Film Fatale

Akeelah & The Bee: The Most Inspirational Movie of all Time

I’ve been feeling super Black lately, so I started watching Black films.  Most of them are about sad, Black men in the inner city who watch all their friends die from gunshots before escaping the hood through either sports or music. Others are about fat, sixteen-year-old Black girls who are still in middle school, pregnant for the second time, raped, abused, have a child with downs syndrome, and are HIV positive.
Akeelah and The Bee, though is, to date, the only happy Black movie known to man.  Unless you count Good Burger. Then there are two.

Akeelah and The Bee is about a young, Black girl growing up in a bad neighborhood somewhere in LA near and/or around where Ice Cube’s brother Ricky was shot in front of Cuba Gooding Jr. She goes to a shit school with no budget and a ton of bullies. Two bullies pick on Akeelah specifically because they, like most people, hate smart children. They hate Akeelah so much that they go out of their way to go to her special events and make fun of her. Say what you will about bullies, but they have a dedication that the kids they convince to kill themselves are obviously lacking.

No H8.

It gets better.

Aside from school life, Akeelah has an interesting family dynamic (and that was the worst transitional sentence ever written). She has four siblings. Her sister is never really seen but has what seems to be an illegitimate baby. Her mildly older brother is in a gang. Her way older brother is in the military in hopes of getting a college degree; he is also Malcolm in the Middle’s older brother’s Black friend in military school and the alien genius from the short lived but utterly brilliant Nickelodeon show Allen Strange.  Akeelah’s mom works long hours at the hospital to provide for her family and her father died during a shooting in the hood; because no Black child in cinema ever has both parents.  Not even in Goodburger.

Right off the bat the film starts building Akeelah’s character through scene. She gets A’s on her spelling tests, she plays scrabble for fun, and she’s excited about learning.  This, of course, get’s her bullied because the urban community hates education almost as much as they hate college (this, of course, is not their fault and reflects the internalized socialization forced on to them by a continually oppressive system, but because the foundlings of said system are in the past and we do not have a delorean, I have no choice but to move forward and insult it—Besides, you probably don’t care).
Akeelah gets offered to do the spelling bee and decides she doesn’t want to.  But then someone tells her to do it for her dead father, which is exactly what you say to a child at a key developmental milestone.  You say to them, “Hey, do this thing you don’t want to do for your dead parent.”  There’s no way that kind of a thing could have dire consequences on a child’s mental health.

At this point Laurence Fishburne shows up as a positive Black role model (as seen in his roles in Boyz n’ The Hood and kind of a little bit in The Matrix) and is way to harsh on an 11 year-old girl. He almost makes her cry. But, he also lends a tender moment to the film by showing Akeelah the most bad ass Nelson Mandela quote of all time.
Akeelah wins the spelling bee shit and becomes friends with a nice Latino/Hispanic kid named Javier with really supportive parents (and a huge eleven-year-old crush on Akeelah) and a nice Asian boy, Dylan, with a father who hates him (and is also a little racist). That could be seen as a stereotypical comment on Asians, but it’s my understanding that all fathers hate their children, so I think it’s less racial and more completely and unfortunately true. 

Her new friendships, though, strain her old ones because it’s hard to manage wealthy friends who play Scrabble  and poor friends who like to actually do fun things. Shit’s rough, man. Social mobility is a bitch.

On top of that, her mom also hates that she wants to do the bee, which sounds cruel and unfair; but if you work full time, have four kids, your husband dies from gang violence, your oldest daughter has a bastard baby and lives at home, your older son joins the army, and your younger son is in a gang, then I think you’ve earned the right to be overprotective of your youngest child; especially when she is in summer school for cutting classes. I’m going to go out on a limb and say Mom was in the right on that one.

As the conflict rises you discover Laurence Fishburne has had to bury his daughter and be left by his wife. Through coaching her, Akeelah brings back a lot of feelings of fatherhood, and the relationship between the two strains. By the end of it, Akeelah teaches him he can move on and be there for others as he would be there for his daughter.

It’s touching in a way only children’s movies can be. 

The sentence seems problematic.

For a time, however, Laurence Fishburne’s character excuses himself from coaching her in an attempt to stay professional. No worries, though. Shit start’s looking up for Akeelah.  Her bee moves the community. Her mom coaches her, her brothers coach her, her teachers coach her, the gang leader (as played by the guy who does Crab Man on My Name is Earl or The Rubber Band Man in the Office Max commercials depending on how dated you want your references to be) coaches her, the Korean shop owner coaches her. Even the local wino helps her.

You know how many other Black movies show communal love towards the education of children?  Approximately none.

Exactly none.

Fuck.

By the end, Javier loses but is okay with that. He knows he’ll have a chance to win the next year. Akeelah and Dylan Bonnie-and-Clyde their way to a co-victory, thus overcoming their differences in a most triumphant victory. Everyone wins and Akeelah’s bee singlehandedly saves the ghetto.

Is it ridiculous?  Yes.

Is it heart warming as fuck?  You bet your ass.

I’ll be honest with you, tumblr: I was high when I watched this movie.  I was high and incredibly emotional.  I cried several different times; twice out of sorrow and twice out of how fucking happy I was for Akeelah.  Then I called my mom and made her validate my existence.  Then I wrote this post.

Technical Stuff:

Cinematically the film makes great use of montage (particularly when showing Akeelah study). The use of POV shots work out well too, adding to the emotional resonance of the film. It’s a kid’s movie, though, so it can be heavy-handed or overly expositional at times; but you have to do that because kids are stupid (as, oddly enough, are most adults). Because of that, the movie is directed in a way that can, to an adult, seem tired or cliché, but to a child makes the emotional flow of the film clear and easy to follow.  Certain actions or segments of dialogue seem overemphasized to show their importance. 

That being said, Akeelah and The Bee does a good enough job of being something any age can enjoy; and while it stoops to a child’s level, thus allowing them a chance to understand, it does not pander to a child audience or force itself to be terribly over simplistic.  It’s also, in part, the fact that this is a children’s movie that allows it to be so unrealistic.  In some kid’s movies, a child is accidently left at home for Christmas and fights off burglars with gadgets and gizmos.  In others, children walk along a set of railroad tracks, discovering themselves as they look for a dead body.  Most plots are stupid; it’s the journey that matters.

I mean, look at Up for Christ’s sake. If someone walked up to you and said, “Hey, I want to make a movie about an old man, a boy, and some animals flying in a house filled with balloons,” you would say, “You are an idiot.” But then it happens and you and everyone else in the theater cries after the first five minutes. Five god-damned minutes!

Fuck you, Pixar. You broke my fucking heart.

Also, for a film targeting a younger demographic, Akeela and The Bee has a sick soundtrack.  Bootsy Collins? Fuck yeah.

Quotes:
    •    “What do you want to be when you grow up?  A doctor?  A lawyer?  A stand up comic?” –Laurence Fishburne (upon meeting Akeelah)
    •    “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be?” –Nelson Mandela (reoccurring theme of the film)

REVIEW: The Artist

It’s not actually that difficult to make a silent movie. Pop anything into a DVD player and watch it with the sound off for a while, and you might be surprised by how much you can understand. Pixar has experimented with the format for such recent features as WALL-E and Up, earning them high praise. In reality, much of the language of cinema is visual. That’s why it’s a projected image accompanied by sound, and not a radio show or CD.

