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mattsewellisqueer
Reviews
Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
Not For Dummies
Can't help but notice this movie seems to have been targeted for destruction (or, 'retirement') as soon as it was released. The reason is simple: The film was advertised as an action piece and it's actually a rather thoughtful, meandering piece about a society where total alienation has been achieved. It's depressing and beautiful to watch, which is the combination the first film put together so well.
The folks who want to see explosions, I call them dummies and I don't apologize for it, have really helped sink this movie. Just look at the positive reviews and how many people have down-voted them. This is the result of the dummies feeling duped and insecure because they didn't understand what they were watching. If your IQ has at least two digits, don't believe the anti-hype. This is a film that will be discussed for years to come.
Rough Night (2017)
More Confusion Between Equality and Mimicry
Here we go again...
As a feminist accidentally born with testicles, I am always thrilled when I see a film written for women. Unfortunately, Hollywood continues the trend of presenting "modern" women as nothing more than imitations of poorly behaved men of the past. They continue recycling ANIMAL HOUSE and plugging women into the lead roles and calling it radical. Well, there's nothing radical about it. Imitating the worst behavior of the worst men does absolutely nothing to advance the position of women in society.
ROUGH NIGHT is nothing but one long, tedious cliché'. The bachelorette party with the dead stripper? It's been done so many times it's nauseating. It was sexist when it was about a bachelor party ending up with a dead hooker, it's sexist when the shoes are put on the opposite feet. It's not amusing, it's not entertaining. It's precisely the kind of comedy you walk out of feeling depressed. Certainly not what one expects from a comedy.
What happened to women's films like MYSTIC PIZZA? Why can't Hollywood get its head out of its rear and make a movie about women that is uplifting?
Snatched (2017)
Equality Does Not Mean Striving For the Sewer
And here we go again...
As a feminist accidentally born with testicles, I am always hopeful when Hollywood attempts to package movies designed for women. As we know, 99 percent of all Hollywood product is aimed at sexually confused 19 year old males. Give Hollywood some credit--in recent years, they've really tried to introduce diversity to their slate of films and that, of course, means movies produced by and for women.
Here's the problem:
Equality does not mean imitating the worst behavior of the worst men. Hollywood seems to think (and has done a great job of convincing a lot of women) that replacing penis jokes with vagina jokes represents some radical evolution in filmmaking. It doesn't. Hollywood has been trying to make Animal House with a female cast for some time and they don't even understand what made Animal House an enduring film. There is, ultimately, a camaraderie amongst the men of the Delta house which allows them to come together at the end of the film and battle the forces of conformity.
Snatched pretends there's warmth between the mother-daughter pairing of Amy Schumer and Goldie Hawn, but it never feels genuine. This is what has sunk the whole slew of "women behaving badly" movies that started, I believe, with Bridesmaids and has continued through the Ghostbusters reboot and Bad Moms (I'm sure there are a few other, but they slip my mind at the moment).
This is a bit of a tragedy. When Amy Schumer's career began, she was very funny and, in some ways, very radical. She's given in, however, to the pressure to be vulgar for the sake of vulgarity. This is not an attractive trait in any self-respecting woman. It's no different than women solving problems with guns and other phallic symbols in an action movie, as opposed to solving problems with their minds.
This movie will make you yearn for the 30s and 40s, when women in Hollywood were respected and were given roles in films about women negotiating life in an intelligent, realistic manner.
If Hollywood cannot do better than this, the women's movement is doomed.
Henry & June (1990)
Erotic Cinema for Normal People
After reading several of the misguided reviews of this film here, I had to jump in with my opinion.
The negative reviews appear to come from two different types of viewers-- The most obvious are banal, simple minded buffoons who have no idea what they're looking at. They're the ones who deem anything challenging "pretentious." That's okay. Professional wrestling was invented for that crowd and that's where they should stay.
The more insidious negative reviews come from people who actually are pretentious and should know better than writing the kind of garbage they've written here. They're the ones who insist there's nothing radical in this film, that it has no passion, etc., etc.
Here's the truth about Henry & June:
There are very, VERY few mainstream films that tackle the subject of sexuality as well as Henry & June. As you may know from my other reviews, I'm the feminist accidentally born with testicles. I have an almost zero tolerance policy for movies that show female flesh. This movie is so good, I can overlook it. Not only that, when I watch this film with my wife, she actually becomes attractive to me again and we generally have a good night once the film is over. Imagine that!
Henry & June tells the important story of the literary and literal coupling of Henry Miller and Anais Nin. These two did more to liberate western civilization than Freud could ever have hoped for. The director creates a wonderful atmosphere that puts you in Paris in the 1930s and allows for multiple viewings of the film. This is one of the good ones. Don't listen to the idiots, pretentious or otherwise.
Crash (2004)
Is It Worse Than Shakespeare in Love? Yes. Yes it is.
