"Butter" - Film Review

There are movies that strive to be something special, and then there are those films content to pick the path of least resistance. They aren’t ambitious, they’re not doing anything innovative or creatively striking, and they’re often pretty cliché. Butter is one such film.

Butter isn’t a bad movie, but it always fails to go one step past the sentimentality and satire. It’s a funny movie carried by some strong performers, but its satire feels like it’s never specific enough and never goes far enough to earn how unnecessarily mean and smug it occasionally is towards some of its topics and its characters. The sentimentality also largely comes off as being tacked on in a very forced way (there's a black foster child who can't help but be nice towards others).

The film never chooses to settle on where its ire is meant to be aimed at. It’s a very broad attack on conservative culture. But in spite of this, some of its jokes are so over the top that they have an amusing absurdity to them and some are well-delivered enough that they overcome their shortcomings. Though in the end it's all too surface level.

Structurally the film is uneven. The film starts off with voiced-over back stories for two different characters with such disparate backgrounds that initially the film awkwardly handles jumping from one story to the next. After these introductions the film can’t seem to settle on what it wants to happen, burning through several potential stories before sticking to one.

The motivations for many characters aren’t worth bothering to question (the angsty teen daughter is treated like an afterthought). Most tend to do things simply because the plot demands it of them, which would be fine if the film didn’t have a concept that were pretty much a one-off gag. 

The film is set in the cultural landscape of butter sculpturing, a subculture with enough weirdly specific details to fuel the satire at first. But soon the satire fades and muddles away for a predictable, uninteresting winner takes all competition between a clear protagonist and antagonist. 

The film is not without its charms. Its cast is really strong and they have a lot of fun in their different roles, even the bit ones. But the film is largely so light (you might even say light as butter) that it's mostly forgettable.

Grade: C+

Mad Men - "The Doorway" - Review

By this point in time, we’re not watching Mad Men to learn about these characters and who they are. We know about as much about Don Draper as we’re likely to know about any character. But Mad Men once again proves that just because you know everything there is to know about someone, doesn’t necessarily mean you have them all figured out.

For most of this episode, Don by all outward appearances looks like a man who’s accepted his marriage to Megan. He’s not completely satisfied by his marriage, but he comes off like a man who has accepted dying on the sword he’s thrust into himself. 

We start this episode in Hawaii: paradise. Hot, sunny, perfect. We end in brutally cold New York on New Year’s Eve. Don is reading “Dante’s Inferno” when we first see him lounging on the beach. As Dante goes further into Hell, we learn that Hell doesn’t get hotter as we head down its many levels, but much, much colder, until the worst sinners are frozen into a sheet of ice.  

The episode is a long descent into the state of being of Don. The more the episode carries on, the clearer it becomes that Don is more out of sorts than ever. Megan was supposed to be his saving grace. The cliffhanger from last season’s finale “The Phantom” has been answered. Perhaps Don didn’t say yes to the question “Are you alone?” right then and there, but now after some time has passed Don has started up his adulterous ways once more (with Lisa Cardellini no less). 

He loves Megan, much as he loved Betty. But she’s become less and less of the ideal woman he built her up to be. She’s continuing her acting career, starring in television shows, and maintaining her generally independent, youthful ways.She has him smoke pot, she makes fondue, and she gets up and dances with the Hawaiian announcer. 

It’s become clichéd to ask “Who is Don Draper?” It’s also become clichéd to say, “Don is a different person to everyone he meets”. But they remain defining aspects that the show continues to mine more and more. Don knows there’s something wrong with himself. His New Year’s Resolution: stop having an affair. An affair he was convinced he could avoid this time around in his second marriage.

