The Grey (2011)

For what turned out to be a trip deep, deep into the heart of existential malaise and hopelessly dangerous travel, this film sure did not tell the truth in its trailers! Throwing Liam Neeson's face on an adventure film poster these days assures the viewer that one will see @$$ kicking justice, feel vindicated parental authority, and hear the warm, gruff brogue that makes it all so soothing (most of the time) despite the bloodshed. However, upon sitting down, to see this film recently - delayed I know, but excited nonetheless - I found myself deeply disappointed... and then struck by possible revelation.

The studio pitch is perfectly clear in my mind: the director said, "My movie is Alive meets Dances With Wolves meets horror movie conventions, with Liam Neeson!" And the studio said, "Here's the check!"  A plane full of oil rig workers, on their way to Anchorage from a remote drilling site for a little R&R, crashes in the Alaskan wilderness. Only seven survive, one of whom is Ottoway (Neeson), paid by the oil company to keep the wildlife from killing the oil workers with his sharpshooting skills and knowledge of nature. We witness his take-down of a rapidly advancing wolf on a pack of, I'm sorry, on a group of oil workers almost immediately, so we know he's good at his job.  Splice in shots of a now seemingly absent, beloved wife as she and Ottoway lie reclining on snowy white sheets (keep this in mind...), a scene of Ottoway's aborted suicide attempt, and we are primed for a redemption story.

However, on first viewing, the film breaks the sacred contract with American film history and American film audiences and seems to have lost the last twenty minutes of film! For better or worse, the narrative need for faulty characters to be redeemed, for the wrong to be made at least partially right, has carried us forward through much of cinematic history. From our very foundational American myths, there is the rugged man (and women too, since about 1979) of Adventure Movies who encounters challenge, rises to meet them, succeeds, and goes on to either tell the tale into his old age or have more adventures to come. Yes, some stodgy film critics or pretentious scholars may claim this impulse to break with "tradition" (that of giving the audience an ending that does not involve complete annihilation) as being great, and proving some cinematic verve or unique spirit. But this is not surrealist French cinema attempting re-define genre. It is a Liam Neeson action film!

Thus, when we encounter Ottoway and his team of stereotypes, um, I mean, characters, we think we know what is coming. There is some blurriness to who one or two of the men are, but at root we have the father desperate to get home to family (Dermot Mulroney), the annoying jabber-mouth who talks to cover stress and expresses the strain everyone feels (Joe Anderson, much better in Across the Universe), the Token Black person (Nonso Anozie), the criminal (Frank Grillo). And then a slightly odd character who can only be thought of as Conscious due to a role he plays towards the end of the film (Joe Anderson - I think my father perfectly described him as the DNA splicing of John Ritter and Mark Wahlberg).

The sequence of who is attacked and torn apart by wolves follows no seemingly predictable pattern, and one feels little care for the men beyond the usual bets about who will be the "Final Girl" and how amazingly beautiful, stark, scary, and mesmerizing the scenery is all at the same time. And that is one thing not to be upset about, the film is simply stunning in its depiction of the bitter frosty quality of the Alaskan wilderness, and its simultaneous sublime enchantment. Time is not spent/wasted lovingly caressing tree branches, this isn't a Malick film after all. But we'll say more attention is given to the background than to the men's faces.

ARRRGGG MATEYS --> WARNING, THERE BE SPOILERS AHEAD!*

(*Read no further if you want to see the movie and be surprised....)

But lovely scenery cannot distract one from the fact that this film managed to inspire feelings of depression and disgust similar to what I felt after seeing Requiem For a Dream - and that is a film about the debilitating, deadly, horrible effects of drug use! And I'm not the only one to feel this way, as Ebert also makes clear, this is not a pleasant film. The main problem is that upon having one of their number attacked and killed by wolves, the group agrees to what seems to be the Worst Possible idea (Ottoway proposes it) based on flimsy ideas. They decide to leave the protective cover of the plane's fuselage - remaining in two large, semi-enclosed pieces, about fifty yards from the edge of a tree line, in plain sight of any aircraft flying overhead. They leave it to trek out toward some trees a good mile to a half mile away since they might be in the vicinity of the wolves' den and they might be able to move away from the den if they go to the woods. Oh, and there is a random assertion that the oil company will absolutely not look for them for long, will only send out one or two planes, and may not come their way at all.

Now, only one of the men opposes this idea openly and no one listens to him. And to be clear, at the plane wreckage we are shown: a few trees nearby, long metal pieces (that they use to batter away wolves from Ottoway at one point) - ie weapons, protection from the violent winds, and a defensible metal structure with only two openings they could surely bolster and reinforce. And I am the farthest thing from a defender of corporate behavior, but I think that in this current moment the technology is such that, based on the plane being quite a bit larger than a "puddle jumper," and the presumable regularity of the route, the company can probably figure out where about they went down, and will not take the endless weeks (months?) suffered by the Uruguayan soccer team lost in the Andes in the 1970s. Additionally, although perhaps difficult to get started, setting a tree on fire nearby the fuselage would have the double benefit of keeping the wolves away and sending smoke high, high into the sky in an area with no other fires around!