Utter silence for an entire film remains, however, a pretty archaic idea, as is the completely black-and-white picture. It makes sense that any film with both qualities should, thematically, embrace the idea of nostalgia. The Artist does this two-fold, its content firmly embracing the implications of its form. Its setting is during the Golden Age of Hollywood, as movies turned into talking pictures; its protagonist, George, is a man who is having trouble adjusting to the new. It’s no wonder this picture is a critical darling; film critics and makers tend to love old movies, and this film is not only in the format of one, but looks nostalgically back at them.

It’s remarkably effective, too, because the format is done quite well. Intertitles take the place of dialogue (though not, as was also common in some silent pictures, description), but you might be surprised at how infrequently they are used. The score takes the place of ambient sound; its range is dynamic and its sound full. As the years pass, the score takes frequent turns towards swing and other popular music of the time. The score is nearly constant - all the more effective when it drops out entirely. And once or twice, the sound editors break all the rules, events which I found to be quite thrilling and disorienting.

The cast is small, but talented. Notably, everybody is always smiling. Jean DuJardin has the ruggedly handsome charm of old-style movie actors, oh yes, but he also delivers a subtle performance as a kind and talented person, if somewhat vain and brooding. Berenice Bejo is his protege and a rising talkie star; she is charming and nearly as funny as DuJardin, and her chemistry with him provides for a believable love epic. John Goodman and James Crowell are familiar faces, one of the film’s only faults - Bejo and DuJardin are unknown enough to American viewers that their story may be timelessly oriented in the past, but Cromwell and Goodman have shown up in many American pictures, dating the film farther in the future. Around the leads, the producers fill the screen with tons of extras, another callback to an era where digitally expanding a crowd was impossible and studios pushed as many people into the frame as possible.

The Artist lays bare what goes on behind the camera - one of its first scenes takes place behind the screen of a movie theater. The industry of it, and the drama of hiring and firing, is presented, if broadly. The Golden Age may be partly defined as years of assembly-line films: actors, screenwriters, and directors exclusively on contract with different studios to give each studio a different unique look. But The Artist is simultaneously presented with a very human center in the character of George and his struggles, such that the audience has a real stake in the industry’s shift. The result is a funny, dark, and sweet picture, worthy of the classics but retaining a slightly modern feel in its nostalgia.

-Paul Anderson

Review: Tron: Legacy

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close: Thoughts on an Adaptation

The term “unfilmable” is tossed around a fair amount these days, in reference to stories told in other mediums (books, comics, video games, real life) that could not be adequately translated to the screen, and yet Hollywood keeps pushing the boundaries. Watchmen was unfilmable because of its meticulous detail and the flood of iconic images associated with it - but Zack Snyder went ahead and tried it anyway. But then you encounter stories that are designed for the heavily prose-based narrative format of a book, or stories that feature characters that are enriched with an interior monologue. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is both of those.

 

So from the get-go, not only have the writers shot themselves in the foot, but I have to re-examine how I evaluate this movie. In what it aims to adapt, it is ambitious. Oskar (appropriately named, since this film was nominated for two of them) is a kid living in New York. From his obsessiveness and speech, he probably has some sort of mental disability (Asperger’s is brought up, but there’s a good chance he has autism, too.) As the film begins, his father has recently died in the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks. The film is told out of chronological order: the main narrative begins on the day of Oskar’s father’s funeral, one significant and extended flashback takes place on the day of the attacks, and several other flashbacks have no apparent anchor in time.

Not a single one of these things is easy to pull off; that the film is coherent at all is cause for celebration. But it’s competent, not exciting, and a few of those items fall flat even if they’re done well. 

Let’s start with the kid. Child actors are put under the microscope in Hollywood, and rightly so. They’re hard to write for; it’s easy to write a kid to sound too old, too pretentious, or both. And don’t forget that we’re talking about a kid with a mental disability. So Oskar is thorough, easy to anger, and brutally honest. Unfortunately, knowing he has a disability doesn’t make me like him more.

We’re not supposed to read stories to like characters. Here, though, I think we are, because we’re supposed to be taking this journey alongside Oskar. Failing that, we should at least understand where he’s coming from. I would have better understood Oskar’s struggle if I could have witnessed Oskar’s pain. There’s an early sequence where he sees, hears, and smells every little detail around him and feels overwhelmed by it, but it’s accompanied by an unnecessary and rather jarring narration that brought me out of the scene completely. His temper tantrums and cruelty to those around him aren’t offset enough by that. Logically, I understand that Oskar needs to have a system to function (leading to his climactic outburst around the end of the first act), but this is shown neither consistently nor effectively.

You could lay the blame at the feet of many people for this. One could blame the actor, Thomas Horn, whose emotions are stagnant and whose aggression lacks direction. One could point the finger at the director, who gets mixed results from most of his actors; for instance, I have seen Tom Hanks do better with worse material. Or one could implicate the writers for the risky structure of the story. The Help essentially revolved around the performances of two experienced black actresses, and the film is better for it despite its rampant clichés. Meanwhile, ELIAC is almost exclusively under the reins of young Horn. It is risky to center a film around several child actors; riskier still to center it around only one; and riskiest of all to make his the voice and face the only one almost constantly heard and seen. Since, as I mentioned, his performance is only mediocre, the film falls flat.

It is almost saved by the presence of Max Von Sydow, here playing a mute war victim known only as The Renter. Here is a lesson in subtlety, next to a child actor who could use it. Von Sydow never says a word, speaking only via messages scribbled in his notebook. But he never fully reveals himself, and so we are curious to know more about him. In addition, he puts the young Oskar in his place, dismissing or challenging Oskar’s fears because, we can only assume, the Renter has seen greater ones. This grounding is sorely needed in a story narrated by an overdramatic child, and whether the problem, again, is from the writers or the kid, the Renter’s jokes and frankness are a welcome relief.

I don’t envy Sandra Bullock, who is given an almost non-part, but while her role as an independent person is shabby (she is extremely emotional, and not well fleshed-out), she is a very effective mother figure, and an appreciably calming influence on Oskar. Other actors (Jeffrey Wright and Viola Davis as an estranged couple; Zoe Caldwell as Oskar’s grandmother) are sometimes very good. The film was marketed as a panoply of stories and encounters from the perspective of Oskar, but in reality there are really very few. A couple of montages are presented well. I thought this might drive the film away from the narrative of “charming determined boy brings people together from his quest,” and it almost does. Wright and Davis start to make up after meeting Oskar, but this makes decently logical sense, as Oskar’s MacGuffin was a large reason for their divorce in the first place. When the Renter reconciles with his wife and Oskar reconciles with his mother, things start to become a little more statistically improbable. I was happy to see the mother and son find solace in each other, but her methods seem extreme, and von Sydow’s ending is hastily tacked on. I assume this narrative was conceived as the beginnings of healing after the terrorist attacks, which is unnecessary, and less satisfying than the simple joy of one pair of characters wherein each realizes the other’s worth. As a piece incorporating 9/11 elements, it is far better than the despicable Remember Me, but not as grippingly imagined as United 93 or imaginatively reconceived as the season one finale of Fringe.