Don isn’t the only one questioning their sense of self though. Betty, though she’s lost some weight, is still on the chubby side. We see her snacking at a play (the Nutcracker – I’m guessing there’s some relevance but I’m not sure what it is). Sally has a friend who is a gifted violinist, Sandy, and Betty quickly takes offense when the girl dismisses the suburban housewife lifestyle Betty has taken up in two marriages now. Matt Weiner learned at the feet of David Chase (creator of The Sopranos) and Mad Men has been keen on the idea that people don’t change. Not in real life anyway. They may want to, but damn if it isn’t difficult. Sandy lies about getting into Julliard, and Betty follows her to the city to try to discover where she is. She ends up missing Sandy but she does find her violin case. Though she fights so hard to get the case away from a young man who insists that Betty can’t accept his rebellious ways (Sally Draper ain’t too far off from this guy), she eventually leaves behind the violin case. Betty is like a petulant child at times, and her refusal to take the case is like a pointless act of defiance. 

She does change by episode’s end but it’s in the most superficial way possible. Betty dyes her hair. But that’s not proof positive of change. 

Betty refuses to accept growing old. Her Grace Kelly (now Elizabeth Taylor) good looks will only get her so far (well, I guess with the weight gain, have only gotten her so far). In one of the more bizarre scenes, she kiddingly asks Harry if he’d like to rape Sandy. It’s uncomfortable and messed up, but it speaks again to Betty’s inability to accept aging and her frustration at young, attractive people stealing her thunder. This is precisely why she becomes so set on helping Sandy out.  She doesn’t really want to help Sandy, but she thinks if she can save Sandy, in a way she can save herself. 

One character, Roger, is finally admitting there’s something wrong with themselves even if he has a difficult time confronting his problems. His LSD laden experiences from last season have opened his mind up to how he hasn’t exactly been the best person in life. He’s even started taking therapy but he ignores the most important points the therapist makes, such as the fact that his constant joking conceals a hidden problem. Roger’s mother dies and yet Roger feels nothing. He tells his first ex-wife that he looked at the women at the funeral and all he saw were people he’d disappointed. Roger can only see one thing ahead for himself: death.

Death is a reoccurring theme throughout the episode. Don seems to be obsessed with the notion of death. His fear of death and his infatuation with the idea of death leads him to drink excessively (more so than usual) and puke at the funeral. In his drunken stupor he asks the doorman who recently suffered a heart attack, “What did you see when you died?” The ad Don pitches for the Hawaiian hotel reminds everyone of death and suicide (something Don clearly did not intend for). 

If Don is failing to be good at being Don Draper (or not I guess if you see this self-destructive behavior as typical Don), well, then it’s nice that someone has taken up the mantle of being Don (minus the constant identity crises and necessity for affairs). Peggy Olson has come a long, long way. As previously stated, people tend not to change in the world of Mad Men, but when they do it’s often sudden and drastic, and such was the case when Peggy couldn’t take Don’s continual berating any longer. I’d like to have seen Don run into his protégé, but it’s possible Don’s decline and Peggy’s rise will be paralleled. I’m more surprised that Peggy being a female head copywriter didn’t play a bigger role in her story. Her newly mustachioed, long haired boyfriend Abe says she’s too harsh on her underlings, but otherwise it’s largely overlooked.  

Everyone is largely haunted by their past in this premiere and the real big changes of the 60’s are starting to catch up to them faster and faster than ever before. The sideburns are long, the pot is in abundance, and the violence is on the rise.

Stray Observations:

-Sally is really taking her teen angst seriously. Nicely played by Kiernan Shipka.

-What’s funnier from the scene where the cop pulls Betty over? The officer responding to Grandma Francis awkwardly name dropping Harry with “I work for the state of New York. I have my own boss” or Sally saying “I hate cops” after the fact?

-The Kodak wheel from season one has returned but has lost much of its nostalgic luster for Don.

-Sign of the times: Betty doesn’t care that Sandy is smoking.

-The series has mostly moved away from Betty’s relationship with her mother but here we’re reminded that her mother had a massive and terrible influence on Betty.

-Stan has an incredible beard now. He also keeps in touch with Peggy and overhears her conversation with her boss Ted. He suggests that Ted likes her. Peggy seems slightly infatuated at least.