Therefore, the decision to leave the plane feels downright idiotic and a slap in the viewers face considering the above, and there was much pseudo-interactive yelling at the screen about it. None of the events that come to pass - death by being torn apart by wolves, death by falling from a 90degree angle against a tree and then falling 100 feet breaking branches to the ground, death by pulmonary embolism/freezing to death, death by drowning, death by giving up... - would have happened if they had stayed at the plane!

Thus the depressing turn of events is rendered even more so when you realize that No One Makes It Out Alive!! That's right folks, he may have a very particular set of skills, but not even Ottoway makes it out alive! For his end, after he lets the Runner Up die by drowning, he engages in a bout of self-pitying yelling at God to give him a sign and a reason to care, believe, keep going, whatever. When no lightening strikes and the helicopter the movies have programmed us to expect fails to materialize, he gets up and keeps walking only to... Walk right into a Wolf Den! Seeing the head wolf tell the others to stand down because Ottoway is His, Neeson tapes broken bottles to one hand and a knife to the other hand. After decorously waiting for him to finish his taping, the wolf lunges at him, the screen cuts to black, and Roll Credits. Sigh.

Now, after much hateful spilling of vitriol on the film by my viewing party for its shameful assault both on our expectations of Liam Neeson's awesomeness and on the sacred movie myth of survival against all odds, I began looking around for others as depressed as myself with then ending and found possible redemption in one line from a Slant Magazine review. While I disagree with most of  Cataldo's laudatory review, I found sudden possibility in this line:

"[Ottoway] who starts off the film with an abortive suicide attempt. The rest of it plays out almost as if he succeeded..."

Perhaps it is the instinctive drive towards the redemptive inculcated by so many movies. Perhaps it is the narrative habit learned from studying literature, or maybe there is that magic of what is Really Going On at work within this seemingly empty tableau of human male ineptitude in the face of nature.  What I now believe is going on pivots on all of Ottoway's reflecting back on those times in bed with his wife and his awakening after the plane crash. 

We know by the end of the film that his wife has not left him, but has died. So laying on those snowy white sheets with her as she died of some unnamed illness also foreshadows his own laying on the white sheet of snow. Ottoway also states at one point that he was raised by an Irish Catholic father, hence suicide would have been a mortal sin punishable by eternal damnation. Well what is better damnation than for a man who's job entails protecting men from harm to be incapable of doing so? He awakens after the crash alone in a field of white with snow blowing wildly around him, and he must walk a dozen yards or so to look down on the plane wreckage. If you believe that the religious tenants of his faith will structure his afterlife, then the whole movie is the result of Ottoway's suicide the night before the flight. And his hell is one in which every decision he makes causes the death of more men - leaving the downed airplane being the worst and most important. 

 

Additionally, I felt it was suggested that the random assemblage of survivors represent different pieces of who Ottoway is as well. The nervous but communicative man (who incidentally was the only one arguing for staying with the plane) dies first, out in the open, as the men begin to rely more on physical endurance and less on logic and reason. The Token, sick and coughing constantly, is the memory of his ailing wife who eventually succumbs to disease/cold, and who he is unable to save. The family man dies next by failing to survive his 'leap of faith' across a freakishly deep gorge - his tether was a patchwork of clothing pieces from each man, it failed to hold him aloft, and allowed him to fall and be eaten by wolves.

We were particularly angry in watching the movie that the Hispanic "criminal" character simply gives up, and sits down to die after being so strong and determined the entire film. But his death makes sense if he represents the fighter part of Ottoway; the part that wanted to survive, but gave up the night before by killing himself. If the criminal is his fighting spirit, then the rest makes much more sense. They even have the same first name: John. 

The next to last man dies by drowning, but only because his foot is stuck in a very easily handled way, but Ottoway does not duck his head under water and pull the man's foot out! So simple, this baptism gone horribly wrong, wherein to just dive under water (he's already soaking wet) and remove the man's foot from the crack between two rocks - but he doesn't. And just before falling into the water the man confides that he saw Ottoway contemplating suicide the night before and recognized the look in his eyes after seeing it in the criminal man's eyes when he sat down to die a few moments before. He asks Ottoway about the look, and prods him, almost as if he were his Conscious and the final obstacle to Ottoway's end... And his name is Peter by the way. Yes, like St. Peter who stands at the proverbial pearly gates and decides who gets in or not. 

Finally, Ottoway's idea to strike out across the wide open fields, unprotected, dangerously exposed to the elements and wolves is an idea is also absolutely sensible if this is a man who had planned to, and I believe did, commit suicide. One could say that since he was suicidal, his choices may be simply attributable to this fact and not some freaky trip through his own Jacob's Ladder of terror. But, as a man responsible for the survival of others and well versed, presumably, in the survival needs for the region, his decision to leave the craft and offhanded remarks about the company failing to find them is more easily read as part of his punishing afterlife trip than as shamefully poor character development. Bad decisions in life lead to bad decisions in death - now that's narrative structure and character development I can get behind!

So Ottoway could not and was not destined to save the men since he did not save himself the night before. His final showdown with the lead wolf, a supernaturally massive black (of course) beast, also makes sense in this case. A number of reviewers remarked on the fact that the wolves are freakishly large and seeming to enjoy some human levels of reasoning and logic. But if they too are part of Ottoway's hellish punishment, if they are truly the Hounds of Hell, then their stalking and slaughter of these men, these pieces of Ottoway, makes more sense. As does the wolves' decision at the end to treat Ottoway not as a man or prey item, like they treated did the other men, but as another wolf that the current leader of the pack must fight for ultimate supremacy. Then the end is a fight of good versus evil cloaked as a battle of man versus beast. It is really about Ottoway versus his demons made flesh in the body of these supernaturally ever-present wolves that have wiped out all that represents him and his life. 