As a film, it is adequate. The soundtrack by Alexandre Desplat is a blend of quirky piano and unassuming strings; the film is cleanly produced, and topped off with a final message from the dead. It’s neat and tidy without presuming to completely heal the wounds of 9/11, and that may be why it was nominated for the Academy’s premiere award. Unfortunately, I think it’s part of a group of movies this year nominated for the award that satisfy, rather than transcend, the thirst for a good picture (The Help, War Horse), which is a deep contrast from last year’s selections (Black Swan, The Social Network). This is satisfying enough, non-summer blockbuster fare, but no better. Hollywood can challenge itself more.

By: Paul Anderson

Miniature Furnishings and People of the Female Persuasion: An Ode to the Creation Story of Lena Dunham

This is Lena Dunham:

Look at her, all searching and wise.

Lena Dunham graduated from Oberlin in 2008.

(Still from her 2007 short “Hooker on Campus”)

(This is from her Twitter profile picture, circa recently. If you have a twitter but don’t follow her we can’t be friends)

She is my new hero. I will be talking about her and her projects non-stop until at least April 15th. I’m sorry, friends, there is no escaping it. So why not jump on the bandwagon?

Here are some reasons why.

First of all, I am a big believer in hero-worship. Now, don’t get me wrong: I’m not talking about Misery-style kidnappings and holding her hostage until she agrees to be the Jack Donaghy to my Liz Lemon (or even the Carrie Fisher to my Liz Lemon). I’m only mildly a stalker, everyone knows that. I am also not talking about those incredibly unfortunate scenes in 90s after-school specials (here’s looking at you, Full House) where the young innocent daydreams about meeting their favorite rock star but then is just shocked to find out that said musician is in fact a huge jackass who may or may not be casting inappropriate glances in the general direction of that gathered group of groupie tweens.

No, I’ve seen Almost Famous; if your heroes hurt you IRL, just treat it as a coming of age story with a really great soundtrack and you’ll be fine. The kind of hero worship I’m more interested in has a lot less to do with the inkling that if I ever met this Lena Dunham person we’d get along like gangbusters (But we would, just so you know) and a lot more to do with the fact as a writer struggling under very similar ethos I want her to teach me everything she knows.

…So far this post isn’t coming off as not-creepy. Don’t be scared, Lena! I won’t hurt you!

If you are not as pre-invested in The Lena Dunham Story as I am, here is some background:

Lena Dunham graduated Oberlin in 2008 with a Creative Writing degree. The following year, in 2009, she wrote, directed, and starred in the SXSW hit Tiny Furniture:

(Side note: Tiny Furniture is now out on DVD by the Criterion Collection, so you should all go buy that immediately. It’s also on Netflix Instant Play so if, on the other hand, you are a shit-broke college student, you can also watch it there.)

Now, a lot of people have a lot of opinions and questions about Tiny Furniture. The one I come across most often is a simple “So why did they have sex in a pipe?” My answer, to this and all inquiries about Lena Dunham’s decision-making in the process of this film? “Because it’s great.”

Anyway, after winning ALL OF THE AWARDS (or at least the ones that matter) at SXSW, Dunham attracted the attention of none other than Judd Fucking Apatow. He was like “Hey, I think you’re pretty cool,” and she was probably like “I find some of the fringe characters in your bigger movies a little feministicly troubling, but on the whole I still totally respect you and you’re kind of brilliant and hilarious and I don’t actually think you hate women and you’re JUDD FUCKING APATOW so that’s pretty cool.” He probably responded to that with an “Awesome. Wanna make a show together?” and so the show Girls was (allegedly) born.

I have done a lot of reading up on this show. Definitely more than you have, unless you happen to literally be Lena Dunham reading this post (Hi, Lena! Hire me/mentor me/be my friend! We can go to spin class together and shoot each other disappointed looks whenever the instructor starts playing a Chris Brown song.) From what I have gathered from my extensive research on the subject is this:

1. This show is going to be cramazing. (That means crazy + amazing, for those of you who do not have the vocabulary of a twelve year old)
2. It is going to be “like” Sex and the City in that it is going to focus around a group of tight-knit female friends in New York City who talk frankly about sex and probably have shoes.
3. It is NOT going to be like Sex and the City in most other ways.
4. Andrew Rannells, of Book of Mormon fame, is going to guest star as Lena’s character’s ex-boyfriend who may or may not give her an STI.
5. Lena Dunham tweeted something cryptic to Donald Glover a few months ago that lead me to believe that there would be an awkward sex scene between Donald Glover and at least one character on Girls. This enthuses me in way that kind of leads me to believe I should get a therapist. 
6. This show is worth watching.

Lena Dunham deals a lot in her work with themes of post-college pathos. This is something that is greatly important to me. I’ve had post-college pathos since my second semester at Oberlin. As one friend told me the other day, “Alanna, you ARE that show.” Which I took as a sign that she should hire me after I graduate, but which probably just meant that I should whine less to my friends about wanting to move to New York and have post-college shenanigans.

What I am saying is this: Oberlin, I feel Lena Dunham understands us. At least some of us. At least, like, five of us. Probably more than that. So you should watch her show, and cheer her on, so that when she becomes the next Woody Allen you can get pop culture street cred by claiming that you were a fan before the lifetime achievement award.

Alanna Bennett is the co-online editor of The Oberlin Review. She has written for such websites as The Mary Sue and Give Me My Remote. You can follow her on twitter @AlannaBennett, but she has no guarantee that you won’t wish her ill after being subjected to it for a couple of weeks.

The OH in Ohio: Because Nothing Makes You Cum like Cleveland

The major complaint that I get about these review posts, other than that they are
boisterously opinionated, lack sincerity, are void of technical critique, and generally
suck is that they are too long. So I’m going to make this one as short as possible.

Let us begin.

This movie is set, and at least partially filmed, in Cleveland, Ohio. That means two
things: 1) it will somehow find a way to secrete a pungent scent of poverty and
disappointment and 2) no matter what, I have to support it.

This film is, at its core, a picture about a woman who can’t cum, which is becoming
an increasingly popular plot line as conversations regarding female sexuality become socially acceptable. It’s also sad. I took three whole psychology classes once, and I realize that a myriad of problems affect an unfortunate amount of women, preventing them from Orgasm; and I cannot say in words how badly I feel for them. I cum on the daily. Sometimes it’s because I want to. At other times, I’m just a little bored. Maybe I’m by myself. Maybe I’m with a partner. On a train in the rain on a boat when I float of yes, Sam I Am, how I do love my orgasms. I love giving orgasms, though, to be candid, my know-how in that department could always use work (winky-text-face too all you single tumblr ladies and some of you less-single
tumblr ladies, because infidelity does not apply on the internet); and the inability for someone to reach what is naturally the greatest sensation a human being can fill pains me to think about. Everyone should get to cum. Unless you’re into orgasm denial in which case fuck you, get back in your restraints, and beg like the slut you are.

