Review: Ghostbusters (2016)

I ain’t afraid of no ghost!

Ghostbusters is officially the most fun I have had in the cinema for a very long time. It may not be the cinematic masterpiece that was Fury Road last summer, but it is hilarious from start to finish whilst also delivering on an appropriate amount of genuinely scary ghosts.

I was a real fan of the original Ghostbusters films and I am not generally in favour of remaking great films just to rake in more cash, but ever since the success of the 2004 Battlestar Galactica reboot I have been wholeheartedly in favour of films and TV that take something I loved from my childhood and update it in genuinely interesting ways – specifically, to make it relevant to a new generation and to improve on things that now stand out as problematic in the originals. So when I heard that this was to be an all female Ghostbusters, I was interested. As much as I have great affection for the original films, they were uncomfortably misogynistic. The fact that we are expected to root for Venkman’s (Bill Murray) stalking of and aggressive sexual advances towards Dana Barrett (Sigourny Weaver) – his client – and find Louis Tully’s (Rick Moranis) stalking amusing… this is deeply disturbing to the 2016 eye, and extremely uncomfortable for a female viewer.

Rebooting this classic film franchise in a way women can enjoy without these unpleasant undertones was a stroke of genius.

Against the Backlash

Naturally, the film has attracted a lot of sexist backlash. I won’t dwell on the attention-seeking misogynists who have tried to tank the film before it even came out, they’ve had quite enough attention as it is. But I will say that I’m inclined to agree with @Lumetian on Twitter, that ‘MRA Horror is my new favourite genre‘. Whilst not actually a genre in itself – films like the dramatic cinematic masterpiece, Mad Max: Fury Road, and the science-fiction comedy, Ghostbusters, really have very little to do with one another in terms of genre – the sheer levels of horror exhibited by so-called ‘Men’s Right’s Activists’ at the very existence of these films is turning out to be a very good indication that the film will be a quality piece of entertainment.

As a fan, I was excited for more Ghostbusters; as a woman, I was excited that the wrongs of the past were to be corrected and that I would get to watch a science-fiction/fantasy film where the heroes were all women.

Race and Representation

Which is not to say that I had no reservations – as others have pointed out, it’s a very white cast and whilst the three white women on the team are all scientists, the black woman, Patty Tolan (Leslie Jones) is a working class woman who, from the trailer, was presented as having no professional skills beyond wise-cracking street sense. Note, however, that Leslie Jones herself defended this on Twitter, noting that an MTA (Metropolitan Transportation Authority) worker had contacted her to thank her for representing people who perform this kind of role. Privilege and oppression remain multi-sided, and representing working class people as heroes is also important. The issue comes from the fact that white people are more likely to be represented as professionals and scientists, whereas black people are far more likely to have roles as working class people. Why couldn’t one of the white women have been an MTA worker, after all?

I was pleased to see that the role did have a lot more to it than appeared from the trailer. Patty shows herself to be very knowledgeable about the city, and not simply in a ‘streetwise’ manner, but in actually knowing a lot of historical information that becomes crucial to fighting ghosts and solving the film’s central enigma. This doesn’t completely erase the problematic aspects, and as a white person myself I’m not best placed to comment on whether Patty’s character constitutes ‘good’ representation or not, but overall my feeling is that she’s better than no representation at all and I appreciated that the film promoted a wonderful comedian like Leslie Jones.

It’s worth noting that Leslie was slighted by the fashion world, where designers refused to provide her with gowns for the red carpet simply because she isn’t a ‘sample’ size. After she called this out on Twitter, designer Christian Siriano stepped up to the plate and provided her with a stunning red gown. Without doubt, it is Leslie and Christian who have come out of this looking best, but as a rising star she should never have had to be in this situation. Basically, I mostly just want to raise pom-poms for Leslie right now.

Representation of Men

In the run up to the release there was a lot of noise made about the prospect of supposed ‘reverse sexism’. It’s feminism 101 to point out that sexism is institutional, widespread, and historic – it simply isn’t possible for men to experience ‘reverse’ sexism against their background of massive privilege. Nevertheless, this doesn’t mean that individual men cannot be objectified, misrepresented, or stereotyped in ways that hurt both men and women. Prejudice is never good.

I’ve addressed elsewhere the question of whether Chris Hemsworth‘s character, Kevin, is shown as objectified in the trailer. The answer, by the way, is no. Objectification is the reduction of a person or character to an object: lack of characterisation, focus on body-parts rather than the face or actions of a character, absence of agency or self-directedness, existence purely for the visual pleasure of the viewer and other characters within the media presented. This wasn’t exhibited in the trailer, but there remained the question about how he would be treated in the movie as a whole.

It is worth noting that Kevin is a caricature, but he is not a stereotype. Indeed, I’ve never seen a character like him in film before. Kevin is extremely handsome and not very bright. He is nonetheless very likeable and characterful. He is clearly meant as a counterpoint to stereotypical representations of female receptionists in film and TV – beautiful but unintelligent, an object of attraction – the ‘sexy lamp‘ as characterised by Kelly Sue DeConnick – a character that could be replaced by a sexy lamp with no detriment to the plot. As a send up of this, Kevin is hilarious, and yet Kevin himself is neither a stereotype, nor a sexy lamp.

Kevin cannot be a stereotype because men have never been presented ubiquitously in this manner. Nor is there any evidence that he is intended to present men in general or to be a realistic representation of a man. His characteristics are exaggerated to a pants-wettingly funny extent, and it’s quite clear that the famously handsome Chris Hemsworth (best known for playing the superhero, Thor) is having the time of his life in this role.

Nor could Kevin be replaced by a sexy lamp. Despite his incompetence as a receptionist, Kevin displays an interesting character with a life independent of the women in the film and undertakes agentful action that affects the plot. Kevin is an actor for whom being a receptionist is his day job, he plays competitive hide and seek, he dabbles in graphic design. He is exaggerated, but rounded.

I’ll admit to being a little uncomfortable with how often other characters comment on Kevin’s handsomeness – this is not, it has to be said, something that men say about other men very often. However, I think that’s kind of the point. As a caricature of how women are frequently shown in film, we see how strange and uncomfortable behaviours are that are completely accepted when directed at women.

I was also uncomfortable with Erin Gilbert’s (Kirsten Wiig) attempts at flirting with Kevin in the workplace. However, in stark contrast to Venkman’s sexual advances towards Dana Barrett in the original, Gilbert’s colleagues call her out on her behaviour and no romantic relationship results from her advances. Sexual harassment is not endorsed or normalised by the film, and that is the key.

Beyond the representation of Kevin, there are a whole host of male characters, each with different personalities. Far from the MRA-nightmare of a film that presents all men as Evil, men have individual personalities, mostly neither good nor evil, just different. Yes, the bad guy is a man, but his representation is no different from the representation of bad guys as alienated loners to be found in umpteen million other films in this genre.

Entertainment Value

Overall, this had everything I wanted from a Ghostbusters film. It was extremely funny. Melissa McCarthy as Abby Yates, Kirsten Wiig as Erin Gilbert, Leslie Jones as Patty Tolan, and Kate McKinnon as Jillian Holtzman were all hilarious in very different ways. I’ll admit that early in the film I found there wasn’t enough to differentiate Yates and Holtzman, who seemed to be competing for enthusiastic maverick, but this swiftly changes as Jillian Holtzman becomes one of the most delightful and unique characters I have had the pleasure of seeing in film. She expresses a wild side quite unlike Abby’s and her dual-wielding proton-pistol fight sequence is a real crowning action moment for the film.