Thus the film does not wish to maim our sensibilities by confronting us with the impossibility of survival against all odds every time (even though it may do us as humans good to consider death as a possibility occasionally, and act like we have common sense). Instead, the film functions as a meditation on what one man endures because of his lost faith in life, in himself, and in his God after the death of his wife. Far less judgmental than I am perhaps making it seem, but heavy on the meditation. And in this vein, the film is actually pretty fabulous to consider.

Genre: C   (as adventure, its only ok)
Epidermal/Ethnic Variance: B-
Visuals/Audio: B+

Gender Rep: D-

    (only women here were dying in flashback or dying as stewardesses)
Narrative: B     

Overall, Gut Says:  B

Snow White and the Huntsman (2012)

Somewhere in the middle of this film I found myself with a few tears flowing down my cheeks due to the lucious tableaux of small but sturdy folk encircling a funereal pyre in a mythic, magical, mystical forest, combined with the sound of a Capella singing of Celtic mourning hymns - I call them hymns because the tone took me to my Black Baptist church upbringing, when elderly women would break into spontaneous song. I suppose I can call the film its own sort of hymn since Snow White and the Huntsman completes the impossible task of being at once a spiritually engaging meditation on good versus evil and a wonderful summer adventure flick whose well known/worn concerns are here rendered as newly feminist and communal.

To explain further, this is not your mother's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. In this version of events, we meet a spunky Snow whose greatest virtue is not her beauty - although that is noted by many - but her compassionate and warm heart. Whether taking in a bird whose wing needs mending, or accepting with grace and reserve the woman her father, the king, has decided to marry a year after the tragic death of her mother. Chalk this film up as another reminder of why I never yearn for "days of old" when death usually came with unknown cause, and with even greater frequency! But I digress.

Rupert Sanders reveals himself to be a filmmaker whose eye for visuals binds a seminal story like this one in a new but still understood fashion. Thus the drops of blood from Snow's mother's hand that hit the snow after she pricks her finger (on the rose bush that blooms mysteriously in winter) are as beautiful as the the scene itself - calling to mind the banked nature of winter filled with promise. Yet this moment that inspires her choice of name, when touched so earnestly by Sander's camera, calls up its own irony and sets Snow White among the Apples and Kal-El's of today's naming culture. If it wasn't iconic, how many of us would believe the name patently ridiculous? However, the current moment is called to mind when we consider characters.

Chris Hemsworth as Thor, I mean, the Huntsman, shakes off some of his self-righteous fury and replaces it with drunken self-righteous fury. To wit, he does display greater depth than he had to as the demi-god forced to take holiday on Earth in Thor (2011). But I find myself still waiting to see what else he is capable of when not in period costume immersed in a character of such firmly rooted history. That said, as a widower in a land without hope for a future, his performance offers a stoic and at times touching grounding in the immediate presence of loss that would have been missing and missed otherwise.

As our modern Snow White, who is imprisoned for a decade and must lead an army against the evil queen to retake her throne, we have Kristen Stewart. Stewart does a far better job here at conveying emotional complexity and acting chops than in her more famous forays into werewolf/vampire love triangles, although that might not be saying much. I found myself surprised and curious if it was Chris Hemsworth's effective, if at times confused seeming turn as the titular Huntsman that drew out this performance from Stewart - who thankfully did none of the repetitive blinking that stands in for responsive emoting in the Twilight movies! (Not that I don't Love that pulpy gothic blather for its own quirks.) The two of them together, if not really giving off the sparks we are meant to feel between them, do give off the glow of comrades on a common mission and with the common goal of redemption and purpose.

Of course the One To Watch is Charlize Theron's evil queen Ravena, who oozes a deceit that requests no apologies - although a brief back-story is shoe-horned in for those who may feel need to understand her pain. Sanders' affection for the queen is clear when, as Stewart trudges through yet another dirty swamp in her tattered dress, Ravena slips from one delectable scene and outfit to the next. At one moment nude save her crown and completely covered in milk the consistency of Elmer's Glue, Theron's performance seems to show off the settings, giving them more depth, rather than the other way around. Colleen Atwood's gorgeous costumes - sure to earn her another well deserved nomination unless the Academy members are watching the film while inhaling some of that glue Ravena was drenched in, and get distracted - offer no shortage of eye candy.

But the film's strength lies in the movement from castle to forest where I doubted my eyes at first, and then thought the filmmakers had found little people who looked exactly like Ian McShane, Bob Hoskins, Toby Jones and Nick Frost. Only to discover some magical trickery was afoot as they were all simply made to appear small compared to Stewart and Hemsworth. The scenes Snow and the Huntsman spent around forest fires with the "seven dwarfs" could have devolved into hammy, cheesy mockery. But instead, even with limited exposition, the wonderful actors infuse their characters with a humanity that draws the audience in, and you care about them. Hence the scenes where they sing become less hokey repetitions of 'high-ho" and are instead immediately elegiac and bewitching.