Paul Rudd, Danny DeVito, The cute girl from One Tree Hill (Ed Note: The show it The O.C. Don’t judge me for knowing that) or one of those shows (Misha something. I don’t know), and that Black guy who always plays the villain or some scary guy who’s name I can’t think of because he’s not Will Smith or Denzel Washington all star in this movie. You know the guy I’m talking about? He was the lead gargoyle in Gargoyles, the vindictive drug dealer in Requiem for a Dream that gets blown by the pretty white girl who’s desperate to shoot up, the magic villain from The Princess & The Frog, and the angry, billionaire father from that ATL movie where rappers dance on skates in the hood, etc.

Paul Rudd is a nice guy and a decent husband. He is also a public school teacher
in Cleveland, which allows for a bit of well deserved commentary as well as a
much better take on a failing system than Cameron Diaz’s Bad Teacher could have
ever dreamed of. Unfortunately, he can’t get his wife to cum. This forces him into
a state of self-loathing as he questions not only his worth as a man, but also his
sexual prowess. This thus causes him to sleep with a really hot high school student
of his, which develops into an affair. Then, as he catches his wife finally having
an orgasm with a vibrator (which is followed by a brilliant montage of flowers
blooming, bridges opening, and dolphins flipping. She then, of course, proceeds
to masturbate as often as possible with anything available – which, as many of you may remember, is exactly what it’s like once you find out you can do that), his fear or sexual disappointment and her confusion as to the disconnect between her emotions and physical desire cause the couple to split. Rudd keeps fucking the hot high school girl, and his wife bangs as many people as she can in hopes of finally cumming. Alas, time after time, she has no luck. That is, of course, until she meets Danny DeVito, who plays a successful in-ground pool salesman in Cleveland.

1.) No one in Cleveland has a pool.
2.) In-ground pools imply financial success. Financial success implies a job. No
one in Cleveland has a job.
3.) Assuming that, hypothetically, anyone in Cleveland had a job to buy a pool
with, the sky snows with the sorrow of broken dreams and misplaced
promises eight months out of the year.
4.) Never end a list on an odd umber.

Devito plays a nice guy in this movie, which will jar the fuck out of you if you’re a
Sunny fan. Devito also gives this woman the orgasm of her life while fucking her in
a pool in Cleveland. Are there a lot of problems with that? Yes. Along with the in-
ground pool and the Cleveland, there is that whole cumming on DeVito thing. But
fuck it. That woman deserves to be fucked into an orgasm. As do most women. Not
all, though. Some of you are cold, worthless, soul sucking bitches who don’t deserve
to have even the slightest inkling as to the experience of sexual gratification.

You know who you are. You know what you’ve done.

This is a surprisingly charming movie, especially considering that the last film I
saw about a woman’s inability to cum was Short Bus, which was, I will admit, also
a pretty good movie assuming you can tolerate images of intensely graphic straight
sex, gay sex, and auto-fellatio. And, as I assume you all have the internet, a healthy
curiosity, and hormones, I presume many of you have already seen such images.
So why not add a little bit of a plot line and spice it up with a dose of Canadian
film-making? It has a loveable cast all playing lovable characters, and while the film
shows a marriage being destroyed and characters losing themselves to sex and
sexuality, it ends on a feel-good note. I recommend it, and I mean that sincerely. Are
there some throw-away scenes? Yes. But, overall, it’s a perfectly enjoyable film.

As a final note, here are some memorable quotes you may appreciate (especially if
you’re from the area):

• “[in regards to sex] Do you enjoy it?” – “I guess I never thought about it in those
• terms.”
• “Fuck the shit out of me.”
• “Every night you go to bed with the magnificent woman of Cleveland [that isn’t saying a lot. That’s like saying, “every night you go to bed with a 6/10].”
• “Why would I be depressed? I’m a biology teacher in the Cleveland public school system.”

You’re Welcome.

SURFER, DUDE: Matthew McConaughey Smokes Weed, Fucks Bitches, Makes a Movie, and Pretends it’s Not a Documentary

To be honest, my dear readers, I go out of my way to watch shitty movies. I go above and beyond the call of duty to watch bullshit films that no one would have any interest in seeing just to let you know that, in fact, you are justified in having no interest in seeing them. It is, without a doubt, the biggest waste of time that I attempt to make seem mildly pleasant in the face of realizing how much shit I am filled with.  But that doesn’t mean that I can just go around sounding like any old asshole off of Rotten Tomatoes.  Fuck those guys. Most of them are just lonely assholes who want you to know why they either liked or didn’t like a movie. I, however, have a degree (almost), which allows me to academically tell you why I did or didn’t like a movie. I am a professional. You are reading the blog post of a professional. I don’t want to say that you should feel honored, but if that is how you feel, it’s probably for the best.

Being that I am a professional, I went to a library sale that sold giant bags full of whatever you wanted for $1.00. So I went about and did what I always do at books sales: I bought a shit ton of books I will never read but that will make me look cultured as fuck if anyone ever comes in to the malice-infested quarters I call a bedroom. Among other things, I bought a book about Cinema, a book about some guy who used to make cinema; a couple low-budget, Mexican films (Pan’s Labyrinth is the only thing keeping “low-budget Mexican film” from being an oxymoron), and a VHS tape of a Hebrew version of the 80’s cult classic Alf which I hope will convince Israel to let me go on Birth Right. I may not be Jewish, but I also don’t give two shits about Palestine, so I may as well be.

That paragraph wasn’t as funny as I wanted it to be, but I am too apathetic to fix it.

I also bought Surfer, Dude, starring Matthew McConaughey. It was, by far, the best dollar I have ever spent. Unless you count that dollar I donated to Haiti. I like to think that one dollar really helped them rebuild a shithole of rubble and destruction it became after the disaster back into the shithole of rubble and destruction it was before the disaster. I hate feeling like I have to donate to lesser countries.

#FirstWorldProblems

Because of the book sale, this movie came out to cost on nickel.  And dammit if it wasn’t the best nickel I have ever spent.

This is the plot: Steve Addington (McConaughey) is a surfer who likes weed and water and other stuff that your idea of an archetypal surfing character would enjoy. But he’s not just any surfer; he’s a surfer who is only in it for the fun, not the money or the fame. That has, in turn, made him really famous, but mostly poor. Then he’s offered a starring role in a reality series that would end his financial troubles but cost him his beliefs. So instead he’s all like, “nah, brah, I just want to surf.” And the audience is like, “What a crazy, cool, calm, and collected dude you must be!”