But as well as laughs, action, and the social awkwardness we expect of the loveable outsiders the Ghostbusters should be, the film also delivers genuine scares. The ghosts achieve the otherworldliness of the originals surprisingly well, delivering a higher level of imagination and quality than I expect from modern CGI. I’m rarely actually scared by horror, but I jumped several times in response to spooky goings on I didn’t see coming. Right from the opening sequence the ghosts are frightening and visually captivating.

I had the pleasure of seeing this in 3D at the IMAX, and I would say that if you’re able to watch it in 3D (the medium is not suitable for everyone) it’s worth doing so. This is a film that does 3D well.

Cameos

If you still have any concerns that this film is in some way a snub to the originals, lay them to rest. All of the original team who are still with us make an appearance as a part of a series of delightful cameos – look out for Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Annie Potts, and Ernie Hudson, as well as Sigourney Weaver who appears as part of the credits sequence (which you should definitely stay for). Moreover, Dan Aykroyd was an executive producer of the film. This movie is 100% endorsed by the old crew and for me it felt to be very much in the spirit of the originals.

I thoroughly recommend this film for an evening of fun and guaranteed laughs. Treat yourself!

It’s time to watch films from the 1930s

Klara Novak persuades Mr Matuschek to give her a job. (The Shop Around the Corner.)

This might seem like an odd statement, but it’s never been more true. I’ve been thinking it a lot for the last few years (as those who have read my review of Mr Smith Goes to Washington will know) but a post I read recently on Tumblr galvanised me to write-up the interlinked thoughts on this matter that have been batting around my head.

The post was by Robert Reich, and is called ‘Why there’s no Outcry‘. It’s concerned with a matter that’s been close to my heart, lately: the fact that we know the gap between the rich and the poor is widening at an alarming rate, but we are not responding as we have done in the past, with such things as ‘the Progressive Era or the New Deal or the Great Society‘. The answer, Reich posits, is that groups who have previously engaged in the activism that prompted such reforms are too inhibited by their financial and political restraints to demand the change that is necessary. Reich focuses in particular on the working poor, who are too afraid of losing their jobs, and for most of whom unions no longer have the political clout to seem like a viable ally; and on students, who in the past have had the political freedom, intellectual stimulation, and lack of immediate financial pressure, to allow them to participate in activism in a way working people rarely have the luxury and resources to. The working poor are not unionised, students are hemmed in by debt and fear of being unable to obtain a job with which to pay it off. And all people have had their liberty to protest restricted as our civil liberties are eroded.

Technology also plays into this. Whilst the Internet gives us new avenues to communicate, spread knowledge, voice anger, governments and big business also use it, and increasing surveillance, to monitor us. Speaking up becomes a significant risk. Chillingly, protesters in the Ukraine were recently texted by their government: ‘Dear subscriber, you are registered as a participant in a mass disturbance’. And right now the Ukrainian government is preparing to shut down all access to internet, TV, and telephone to cut off communications with the rest of the world to prevent news of the protests spreading. Meanwhile, Net Neutrality is under threat in the US, and the US government plans another war whilst the victims of Hurricane Katrina still languish in poverty, 8 years on. And, as is noted in that link (attributed to Bryan Pfeifer, but I couldn’t locate the original) most of the ignored victims are people of colour – our social divisions deepen along financial lines as rich white people fail to be interested in plights that largely affect people of colour. It’s hard to ignore the comparison to the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, immortalised in the song ‘When the Levee Breaks’, in which ‘somewhere between 700,000 and 1 million people were displaced’, mostly black people, many of whom were held in concentration camps when they tried to seek refuge elsewhere.

But whilst the similarities to events of the 1920s and 30s abound, our popular media is full of eccentric billionaires and superheroes who right our wrongs in fantastic style, wowing us with showy fights and special effects which offer us nothing that we can turn to in ourselves to fight our struggles with. I love Person of Interest and its evident concern with  surveillance culture, but the answer is not a white billionaire genius computer nerd teaming up with a white super-spy. I’m the first to enjoy a good fantasy, and I love superhero films, but we’re drowning in sedative culture that ignores the pressing concerns of our day to day lives and seeks to make us forget to take our own stands.

As a Jimmy Stewart fan, I sought out a number of his old films simply to watch the great and beautiful man do his thing. What I got was a punch to the gut of people living the experiences we’re feeling right now nearly a century ago. When you mention It’s a Wonderful Life, people think of a feel-good Christmas movie. When you talk about Mr Smith Goes to Washington, you think of a political drama about an Everyman figure fighting the good fight. If you’ve heard of it, then you might think of The Shop Around the Corner as a sappy romance, in a similar vein to its later incarnation You’ve Got Mail. But there are important differences between You’ve Got Mail and The Shop Around the Corner, and these differences chiefly arise because You’ve Got Mail was made in the boom years, where the social pressures of The Shop Around the Corner simply do not apply. Meg Ryan plays a shop owner who is put out of business by the owner of a big chain, but she’s never really in dire financial straights, and neither is he. The stakes are pretty low on both sides. For a film whose premise is to take an old film and try to show that despite changes in technology, things are still pretty much the same, it kind of strikingly misses the point of the original film.

Check it: The Shop Around the Corner starts as Klara Novak (Margaret Sullavan), having been forced to leave a job where she was being sexually harassed, is desperately seeking work at another department store. She approaches Alfred Kralik (Jimmy Stewart), the senior clerk at Matuschek and Company. He’s clearly at the top of his game and a good deal brighter than the store owner, and he tries to let Klara down gently, pointing out that Matuschek & Co. aren’t doing such great business themselves. But Klara gets a lucky break when Mr Matuschek overhears their conversation and is impressed when Klara manages to sell a box that he had disagreed with Kralik over earlier. Klara is hired, but she and Kralik have got off on the wrong foot.

It turns out that Kralik has been engaged in romantic correspondence with a woman he has never met. They arrange to meet, but on the day of their date, Kralik is fired, due to a misunderstanding, and the fact that he’s the only person in the place prepared to stand up to Mr Matuschek. Kralik can’t face keeping his date, but his friend persuades him to go see what the girl looks like anyway. I hope it’s no spoiler to say that it turns out to be Klara. The rest of the plot unfolds as you might expect, with some interesting side plots.

You can already see how economic uncertainty (including how this can be affected by issues like gender) is at the heart of the plot. These are people who are in employment, but still living very much on the edge. Klara is truly brave to leave her former employment after she’s sexually harassed, but doing so leaves her in desperate straights. Both Klara and Kralik are intelligent and self-educated – their meeting of minds is over literature, and Kralik had found Klara’s ad in the classifieds when looking for second hand encyclopedias –  both clearly capable of performing roles much more challenging than those they are employed to perform, and both extremely grateful to be employed at all. Kralik’s bravery in speaking out is noted as rash on several occasions. Kralik’s friend, Pirovitch (Felix Bressart) advises him, gently:

Pirovitch: Kralik, don’t be impulsive, not at a time like this. Not when millions of people are out of work.
Kralik: I can get a job anywhere.
Pirovitch: Can you? Let’s be honest.
Kralik: I’ll take a chance. I’m no coward, you know. I’m not afraid.
Pirovitch: I am. I have a family.
Kralik: Well, I haven’t.
Pirovitch: Think it over. Those were nice letters, weren’t they?

Pirovitch is pointing out that even love has a cost. To speak out is to endanger not only your own health and happiness, but that of those around you. If you lose your job, you can’t support a family, you can’t plan a family, and you become a prospective burden to anyone who might become involved with you. In times of economic hardship, the wise person avoids risks. Maybe money can’t buy you love, but love can certainly leave where the lack of money makes loving too hard.

