The Hurt Locker

This is the kind of movie you don't love - you appreciate. It's the story of a bomb diffusing squad in Iraq and how the adrenaline that comes with their job (and with watching this movie!) makes war a kind of drug.

I don't have much to say gender-wise because there were no female characters in the film (except for a brief, inconsequential cameo by Evangeline Lilly). I would have loved for Kathryn Bigelow (remember, she won two big-time Oscars for this film) to make at least one of the bomb squad members female, but I understand why she chose not to. I don't know if women are even allowed to fill that role in the military.

I've been thinking about the fact that a female finally won the Best Director Oscar through a film cast only with males and about a subject - war- that tends to be associated with male viewership. Here are a couple of ideas I've had:

- Did she win the Oscar partly because people were impressed a woman could make a war film?

- Are there elements of the experience of being female that caused her to make this movie differently than she would have if she had grown up male? In the film, there's an interesting tension between a glorification of war and an acknowledgment of its horror, and also between the excitement and tedium of bomb diffusing. And the main character, Sergeant James, a kind of arrogant cowboy, is portrayed ambiguously. He seems at times like a hero and at times like a careless idiot. Do any of these choices have their roots in the fact that Ms. Bigelow likely didn't grow up doing things like playing war video games or dreaming of following in the shoes of fathers and grandfathers who were in the armed services? In other words, does that fact that she may have a little more distance between herself and the the idea of war make her more able to portray it in a novel way?

These are really just items for debate. We can't know the answers to them, of course, Just food for thought about a really well-made film.

Click here to go to The Hurt Locker's website.

The Princess and the Frog

Fabulous. No complaints. Disney, a lightening rod for controversy over the portrayal of gender and race, really outdid itself, gender-wise, in this film. (Race might be another story. I've heard some criticisms. But that, my friends, is a topic for another blog.)

The Princess and the Frog is a fun animated film that reminds us twenty- and thirty-somethings of our childhoods. The filmmakers use old-school hand-drawn animation and incorporate songs the way they did when we were kids (the characters themselves sing, Little Mermaid and Lion King style). The plot goes something like this: Hard-working Tiana lives in New Orleans and dreams of opening her own restaurant. A frogged Prince Naveen mistakes her for a princess and convinces her to kiss him so he can be human again. It doesn't work the way they hoped. Hijinks ensue.

I am notoriously hard to please but have no problems with this film. I got worried at one point that it was going to follow the tired romantic comedy formula in which a highly ambitious but highly stressed female is taught by a cool, laid-back male that her drive is keeping her from being happy.

Nope. Disney flips that narrative on its head and makes the cool guy look pretty pathetic next to the tough, no-nonsense heroine. Tiana has to teach him how to be an adult, and he happily learns. This culminates (spoiler alert) on him following her into the restaurant business - not whisking the new princess away to his kingdom.

After I was satisfied with that, I got nervous that, because of the goofy male animal companions (a required part of any great Disney film, apparently), only guys were going to get to be funny. Tiana, with all of her strengths, isn't exactly a barrel of laughs. But the sweet and hilarious character of Charlotte, Tiana's best friend, solves that problem.

And speaking of Charlotte, I like that her character is used to make fun of the princess obsession caused in large part by the very company that produced this film. :)

I could go on, but my reviews are always too long. Let me just end by pointing out that although this film uses older, less exciting technology, I'll take a good story FREE from silly stereotypes over a disappointing (at least from a gender perspective) but fancy animated flick. (I'm looking to you, Pixar division of Disney.)

Click here to go to the website for The Princess and the Frog.

An Education

Stay in school, girls. That's what An Education is telling you.

Because I hadn't heard a lot of controversy about the film, I didn't expect to be weirded out by this Lolita-like story. I guess I figured that if I wasn't hearing gossip, the filmmakers must have portrayed the relationship discretely. But they didn't, really. It was weird. And disturbing. And kind of gross.

But it's all in the service of a really interesting and well-communicated message that has a lot to do with girls, but more to do with young people in general.

The story goes something like this. A precocious (and adorable) 16-year-old Jenny is seduced by an older man. She becomes enthralled with his exciting, grown-up life, and gradually becomes something very different from the excellent but bored student she once was. Her parents are also charmed by David and become kind of blindly complicit in the relationship. When David proposes, Jenny has to decide whether to go to Oxford as planned or marry him.

And then, there's this perfectly written and acted argument between Jenny and Miss Stubbs, one of Jenny's teachers, where Jenny makes a pretty convincing case for the relationship with David. I want to quote it because it's so good, but I'd rather you go and watch it. The dialogue actually had me, a by-all-accounts devoted student and happily responsible young adult, questioning the decisions I've made in my own real life.

I won't let on what Jenny decides, but by the end the film has reminded you that a life you make for yourself is priceless and that, as much as we young people may want to, we only short-change ourselves when we try to fast-forward through the difficult, uncomfortable, or boring parts of our teens and twenties.