Okay, so this is a new thing I’m trying. This is going to be the part where I attempt to explore the finer, technical details of filmmaking that were utilized in the production of this film. But, just so I keep your attention, I am going to write them here as if I were a thirteen-year-old-girl who just became a freshman in high school and is dating a senior, Derrick, as she journeys through the entirety of their relationship together:

The lights were, like, cool or whatever I guess. There were some, like, harsh tones and ridged lines in scenes that were taking ‘bout corporate greed or whatever, I guess. But then, like, also, there were really warm tones with natural light and stuff in the scenes with the surfers. Oh my god, Derrick could so totes be a surfer proly. He has, like, these really strong arm muscles that he uses to pick me up sometimes in between class and that fucking bitch Molly always acts like she can’t see us but I know she’s just jealous that he took me to the winter formal, so I make out with him super hard in front of her so she can see. Anyways, the different lighting is cool but it also is a little bit heavy handed for my taste. Derrick’s hands are just right tho ;)

And, here’s the thing: I feel like a lot of other stuff happened to create a dichotomy between two contrasting points of view in the world created before us by the filmmakers. Like, oh my God, so Matthew was shirtless for almost the whole movie, which is kind of hot if you’re into older dudes. But all of his friends were super bohemian looking and so when dudes with suits came in you were like, “ew, not only are you to old, but you are also totes dressed winter suits during the summer and not even trying to hide it so its really obvs.” But it, like, is also shown by the fact that all the fancy suite guys drink alcohol but the surfer dudes smoke pot ‘cause one is like, from the earth and the other is like, maybe not I guess. You know, sometimes I think Derrick drinks too much. Like, it’s cool when he smokes ‘cause he’ll invite me and we’ll hang out and it makes me feel all cute like a Wiz Khalifa song because I know that he really loves me. ‘Cause it’s been almost three weeks at this point, so it’s pretty serious. But when he drinks I can never understand his texts and he sometimes doesn’t even text me back for hours and I get really worried that something could have happened to him.  And then the next day there were pictures of him with a bunch of beer cups and Molly and when I asked him about it he said that he wouldn’t be dating me if he thought I was just going to act like a little girl all of the time, so I pretty much had to have sex with him because, like, that’s what you do when you’re in love and I want him to know that I’m as serious about this as he is.

So then, like, it’s fair to say that, I think, a lot of the stuff in the movie was, like, really beautiful. Totes beautiful. And, like, I guess that the thing is a lot of it was ‘cause they filmed stuff in nature. And nature is always beautiful. Or at least I think so, which is probably because I’m a Virgo.  Grrrrrrr!  But, like, even though they kind of just used the beauty that the earth had already made in a lot of their shots, there’s still a lot of technical elements that go into the proper nature shot, and they should get some credit for capturing the essence of the west coast and the ocean on film. Just like I should get some credit for putting everything I had into that relationship with Derrick. But instead the one time in the entire six weeks we dated that I say, “I don’t want to give you a blow-job today, I would much rather cuddle and watch Duck Tales” he goes and calls every girl in his phone and goes to have sex with some of them and then text me like, such hurtful things that I cry. So hurtful. And it’s not even like it’s a lot to ask to watch Duck Tales on Friday night just because it’s his friend’s birthday. He sees his friends all the time, but he never wants to come to see me unless I say that my parents are gone or something. It’s not even fair!  And then he acts like he doesn’t even see me in the hallways anymore and I know he showed all his friends the pictures I texted him which he totally promised were just going to be for him, but whatever I guess ‘cause I can’t do anything about it and he was an asshole anyways!

….

Was that an accurate description of what it’s like to be a thirteen-year-old-girl?  I’m not really sure the true essence showed through the page. Don’t they put random “grrr’s” into their sentences? I don’t know. I stopped taking to thirteen-year-old-girls when I stopped being a thirteen-year-old boy.

God dammit I hate teenagers. And adults. And children. And humanity.

I will, at this point, mention that were I ever to meet a girl of the proper age who asked if we could cuddle and watch Duck Tales, I would marry her. Also, she has to be pretty.  Let’s not get idealistic here, you still have to be pretty. And not like, “I’m pretty, but in a rebellious atypical way,” but pretty in one of those objective, normative ways.

I fucking love normative things.

No H8.

I’ve heard rumors that this film was produced by Matthey McConaughey for no other reason than to allow him the opportunity to make out with girls of every race. Some of you may think this is problematic in the eyes of visionary feminists and racially progressive tendencies. But have you ever seen KD Aubert? Go Google search her. And then stare at her and then  about what a good idea it is to fund a movie that will make you money and allow you to make out with anyone you wanted. I would produce ten movies for a chance to make out with KD Aubert.  I would produce ten shitty movies to make out with her.   would produce ten David Lynch movies, causing the entire world to suffer through long winded, masturbatory expressions of artistic vision for the sake of making out with her.

Despite being completely worth $0.05, this film did have its problems. 

The first mistake: You do not put Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey in the same movie. Who the fuck is who? Are they talking to themselves? Do they realize how similar they look? Why is one a sex symbol and the other forced to be in movies like Kingpin? What kind of movie would Face/Off have been if it starred both of them?

The film also runs into a few problems in terms of representation and demographic.  Because of the weed culture that surrounds surf culture, it’s no doubt fair that it be represented in a film about surfers. But, as with any form of intoxication, it’s difficult to properly capture what it’s like to use drugs without creating stereotypes that isolate any audience that has actually done drugs (which is anyone in your audience worth keeping around). Surfer, Dude does a decent job of representing heavy weed smoking (general confusion, apathy, and absolute paranoia at the site of a cop), and it sacrifices elements of realism for comic relief, which is a necessary evil; but it still has its problematic elements. Additionally, there are so many gratuitous breasts. I don’t even know what to do with that. I enjoy breasts, I like to look at breasts; when breasts are present, my mind is eased. But it just makes no fucking sense. Why are there just random titties everywhere for scenes at a time? I get that the film is trying to cement itself in the hearts of the teenaged-boy demographic that they are going for, but at a certain point, it’s bullshit. It’s one thing to say sex sells and include attractive actors—whether male or female—in a film. And it’s one thing to display sexual elements of the human anatomy for the sake of representing character or progressing he film (Fight Club, for example, shows giant throbbing cock multiple times throughout the film. And as much as I’m hesitant to support giant, throbbing cock in my David Fincher films, at least the cock here applies towards characterization and thematic context). But titties for the sake of titties is bullshit. If you want to turn me on a little bit during a movie, fine, touch my heart with an emotional sex scene  If you want to make me stare at breasts in the middle of a story arch, go fuck yourself. I’m already probably loading London Keyes videos in at least three of my safari tabs. Get your shit together.

Dammit, Blow Up, you ruined everything with your fucking biddies and your fucking tits and your fucking Italian, pseudo-neo-realism, European sex-crazed nonsense!

(If that reference resonated with you and you want to watch Duck Tales and you want to cuddle and you are normatively attractive, please find a way to contact me. I love you. I have always loved you, I just didn’t know until right now).

The largest problem came about with the inclusion of an utterly superfluous love story— Alexie Gilmore, whose performance in this film can be described as little less than perfectly acceptable.

While the eventual love bond is tweaked into summing the film up in a tidy little bundle, it’s fucking stupid. It just randomly gets thrown in there. It was clearly placed in the film for no other reason than that it was expected to be in the film. There was no fire or passion behind it, nor an overarching story of romance. It was just there to complete the general formula of what is needed in a movie: conflict + character + resolution + boy falls in love with girl = movie. It’s like when you’re having sex with a girl and you start to pull her hair. You know she doesn’t like it, and you’re not really all that into it, but you do it anyways because that’s how all the people on the internet have sex, so maybe you might as well. And, at the end of it all, you probably just should have sit back and let the sex run its course without interfering with over popularized ideas of what it should be. After all, it only cost $0.05.