And it’s no empty warning: we see that Kralik’s intelligence and outspokenness puts him in the firing line when the boss is looking for someone to blame, even though Kralik has been nothing but loyal. He does lose his job, and his boss loses a good worker. But he can afford to do so – there are other good workers who will step up to the plate to fill his place. Of course, this is a romantic comedy, it’s required to have a happy ending, so things work out OK, but every conversation is underwritten with a tension that says that everyone except for Mr Matuschek is living on the edge. And even though Mr Matuschek is basically an OK sort of guy, the extent by which his wealth exceeds those of his workers is striking.

Sure, this is a film about love, but it’s also a film about economics, unfairness, the poverty line, and how this interacts with one’s ability to protest and live a free and independent life.

By the same measure, Mr Smith Goes to Washington isn’t just an underdog film, it’s a film about political corruption, the power of the state and big business to destroy anyone who dares to protest; it’s about media control and the control of education and the right of children of all races to have freedom to learn in a positive environment, and how rich white men will not only take that away without thinking, they will fight viciously, and they will win if we do not have laws in place to prevent it and a populace knowledgeable, willing, and brave enough to make use of those laws.

Similarly, It’s a Wonderful Life isn’t just a tale about how an angel gets his wings by helping a good man see how the world is a better place with him in it. It shows how reckless and selfish bankers can ruin hundreds of lives and leave unfortunate ordinary people to take the consequences in their place. It’s a film about hardship and desperation before the happy ending, and how good people can be driven to take their own lives by economic hardship. And it’s a film about how we need to stand together in difficult times against the rich and privileged who would throw us under a bus.

I don’t know how we get out of this state we have allowed this world to get into, but what I do know is that we have faced these issues before and found a way out the other side. So maybe it would do us some good to watch the films we made the last time around.

Review: Prometheus

Title: Prometheus
Cinematic Release: 2012
Starring: Noomi Rapace, Guy Pearce, Idris Elba, Logan Marshall-Green, Charlize Theron, and Michael Fassbender
Written by: Jon Spaihts and Damon Lindelof
Directed by: Sir Ridley Scott

There has been an awful lot of hype about this movie. There have been rumours both that it is an Alien prequel, and that it is not. I’ve tried to avoid all of it. I wasn’t even sure that I wanted to see it after I heard Michael Fassbender was in it. This is not because of his acting ability – I thought he was excellent as Magneto – but rather because of the allegations that he broke his girlfriend’s nose and burst an ovarian cyst whilst dragging her alongside a car.

Ultimately the charges were dropped, as so often happens where a Hollywood star is involved, and I can’t find anything but rumours as to why. There are reports that she dropped the charges because she didn’t want to hurt his career (she later got back together with him), and (as far as my Google-fu can tell) unsubstantiated rumours that she was just making the accusation for the money, and that she had ‘done it before’ – i.e. accused another famous boyfriend of beating her up. I’m always curious when a woman is beaten up by two different men and it’s cast as her doing something before. Doing what, exactly? Getting beaten up? Daring to take the matter to court? If she was doing it for the money, she doesn’t seem to have got anything out of it. And while I know that women who are attracted to a certain type of man will make the mistake of following that attraction more than once, and even go back to a man who has beaten them, I can’t for the life of me see why a man would go back to a woman who had wrongfully accused him of beating her if there was no truth to the charges.

It’s a quandary. I believe in ‘innocent until proven guilty’, but I know that even proven guilty men are treated as innocent in Hollywood. Chris Brown beat Rihanna in a really quite horrific way. He turned himself in and was judged guilty of this crime. This year he was invited to present the Grammys, and the Grammys explained their decision as being that they felt they were the victims because they hadn’t been able to use him for a few years. This is a man who was convicted of an incredibly violent beating.

In most ordinary circumstances it is difficult for women to have their stories believed in cases of domestic violence; in Hollywood the industry feels victimised when confronted by the moral failings of its stars and the woman is blamed for bringing ill-repute on the man. Which is why I wouldn’t be surprised if pressure was applied to Leasi Andrews to hush up, and hence why I don’t want to support Michael Fassbender by going to see movies that he is in, and why I find it a little disturbing to see people gushing over him.

So. I wasn’t sure I wanted to see Prometheus, despite the hype. But then I saw the trailer, and I had to admit that it looked like it was going to be a significant cinematic event. And I reflected on the fact that this is a film by Ridley Scott. Ridley Scott gave me Thelma and Louise and the incandescently iconic Ripley from the original Alien films. If you haven’t read the incredibly powerful article ‘Ellen Ripley Saved My Life’, by Sady Doyle, you need to correct that. Because Ridley Scott doesn’t simply create and enable feminist icons, he makes films that have a powerful impact on real women’s lives, and if he had produced another work in the same vein as the Alien films that looked like it might be as powerful and beautiful as the trailer convinced me this film could be, I wanted to see it. Michael Fassbender is just one actor. He wasn’t convicted of anything. Did I really want to condemn the work of all the other actors, and of Ridley Scott because of what one man might have done? If Ridley was prepared to use this actor, shouldn’t I be prepared to watch this film?

I don’t know. It still feels a bit like I’m making excuses for compromising my morals. If you scroll down to the bottom of that link I gave you on the Chris Brown thing, you can see from the comments I add that I’ve struggled with this before with other actors I liked about whom nothing has been proven. I guess my compromise is to go see the film, and then review it, presenting all my qualms and leaving you to draw your own conclusions. Comments will be disabled on this post because I suspect that any debate about Mr Fassbender will be along similar lines to what I have seen repeatedly in looking into discussions of this elsewhere on the net. I just wanted to make this better known, as the net has been unusually quiet on this one.

But for now, let us set that behind us and discuss the film itself:

Plot

Two scientists, Elizabeth Shaw (Rapace) and Charlie Holloway (Marshall-Green), discover ancient artifacts from disparate ancient civilisations from around the world that they believe are an invitation from aliens who created life on Earth. Their evidence is apparently compelling enough to convince a vastly wealthy company to commission a mission to go to the place indicated by the cave paintings and see what’s there. The head of the company, Peter Weyland (Pearce), is an old man, and dying, and he wants to fund a mission so that mankind can go talk to their makers.

Everyone on the mission goes into stasis for the two years it takes to get there. Except, that is, for David (Fassbender), who is a robot created by the man who heads the company. When they reach their destination he wakes everyone up and they go down to the planet to see what can be seen. What they find are the apparently deserted ruins of a ‘pyramid’. As David has been learning the languages of all the ancient civilisations that contained the markers that led them here, he can now read the language of these ancient aliens by working out what their symbols mean. Using this ability he is able to trigger a holographic projection which leads them to a dead alien body – the alien was decapitated by a closing door. Entering the room they find a massive humanoid stone head surrounded by metallic objects that are totally-not-alien-eggs.

Yeah, there’s no way this is an Alien prequel

Everything looks pretty dead inside this tomb-like pyramid, but David notices that by opening the room they have changed the atmosphere, and the surface of the totally-not-alien-eggs starts to change in response. Before they can investigate further, a powerful storm draws the crew back to the ship… except for Milburn (Rafe Spall) and Fifield (Sean Harris), who are stranded in the pyramid, which is maybe not quite as dead as it first appeared…

How was it?

I have to admit, Prometheus impressed me. Part of it was just that I haven’t seen a proper science-fiction movie in so long. I love me some superhero films, but I miss the part of me that used to get inspired to dream about space and other worlds. I’m not sure I’ve seen a film that was really trying for science-fiction in this way since Moon, and I have to say, just like Moon it was very pretty. This was grown up CGI. CGI that doesn’t even look like CGI, but is taking us to other worlds, freeing us from planet Earth. I suppose the other major contender of recent years would be Avatar, but in its constant bright, sunny colours, Avatar lacked the gritty, visual realism-combined-with-wonder of Moon and Prometheus.