-Peggy’s co-workers are pretty useless. The one guy re-enacts the Tonight Show act that led to the ad’s re-working but it’s pretty half-assed, and no one can seem to come up with any other information on the specifics of the incident. Her copywriters are lazy and fail to come up with any good ideas.

-The camera operator tells Don “I want you to be yourself”. If it was only that easy!

-Roger flips out after seeing his ex-wife with a new man. Change is not being accepted by Roger even as he nominally admits that something has to change or his life is merely a straight line towards the grave.

-Not sure what to make of Bob who keeps trying to get his foot in the door with members of the ad agency. Without being asked, he provides catering to the funeral. Ken Cosgrove gets to tell him off though, seemingly as an excuse to give the character screen time.

-Joan is giving Roger the cold shoulder.

-Don mistakenly switches his military issued lighter with PFC Dinkins's, the man he meets at the bar, and spends much of the episode worrying and fixating on it. The other lighter said "Dick Whitman" on it.

Grade: A-

Game of Thrones - "Dark Wings, Dark Words" - Review

 "Themes are for eighth-grade book reports," Game of Thrones co-creator David Benioff recently said about the overall intentionality he and D.B. Weiss provide to the show. That's a frustrating notion not only because it's unavoidable for themes to exist in a work whether you try for them or not, but because it also makes you wonder just how the hell the show we're watching is structured if not around theme. I bring this up because though I enjoy Game of Thrones, it's a show that often feel like every sequence was filmed great and then the editors were forced to parse out all these various elements together. The result is a soap opera-ish level of disassociated scenes that lead to episodes ending wherever (any old place that is) rather than in a place that appears to have been built towards knowingly for maximum impact.

Now I'm not someone who's huge on distilling out themes. When I pick up on them I feel all savvy and sophisticated, but I don't go out of my way to try to figure out what they might be. In fact, I tend to watch shows for characters more than for themes, and this is especially the case with Game of Thrones. I watch for what's Arya up to this week and what the story is trying to say about her, or Tyrion or Bran or Jaimie, and so on. This is what I suspect a lot of us do because mainly why we're told to be invested in any one of the many stories being shown is that there are one or two characters central to that story who are worth following. I could care less about Gendry and Hotpie, but I care deeply about Arya. I don't mind stopping in with most of these characters and finding where their story is at, but it does sometimes make what we're watching come off as arbitrarily strung together. Why do Jaimie and Brienne get less screen time than Bran or Arya? They could have had more scenes and I'd still have been very amused by their mismatched team-up.

The problem isn't just Benioff and Weiss though. The problem also comes from the series being an adaptation. I always found the weaker entries in the Harry Potter film franchise to be more about fan service than about actually creating a fully formed story that worked within the film medium. Similarly, adapting the show just to adapt it and adapt indvidual elements as well as possible leads to a consistently fragmented quality to the show.

The greatest asset for Game of Thrones is simultaneously often its biggest hindrance: its source material. George RR Martin’s book series has a vast world and great characters to draw upon, and part of the success of the series comes from relying on these aspects of the book. But by the same token, A Song of Fire and Ice is an increasingly sprawling series. There are characters in far flung locations that often seem to have nothing in common other than that they exist within this same world. Each book in the series provides MORE. More characters! More locations! More conflicts! And the series on occasion feels like it’s sometimes just trying to keep up with all these new developments, adapting them but not necessarily making them work nicely as an hour of television. Sometimes it’s easy to watch an episode of Game of Thrones and largely enjoy it, but if I were to say “Hey, remember that one scene with Sam?” You might scratch your head and go, “Oh yea. I totally forgot about that”.

Which sometimes means you may not even notice that certain characters are completely absent. Until I thought about it, I didn’t realize Dany was missing, nor Davos. It’s likely best they didn’t appear though because this episode couldn’t help but feel like it was less of an episode of television and just a lot of mostly really cool things that just happened to all have been mashed together with some semblance of relationship.