In other words, like a hymn the scenes stir the soul through sound and sight, but possesses a message about the complexity of their relationship to each other and to what Snow represents. When the dwarfs give their allegiance to Snow as the rightful queen who can save the kingdom, and agree to follow her into battle, we're again reminded that we're not in Kansas, err, Disney anymore. As an antidote to the spate of silly fare directed at young girls, full of the concerns of boys and clothes, the film triumphs. Snow's princess is both innocent and tough, capable of carving a three inch trench from forehead to chin in the face of the lecherous brother of the queen, and bringing a thirty foot tall bridge Troll to a sweetly submissive state by the force of her good will alone.

And despite having the unfortunate designation of Evil Queen, Theron's Ravena is a woman full of the unyielding desire for her own way and the desire for a beauty that she knows (even in medieval times) can ensure one's comfort and success in life. Such commentary is often cloaked in fairy tales, whose moral imperitives were either shoved in or the story altered for them to fit. But here, they are revealed and then subverted by the fact that both women desire to rule, and the preference only goes to the one who seems to show greater care for folks in her kingdom.

In other words, although Ravena must answer for the evil she does, and she does engage in a lot of vile acts, her punishment feels less an argument that the purity of Snow is preferable to her evil than a suggestion that any woman who rules must needs combine her desire to rule with attention to crops and prosperity as well, or be drummed out by the locals! In this way, Snow's rule is the better since her view of the best kingdom possible is one wherein community and the good of all comes first. And because she doesn't regularly suck the very youth out of random neighborhood girls to keep herself young.

Community comes even before her own desires, as becomes clear towards the end. One could call it a cheap, cheesy attempt to cash in on the "love triangle" trope running rampant through films and books aimed at youngsters, but the "choice" between her childhood friend William - a forgettable and sad Sam Claflin who suffers from being unable to rescue Snow as a child, and showing up after the Hunk, I mean, the Huntsman - and the Huntsman is about the impossibility of a queen finding a man both suitable to the drawing room, the bedroom, and the battlefield, who won't one day try to take over her throne! Ravena too rules alone after murdering Snow's father, and both women evoke Cate Blanchet's Queen Catherine forced to rule alone if she would have her own will actually prevail.

Overall, the feminist depth I happily gleaned from the viewing was unnecessary to the group of small children and adolescents there with their parents and the greater crowd of old and young Harlem movie go-ers who, in typical New York City fashion, shouted at the screen "She showed that b#*ch what was up!" as Snow's good triumphed over evil, and laughed good naturedly at the shenanigans of the dwarfs letting in Snow's army by sneaking in the castle and opening the gates. A film that will entrance old and young with its beauty and offer young girls a nice alternative to being a vampire or werewolf's meal/plaything.

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Genre - A-
  (as fairy tale action/adventure, its far better than most!)
Epidermal/Ethnic Variance - C+
  (some children of different hues and ethnicities at a remote village, otherwise, even magical lands are again for Whites only)
Visuals/Audio - A
Gender Rep - A+
   (for women re-framing what it means to be princess and in charge!)
Narrative - B+
Leaving Theater, Gut Said - B+/A

OVERALL GRADE: A-

Prometheus (2012)

The Greek myth of Prometheus involves a superior and powerful being who, out of compassion and the desire to generously give to his creation, gives fire to mankind, and is punished by his fellow powerful being "colleagues." His punishment is the daily violent consumption of his liver by an eagle - the liver grows back each day. With these images and ideas in mind - that of a god creating a creature both wonderful and violent, and giving a force both destructive and beneficial to that creature, and being punished for it - one cannot help but be enraptured by the questions, and there are many, many questions, raised by Ridley Scott's entrancing film.

Beginning with our interstellar Prometheus' voluntary self-annihilation at Victoria Falls, which allows mankind to exist by dispersing his DNA through the water, the film revolves around questions of sacrifice, consequence, compassion, and how they structure relations between people. The film begins with the discovery by academics of Scottish cave paintings similar to those found all over the world with large beings standing next to much smaller people, and a representation of a specific group of planets far, far away. These scholars of, seemingly all ancient cultures(?!) - Noomi Rapace and a sadly forgettable turn from Logan Marshall-Green - conclude that these alien engineers are suggesting we humans go visit them. For the sake of time I suppose, the methods these two use to determine that the drawing is an invitation is not explored, lending their conclusion an air of farce. As invitations to visit go, this one is probably the most vague and least well explicated or elaborated, but as one character says, they're running on faith - and hoping we'll follow them on some faith too.

From there the film smartly moves into space, which serves as a blank slate on which to project the crew's desires, both mundane and spiritual. As usual, Ridley Scott's fastidious attention to the environment in which he places his characters can be so lovely as to overshadow them. As is the case with our Ripley/Sigorney Weaver surrogate this time around, Noomi Rapace as Elizabeth Shaw. Between the child-like, tinny, timidly inconsequential quality of her voice, and a dour, flat aura/demeanor that persists even when she is supposed to be happy, the world Scott wraps around Dr. Shaw is frequently more interesting to consider than she is! And unfortunately, even with the cotton stuffing of a similar haircut and tendency toward survivalist intelligence, her performance falls far, far short of filling Ripley's shoes. The sparks of fire that Rapace exhibited so easily at times in Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows (2011), and which seared her performance into people's minds in the Swedish version of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2009) are missing here completely, and I left feeling her current It-Girl status to be undeserved, if it lacks the vulnerability, reserve, complexity and power that made Weaver's Ripley someone to cheer for. In other words, Elizabeth was the one character I was supposed to care about most but cared about least. 