That said, I’m not going to stress the realism point beyond the visuals. My geek-film-buddy, Lee Harris, was much less impressed by the film than I was, and I think I can understand why. In terms of themes and big ideas, this was science fiction, but the actual science was pretty light. The trouble with doing a prequel (or prequel-like-film) is that you are constrained by the existing set-up. There is no room for the advances we have made in computing to be reflected in the vision of AI presented to us. David is fixed in the same vogue as Bishop and Ash, and in fact condemned to being an earlier model. He therefore maintains a sort of aloofness and affected lack of emotion that no longer seems plausible.

I’m not prejudging the matter of whether robots really could feel emotion (my personal feeling is yes, but the matter is still hotly debated) but rather how well they might perform it. Anyone who has ever messed around with a chatbot will know that whilst they can still sometimes be hilarious in their mistakes, they’re also based on programs that learn from those they interact with. They therefore work on a principle that allows them to seem increasingly like us, and not therefore distanced by an artificial aloofness. The idea that a computer as advanced as David clearly is would not thus be able to perform human behaviour and emotions more seamlessly than he does is simply ludicrous in 2012 in a way that it wasn’t in the 80s. Not that there aren’t hints that David does have emotions despite what everyone says, but his performance of them is still marked by an attempt to project ‘otherness’ that I don’t find wholly convincing. This is not, incidentally, a knock at Fassbender – it’s a part of the writing, and I’m pretty much sure it was a directorial decision as well.

Which brings me to another point. The technology required to produce a being like David… maybe we’ll have it before the century is out, but the tech to get us to other worlds? No. The technology that fills this film is simply too far in advance of our own. I wish I could say I thought we’d see it in my lifetime, but in all honesty, I don’t believe it.

The other major split with realism comes towards the end of the film, so this will be slightly spoilery, but I don’t feel I can adequately review some of the most significant aspects of the film without covering it. Basically, there is an instance of alien impregnation. The protagonist is having none of that, however, and manages to haul herself into an automated surgical machine (one designed solely for use on the male body, no less) and gets it to perform an abortion on her by telling it to remove the foreign body. Nevermind that her whole womb would be a foreign body on a man – let’s assume she’s a computer wiz and knew just what to input to prevent such a mistake. Having had abdominal surgery, after which the wound is sealed by staples, she fights off the surprisingly deadly alien that had been ripped prematurely from her body, struggles out of the room, and, dosed up on painkillers, manages to run, jump, fight, abseil – basically everything that is required of an action hero, for the rest of the movie. The actor, to her credit, does a pretty ace job of acting like this really fucking hurts, but you can’t get around the fact that it seems unlikely that she would have been able to stand, let alone walk or run, so soon after such an operation.

I’m in two minds on this last point. On the one hand, it’s laughably implausible. But on the other, I wonder if it would seem so if she were a male action hero. Male action heroes routinely suffer injuries that should leave them out for the count, and yet they go on to save the day – usually with less honest expression of pain than Noomi Rapace delivers. There’s a part of me that’s kind of cheering to see such a bold statement that simple possession of a womb and the ability to get pregnant does not render a person weak and helpless. Of course, Ripley was a more believable illustration of this, but I also appreciate the counterpoint to the backtracking that seemed to place all Ripley’s strength in a mothering instinct in Aliens. Elizabeth Shaw is a character who does want children, but she acts quickly to get the abortion she needs to survive. With the sort of draconian legislation that has been proposed in the US recently to further remove the power women have over their own bodies, such a bold pro-choice statement is actually pretty welcome. A few years ago I might have wondered if something that drastic was really necessary, but given the breathtaking attitudes expressed in the link above I kind of feel like the symbolic sledgehammer might have a role at this place and time on this issue.

Props should also be given (and with fewer qualms) to Charlize Theron and her portrayal of Meredith Vickers. Vickers is tough, commanding, and capable of burning a man alive if that is what’s necessary to save her team. Yet she is not frigid or unattractive as such female characters are so often portrayed. She is allowed to have a sexuality, but she does not need to use her sexuality to control her male subordinates. It slightly grated that Janek had to ‘educate’ her in asking for sex if that’s what she wanted, but this was slightly alleviated when her decision to follow his suggestion is given as a command for him to come to her quarters at a place and time of her choosing.

I also appreciated the racial diversity in this film. It’s a rare thing to have a female action hero who is not sexualised up the wazoo, it’s rarer still to have a female, mixed-race protagonist. Although the cast is still predominantly white, the inclusion of Idris Elba as another prominent character and Benedict Wong in a supporting role still help to make this a more racially mixed movie than your average Hollywood blockbuster.

The other major facet of this film was an exploration of religious belief. Unfortunately, this was not as well-developed as I would have liked. Although other belief-systems are mentioned in passing, the only religion any of the characters express any devotion to is Christianity. The over-arching message seemed to slightly awkwardly equate hope and religious belief (especially Christianity). Whilst I wouldn’t put Prometheus on a par with Signs for heavy-handed religious symbolism, the film was clearly attempting to evoke deep questioning here, and, for me anyway, only achieved something fairly shallow. There was a gesture towards a discussion about the relationship between religious belief and the human drive to seek answers in a universe that rarely gives them, but the narrow focus on Christianity artificially limited the bounds of that discussion. Equally, although a few characters in the film professed atheism, this was too often equated with not wanting answers, or with giving up, which, as an atheist philosopher, I find bizarre and a little offensive. Religion is not the only place human beings have turned to in search of answers for the ‘big’ questions about where we have come from, what life means, and how we should live. In a film called ‘Prometheus‘, which frequently underscores the fact that the fact that aliens might have created human beings, there is surprisingly little substance to its discussion of what this might mean for human belief systems, and the focus on Christianity, to the extent of making it happen at Christmas oddly polarised the debate, as though Christianity and a cold, empty atheism were the only options.

That said, I still give it props for trying. My hope is that this film will give other film makers the jolt they need to start thinking about what we can do with science fiction again. We have the technology to make it look pretty, but that shouldn’t be an excuse to just keep giving bigger and bigger budgets to films that just roll out the familiar tropes against a backdrop of very pretty scenery. Take us to other worlds and use that to make us consider other ways of viewing our world. That’s what I love science fiction for, and I have to give Prometheus some respect for bringing that to our screens again.

Prometheus: it’s worth your time. At the very least, it’s extremely pretty.

Reviewing Through the Time Machine: The Glass Slipper

Title: The Glass Slipper
Cinematic release: 1955
Starring: Leslie Caron and Michael Wilding
Written by: Helen Deutsch
Directed by: Charles Walters
Genre: Fairytale/Fantasy/Romance
Price: Only available on VHS. Available on eBay at time of posting at £15.75 + £11.49 P&P

It may seem a bit ludicrous to review a film you can’t even buy on a format most people would watch, these days, but that’s kind of why I feel it’s important to include these glimpses into the past, reminding us of treasures that ought to be a part of our heritage, whether the big distributors think they should be or not. And anyway, how does one create a demand for the production of great old films in DVD format if nobody talks about them? I’m glad I have my old VHS tape, but I would buy this on DVD, and I’d exhort others to do so, too.

The Glass Slipper is an absolute classic. It is still my favourite Cinderella story film – over Ever After; over Pretty Woman; and certainly over Disney’s Cinderella, released just five years earlier than The Glass Slipper itself. It melds qualities dreamlike and suitably fairytale with a tone of wry subversion that respects and updates the source material in equal measure.

The plot does not deviate greatly from the traditional tale, but its exploration is more subtle, with more of a care for psychological realism than most. Ella is the daughter of a rich man who remarried after her mother died, before passing on himself. Her stepmother and step-sisters use her as a servant, refusing her equal standing and treatment on the premise that she is bad-tempered and dirty, even though she is only bad-tempered and dirty because they use her so ill. The narrator explains. ‘She was not precisely an amiable child… It was the old story of the rejected becoming all the more rejected because they had behaved badly because they had been rejected – one of those, err, circles… And there it was again. The heat of tears burning behind the eyes… a few more years and she will stop fighting back’.