Sometimes the episode nailed creating the necessary connections to make these disparate events have cohesion. Watch Catelynn sadly mourn her treatment of Jon only for a perfectly chosen cut to Jon being schooled by Mance Rayder about the nature of the wildling army. Then watch as warg Orell (Mackenzie Crook) describes the destruction at the Fist of the First Man and then how we pop in on an exhausted Sam collapsing. These connections worked so well that these series of scenes flow one into the next despite their large distances from eachother. Elsewhere though this doesn’t occur and it begins to weigh on the episode.   

   

“Dark Wings, Dark Words” largely functions as Season Premiere Part Two: Revenge of the Missing Characters. There are so many major characters by this point in the series that the show is forced to spend much of this episode reintroducing us to a number of characters we still had yet to see until now.  Many of them are very welcome sights to see, but because it’s so many characters previously without storylines developed, the episode feels like it’s backtracking to catch us up on the situations of these previously absent characters. It ultimately gives the episode a feeling of being stuck in second gear, even if things do feel like they move forward as a whole much more. The series tends to be a slow build that doesn’t truly kick into high gear until halfway in a season so it's easy to forgive this slow going. But even by standards of moving pieces around, this feels like a fair amount of tablesetting. 

The episode mainly has two problems. It’s, like I said before, an episode that’s partially reintroducing characters, but it’s also an episode that’s reminding us of certain characters’ existences. The latter storylines really do come off as merely reminders. For instance, Sam and Jon get only one scene each. And while I like Tyrion and his relationship with Shae, this can't help but seem like the writers trying to shoehorn a popular character in when he really doesn't have much to do this episode. Other returning stories do, however, get pushed forward though, such as Margaery and Sansa (more on that later). Meanwhile, some of the choices for the characters who we didn’t see last episode feel somewhat arbitrary; we probably could have seen Arya, Bran or Jaime and Brienne last episode if it weren’t for time constraints. 

And some of these stories just have elements that are awkwardly handled. We have even more new characters! It’s a buy one character get another free sale here on Game of Thrones. Those two youngins who’ve joined up with Bran are the Reeds. They should have been introduced last season but the writers chose to push back their appearance until this season. In some ways, that wasn’t a half-bad decision. Season two already was feeling overstuffed and the Reeds don’t start to play a really significant role until events that will soon be taking place, and it’s nice to finally have somebody explain these dreams Bran is having rather than it being vaguely answered away as magic! But damn if Jojen and Meera don’t seem to come out of nowhere. I enjoyed the performances of Thomas Brodie-Sangster and Ellie Kendrick, and they immediately inhabit these roles in a way where they quickly feel as if they’ve always been there. But overall it’s another example of the show stuck with a character or plot occurrence and the writers finding it difficult to translate it to the new medium.  

The show always feels strongest when it’s at King’s Landing. This is the core of the show and it’s where the political machinations at the heart of the series reside. Characters don’t come off as if they’re just moving from point A to point B on the map.  Being stuck in one location actually proves to be fruitful. These characters can’t exactly run from their problems and so they’re forced to confront them. They’re goal isn’t getting to the Wall or to Riverrun; instead, they’re forced to deal with whatever inescapable human drama is currently taking place in the capitol. 

Which leads me to my next point: can we stop and admire the Tyrells? Because, man, oh man, are they ever the group of badasses. We already had hints of Margaery’s skill at manipulating circumstances to her benefit, and she continues to excel at this; after a bit of useful information is extracted from Sansa (more on that in a second), she plays Joffrey to a tee. Joffrey is a boy pretending to be a man; yes, he’s an awful, awful person, but he’s one easily duped by sweetly cooing Margaery who is a clever, clever girl and feigns praise and plays into Joffrey’s weird sadistic tendencies. I’m assuming she learned this cleverness from her grandmother because Olenna (played exceedingly well by Diana Rigg) is wonderful; she’s, for one thing, damn funny. But she also cuts through the bullshit and sees things exactly as they are. Olenna coaxes a fearful Sansa (Sophie Turner makes this fear palpable) for the true nature of Joffrey (“He’s a monster”). 