As the movie's titular heroine this would make one think the film suffers, but not as much since Scott has filled the other roles with actors of singular grace and nuance. Notably Charlize Theron as the ambiguously motivated and alluringly sibilant Weyland Company representative, Idris Elba as the ship's aloof but humane captain, and Michael Fassbender in a benignly vicious role as the ship's android robot, David. The texture and tone of Fassbender's performance nearly deserves a review all its own, and is thrilling considering that, in what one can only assume to be a nod to the original film, at one point he is still emotionally compelling as a disembodied head! Overall his performance is so wonderful because he perfectly reflects - in gesture, facial tic, vocal modulation - the subliminal questioning about consequence and humanity that the film is obsessed with. For example, when preparing for arrival, as the only sentient "being" awake on the ship, David evokes a creepy voyeurism tinged/satiated by longing with very few spoken lines or movements. His performance fills one with wonder at the complexity of what it means to be human as reflected in what we project onto/into our creations.

After the perfunctory but necessary opening, we arrive on the planet LV-223 and - in somewhat haphazard fashion - at a site with ancient alien "buildings" - the first place you fly over has alien construction on it, really? Despite the revolutionary, 'first contact for humanity with other sentient life' quality of this discovery, and despite the fact that he is supposed to be a brilliant Ph.D./scholar, Marshall-Green's Dr. Charlie Holloway acts like a frat boy on holiday. This is a man who spends his life in remote locations, for long hours, plying small brushes in delicate strokes, seeking the bits of history that, once assembled, reveal a larger picture. And then over the course of months or longer, he works at carefully preparing to present that work to other people. And yet he displays bizzare inattention to detail and a refusal to engage with the discovery. For example, after understandably insisting on visiting the amazing discovery regardless of there only being six hours of remaining daylight, upon entering the system of tunnels and chambers, he quickly sours on the discovery when live alien beings do not immediately reveal themselves. Holloway turns to calling the central chamber with the massive stone head from the promo posters "just another tomb" without investigating even a fraction as superficially as the others (who, incidentally, are collecting a perfectly preserved alien Engineer's head and checking out massive oozing canisters within twenty feet of him). And he is so disappointed, he takes no samples/specimens, takes no notes, and spends precious time on an alien world getting drunk and laid on the ship. Holloway's further indulgence in downright brutish and insensitive treatment of android David for being a robot feels a bit ham-fisted, sloppy and odd as a way to keep the audience from caring for him too deeply, since we fully expect in a Ridley Scott film to care about those whose lives are lost. Thankfully, the character's unexpected, unusual, and unprofessional behavior is given little screen time, and the performances of the other characters dominate.

As is to be expected, the film is one of those where folks are picked off one by one, and since poor Ripley's 1979/2122 Nostromo crew is unaware of the history of the planet when they stop by to answer a distress beacon, we know none of them will make it home. This film is less concerned with making us care about all of the crew than the first film was, but the encounters between human and planetary "wildlife" makes up a bit for this. The creature effects are beyond amazing, and I was happy to see H.R. Giger's delicious manipulation of human reproductive and other body parts again brought to bear on the alien life. What also became clear is that, whether planned or not, the symbolism used in creating Alien's body makes sense considering the same superior beings who created us also created the Alien - albeit very indirectly, accidentally, and against their will. But I won't ruin the fun by saying more... Suffice it to say that more than one scene had the audience, and me as well, groaning out loud over not just the death of a character, but the appearance of the critter that killed them!

The action sequences are both awe-inspiring and lovely as the crew discovers planet LV-223 to be less cradle of the alien Engineers' civilization and more Area 51/1950's New Mexico desert. But the real thrill comes from the realization that each character's actions are constantly pushing and pulling at what the cost of sacrifice is, whether the sacrifice is one's body, one's life, one's dignity, or one's ultimate desires. In other words, obvious ideas about 'what it means to be human' aside, the film's strength lies in the other ideas it plays with. Ridley Scott's film glows with its ability to make the environment itself an active force compelling choice and suggesting that sacrifice is often as much about the human as it is about the "alien" - ie, the tension between that which is presumably us and that which is profoundly Not us/is hostile to us.

A bit esoteric a viewing lens, and maybe reading too much? Perhaps. But the unexpected depth and beauty of the film's play with the ideas of compassion and sacrifice made me less annoyed by 1) the  number of unanswered central questions and 2) the obviousness of inevitable sequels suggested by the end of the film. By managing to raise similar, but more complex questions than the first Alien, fans of the terrifying and the brainy are both sure to be satisfied, and excited for what Scott has planned next.

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Genre - A+
Epidermal/Ethnic Variance - C+
Visuals/Audio - A
Gender Rep - B
Narrative - B+
Gut Says - A
OVERALL GRADE: B+

True Blood's Pariah, America's History, and Black Women's Representaitons

There has been a great deal of hate poured on Tara as a character on the show True Blood on HBO in the form of multiple Facebook groups dedicated to hoping she dies, and blog posts complaining about her. Did I mention Tara is a strong, outspoken, often justifiably angry, and determined Black Female character? Sigh.