Oh, does that ever ring true. Not that I was neglected by my parents, but I was bullied because I didn’t behave in the ways considered ‘normal’, and so I became bad-tempered, and was bullied all the more for being bad-tempered and ‘anti-social’. After a while it does kick the fight out of you. It becomes clear that shouting and fighting and speaking up for yourself does no good, and so you become quiet and ‘docile’. It’s a theme any child could identify with – everything that doesn’t go your way seems unfair as a child, but I identify with it all the more in retrospect. Somethings are genuinely unfair, but one’s complaints are taken for childish peevishness, and ignored. So it starts to seem hopeless. Why continue to cry out if your voice is never heard?

That’s when depression hits. Whether the initial fire is extinguished or directed inwards, all external action comes to feel fruitless. If the world is deaf enough, unresponsive enough, eventually even the strongest spirits collapse, stop trying to change it. In a sense, it’s almost worse to be strong-willed in such a case, for if you stick stubbornly to your principles and what you believe is fair you can’t bring yourself to adapt to the world and enjoy it for what it is. You perceive only the bleakness of what is wrong, and the impossibility of setting it right.

It’s a complex motif, simply expressed, which a person of any race, gender, background, sexuality etc. etc. can identify with, but I do feel it would be wrong to neglect the implicit feminist critique in this archetypal tale of female aspiration in the face of limitations placed on women both by society as a whole, and by other women who have internalised society’s rules and oppressive habits. I cannot help but be reminded of this theme, following my reading, today, of this interesting reflection on the way boisterousness and ‘bad behaviour’ is treated when exhibited by men as opposed to women, as exemplified in the recent kerfuffle prompted by Christopher Priest’s comments on the Clarke Award. I wasn’t convinced by yuki_onna’s argument at first. I’ve seen men shout offensive remarks at one another on the Internet, after all, they hardly go uncriticised. And it’s not as though no woman’s critical comments are considered by some to be of worth even if they also receive harsh objections… but as she went on, I realised she’s right. If I have seen men threatened with rape for daring to voice their opinion it has happened so rarely that it left no impression. And I can’t help but recognise in myself the caveat after caveat I attach to even the most mildly worded critique on the net if I think it is likely to be at all controversial. This is not because I’m naturally timid – my parents took me to a child psychologist because of fighting at school (incidentally, the psychologist judged me completely healthy, at that stage of my life – I fought because I was provoked). In the past I have been described as ‘scary’, because of my forthrightness of opinion and boisterous attitude. I don’t think anyone would say that now, and there’s a very good reason for that: I’ve been worn down. I am tired. I don’t want to be called scary for voicing my opinion without lowering my eyes and apologising first. Behaviour that is normal and accepted in boys and men is pathologised and ostracised in girls and women (even if medical professionals can tell the difference, nowadays, the rest of the world has some catching up to do).

Incidentally, I’m not just going off on one, honest. Although the film treats the subject gently and with unintrusive grace, the feminist critique is undoubtedly intended. One of the most wonderful aspects of the film is the ‘fairy godmother’, Mrs Tuquet. She is a woman who has been ostracised by society herself for reading books, which Ella’s stepmother says led her to go from ‘bad to worse’. Although her behaviour is a bit strange, she seems nonetheless intelligent and kind. For example, when they first meet, she comforts Ella by gently defusing her anger at the way she has been treated, reducing the insulting corruption of her name to a mere word – showing Ella how to hear it only as sounds, sounds which can be musical or funny independently of their intended meaning: ‘”Cinderella”,’ she says, ‘I like it very much. There are other words I like very much, like “windowsill” and “elbow”… el-bow… and I like “apple-dumpling”, too – it’s a comical word’. My early attempts at self-preservation followed very much this path: if society won’t accept you, accept that you are strange and take pleasure in the freedom that can be found in being defined as different. Once you’re labelled as different it is hard to impose upon you the rules that apply to those who are still within reach of the cherished title of ‘normal’.

I think that's her real waist, guys - she actually does ballet in that corset!

Mrs Tuquet seems content in her ways, and yet though she has been content to adopt the reclusive, excentric lifestyle for herself she wants both happiness and acceptance for Ella. Her interventions in Ella’s life are not simply the traditional ‘makeover’ role of the fairy-godmother, revealing the beautiful, normal-looking girl under the ashes. When she asks Ella why she goes about as she does, and Ella petulantly declares that she doesn’t care what people think of her, Mrs Tuquet responds ‘Well, there’s nothing wrong with that, but there’s no excuse for scaring people’. Of course, Ella is beautiful (one could hardly disguise Leslie Caron’s dancer’s physique), and she will receive a beautiful gown and a brush up and she will be acclaimed as a great beauty at the ball – this is a Cinderella story, after all – but the film makes a valiant effort to draw the fine line between beauty in confidence and conformity in beauty. Again, I identify strongly with both Ella and Mrs Tuquet, here. My mother and sister never understood my insistence in wearing baggy T-shirts, shunning make-up, refusing to brush my hair, and so forth; and the more they tried to force me to conform, the wilder I became. Of course, I was completely right to wear only what made me feel comfortable, but not brushing my hair and failing to use deodorant were not, upon reflection, all that valuable a form of protest.

Another fun aspect of Mrs Tuquet is that it’s never quite clear just how much of a fairy-godmother she is. She appears to be an ordinary woman, and she’s certainly never referred to as a fairy. She is known about the village as a sort of harmless thief. She steals things, but she always gives them back. The shenanigans she construes to enable Ella’s attendance of the ball appear to be a combination of theivery (stealing the dress) and calling in of favours (persuading the coachmen to do an extra run for Ella)… and yet, at the end, as she walks off, Mrs Tuquet simply fades away. I’m usually somewhat bored by the ‘is it or isn’t it’ style plot, but in this case, I approve. The suggestion is pretty strong that Mrs Tuquet is in some sense magical, yet nothing she does to help Ella amounts to something impossible for a real woman to do. In this way, Ella is not robbed by her achievement. The prince falls in love with the dirty, spirited, rude girl, and Mrs Tuquet merely facilitates their coming together, providing the opportunity for their love to flourish, and prompting Ella towards a more mature outlook that will enable her to forge her own place in the world, rather than simply handing her illusory baubles with which to attract a man.

I also like that the film openly explores the emptiness of Cinderella’s ambitions and dreams as expressed in the traditional tale. Ella has been told a prophecy, that one day she will live in the palace, but when Mrs Tuquet asks her what she will do in the palace she hasn’t a clue. And later, when she fantasises about it, even her daydream descends into a sort of boredom. I remember being puzzled by this scene as a child. The vision of the palace seemed artificially stale and empty I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to get from it. I now realise, of course, that that was the point: a nebulous dream of having wealth bestowed abruptly upon one is artificial and empty, baring no concept of what in such a life would bring happiness. And once Mrs Tuquet’s questions have gently nudged her towards such a realisation, Ella’s mischievous curiosity causes her own day-dream to come tumbling down:

This is one of three dream-ballet sequences, all bar the last of which somewhat puzzled me as a child. I understood that they were dreams or fantasies (I think), but the sudden interjection of ballet into a live-action piece was striking, despite my ready acceptance of random singing and dancing in musicals and the odder flights of fancy one met with in the average Disney film of the period (pink elephants on parade, anyone?). I’m not sure this was to the film’s detriment. I found such sequences fascinating fodder for the imagination, although I don’t think I ever really understood the middle sequence as a child.