It’s not as if all the elements outside of King’s landing are without merit. Jaimie and Brienne are a winning pair and their odd couple relationship is very fun to watch. Maisie Williams is just Maisie Williams and so she’s so damn enthusiastic and passionate about playing Arya that it’s hard not to be pleased she’s back even if this isn’t the strongest bit of story the series has given her to date (although, the Hound crosses paths with her in problematic fashion so that’s a plus!). But the Robb-Catelynn material is skipping a few steps in storytelling as it tries too quickly to get these characters where they need to be. Similarly, I like Mance’s explanation of the precariousness of the wildling militia and their motivations (the whites, of course), but it feels like just an excuse to stop in with Jon. 

My review could without question go on much, much longer, but I’m already way past a thousand words and I promised to cut these down. This is a step down from last week’s episode; there are too many stories for this episode to function as a standalone effort. For instance, not enough has been done with Brienne and Jaimie to justify the ending (as solid of an ending as it may be). I wish we could have gotten a few more scenes there. But I wish that of a lot of these stories, and there are still characters missing because it’s jam packed in the first place. These stories all are mostly very disconnected, despite being mostly good in and of themselves. 

Stray Observations:

-Isaac Hempstead-Wright (aka Bran) is starting to hit puberty from the looks of it.

-HODOR! I don’t have anything to add except Hodor.

-Cersei’s control issues continue in abundance. She can’t win over Joffrey, no matter how hard she tries. It’s rather fun to watch Cersei lose control. Lena Headly plays this side of the character really well. It helps that we get such terribly offensive lines from Joffrey as: “Intelligent women do what they’re told”. Cersei’s story is one of a woman trying to be something that the medieval world of Westeros just isn’t accepting of. Like Arya and Brienne, she’s a female trying to do “mannish” things and getting backlash for it.  

-Sansa and Shae’s relationship felt forced in the second season (like simply something for the characters to do), but it’s quickly become a relationship that works really well. These are two women in very tricky positions that could turn bad quick if they’re not careful.

-Worst Introduced Character of the Week: Lord Karstark. Perhaps he was introduced last episode, but heck, I didn’t pick up on it if that was the case. All you need to know is that he isn’t all that pleased with Robb’s marriage. Also, Robb left Roose Bolton at Harenhal and Bolton's men were the people who ran into Jaimie and Brienne at episode's end.

-If you’re not quite sure what’s going on with Sam, don’t worry, he’s being taken in the direction he needs to be taken in. Same goes for Jon. (At least: fingers crossed)

-Brienne and Jaimie’s swordfight was really well done. Nice to see two of the series best fighters come to blows.

-Riverrun, for those unclear, is the Riverlands equivalent of Winterfell and the birthplace of Catelynn. They’re going there because her father died, but also because they no longer have Winterfell to go to and they need more troops.

-“Men only want one thing from a pretty girl” – Shae’s got the right of this. Littlefinger doesn’t do things willy-nilly.

-Catelynn learning of the “death” of Bran and Rickon is chilling. The series is very good at making little pieces of unknown information lead to devastating consequences.
-Where in Seven Hells is Varys?
-Arya's efforts to leave the Brotherhood Without Banners are thwarted by the Hound recognizing her.
-Ser Barristan Selmy's reveal last week can't help but feel slightly pointless since there's no Dany in this episode.
-If Theon's story is confusing that largely stems from the fact that (minor spoilers) he doesn't have chapters in the book being adapted and so the writers are fabricating events. They're also withholding certain information and skipping a few story beats, but we'll see where they take this.