I found the most cogent and sharply examined analysis of the hatred Tara receives so far in a blog post about "Strong Female Characters" at TigerBeatDown.com. Demanding a full reconsideration of what it means to be "strong" in the context of these cinematic and visual media, the author calls upon us to consider why to be "strong" is good for White women - historically rooted perceptions of weakness and and wilting-Lilly quality as natural - and why it is always perceived as very bad for Black women - historically grounded perceptions of Black women as inherently masculine, animal like, the diametric opposite of all that is wonderful and White. Therefore, a strong White woman is good and show's gumption, a strong Black woman is annoying.

Unfortunately, I found this analysis through the link in a Think Progress blog posting about why the brilliant critique at Tiger Beat Down was wrong because Tara is unloved due to being "Static" not due to being Black. If I wasn't also reading Killing the Black Body by Dorothy Roberts and Hortense Spillers' Black, White and In Color, I might not be quite so imbued with excitement over TigerBeatDown's insight and anger over this blogger's shortsightedness and seemingly ill-intentioned attack. But alas, reading the history of Black women's treatment within the U.S. will do that to you. But that aside...

As is too often the case, liberal, well educated, White women still refuse to believe race can play a role in the abuses suffered by a Black woman and other Women Of Color because it would force a questioning of their own relatively privileged position within an extant representational/power hierarchy, within an evolving cultural milieu, and within a functioning historical narrative that prizes their supposedly inherent positive attributes to the detriment of Women Of Color who are perceived as all that is opposed and awful. After one too many frustrated flipping of pages, figurative and literal, to escape their narrow thinking, I decided to answer the lunacy of this blogger, and have included the content below:

Alyssa, your comments about Tara with regards to race and her representation on True Blood go from unfair to downright vicious - especially growing as they do out of a desire to declare the profound and insightful commentary at TigerBeatDown.com to be false. You state:

"It’s that the character never grows, and exhibits consistently poor judgement [sic], sabotaging a potential relationship with a nice, stable man and taking up with a former criminal, seeking protection with and then falling under the spell of a powerful, chaos-inclined magical entity, and then when she gets therapy and rebuilds her life outside of Bon Temps, sabotages it again for no discernable [sic] reason, taking up with a genocidal witches’ coven."

What character on the show miraculously evolves as you would demand of Tara? NONE. Part of the show's allure is the constant danger and impulse of so many characters to constantly make decisions which place them in mortal danger. Thus you could create a list like the one you spill over Tara for any of the other characters on the show! The only one to demonstrably change in any real way is Eric, and only because he suffered a witches curse, now his memory is back and lord knows if he'll stay all sweet.

Everyone on the show consistently makes bad decisions - Sookie can only love men who desire to eat her. She slept with Eric! He's hot, but vicious. She didn't pick the hot, available, stable werewolf, but instead the crazy, scary vampire. Or how about Arlene who went from a serial killer to a mildly deranged military vet. Or Sam who consistently does the Wrong thing - whether killing folks in the past or kicking his brother out when what his brother needed was stability, a place to call home without dog-fights, and someone to call him on his BS for a change.

But even if we only consider what you are asking of Tara and not her characterization compared to others (even if I think the comparison is sufficient to show similarity, but in the interest of answering the insulting length of your demands...) there is still something amiss in your desire to declare Tara "Static" if we consider what you list as the reasons why she is a static and hated/unloved character:

1- Who is this nice stable man she sabotages a relationship with? Who on this show has ever been shown to truly be stable at all? Maybe werewolf man, but then he does change into a beast when the full moon pops up.
2- Are you really beyond the ability to understand or see the desire of a child of an alcoholic single mother (with no other family) to take advantage of the shelter and care being offered by a woman with so much to give and other people in need under her care? Can you truly be faulting Tara for being bewitched? Do you fault everyone else for their bewitchment as well? And are You Really asking Tara to have been psychic and discerned that the nice lady was really a maenad intent on destroying her life? Because I refuse to believe that someone who went to college would expect precognition of a Black female character as the grounds for the character to be considered 'dynamic.'
3- If you do not know why Tara sent her girlfriend away - to avoid her being hurt/killed - and believe the show's creators so inept as to have had her take up with the coven for no reason - if you watch the show, there is a reason - then I don't know what to say.

Clearly, the reasons you present for why Tara is "static" are really reasons rooted in a desire for her character to be superhuman, infallable, maternal, and rooted in a quasi-behavioral Whiteness which you point out as being necessary for this to be possible. And before you dispute this, you do say:

"Tara’s character [in the novels] is a recovering abuse survivor who’s sometimes brittle because of it, but she’s also a small business owner, a good friend to Sookie (though they have their fallings [sic] out), a wife and mother—and she’s white. If Ball had kept that character development arc, and committed to that emotional growth, but cast Rutina Wesley in the role, I think we’d think Tara is a hero. Instead, he both made her black and an object of perpetual humiliation. If we’re not cheering Tara it’s because the character has no discernable [sic] investment in her own life and happiness."