In this dream Ella believes the man she met in the woods is the son of the cook in the palace of the duke (he is, of course, the prince himself!), and her fantasy is easily converted and happily filled with thoughts of being not only a cook’s wife, but a valuable part of the kitchen staff. Far from disappointed that the prophecy might mean that she would merely work at the palace, Ella’s dream is enlivened now that she can see a role for herself within that world.

But the real prize is the final sequence, where Ella has finally discovered the truth of the prince’s identity and believes that he is promised to marry a foreign princess (a rumour started by her own enigmatic presence at the ball). The passion expressed by the lead performers elevates this ballet sequence from mere dance to true art:

I was swept up by the romance of this film as a child. For me, it was the correct Cinderella. I am ever so glad to see that it has stood the test of time. If only it were available on DVD.

Soldier’s Girl – A Review for Transgender Day of Remembrance

Today is International Transgender Day of Remembrance – a day to remember all those who have been killed due to hate and prejudice directed against transgendered people. I know a number of transgendered people – some who attained physical unity with the gender they identify with long before I knew them, some who are in transition, some who have only recently come out as struggling with their gender identity. Some have opened up to me about their experiences and difficulties, for some it has never been a significant aspect of our relationship – simply a fact about their physical past. I hope that none of my friends have suffered violent attack because of this issue, but I don’t know that that’s true. I do know that they have endured unpleasant verbal reactions from those around them, often from people who do not realise how hurtful the things they are saying are, as they have never had to struggle with the way their gender relates to their sex, and prove resistant to anything that threatens their paradigm of normality which is based on that sense of identity.

I watched Soldier’s Girl earlier this year because I was on a Lee Pace hit, but the film ended up being so much more significant than that. It’s based on a heartbreaking true story, which you can read about here. I’m wary of writing too much about transgender issues from the ‘outside’. I have a number of issues with my body and with how my gender is regarded, but at the end of the day I self-identify as a heterosexual woman, i.e. the sex I was born. I don’t want to make any gross generalisations about things that I can’t know from the inside. So, instead, to mark this day of remembrance I wanted to review this film, which brought home to me the horror of the reality of violent prejudice that still exists in our supposedly enlightened society.

Title: Soldier’s Girl
TV Release: 2003
Staring: Troy Garity, Lee Pace
Written by: Ron Nyswaner
Directed by: Frank Pierson
Genre: Drama/true story
Awards: 15 awards, including 2 Emmys and 3 Golden Globes

Note: this review contains spoilers as a matter of necessity. The film is based around a real event which functions as the film’s climax, I’m therefore operating under the assumption that you, like me, will know its content going into the film, and that this is unlikely to spoil your enjoyment.

Plot

Barry Winchell (Troy Garity) is a private in the US army. He falls in love with a transsexual showgirl named Calpernia Adams (Lee Pace) after his roommate, Justin Fisher (Shawn Hatosy) takes him to the club where she performs. As their relationship grows Justin spreads rumours about them at the army base, out of what appears to be a mixture of jealousy and discomfort at the fact that Calpernia is transgendered. Justin appears both attracted to and repulsed by transgendered women. When drunk he seems open to treating them as sexual objects, but the idea of Barry having a romantic relationship with Calpernia does not sit well with him.

Most other people on the base seem inclined to respect the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy of the US army. They seem to disapprove of Justin’s stirring, and seem to respect Barry’s privacy. But not everyone is so sanguine. Justin finds a susceptible ear in Calvin Glover, who seems prone to violence and highly impressionable. At the 4th of July celebration, the same night that Calpernia is competing in the Tennessee Entertainer of the Year Pageant, Justin goads Calvin into beating Barry to death.

Thoughts

This is a powerful movie, most of all because it treats its subject matter with such sensitivity. Calpernia Adams was consulted in the production, and I find that deeply reassuring. It is such a sensitive issue that I would have felt rather uncomfortable about it if the film had been made to sensationalise the issue with no reference to the real people who were involved and lived these events.

Truly, I was shocked to hear that a man had been beaten to death little more than a decade ago for having a relationship with a transgendered woman. I suppose I shouldn’t have been, but I was. For that reason alone, I feel that this is an important film – to educate people like me.

I was also impressed with the nuanced level at which the issues are handled. It would have been very, very easy to present Justin Fisher and Calvin Glover as inhuman monsters or stock bullies. But they are not presented as such. Justin has ADHD and learning difficulties, which Barry helps him with. It is clear that they are friends, despite the difficult aspects of their relationship. One of the problems that Justin has is that he forgets to take his medicine and is prone to extremes of emotion when he drinks in combination with his meds. Glover is clearly a troubled boy who is easily led by anyone who gives him attention. He latches on to Justin as a sort of hero, and is presented as beating on Barry in an attempt to impress him. The impression is given that neither man intended to kill Barry – that Glover simply got carried away. The event is no less horrific for this fact.

What’s more, by treating the military with sympathy, the film opens the issues out for us to consider that the more sympathetic aspects of the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy are also complicit in allowing crimes like this to occur. Although few characters in the film show active homophobia or transphobia, the policy of not talking about the issue means that Justin and Glover are not checked or confronted in a way they otherwise would be.

I was also deeply impressed with Lee Pace’s performance. I already respected him as an actor, but above and beyond the delight he has given me in other films and TV shows, I admire him for taking this role and performing it with both nuance and passion. Because this is not simply a story about a terrible tragedy. It is also a love story, and the story of a transgendered woman embarking on a romance with a straight man. Her anxieties about his acceptance of her, or that he might regard her simply as an experiment before going back to ‘normality’, are as powerful as they are understated.

I really can’t recommend this film highly enough, and it seemed appropriate to recommend it to you today – a day of remembrance for those who have suffered and been killed as a result of ignorance of and prejudice towards transgendered people.

Captain America: The First Avenger

I know I owe you guys another Read Along with Rhube, but I can’t keep it inside any longer: this film was so good. All the squee I had for X-Men: First Class, plus some more, with none of the race and gender issues. If you haven’t already seen this film in the cinema, do it now.

Plot:

Somewhere in the present day Arctic circle a mysterious and oddly shaped plane is uncovered.

Somewhere in Norway, in 1942, Johann Schmidt (Hugo Weaving) and his team of Nazis invade what looks like a monastery to steal a mysterious artifact.

In lots of places around New York at the same time Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), a short, skinny man with asthma, is getting rejected from the military again and again. Steve is a nice guy who never backs away from a fight, wants to do his duty, and is mysteriously unable to get women. He’s ‘Hollywood Homely’, in other words – i.e. he’s actually not a dickhead and he’s still really good-looking, but because he’s going to become an enormous stud-muffin we have to pretend for a bit that he can’t get women.

Anyway. On a double-date with his successful military friend, Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), Steve is effectively ignored by the friend of Bucky’s date he’s supposed to be with. So he goes off to try and enlist again, as you do. Bucky realises he’s missing and catches up to go ‘WTF, man, we’re on a date!’ and whilst Steve is going on about how much he wants to help the war effort, Dr. Abraham Erskine (Stanley Tucci) overhears, and decides to help Rogers enlist by getting him into his special program.

Rogers doesn’t know what Erskine has planned, but when in training test after test reveals that Steve is both smart and a nice guy, Erskine decides that this is his man. During the testing period, Steve also meets Colonel Chester Phillips (Tommy Lee Jones) and the awesome Agent Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell). Despite his supposed dweebiness, Peggy seems to quite like Steve – probably because she’s neither blind nor an idiot, and he’s blatantly a really nice guy.