Grade: B

A Potential Reduction in Output

Technically my official job is to be a student, and not as this blog might have you assume a film and television critic. I love watching, thinking, and writing about movies and television shows. And my biggest regrets is that I'm not able to put up more reviews and content than I already do. I know I've been slowing down in my output recently and that's a trend that's likely to continue until at least mid-May when my finals are over.

Reviews, and hopefully a few thinkpieces, might be posted before then, but I make less of a guarantee. There are a number of shows I hope to keep up with but I can't say with certainty that I will review something or that it will be put up on this site immediately. Trust me, I intend to make up for it during the summer when I hope to watch God-awful amounts of shows and movies.

Until then I'll keep up with the shows I have been reviewing as best I can, including Game of Thrones, How I Met Your Mother, New Girl, The Office, and The Vampire Diaries. I also plan to review Mad Men. But we'll see how that turns out. I apologize in advance. I do reviews because they matter to me and I enjoy doing them. And I hope that you keep tuned in and please comment when a review inspires a response from you.

The Office - "Promos" - Review

The Office doesn’t exactly have a premise that was built to last. There’s no good, logical reason why the camera crew would have stuck around for nearly a decade. The reveals of the people behind the camera and their desire to stick around haven’t been entirely fruitful. The introduction of Brian the boom-mic guy was handled uneasily and reminding us that this is a documentary is problematic for how it undermines much of what we’re seeing (the show has increasingly taken liberties of what the camera crew was privy to see).

When the show uses its documentary-style right though, it really does work in a very impactful way that other styles of formatting have a more difficult time pulling off. Earlier this season when Pam broke down crying after calling Jim, I was teary eyed because, no matter my mixed feelings towards the series at this point, I still like Pam, and this moment played into the series earlier sense that what we were witnessing, even when bizarre, had some level of truth to it. 

So although this episode was mixed and had too much going on, a fair amount worked surprisingly effectively. Much of this stemmed from the show having the characters learn that the film company is releasing the documentary about their work place. More importantly the camera crew caught practically every intimate moment, largely without the characters knowledge or consent.

Angela and Oscar are arguably played too maddeningly goofy for a crisis this serious, but it grows from a believable, well-established place. These are stories that, though handled with less than satisfying results, we’ve been following for some time now. I haven’t been a fan of their shared relationship with the senator (it feels like it’s trying to do something that’s in the zeitgeist but making really questionable stretches to achieve it). But, hey, it happened and the show is dealing with what that means now that the documentary is soon to be released.  The scene where they both talk into the speaker phone to Robert is really funny moment. It may not have had the gravity that something like this ought to, but the seriousness is saved for the more important storyline: Pam.

This season has largely been all over the map. It’s had its moments but the show is relying on our affection for these characters more than well-set up jokes and the battles against workplace ennui. However, the one place where the characters have been acting in a manner that doesn’t seem to come completely out of left field is with Jim and Pam. The moments featuring these two characters (in the context of their relationship) have, for the most part, continued to be surprisingly good. They’ve been so good, in fact, that it’s the biggest reason the show hasn’t lost all my interest. 

Yes, I still chuckle here and there. But the show doesn’t hold my attention like it used to.  There are storylines that so actively disinterest me that I zone out just a bit when they come up and there are too many storylines that are bizarre or implausible or not very funny. 

The moment where the entire cast looks over at the camera after discovering the documentary will show their secrets is very funny and a good use of the self-awareness there’s a film crew surrounding them. 

However, the success of this soon fades out for more gags around the edges that don’t really work. Andy’s character has become so muddled that it hardly matters that his behavior doesn’t make sense (although I really liked the unexpected payoff that Nellie was pranking him in the comment section the whole time). Dwight and Clark have a storyline that’s very uninteresting and pointless and that leads nowhere to the point where it felt unnecessary and like filler. Ryan Howard just feels like a stunt casting even if they do use him in an amusing way (the shameless promotion of Subway was a nice knock on product placement and the autobiographical-superhero mashup film concept about his life is so absurd that it can’t help but be funny). But it’s a storyline that seems like an excuse to have Jim in the episode when there’s really no need for his presence.