Now, if you list wonderful things and add, "--and she's white.", then follow by saying, "he made her black and an object of perpetual humiliation", what you are doing, even if inadvertently, is setting up the similarity between the wonderful world of possibility that is White Tara in the book and how awful Black Tara is in the show. You are linking the characteristics to color not for the purpose of clarity, but to further establish why Black Tara is so faulty for this indistinct, intangible but seemingly preferential list of vague plot details. (We'll leave aside discussion for now of all the troublesome undercurrents of your desire to see a Black, single mother Tara character with children.)

Done so casually, this comparison is scary to me. Especially because it renders inauthentic your claim to want to add business-owner as a part of Tara's character to make her better. Oh, and a business-owner without any ups or downs natural to all characters on a show, and with a perfect supportive relationship to Sookie at all times. Perhaps one can fault the show for not giving Tara enough purely self-motivated, self-oriented actions, but to demand perfection is... odd.
And it goes without saying that None of the characters demonstrate a serious investment in their own happiness as far as making good decisions.

When you present such an insubstantial and specious list of reasons for why Tara is hated by so many, and use it as a direct assault on the sound, historically and theoretically grounded arguments of the authors at TigerBeatDown.com, I would question the stakes for you in derailing the cause of honest discourse about women and racial representations on TV. I would question your reasons for trumpeting Tara as "perpetually humiliated" rather than as an able, adaptable, strong, survivor of multiple horrific incidents who still manages to support her friend Sookie by refusing to sugar-coat the truth or allow her to make crazy decisions without reflection. The best moments are when they are honest and real with each other about what is going on, even if one end up angry about it. So again I ask, what is at stake for you in derailing the cause of Honest discussion about these representations the way you are?

Kerry Washington Lovely in Lift (2001)

Comment in response to Elvis Mitchell's review of this wonderful little film:

Lift (2001) is a sharp, witty cinematic effort, giving us well drawn characters whose lives we care about. Its also a stunning turn by Kerry Washington in a heavy indictment of consumer culture. It is filled with complex and generous portrayals of these characters. And even if the reasons underpinning their desire for the designer goods is something which the audience is expected to know already - which, depending on the viewing audience could determine whether these characters end up stereotyped or understood - the actors still give them such depth one should feel for them.

Elvis Mitchell calls these young Black characters small-minded and short-sighted, but this is an ungenerous read at best and at worst its a rough essentializing. Especially because, at its most poignant, this film proves that ironically, the accusations of otherness slopped onto Black people in the U.S. can easily be disproved when one considers the fact that the All American Love of bigger, better, more, now is shared by White and Black Americans! If nothing else we know that the oppressed, or formerly oppressed, follow the suit of their oppressors, so if we are to nag these young people for their behavior, we must condemn all American culture for making it seem there is nothing in life but to own and have more stuff...

Jennifer's Body (2009): Misunderstood Brilliance

Jennifer's Body suffers from a few major afflictions: reviews that want it to be something gorier or more evil than it is, reviews that attack it for an assumption of cheap opportunism, and some reviewers that plain just don't understand at all what's going on.

What is going on is that, within the context of a friendship of lopsided power dynamics but seeming genuine affection between two teen girls, the more dominant and narcissistic friend is sacrificed to a demon by a group of young men so they can be a successful rock band. This sacrifice turns her into an undead succubus who must then consume young men to survive. Her best friend must then decide how she might be stopped, while navigating the tricky terrain of their lifelong friendship.

I felt compelled to write this review not because Diablo Cody has created the perfect horror movie, or even one it seems most (male?) horror fans will enjoy. The film does suffer a few moments of seemingly forced dialogue which only works because Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfried produce such wonderful, natural feeling performances. The reason why this film is amazing has to do with it being the logical conclusion to or heir apparent to Mean Girls and Chumscrubber: The Perfect White Suburban Female Horror flick. Playing on the suburban malaise and disconnections which sometimes structure empty lives, this film ensures we feel fear at the thought of the dark underbelly of small town American teens! Rather than a rehash, it takes Mean Girls to another level, one where female friendships and rapidly proliferating youthful apathy are revealed to be the true terror and not some indestructible man in a mask.

Aaaarghh! There be Spoilers Ahead!  

In dreadcentral.com's review - which at times implies that that Diablo Cody does not understand even the basics of narrative structure - they accuse the film of being too concerned with seeming important, and using a whirlpool as a useless plot device at the film's climax. I argue here that part of what they've missed is that Cody and Kusama are all too aware of both the levity and weight of the film, and have used each element purposefully.

It may not be a strictly feminist horror film - Needy escapes, but after all they do kill Jennifer in the end, bad form! But the film does a great job at revealing the true horror, fear, resentments, distrust, and oppression at the center of so many female friendships!! All women at sometime have thought a friend to be a demon: evil, ruthless, heartless, cruel, and capable of infinite evil. This film is what would happen if one could prove it. Therefore the whirlpool is far from a useless plot point, and is instead a potent visual metaphor for a number of things:

First, the terrible fear most civilizations have of female sexuality as that swirling thing that may have no depths, operates beyond man's comprehension, and can consume infinitely. It is no mistake that one of the film's early scenes is of two men dumping boxes of balls into the whirlpool (to try and understand its trajectory and operations) which are consumed by the vortex and never seen again. This gynephobic undercurrent may be represented, to me at least, in somewhat heavy-handed fashion, but I have yet to read a review that points this out, which means folks are missing the significance and it is a cool thing to note!!