So, Steve is chosen for Erskine’s experiment and gets turned into the massive stud-muffin we all expected from the trailers. Unfortunately, a spy for Schmidt somehow got into the room, kills Erskine, and manages to destroy all the serum in the process. It seems that Schmidt was an early experiment of Erskine’s, but because Schmidt was a Bad Man, the serum only made him worse (apparently working on the same theory as ‘only bad witches are ugly’). Rather than an army of supermen, the US now has only Steve, and the program is cancelled. Steve becomes little more than a mascot, ‘Captain America’, shipped around the country with dancing-girls to promote the war effort.

Unsurprisingly, when he’s sent abroad to entertain the troops he’s rather less well received by men who have been fighting and dying in the field whilst he’s been prancing around on stage. As this was never what Steve wanted to do when he was trying to join the army, he’s pretty depressed by this. When he learns that a large number of men, including his friend Bucky, have been captured by Schmidt, Steve decides he can’t sit back and do nothing anymore. With Peggy’s help, he sets off on a one man mission to save the day… and succeeds.

After this success the army sits up and takes notice of him again, and agrees that he can head a team to launch an attack on Schmidt and his organisaton, Hydra, which has broken off from the main Nazi party. Because everyone now agrees that Captain America is properly awesome, Steve is allowed to choose his own men. Of course, he chooses Bucky, as well as a pleasingly mixed race crew of men he freed from Schmidt’s base.

The rest, I’ll leave to your imagination.

How good was it?

This film was so good it was practically erotic. I never really fancied Chris Evans before, but, umm, yeah. Forget whatever rom-com you were thinking of – if you want a date night movie, take your lady/man to see this. Adrenaline + hardbodies = win.

And let’s just give a shout-out to the special effects crew. Watching the trailers I was genuinely curious about whether they used one man or two for their weedy-dude to stud-muffin transformation. It was Chris Evans throughout. The only draw-back was that the voice was slightly off throughout the weedy-Steve scenes. I wouldn’t have thought it mattered, but you could tell it was the voice of a man with a much bigger chest, and it was distracting – not least because I was trying to figure out whether this was a dubbing or effects issue, because I didn’t know if it was the same actor or not. Hopefully I have freed some of you from this by letting you know what I did not.

Apart from the effects and the phaw, though, this was a thoroughly excellent movie throughout. If you’d told me two years ago that Captain America would be up there with my favourite superhero movies of all time I would have been extremely sceptical. This was probably the movie I was looking forward to least of all the Avengers movies. I always thought Captain America was the most ridiculous and least appealing of all superheroes. Sounds like a big, butch, ‘isn’t America wonderful and patriarchal’ vehicle. He also had the dorkiest of all superhero costumes – running around with a freakin’ flag on his chest. Of course, Captain America was originally designed as a propaganda device, so it’s really unsurprising that that’s how he was, but updating him into something plausible and entertaining for the twenty-first century was going to be a real challenge.

And they achieved it. They really did. I gather from my more comics-informed cinema-going companion, Lee Harris, that the weedy-dude underdog aspect wasn’t a part of the original story, which makes it a really smart trick for the movie. This is what saves the picture and transforms it. Instead of taking a jock and just making him more jock-like and launching him on the world to enforce American values, they gave us an everyman figure who’s just a fundamentally nice guy who wants to do his bit in any way he can. He can still go forth as an ideological symbol, but it’s a subtle shift that makes him much more palatable. I also liked the fact that he’s chosen because Erskine, who is not American, identifies with the values that Steve holds dear – not as American values, but as a universal marker of decency. He likes Steve not because he’s ‘All American’ but because he doesn’t like bullies, and because he’s prepared to fight bullies even if he knows he doesn’t have a hope in Hell. It opens the figure out for the rest of the world to make him their own, which is a really difficult thing to do for a character called Captain America.

I also adore Peggy Carter. There’s not a lot of room, in the setting, for believable strong female characters, but they pull it off in a way that X-men: First Class, which had much more room for maneuver, did not entirely succeed. Peggy doesn’t need to be super-powered to kick-ass. She just shows herself to be calm, determined, and a phenomenal shot. When Steve knocks her out of the way of the car Schmidt’s spy is driving at her it’s pretty clear that she actually would have had the bugger if Steve hadn’t got in her way. No martial arts or super-strength required for this lady to kick-ass. What’s more, there were female agents working in the war. There weren’t as many as the men, not by a long shot, but it’s entirely plausible that a character such as Peggy would exist.

I also liked the racial diversity of Captain America’s team. Up until that point in the film my one big reservation was how white it was. I still think the general crowd scenes and the recruitment offices could have been a bit more mixed, but it was awesome to see that Steve selected an African-American and an Asian-American amongst those for his elite team. I gather that this actually reflects the comics, too, which is rockin’, but I also enjoy the treatment of them in the film. Granted, it probably glosses over the racial tensions such a decision probably would have aroused, but this is a long film with a lot going on – it wouldn’t have been possible to cover this in any depth anyway. Plus, there’s an extent to which it’s nice to have non-white people join a group of heroes and have it not be made a fuss of. They’re just the dudes Steve recognised as being awesome. They’re not exceptional for being black or asian, they’re exceptional as people. After what happened to the black and latina characters in X-men: First Class, it was something of a relief.

Overall, this is a truly well-constructed, fast-paced, and engaging action movie that not only treats its source material with respect, but updates it for the tastes of the modern audience. The love story is nice, but under-stated. Steve Rogers is a thoroughly likeable character. I like what it does for race and gender. I’m slightly annoyed with the ‘being bad makes you ugly’ angle (and the implication that only beautiful people are good), but I’m not sure there was a great deal they could do about that without ditching the Red Skull/Schmidt character completely. This film has an absolutely fantastic cast, and they are all bringing it to the table with both wit and poignancy. The special effects are great, and so is the cinematography.

I can’t wait for the Avengers movie – I want more Captain America now.

(P.S. you definitely need to stay after the credits. It’s AWESOME.)

Knights of Badassdom: Geek Gods go LARP

Am I getting YouTube happy this weekend? I don’t know, but what I do know is that some of the most awesome Geek Gods of the Small Screen are coming together to make a movie about LARP (Live Action Role-Play) Gone Wrong. And by Geek Gods, I mean:

Peter Dinklage (Tyrion Lannister, Game of Thrones)
Summer Glau (River, Firefly and Serenity; Cameron, The Sarah Connor Chronicles)
Danni Pudi (Abed, Community)
Ryan Kwanten (Jason, True Blood)

Not a bad line-up, I got to say! As a former LARPer myself I am dead excited to see this. Some of you on Twitter may have noted my frequent little geek-gasms when episodes of Game of Thrones looked just like the world’s most AWESOME LARP. So I’m especially excited to see this, especially as Peter Dinklage is in it, and you know I have the Dinklage love. I’m also hoping we see some kickassery from Glau – I mean, you would, wouldn’t you?

My only negative point from that trailer is that there aren’t enough women. I know I sound like a broken record, but then, films feel like a broken record to me on this issue, so I’ve decided to resign myself to being boring on it until the world stops being boring at me about it. And, believe me, I’m aware that there are still more men than women in many geekish events, including LARP, but as a lady who has LARPed, I gotta say that the ratio at least feels more like 60/40 than the 90/10 I had an impression of from the trailer.

Don’t get me wrong, it looks like the film is still doing better than most movies, but when you (from the looks of things) have five main characters only one of which is female… Summer Glau starts to feel like the token badass chick. And when you toke her out in nerdbait sexy-knight gear… yes, it reflects a reality, but only one portion of it. I have known hot LARP ladies who are both hard (in-game and out) and like to show skin. To those ladies, I say: rock on! But I’ve known plenty of other ladies who play… well, as wide a wealth of characters as the men do, with no reflection on their relative hotness.