Are we picking up the mild metaphor that’s been chucked into a pile of smut?  Are you picking up what I’m putting down? Are we on the same page?

The last little problems were that the Australian dude was characterized by always wearing shirts for Fosters Beer—which my roommate assures me no Australians actually drink—and that the introduction to the film was devastatingly expositional. It was so much exposition that it hurt me to see.

Anyways, the films ends and everyone is financially stable and high and surfing and there are some Willie Nelson cameos and a heard of goats and some general merriness.  It’s a feel-good, throw away film that you may pop in every once in a while just to look at pretty shit with an easy plot to follow.

That’s a polite way of saying that’s this movie is for stoners. If it looks pretty and it requires no thought process, it is a weed movie. Do you know how weird, complex, artsy films get when you’re high? I tried watching Being John Malkovich high the first time I saw it, and it just ended with me crying.

I wouldn’t say this is the kind of movie you go out of your way to see, but if given the chance to pick up a cheap copy I’d say it’d be worth it for no other reason than KD Aubert. Although Googling her would be just as good. Or Mr. Skinning her. Is that the verb form of looking someone up on Mr. Skin? It sounds oddly violent for such a pleasant experience.

You’re welcome.

Curtis Cook is a senior at Oberlin College who enjoys problematic language, White women, and whiskey.

NETFLIX REVIEW: Blackthorn

This has to be the least adventurous adventure movie in recent memory, and it’s hard to really say why. All the right elements are in place—you’ve got cowboys, horse chases, gunfights in the desert, betrayal, plot twists, revenge, and mumbly southern drawls. But for some reason something about this movie isn’t working. Even though all the elements are in place, the excitement, the emotion, just isn’t there. This movie feels as dry as the desert most of it is set in. 

It’s about Butch Cassidy, played for most of the movie by Sam Shepard, and in flashbacks by Jaime Lannister (boy does that sound more awesome that it actually was), now a tired old horse-seller living in Bolivia, who meets a Spaniard, who used to work in a mine, until he decided it would be a better idea to just steal the mine’s money and flee to…somewhere? I dunno, I got so sleepy I couldn’t really follow it all.

I think what Blackthorn is missing is its heart. It’s as though the people who made this movie just weren’t feeling it. Though there’s the potential for a great story here, and you can see the hole where a great movie should have been, the trouble is that Blackthorn just doesn’t seem to believe in itself. Things happen that would be dramatic, and you start to think you might finally be feelingsomething, but these moments are so downplayed that you have to wonder if you are supposed to care at all. Seriously, movie! How about a little, well, drama?

It’s not all bad. There are some scenes that perk you (by which I mean wake you) up, like a pretty cool chase across some salt flats, and a shootout in the mountains of Bolivia between our heroes and two very pissed-off women. But every time the movie looks like it might finally pull itself together, it sinks back down into the murky depths of its plodding inertia.

Putting your finger on what’s broken in Blackthorn is sort of like figuring out what’s wrong with the economy. There’s no easy answer, or rather, there are a lot of little bitty answers that sort of add up. First of all, there’s the the fact that everything is so sedate. No one seems to get riled up about anything.

In one scene, a major character is killed. This death should be tragic, both for the audience and the protagonist. But even though we get a few seconds of obligatory weeping over the fallen body, the movie then switches to a new scene and we’re back to the cowboy drawl. This death is rarely mentioned again, and it’s hard to tell just how much out protagonist even gives a ***. I feel like I cared more than he did, and I barely even knew the deceased.

Similarly, there’s a big plot twist at the end that should be shocking and horrifying. The music doesn’t even change its tempo. Same twangy, psuedo-westerney stuff we’ve been hearing the whole time. If theres a such thing as cowboy elevator music, well, here it is.

Now imagine this trailer with elevator music, and you begin to understand the movie.

And then we’ve got another big problem; the central relationship in the movie just isn’t working. You’ve got too main characters, the old, grizzled veteran bandit, and the Spanish thief. The friendship between these two forms the emotional core of the movie. Or it would, if we, the audience, got any sense that there actually was a friendship. Sadly, the relationship between these two characters never feels real. Part of the problem is Eduardo Noriega, the actor who portrays the Spanish thief. I’m sure he is capable of acting in his native language, but here everything he says comes off as forced. You can’t help but feel as though he is tiredly reading off lines from a script he’s got in his lap. Listen to him in that trailer up above:

“You’re a damn legend! Now here you are! Here you are!”

His character is supposed to be overcome with excitement in that scene, bursting with energy and enthusiasm. But instead he just sounds like someone who just got woken up while he was napping and is about to nod off trying to act as though he’s bursting with energy and enthusiasm.

Blackthorn is like the Cohen brothers’ True Grit without the snappy dialogue and brilliant acting that made True Grit good. It’s got a fine premise, but it just feels too damn sleepy. And in a self-proclaimed adventure movie, sleepy is probably not a good thing.

Written by Stefan Babich, a third year in the College.

(Photo via Barfutura)

NETFLIX REVIEW: Barely Legal: Gratuitous Tits & A Sad Grab At Progressing Feminism

I just want to point out that I used “tits,” “grab,” and “feminism” all in the same sentence, up in that title up there.  Please allow the twelve-year-old boy inside of your soul to roll on the floor with laughter while the adult, female part of you sheds a silent tear for the disrespect I just displayed toward your movement.

I wasn’t going to watch this movie. I actively did not want to see this movie. I knew that it was going to suck. But then someone asked me why I had never reviewed a movie that I liked, and I realized that I don’t know how to enjoy things. I don’t know how to say positive shit about anything. I just saw Inception, and that was a great movie. But I don’t know how to say, “what an interesting concept! And it seems obvious that Christopher Nolan makes for both an excellent director and a fantastic writer, taking aspects of the fantastic and incorporating it with essential bits of action and suspense in order to create not only a compelling story, but a visually riveting film.”  I don’t know how to be nice about things, and no one wants to read someone be nice about things.  So instead, I learned how to say, “It’s this crazy fucking movie where the dead kid from The Titanic and the sad little orphan boy from Angels in the Outfield join forces to go wallow in dream land with the Scarecrow from Batman and some dead foreign bitch who likes trains.”

See how much easier that rolls off the tongue. Words like “critically acclaimed” and “visual mastery” are so harsh to the ear and eye. “Orphan kid” and “some dead foreign bitch” just sound so much cozier.

Alas, though, this post is not about a film I enjoyed, though. This post is about a film that has filled me with rage, horror, arousal, confusion, and boredom the likes of which I have not experienced since Lars & The Real Girl.

“Let’s be indie for the sake of being indie.”  Fuck you, Ryan Gosling.  Get back to your romantic comedies and heart-wrenching dramas.  Leave the indie shit for Philip Seymour Hoffman.  He’s not conventionally attractive enough for mainstream cinema, at least let him hold on to his talent.

So, I fucking watched Barely Legal, which I thought would at least pretend to be a movie the way that American Pie pretended it was a movie. I knew it would be nothing more than a string of sex jokes and a lot of soft-core pornography, but I didn’t know it would only be sex jokes and soft-core pornography— and a ton of jokes about the blind, but we’ll get to that. Because as I man who has met a blind person before, I feel like I have to pretend to find that incredibly problematic.

