretending to fight because it looks cool.

Grace and I have discussed several times the drought of female villains, even in action films with female leads. Sharon Stone's Laurel Hedare is one of the few, but I wish she wasn't. To have Catwoman's opponent be a model whose skin has been made invulnerable by a toxic beauty product is almost more than I can stand.

If there were 10 films a year with women who supposedly kick ass, we could afford something like this, but it's just a slap in the face and an extra hurdle to overcome in changing the culture. No stars.

Monday Links: July 13th (Matrix Edition)

2009-07-13T21:41:10Z

If you haven't checked out d's guest posts on The Matrix, The Matrix Reloaded, and The Matrix Revolutions, you should!

And in honor of the 10th anniversary of the first Matrix film, here are some links that Grace and I particularly enjoy. Please feel free to share others in the comments!

The Matrix: Coding Counter Racism by Josh Wickett.

The Pornocracy of "Fate": Moms' Tricks in The Matrix by Matt George.

Holy Trinity - female characters in The Matrix: Reloaded by Anna Sandfeld on The F-Word.

A future worth fighting for by Andrew O'Hehir on Salon.com.

The Matrix Reloaded Makes Strides in Racial Diversity on BlogCritics, and the comments section on this one is also worth a read.

Matrix Revolutions: Imbalance by Cynthia Fuchs on Pop Matters.

These posts by Steven Barnes:

Taking the Red Pill
Ah, Zion
The Matrix Revolutions (You have to scroll down.)

The Taming of the Shrew:The fall of Trinity in the Matrix Trilogy on Beyond Pandora. (This is actually closest to my interpretation of Trinity of all the writing I've seen online -Skye)

The Matrix and the Mater by Stephen Faller.

The Matrix Revolutions

2009-07-10T15:20:28Z

Welcome to the third installment of Matrix reviews, brought to you by our guest poster known as d. If you missed her reviews of The Matrix and The Matrix Reloaded, check them out too! Then on Monday we'll have some Matrixy links for you to enjoy.

"Now, since the real test for any choice is having to make the same choice again, knowing full well what it might cost...I guess I feel pretty good about that choice, 'cause here I am...at it again..." - the Oracle

Many people adore the first Matrix, and would very much like to forget that the sequels were ever made, if they even saw them. Others who are more action-oriented enjoy Reloaded, but saw Revolutions as too slow; both factions thought it was more of the same. Reloaded and Revolutions do share some similarities, since they were filmed simultaneously. But if I had to lump the films in any way, it is The Matrix and The Matrix Reloaded that more closely resemble each other. The Matrix Revolutions is just that - revolutionary. It not only pushes the boundaries of HC, but of storytelling itself.

Most U.S. films use the protagonist as the main focal point, and don't veer too far from him or her. This isn't the case here; a good chunk of the film is split between three storylines: Neo and Trinity racing towards Machine City to stop the machines from destroying humanity; captains Niobe, Morpheus, and Roland (along with their crews) racing towards Zion to defend it against sentinel invasion, and the remaining citizens of Zion holding that same invasion at bay. The split gives the film a more ensemble feel, and allows other characters to really come into their own.

One character who leaps from wallpaper status to the forefront is Captain Mifune, played by Nathaniel Lees. I was going to declare that this was the film Skye was looking for when she lamented (in Doomsday's review) the dearth of non-ninja military characters. And while he does carry a Japanese name, his ethnicity is Samoan-Australian (so I'm not quite sure where that puts him). He barks out orders as ineloquently but heartfelt as any officer I'd seen in film. He proves himself to be one of the finest combatants on the battlefield, and he also inspires and encourages a young Zionist to be even more courageous. And not a lick of martial arts! His weapon of choice is an APU, which looks a lot like the machine Ripley uses to fight the mother alien (but with many more bells and whistles).

There's so much diversity in the first two films, I just didn't think they could put any more in, but they do! At the film's beginning, we see a very philosophical discussion between Neo and a sentient program family, who are Indians. Wow, Asians of all kinds in one film? Too unbelievable! The dialogue is a bit mind-warping and esoteric (which means of course I loved it!), and their interaction is a bit isolated, but I thought it was good nonetheless. And it doesn't end there; the daughter Sati (Tanveer K. Atwal) goes on to play a symbolically much larger role. In fact, you can tell a lot about a film by how it ends. While the story traces Neo's journey to oneness, we don't end with him looking triumphant. He's alluded to, yes, but what we see is a lush park with Sati, Seraph (Collin Chou) and the Oracle (now being played by Mary Alice) talking amongst each other. It is a vision of utopia, and it is symbolized in the union of an African-American woman, Chinese man, and Indian girl. Not only that, but the gender makeup is slanted toward the feminine, and you really see this as it's compared against the discussion between the Oracle and the Architect (of the matrix program). Also, the last shot is not of humans, but human/machine hybrids; it's another aspect that challenges what we expect in films - no black and white hats here... everyone's in shades of grey.

But let's focus a bit more on gender, shall we? The Oracle grows into a character who is not only helping the humans, but has an active goal, and will take aggressive steps to realize it. Niobe (Jada Pinkett) makes her own aggressive choices, and shows she's one of the best pilots, if not the best pilot in the entire fleet; and not only that, but Morpheus and Roland heartily acknowledge it.

One character I didn't talk about too much is Zee (Nona Gaye). In Reloaded she plays the stereotypically concerned wife who wants her husband to return home. While it seems stock, it's not a portrayal they often give to an African American female, so I appreciate that. But in Revolutions she becomes ideal! She volunteers to make ammo and enlists in the infantry. This is so out of character for her, but you can see that she's harnessing all her courage for love. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I HATE when movies only allow women to have sacrificial love for their children, biological or surrogate. It's so refreshing to see a loving relationship where the man and woman will give their lives for the other. Zee later teams up with Charra (Rachel Blackman), who appears to be career military. They have a very honest and realistic rapport with one another that you would expect during a time of crisis. And they're both responsible for temporarily disabling the digger the sentinels are using to bore their way to Zion.

I saved the best for last: Trinity! She seems much more the woman we saw from the first film. She's truly Neo's helper, but not in the Stepford wife way. Trinity's more like the holy spirit to Neo's Jesus. When a plan to rescue Neo goes south, she's the one who soldiers it through. It's not at all coincidence when Neo tries to meditate out of a situation, and it is Trinity who he first sees. Neo's call depends on him getting to Machine City, and he wouldn't be able to get there were it not for Trin (as he calls her). In this last installment their relationship is balanced between what they are to each other, and what they do for the good of humanity. In the first two films Neo discourages Trinity from acting when he believes it's too dangerous. By the third film, he finally sees that while he may be terrified of losing her, he needs her by his side. She also has some of the most emotionally charged scenes in the film.

Morpheus in The Matrix and Neo in Revolutions utter the line: "Time is always against us". And I feel that way also. Not literally - moreso than time, it's word. There are whole swaths of elements from the films that I've barely touched. But I hope I've said enough to make you curious. While I reviewed them as stand-alone pics, I think the best way to see them is consecutively. In my initial viewing I saw the first two together, and Revolutions the next day. This gives the trilogy a palpable and obvious cohesion.

I have one disclaimer: if you really just want a female lead film, this isn't it. But if you want to see what a world just shy of that looks like, a world in which gender and ethnicity determine neither your role nor your importance in society, then Revolutions (in addition to the previous 2 films) is a must-see. Another significant line spoken by the Oracle is, "Everything that has a beginning, has an end." That includes this review. And it ends in four stars.