And yet, those odd handful of minutes the show dedicates to Pam are as touching and moving as anything the series has done. They’re all the more pleasing for how everything else is a mess. Though I wish I didn’t have to sit through all this haphazard series of jokes to get to these moments, when Pam asks Brian, “Has Jim changed?”; I had chills. Pam looking back on those perfectly captured moments between Jim and Pam back in the early days of the show made me just as nostalgic for those times as her.  

This one aspect shouldn’t be keeping me around, but if the show were just these moments, it would still be as good in quality as it was when it first aired, that’s how strong these dramatic moments have been. The episodes that have failed to be as strong, in recent memory, and have been noticeably more problematic have been those that don’t have at least one of these moments.

Grade: B-

"Girls Against Boys" - Film Review

Rape is something I’m not totally comfortable discussing. I once wrote an essay of nearing 2,000 words on rapes depiction in pop culture. I never published it here or in any other place because I knew I was balancing something really tricky; that I was delving into a topic that if I accidentally broached some line in how I treated it, it would make me look like an ass whether I meant to or not, and, well, I didn’t want to take that chance. Now, I wasn’t be a douchebag about the topic. I was attacking all the many vicissitudes about what makes rape culture just an awful, awful thing. I wanted to write about it because I’d seen rape depicted in some shows I had been watching and the experience of watching it made me so uncomfortable and I wanted to think about why I had such a strong reaction. Depicting rape is something you have to be really sensitive about because it’s so frequently loaded when it’s part of the discourse and because you could end up being unintentionally offensive or it could off as if you’re being too slight about the subject matter.  And that’s a lengthy way of saying that the first strike against Girls Against Boys is that it treats rape as an afterthought.

Our protagonist Shae (Danielle Panabaker) is raped at one point, and the film doesn’t blame her for it, but the only reason it has the character get raped is to justify her killing spree against the men in her life who have wronged her. Did it have to be rape that led to some women getting vengeance on the men who’ve harmed them? No. I’m all for empowering women and I’m all for strong female characters who take charge and even kill a few people to serve up some revenge. But it just feels like it's purposely manipulating our sentiments so we won’t be upset at the excessive violence later, and that’s totally the wrong way to be handling rape as a subject matter. The whole rape scene preys on our emotions. Shae is sexually assaulted but briefly manages to gets away. We start rooting for her escape, and then the film exploits this so we’re that much more upset when she doesn’t and the rape does take place. 

Having done the necessary legwork, the film decides that Shae and her new chic friend Lu (Nicole LaLiberte) are going to kill people violently. What follows comes off as someone writing a film who only had a vague understanding of feminist theories. Slumber Party Massacre similarly attempted to be a feminist work (written by a feminist author and activist, Rita Mae Brown, no less) and it failed miserably because it ended up objectifying the very women it was empowering and therefore glamorized the violence towards them. The violence of Girls Against Boys is tedious, tawdry, and pointless. It’s the violence level, at times, of a Saw film with the feigned pretension that it’s high minded; at least, the Saw franchise knew it was schlock and schlocked it up like it was nobody’s business. 

Let’s say Girls Against Boys had just been a poor attempt at feminist empowerment used to ground the needless violence. That would be bad enough. It wouldn’t be the worst thing; at least it wouldn’t be straight up misogynistic which is a slight step up from a lot of junk out there. But it doesn’t just stick to this narrative. It has the relationship between Shae and Lu breakdown, and Lu suddenly has an inexplicable lesbian crush on Shae that turns her psychopathic intentions from men to Shae. Not only does this come out of nowhere, but it undermines the message of the film. 