That, my dear readers, is how empathy works.

The film centers around three rich white girls who are either in high school or college (the vagueness is important because it makes the rest of the film confusing and incredibly less erotic/creepy/gross/an orgy of teenaged porn).  They all, for whatever reason, live in an incredibly large mansion with no adults or other roommates, they spend their afternoons hooking up with their boyfriends and lounging by the pool, and were all born on the same day. Additionally, these three wealthy, unsupervised young women are all virgins.

I am not going to go on a tirade about how unbelievable it is that three wealthy, unsupervised, eighteen-year-old white women are still virgins. In my experience, that’s rare, but in no way impossible, nor is it anything which should be mocked or frowned upon. Some of the coolest people to write poorly spelled, cynical movie reviews on tumblr didn’t have sex until they were eighteen either.  Or nineteen.  Maybe they were nineteen. Maybe they were even nineteen and closer to twenty and a little ashamed of themselves. But details aren’t important. 

Things happen, people make decisions, and that’s respectable enough to deserve portrayal in an American sex comedy. I’m not about to mock something that could be as personal as someone’s sexual decisions. What makes this so fucking unbelievable, though, is that these three girls who are not related and seem to come from different families are all living alone in a mansion without parents or, apparently, school to attend. Or jobs to go to. Or outside friends. And they were all born on the same day.  It is also very vague about whether or not they are in high school. And they all just turned eighteen, and none of them seem smart enough to have just turned 18 in college, which means that when they show their breasts it can be assumed that it is meant to be taken as a high school girl who just turned 18 showing her chest. Which makes this more like creepy porn than comedy. 

Here’s a rundown of the characters:

Cheryl has had a long-term boyfriend who looks like the bassist from Fall Out Boy. She plays, more or less, the ditsy blonde who has finally decided that she and her partner have grown closer enough together that they can have sex. At the same time, though, she has dreams of marrying him after school and continuing to live in a dream world of love, sex, and unsupervised mansions.  If we’re to take this as an important thematic choice on the part of the writers (and we are meant to, because how else are we going to pretend that the study of film has any legitimacy?) then we can assume that this character represents the dreamy eyes of innocence and youth.

Sue is super religious, has never masturbated, goes to confession, thinks ill of everyone around her, and only submits to lose her virginity on her birthday to be a part of the group; making her character representative of thrice the problematic teaching of abstinence only sex-ed, the often sex-negative consequences of religious involvement in the bedroom, and the writer’s kooky attempt to get back at her parents for making her go to Sunday school by constructing an archetypical character that breathes no new voice into religious satire and merely meanders throughout the film using jokes that have been around for far too fucking long in the first place.

Our third character, my dear readers, is Lexy, who is at least remotely progressive throughout the film, if you kind of squint your eyes and cock your head to the side.  She is the girl who has hooked up and goes after what she wants and 69’s and masturbates (for as much as I do it, I have had to spell check that word every single time) and is comfortable with her body and has been involved with group intimacy and has taken it up the ass, but still considers herself a virgin due to her lack of vaginal sex.  If some of you think that’s unreasonable, Google search Nikki Blue.  You will not be disappointed.  If you are, we are not into the same things sexually, and fuck you for judging me.

No H8, though.  Never any H8.

So these girls decide to lose it on their birthdays.  Cheryl with her boyfriend, Lexy with some mystery person named JJ who apparently gave her five orgasms in a row, and Sue, who just just says she’s going to because everyone around her is doing it and that’s how Christians role.

Bam, making fun of Christianity on the internet. Does it get any more original than that?

Yes. Yes it does.

So, eventually, through a series of events, Sue discovers masturbation, feels super bad about it, but learns that pleasure is greater than sin.  She then proceeds to masturbate with the following objects:

            -A Dryer

            -A Vacuum Cleaner

            -A Vibrating Controller For A Remote Controlled Video Game

            -A Removable Shower Head

            -A Jacuzzi

            -A Vibrating Toothbrush

            -A Vibrator

None of these scenes are particularly funny.  Like, it might sound funny to say, “Some girl got off on a toothbrush.”  But it’s not quite the same as an apple pie. But at least she finally got it off. I was happy for her. After 18 years of not knowing what an orgasm felt like I could care less if she sat on her hands and scooted her ass across the lawn like a sick puppy, at least she came. And that should be an inalienable fucking right for everyone.

Cheryl discovers that random high school girls have been blowing her boyfriend (as they are want to do), so she does the adult thing and decides to have revenge sex. To which I say, good for you. There’s nothing quite like cold, shallow, remorseful sex to really show it to your ex. 

She tries it with a nice kid who actually has feelings for her, but it doesn’t work out, so she goes for the blind guy.

“Oh, that’s right, I remember that a blind guy was mentioned in the overly opinionated and subjective introduction to this review.” That is what you should be thinking right now.

So she starts to hook up with this blind guy who insists in blindfolding her and having her listen to calming Bengali music, because that obviously is not fucking offensive or anything. Then he leaves her like that while in the middle of eating her out to go smoke pot with his bros, which is totally fair sometimes. It’s a good thing that he left his service dog in the room and covered Cheryl’s vagina with peanut butter.

No I am not fucking kidding you, that is how low the film went: an eighteen year old girl was abandoned mid-foreplay by a blind man who was blind for no other reason but to have an excuse to have a dog in the room so that a dog could eat her out. The peanut butter? No one can fucking explain the peanut butter. I assumed this was the writer’s, Naomi L. Selfman’s, first gig.  But then I looked that shit up.  Turns out she’s worked on such classics as Mega Shark vs. Crocosaurus and Mega Python vs. Gatoroid.  She is proof that no one checks your résumé.

By the end of the movie (Spoilers…If you care…Which you don’t…), neither Cheryl nor Sue has sex. Though Sue does discover how awesome cumming is and Cheryl find a nice boy who will treat her right. So I guess they both turn out all right, but Sue definitely won that round. If I had to choose between love and cumming, I would choose love. But that’s not funny, so let’s pretend I said that I would choose cumming.

Lexy ends up getting sexed. But, fun fact, it turns out that JJ was a woman the entire time and Lexy realizes that her life of passionless sexual disappointment has all secretly been her attempting to hide the truth from herself.

Cool story, bro.

No H8, but your movie still sucks.

In fact, this movie is so fucking terrible that Lisa Younger, the actress who plays Lexy, doesn’t include the film in her online résumé.  She does, however, include Jack The Dumb-Ass 3 and Chlamydia.  Somehow, in this girls mind, the third installment of a man named Jack acting like an asshole and a film about a sexually transmitted disease sound more legitimate than her role as co-star of Barely Legal.  And that’s totally fair because she spent more time naked in that movie than I have ever seen anyone spend outside of pornos.