The portrayal of female characters is perfect. Jenny, played by Oscar-nominated Carey Mulligan, is a heroine all young people, female or male, can relate to. Miss Stubbs becomes an unexpected and understated role model any girl would be lucky to have. And Jenny's mom, dad, and headmistress remind us that our expectations for young women are many times unfair, unrealistic, and nothing like what we would hope for boys.

Click here to go to An Education's website.

Congratulations to Kathryn Bigelow

Congratulations to Kathryn Bigelow, the first female to win the Academy Award for "Best Director." Her film, The Hurt Locker, also won Best Picture. I haven't seen it but will post a review as soon as I do!

The Lovely Bones

I've been thinking about this one for awhile. Here's what I've decided:

The plot of the movie itself is very fair to women. I especially loved the character of the sister. She was tough, athletic, and so brave. I also appreciated the non-stereotypical reactions of both parents to Susie's death. The mom takes off to California and the dad stays home obsessing over his daughter's murder. This could have been done the other way around, and it would've made the story less touching, in my opinion. These two characters become more real because of the non-traditional choices made by the filmmakers. I bet it didn't hurt that The Lovely Bones is based closely on the book by a female author.

Here's my beef, though. When you make a film about the rape and murder of a fourteen-year-old child, you have to do it really, really carefully. I think the book made it work. I don't know if the movie quite got there. It's just really tough to say on film, sensitively, that this girl is treated in the worst possible way a human being can be treated, her murderer is never caught, and, in the end, it's all good.

This is really more of a critique of the artistic choices of the film, though, than of the filmmakers' intentions with regard to gender. I think it was a good effort, and it was a truly memorable movie for me.

Go to The Lovely Bones' website.

Garden State

Can you tell I've been staying in and watching lots of DVDs? It's snowy and cold these days in the Midwest!

Garden State. I loved watching it again after a couple of years away. It's typically male-dominated. Male protagonist with male friends, male enemies, and male doctors. But, the love interest, Sam (played by Natalie Portman), is well-developed and totally acceptable in my book. I'm glad she doesn't want to be anybody's bitch.

I liked that "Let Go" by Frou Frou was used in such a key moment in the film, but the soundtrack is otherwise very guy-heavy.

Also, and this is just a personal beef I have, but I think Zach Braff writes movies just so he can make out with pretty girls.

Take away message? Let's get some young, talented, Braff-ish women to whip out some equally fun but more lady-friendly films! I wouldn't complain about hearing more awesome all-girl or female-fronted bands on soundtracks either. ;)

Go to Garden State's website.

The Hangover

Well, everybody's right. It's funny. I absolutely enjoyed watching it. I can't find a lot to celebrate, though, when it comes to the portrayal of women.

I'm just not into this world of male comedy where strippers and prostitutes are funny and readily available when otherwise "nice" guys want to let loose at a bachelor party. I hate to sound like the much-ridiculed villain of the movie, Melissa (played by Rachael Harris), but each of those women IS actually someone's daughter. Believe it or not, women ARE actually people, not just objects for men's bachelor party and movie-going entertainment. If saying that makes me uptight - if it means I take life just a little too seriously - I guess I'll just have to be okay with being a too-serious, uptight villain.

And, do I even need to say it? The movie is SO male dominated. Practically the best speaking part in this film for a female was the receptionist at the hotel. And could they have cast a more lifeless actress than Sasha Barrese as Doug's wife-to-be? I'm not even sure what to say about Jade (played by Heather Graham). I don't want to criticize the fact that Stu (Ed Helms) ended up liking her because, as I said, escorts are people too. But it goes along with what I said above about the portrayal of stripping and prostitution as funny or no big deal. I just don't like that message.

Finally, the baby was a really interesting part of this movie. I was mostly annoyed with it as it was just another instance of men being unable to care for children. I mean, come on, what normal human adult doesn't know you shouldn't leave a six-month-old alone in a car...in the sun...in Las Vegas? What real-life man can't handle carrying around an infant for a few hours without slamming it into a car door?

However, and I know I'm making this WAY more academic than the filmmakers want me to, but I couldn't help but think about how the baby slowed those guys down. Everywhere they went, the baby had to go. Everything they did, they had to figure out what to do with the baby. It was ATTACHED to them. It made noise. It caused trouble. It slowed them down so much, in fact, that they conveniently got rid of it (by handing it over to a woman) after just a couple of scenes. It almost seemed like a shout-out to how movies are never made about four crazy twenty- or thirty-something women looking to have a wild bachelorette party in Vegas. How could they be? Who would be looking after all the babies?

But it's probably not a shout-out. At much as I enjoyed this movie, and as often as I'll quote it in the future, I just can't forgive it for being yet another comedy that makes the same old offensive mistakes when it comes to gender. I can't wait for the day when I can laugh through a film and still feel great when I leave the theater (or turn off Comcast On Demand, in this case).

Go to The Hangover's website.