As critic Noel Murray so perfectly described it, “Girls Against Boys is undone by [Director Austin] Chick’s apparent supposition that he’s the first filmmaker to notice how men sometimes take advantage of women, or how putting a gun in an actress’ hands can be a complicated symbol of empowerment”. It’s a movie that thinks it’s being really clever, bold, and smart, but rather is being unsubtle, boring, and occasionally borderline offensive. The film has us watching one-dimensional characters with poorly explained motivations killing people and it presumes that it’s the most original thing you ever did see. 

Grade: D-

"And God Created Women" - Film Review

“And from the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man” –Genesis 2:22

It might seem odd that a film as breezy, light, and with the subject matter of And God Created Women would take its title from a Bible passage. The film isn’t a Bible thumping sermon condemning nontraditional gender practices; in fact, the title is laced with an arsenic irony. Though I don't know if it necessarily earns the right to quote from the Bible, there's certainly a logic to it. The film has a number of supporting characters admonishing Bridget Bardot’s Juliette for her promiscuous, flirtatious behavior, but it’s never judgmental about this behavior. The film isn’t trying to criticize her behavior but rather criticize those people that look down upon it.

Director Roger Vadim is really sensitive towards the character. There’s a clear affection for Juliet that comes across throughout the film. This makes it particularly painful to watch Juliette while she gets berated for outdated standards that were becoming increasingly out of touch. 

So much of the film is about people making Juliette do things with her life that she clearly doesn’t want to do but is forced to because of social norms or expectations. Juliette is someone who was never meant to be tied down though; she’s a free spirit. And yet everyone wants to tell her who to be and how to act. But that just leads her to be deeply unhappy.

It’s hard not to think of Jessica Rabbit’s great line “I’m not bad. I’m just drawn this way”. Juliette is a stunningly beautiful individual and she’s very open about her sexuality. “She’s brave enough to do what she wants when she wants,” the land developer Eric Carradine (Curd Jürgens) says early on. It perfectly sums up the character. There’s nothing wrong with her, but because she knows what she wants and she goes out and gets it she gets unjustifiably and cruelly called a “slut”. 

It’s a shame Carradine is twice her age because he’s the spot-on match for her. He understands her and respects her like no one else does, but he’s too concerned with her happiness to let things go anywhere.

Her other suitors aren’t much better matches. She loved Antoine (Christian Marquand) but when she learns he sees her as just a fling; she breaks off engagements with him. Later Antoine wants her back, but only out of jealousy for marrying his brother Michel (Jean-Louis Trintignant). 

Juliette is only eighteen; she’s an orphan and her foster parents no longer desire to keep her around once the rumor mill starts piling on the mutterings about her sexual dalliances. She’s about to be sent back to the orphanage, but Carradine contrives a plan to keep her around: someone needs to marry her so she can stay. Michel takes up the suggestion. Michel is too naïve to realize what he’s getting into. Juliette loves him, but it’s a marriage of convenience and even his best attempts to keep her from getting bored just aren’t doing the trick. 

“What are you afraid of?” Carradine asks. “Myself,” she replies. Juliette wants to make the marriage work, but she is too self-destructive.

A lot of how the film is plotted is lightweight and contrived, and it’s easy to see it building towards a point where Julliete is torn between her wild ways and a quieter everyday existence.  Plus that ending seems to play against its more feministic earlier tones as Michel finally “tames” her.  

 

Yet much of the film works in spite of this. It’s sometimes funny, occasionally sad, playful, incredibly sultry and in love with the very fact that it’s being uncommonly upfront about sexuality and sexual mores (the film was something of a scandal back in 1956). Bardott remains to be a sight to behold. The film put her on the map and defined her as the sex symbol she's remembered as. Vadim once said, “That was one of the most amazing things about Brigitte’s presence on film. People often thought she was naked when she wasn’t.” It's not even that the film chooses to shoot Bardot in a way that you're meant to ogle her, but just be in awe that someone can possibly carry themselves so naturally and sensually. Despite my problems with the ending, the level of sympathy it has towards Juliette still make the messages of its film still surprisingly relevant and powerful, and the film is still very, very sexy.  

Grade: B