Second, the vortex that bad female friendships can become, sucking energy, joy, even life out of you even as you find them impossible to escape. See the previous comments about female friendships.

Third, and finally, the terrifying depths of female abjection and violation in the face of stronger men. It is no mistake that it is near that infinite whirlpool that the band decides to sacrifice Jennifer to a demon. Ostensibly she has to be sacrificed in the name of the band's financial success, but the placement near the whirlpool reminds one of the vast numbers of women who go missing, are raped, assaulted, and abused worldwide and whose cries are either laughed at or go unheard altogether.

Reviewers complaining about the improbability of Cody's language have spent little time around groups of girls age 13 to 19, because the made up slang, the viciousness, and constant pushing and testing is a hallmark of current female interaction - the latter to a disturbing degree I believe. And scenes in the classroom, of Jennifer's demon possessed form laughing about death and sadness is not so far fetched in our mass media, rapidly evolving, 24 hour news cycle lives. A reviewer in Australia complained that the movie fails to create anything a viewer could identify with as scary. Well he clearly has never been in a female friendship.

If there's anything to truly complain about in this film it is the narratively necessary and therefore inevitable, but ultimately uninspiring demise of Jennifer. In a womanist read of the film, Jennifer lives a toxic-masculinist dream: taking on "lovers" when she wants, disposing of them at will, and using their adoration and fear of losing out on the opportunity she offers to suck them dry of energy and leave them empty in her wake. How many films celebrate just this sort of male behavior wherein women occupy cardboard placement in service to men's sexual whims or maternal needs? I adore The Hangover, Wedding Crashers, and Swingers, but these films are no friends to women.

Here, unlike in for example Weird Science (1985), Jennifer as whirlpool does the supernatural selecting and discarding. Her death therefore somehow feels an appeasement of scared male egos - the film's scientists - who really just want that whirlpool to be clarified, contained, and understood. Beyond the usual requirement that horror films punish the bad (often) and save our heroine (sometimes), it seems that Jennifer has to die for her bad friendship, her ruthless high school demeanor, but most importantly for her murder of young men whose only crime was to fall for her beauty imagining it covered a nice person too. Hence the film requires Needy's discovery of the end of the whirlpool, the end of Jennifer's sexually charged rampage through male flesh, the end of male fear of the unpredictable or dangerous in dreamily imagined encounters with strange, hot women. After all, men need to believe there are hot women out there who will sleep with and satisfy them without then eating them afterwards.

What does the whirlpool mean for Needy? In one read, we could say that Needy has discovered her own empowered connection to the whirlpool's violent, powerful possibility - she has become part demon after all, and can truly enjoy her sexuality, refusal to be a victim, and no-nonsense attitude. Now, Needy may become the perfect melding of Jennifer's power, sensuousness, and self-containment, and her own composed, moral, logical self. Thus, in truly amazing and womanist inspired writing, Jennifer and Needy are two halves of a whole, and the perfect woman is and can be (if she wants) a mix of the sassy and sweet, brutal and tender, powerful and empowering!

However, in a more likely read, the discovery of the end of the whirlpool still harkens back to scary female sexuality since the end of the whirlpool equals the earlier deposited, disembodied balls and an obscenely large hunting knife - castration anxiety anyone? And why does the whirlpool seemingly dump out on the side of an empty stretch of road? A lonely no-man's land, where the next person Needy encounters is a motorist played by actor Lance Henriksen. Yes, Henriksen who has been forever immortalized on celluloid as being the male representation of how terrifying and destructive a force reproduction is - pregnancy is death! BUT this does not spell the complete death knell of womanist/feminist readings, and I would have to really stretch to believe Cody and Kusama did not want a less sad reading of this film.

All in all, I found this film full of the necessary frights - that evil friend just might kill me or destroy my life or steal my boyfriend and eat him!! It had genuinely scary moments - groups and solitary men do in fact kidnap and torture women all the time - and legit representations of youthful behavior - I have actually heard dialogue from high schoolers and middle schoolers that eerily resembles this film's dialogue... The film Kick's Ass!!

So reviewers out there, give the film a shot and stop hating just because its "cool" to hate it! The creative minds behind Girl Fight (2000) and Juno (2007) deserve more consideration than you've given them!!

Hangover II: The Hunt For Greater Offensiveness

In response to The Hangover II's completely tone-less, tasteless, and inappropriate use of iconic imagery, I searched the internet for a review which also mentioned this mis-fire. Here's my comment based on Roeper's review of the film:

Thank God one reviewer has said it! My husband, brother and I thought we were the only ones to notice the horribly offensive and far, far from funny re-enactment of the iconic Viet Nam war photograph of a man being executed by a gunshot to the head during the end credits. While I argued that there is no way Phillips could actually have thought this would be funny and had done it unintentionally (using an image stuck in his head but not purposefully referring to this horrible image), my brother and husband argue that he intentionally used it and thought it would be funny. Regardless, I am happy to hear someone else point out its taste-less-ness and as an end to what had in general been expected and tolerable offensiveness, closing with this intolerable image has left us with a terrible taste in our mouths.