Now, my dear readers, it is time for a brief, fleeting moment of serious review time: This film had potential. It would have, no doubt, suffered from its low budget, inexperienced staff, and the reputation of the company behind the project (Asylum); but films with far less going for them have gone on to influence cinema in incredible ways (again, I will reference Sweet Sweetback’s Baadassss Song). Any of the stories that focus on the three central characters could have made for a decent film (though not necessarily an original one).  A girl coming to grips that, despite her upbringing and her faith, she too desires to submit to sin and enjoy the pleasures of the flesh. A young woman attempting to bounce back from a tragic relationship only to find that her efforts of revenge do little more than to push away those who care the most about her. A woman realizes that her sexual promiscuity was a self-imposed disguise for her underlying sexual urges and sheds the mask of her sexuality away to embrace who she truly is. Those could each be movies alone, and together they still could have stood tall.  Add to the fact that this is about young women struggling to lose their virginity, which dismantles the idea that they can go out and have sex whenever they want to; the many scenes where they demand oral sex simply because it pleases them, which in the male-dominated media has become something women are expected to offer but never ask for; and the fact that they all come to their own, personal conclusions about sex, and you have a real movie. 

But then Jose Montesinos had to come in and tells everyone to take out their tits and flash the camera and moan at the slightest indication of sexual arousal and flash their vaginas on the screen and it went from an empowering film written by a woman and intended for women to some sick fantasy film made for your least favorite uncle.

So listen, this movie fucking sucked. But we all knew it was going to suck. This review was nothing but a masturbatory attempt at humor on my part.  I told you nothing you didn’t already know.  But nonetheless:

You’re welcome.

Curtis Cook is a senior at Oberlin College who enjoys problematic language, White women, and whiskey.

NETFLIX REVIEW: Ironclad

Ironclad is the better 300. Which isn’t to say it’s great, because, let’s all face it, badass as it was, 300 had a shit ton of problems. And, unfortunately, a lot of those problems carry over to Ironclad. The dumbing down of real-world history into a good-vs.-evil type struggle over 21st century American values, for example, combined with dialogue cornier than an Iowa’s farmers’ festival. Still, if you’re looking for an epic action-movie about a bunch of outnumbered people trying to defend something against a giant army of baddies, and you had to choose between this or 300, this is the better choice. For one thing, at no point in time do the villains morph into orcs with saw hands, nor do they pull out grenades or samurai swords. Which means this is automatically less ridiculous than 300.

Ironclad is about a baron, played by Mad-Eye Moody, who is trying to launch a rebellion against King John of England. King John has been murdering and terrorizing the barons because they made him sign that hateful magna carta. To aid him in his endeavor, he has gathered a bunch of Danish mercenaries, who are a bunch of evil-looking blokes with black armor, celtic war paint (??) and axes. Luckily for Baron Mad-Eye Moody, he’s got a badass Templar knight who is helping him guard an important castle against the king. He also has about twenty other people on his side, some of them women without weapons or armor, and the king’s army looks at least a thousand men strong. Maybe Baron Mad-Eye should have thought that one through a little more first.

So here we go. The good and the bad. Even though I liked the movie, the bad section is going to be longer than the good section. Just because I’m a negative person.

The Good:

This is an action movie about a bunch of people swinging at each other with swords. So needless to say, the one thing that’s really going to make or break this movie is the action scenes. Luckily (with the exception of one lackluster fight at the very beginning) the action scenes are exceptionally well done. Ironclad uses just the right amount of shaky cam—enough so that the fight scenes feel gripping and exciting, but not so much that you either want to throw up or turn to the person watching the movie next to you and ask who just stabbed who and what is going on. The choreography is more realistic than the usual sort of bullsh** we get from Hollywood; we get scenes of visceral, Braveheart-style combat rather than fancy, but ultimately fake-looking sword-ballet. The armor actually stops blows. Bad guys don’t always die in one hit. Unfortunately, more squeamish viewers may want to give this one a pass, because the gore in this movie tends to be excessive. I lost count of the number of arms and legs that got cut off throughout the length of this movie. The most obscenely, unapologetically gory moment has to be when one of our heroes grabs a severed arm off the ground and proceeds to bash another guy’s face in with it. There. You’ve been warned.

The production values are all excellent. There’s little to no uneccesary or gratuitous CGI, and costume and set design appear to be top notch, though it’s a little odd that all the bad guys wear black. I guess we need some sort of way to tell them apart, but did it have to be black? Really?

The bad:

Sadly, the movie tends to drag a bit when people aren’t bashing each other’s hands in with severed arms. The dialogue in this movie is corny, there’s no other way to describe it. Apparently Hollywood writers seem to think modern American audiences are not going to get behind a medieval war movie unless it’s crammed with good, old-fashioned, and horribly anachronistic American values.

The movie takes great pain to remind us (again and again and again) that King John is an evil tyrant, and that our heroes have to stop him for the sake of freedom. Because if there’s one thing Ameican audiences are bound to care about, it’s freedom.

At one point, the evil king yells up at Baron Mad-Eye Moody that he needs to get out of his castle. Mad-Eye responds that the king signed a charter (the Magna Carta) giving the people of England freedom. Freedom! It’s on, now.

The problem with this (and this is a mistake Hollywood loves to make) is that Ironclad is attempting to paint the central conflict as a classic struggle between a tyrannical king and his oppressed people. It is, in other words, trying to paint the central conflict of Ironclad as the Americna Revolutionary War. Because it’s something American audiences understand. Unfortuantely, what the movie fails to mention is that the ‘people’ the magna carta to weren’t the poor huddled masses.

The magna carta was not about freeing the oppressed peasants from the tyranny of the king. It was about freeing the oppressed rich lords from the tyranny of the king so they could then freely oppress the peasants themselves. So the ‘people’ whose rights our heroes are valiantly defending are actually a bunch of rich dudes who may or may not be just as tyrannical as the king they’re fighting against. Sort of absolutely ruins the whole freedom theme they’ve got going.

But hey, it’s a movie. Sometimes in movies, thingsh ave to be simplified for the sake of drama. I might be willing to overlook this magna carta=freedom bullshit if that was the only bullshit I was being forced to stomach. Unfortuantely, Ironclad also expects us to stomach a bullshit love story between a Templar knight and the lady of the castle. At one point ,the lady of the castle says this to our hero, who is agonizing over breaking his vows of celibacy: “stop hiding behind vows and commandments! Vows speak of loyalty and abstinence, but why never of love, Thomas?”

Well said, Generic Love Interest Woman! But this sounds like the sort of point that might come up in a 21st century religion and ethics university class. Not the sort of thing a brainwashed woman from medieval England would say. But, hey, we get it. Honoring religious vows is just not as important as having sex. Because, you know, that’s the modern attitude, and there’s no way we could ever root for medieval characters if they didn’t have values and beliefs identical to our own.

You know what? *** this shit. Game of Thrones didn’t feel the need to make every character a politically-correct demagogue who preached 21st century wisdom at us, and somehow it did all right. A character doesn’t have to believe in people’s rights, gender equality and democracy to be compelling, but apparently the people who keep churning out movies like 300, Gladiator, and Ironclad have yet to figure this out. Hopefully someday they will.

The ugly:

It’s violent. Very violent. There are hangings, and stabbings, and smashing. One guy gets his hands and feet chopped off and then tossed into a wall by a catapult. So, again, it’s not for everyone. But if you’re in the mood for a good last stand movie, and are willing to suspend your disbelief a bit, then Ironclad should prove entertaining.

Written by Stefan Babich, a third year in the College.

(Photo via Daily Postal)