But hey, it’s a trailer, who knows what the actual film shows. Overall, the ratio of people points towards diversity: more women than most films (despite the problems mentioned above), looks like possibly a guy in a wheelchair kicking ass (although that might just be a motorised chariot), not an entirely white cast (although not reaching the diversity levels of Community, which brought Danni Pudi to fame), and Dinklage bringing it in for actors of a shorter stature.

I’m looking forward to it. Great to see more geek culture hitting our screens and showing itself up as a part of the many-facetedness of life, rather than a freaky fringe. Hussar!

[Edit:] You know? On my seventh rewatching, there are actually quite a lot of ladies in the background. I think my point about the leads and how they’ve dressed and shot Summer Glau stands, but overall balance of the film may not be so bad.

Possession

Title: Possession
Release: 2009
Starring: Sarah Michelle Geller and Lee Pace
Written by: Michael Petroni and Won-mi Byun
Directed by: Joel Bergvall and Simon Sandquist
Genre: Psychological Thriller
Price: Available from Amazon Marketplace from £5.78 at time of posting (only available in Region 1)

Plot: Jess (Sarah Michelle Geller) and Ryan (Michael Landes) are a young married couple. Ryan’s aggressive and troubled brother, Roman (Lee Pace), is living with them, despite the fact that Jess is terrified of him, and he clearly displays sexual interest in her. When Ryan and Roman are involved in a car accident, both lie comatose… until Roman wakes up, claiming to be Ryan, in possession of Roman’s body. It could be that Roman has had a psychological break, occasioned by the accident, his unstable state of mind, and his obsession with Jess. It could be that he’s just pretending, fulfilling a wish he had expressed to his girlfriend to change himself and live a different, better life, more like that of his brother. Or he could really be Ryan, in possession of Roman’s body.

Roman (Ryan?) tries to convince Jess that he really is her husband

Most of the film concerns an exploration of this mystery, as Roman (or Ryan?) slowly convinces Jess that he is really her husband.

Is it any good?

I’m not going to lie, I probably would never have found this film if I wasn’t on a Lee Pace hit. It’s not well-known, and after difficulties with the production company, was never released in the cinema. On the other hand, the plot is right up my alley. Good man trapped in the body of an ostensibly bad/dangerous man – that’s my kind of angst, and it doesn’t hurt that the body in question is that of the beautiful Lee Pace.

It could have been unutterably painful. Body-swap stories are often filled with embarrassing moments played for humour, but missing the mark. This isn’t a comedy, so intentional humour was unlikely, but all credit should be given to both Geller and Pace for bringing really convincing and captivating portrayals. There’s no question in my mind that the actors make this movie. I had some concerns about Geller – I loved her in Buffy, but her film career has been less than stellar. This time, though, I felt she’d really pulled it off, full of all the understated power of her best moments under Whedon’s direction, but moving away from the pretty teenage icon into something more mature.

Gratuitous semi-naked Lee Pace

Geller is also an excellent match for Pace, who excels, both in the unsympathetic role of Roman, and in his change to the more familiar Pace-style role of the sweet and loving artist. I’ll admit, I was watching for angst, knowing how well Pace can bring that, but I was pleased to see him explore a fuller range and show that he can bring something intimidating and distinctly unappealing to the table, also.

In the absence of the performances, however, this is really nothing special. It does what it says on the tin. Of course, some of what it says is that it’s a suspense movie where you don’t quite know how it’s going to work out, but I wasn’t terribly surprised about where it went in the end. I’ll avoid spoiling it for you by saying whether Pace’s character turns out to be Ryan or Roman at the end of the film, but let’s just say that it wasn’t really where I would have chosen to take it, although Geller and Pace really sell it as a resolution.

There’s also much to be desired from the musical score, which is over-dramatic and intrusive. Combined with the copious tattoos and ridiculous goatee Roman sports at the start of the film the music leaves us in little doubt about how we’re supposed to initially feel towards Roman, especially in regard to his feelings for Jess. It’s belaboured and tiresome. The script isn’t bad – it has some depth and interest, but it’s lucky to have found itself in the possession of two such capable actors in what would otherwise be a very mediocre film.

All in all, Possession is a much better film than it has any right to be. It will probably be forgotten in the mists of films that went straight to DVD, and that’s a shame. It’s particularly a shame for Geller, who’s really proving her metal in a quality performance that almost no one will ever see. If you like Lee Pace, or share my taste for beautiful men engaging in understated angst, this film is genuinely worth your time. If you like psychological thrillers, you may enjoy it, too. In the game of suspense films that mess with your head about personal identity, it’s no Primal Fear, but it’s certainly worth a go.

X-Men: First Class

Except for the exceptions, this movie is exceptional. If there’s one superhero movie you should make the time to see this year, it’s this one. I haven’t decided yet whether to regard it as my favourite superhero movie of all time (there’s some stiff competition, and I do have some reservations), but it’s pretty damn good. I know in some parts of the internet it’s considered sacrilege to say this, but it’s better than Iron Man.

So, that’s some heavy praise. What was so good? Well, for starters, it is expertly cast. James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender are spot on for the younger versions of Charles Xavier (Professor X) and Erik Lensherr (Magneto). Jennifer Lawrence as the young Raven (Mystique) was also charmingly appropriate, both as an actor, and as a match for a younger version of Rebecca Romijn. Not to mention that January Jones was a true pleasure as Emma Frost – nice to see her in a more forceful role, as a contrast to her interesting, yet fragile beauty in Mad Men. But the real show stealer for impeccable casting was Kevin Bacon, as the ageless Sebastian Shaw. Given the old ‘six degrees of Kevin Bacon’ game inspired by his ubiquitous presence in films of the 90s, Bacon has been oddly absent from our screens in recent years. This was a wonderful role for him as a come back, especially as he still looks like he might have walked in right off the set of Tremors.

In addition to the casting, the script was simply excellent. Funny, understatedly sad with foreshadowing, and thrummingly charged in all the right places. Truly, the trailers do not do this film justice (and I thought the trailers were 100% squee-worthy). In particular, the quiet, not-meant-to-be relationship between Raven and Hank McCoy (Beast) was beautifully played.

This film was swinging with all the style and opulence of a 60s spy film, but also managed to capture the youthful exuberance and folly of a group of young people thrust together and discovering community in their difference.

So, what are the exceptions? [Spoiler alert] Most striking is the scene where Shaw’s Evil Mutants have invaded the compound where Our Heroes are getting to know each other, slaying dozens of men in front of the shocked eyes of the young mutants, and then asking the teenagers to join them. Who goes over to the dark side? The latino female sex worker. Which of the mutants dies senselessly in a completely unnecessary manner? The black one. In an otherwise brilliant piece of cinema, there’s really no excuse for such an outdated message that black men are expendable and women who have sex are evil. Overall, there’s an unusually high balance of men to women in this film, but as Aliette de Bodard pointed out on her Twitter feed (with one notable exception) they’re all evil. And even the otherwise commendable character of Moira McTaggart (played by Rose Byrne) gratuitously gets her kit off. Not to mention the ridiculous moment when Emma Frost’s otherwise impermeable diamond skin is apparently vulnerable to brass when she’s being tied up against a bed. These are not awesome messages, yo.

Of course, all of this is par for the course for a Hollywood movie, it’s just a shame when a fun, but otherwise lesser, movie like Thor recently did so much better so easily for female representation and discussion of race issues (even if the plot mostly centred about the woes of gods who presented as white males for most of the movie).

But I don’t want to dwell on that. Despite these objections, I still think this movie is 95% awesome, and one of the top superhero films ever made. Never have powers been used so well or effects been so good. Rarely have scripts been so finely crafted.

See this film. You will enjoy it.

P.S. There’s nothing after the credits – just FYI.