Oh boy. As a feminist accidentally born with testicles, I can tell you, there's nothing I look forward to more than a film reminding me how privileged white males like myself are the scum of the Earth. I generally use movies like this as a sort of intellectual self-flogging to make up for the thousands of years of oppression my people have caused the entire world. This one, however, didn't amount to much more than a sappy, manipulative Disneyesque take on the state of racism in the United States.
We know we're in trouble early on when Sandra Bullock's privileged character warns her liberal husband to be worried about two African-American gentlemen on the street and she turns out to be correct. It's like the film is shooting itself in its foot from the get-go. Afircan-Americans should NEVER be portrayed in a negative light on film or in television. They've suffered enough.
Later, we meet an atrociously disgusting white police officer in the character of Matt Dillon. He molests an innocent African-American woman (as one suspects white police officers are apt to do on a regular basis) and then, as though the film wants to make some clever statement about irony, the same racist cop saves the same poor, innocent African-American woman from a burning car. The director plays games like this with the audience throughout the picture. It's like he's learned the very worst lessons Spielberg has to offer. Set the audience up, smack them sideways in a manner the filmmaker no doubt considers "clever." It's not.
The whole movie reminded me of the patronizing scene in Schindler's List when Liam Neeson notices white flakes in the air. The audience thinks, "Snow! Christmastime! Yeah!" and then he walks a few blocks and we see it is actually ashes from burning Jews. Crash is nothing but an endless series of episodes like this. It looks like it was written by a freshmen cultural studies major who hasn't had enough Liberal Arts training to learn how to make his art subtle and, thus, more meaningful. Avoid this at all costs.
For a great movie to feed your white guilt, I recommend "The Brother from Another Planet."
Alien (1979)
One of the finest feminist films ever made
Had to review this one. As Hollywood carts out one male fantasy after another about "butt- kicking" women and insisting these cartoonish appropriations of male violence are somehow progressive, it's good to go back to Ridley Scott's ALIEN and revisit what REAL feminist characters should look like.
As you may or may not know, I'm a feminist accidentally born with testicles, so my opinion in this matter is valid. Both women characters in ALIEN prove to be smarter and more resourceful than the men they are surrounded by. The film begins, as you should well know, with a landing crew investigating a large, phallic spaceship that has sent out a distress signal. Veronica Cartwright's character Lambert says, no less than twice, "Let's get out of here." Her feminine intuition has already told her the distress signal is a decoy. When they find the giant skeleton of a humanoid alien on the ship with its chest cage busted out, she says it again. Do the men listen? No. And they will pay a price for it.
Shortly after, the landing party brings an injured member back (Harry Dean Stanton's unfortunate character Brett) to their spaceship with an alien attached to his face. Sigourney Weaver's ACTUAL butt-kicking character, Ripley, refuses to let the infected crew member on the ship. Once again, a woman doing what is exactly right and, once again, the men don't listen to her. She, of course, will be rewarded once the alien has cut loose and wreaked havoc on the ship by being the only member to survive.
Do guns and flamethrowers and other phallic symbols of the oppressive patriarchy help her survive this ordeal? Ultimately, no. She disposes of the alien, in her final confrontation with it, using her wits.
Women are inherently repulsed by violence. That Ripley should eliminate the threat to her life using her intelligence as a weapon makes her, possibly, the greatest feminist character ever put on screen.
One last thing: I see a lot of people calling this movie "slow." Clearly, they are threatened by a strong, independent female protagonist, otherwise, they would not criticize this movie.
Thelma & Louise (1991)
Feminist movie uses too much patriarchy to get point across
Oh what a confused, sometimes wonderful movie this is. At times, one believes this movie is beneficial to women and the feminist cause in general (I'm a feminist accidentally born with testicles, in case you were wondering). Too often, though, the movie falls back on patriarchal norms to advance its narrative.
And, not to spoil the ending too much (if you don't know how this movie ends, get a job and stop living underneath a bridge!), the fate of the women protagonists is, ultimately, the fate of any woman who stands up for herself in a patriarchal society -- total doom.
The movie begins on an excellent note. Two women have decided to take a vacation together. The younger of the two, Thelma, does so at the risk of angering her typical knuckle-dragging patriarchal husband who, gag, watches football.
The women stop for food and some drinks at a bar and Thelma, enjoying her freedom, gets a little too drunk. A complete sleaze-a-thon takes her to the dance floor and spins her around until she's dizzy and feels the need to vomit. He accompanies her to the parking lot under the guise of helping her, and then, surprise, attempts to rape her.
Here's where the movie gets complicated. Louise shoots the rapist before he can go through with the act. Initially, she aims the gun at him and tell him to let her friend go. Of course, the use of the phallis, the gun, is already a flaw in the film. The women should be able to protect themselves without resorting to the oppressive tools of the patriarchy. When the rapist says something rude to Louise, she kills him. Now the women are in trouble.
What follows is a Bonnie & Clyde-like adventure across the southwest. While these types of films are enjoyable, they are, essentially, patriarchal fantasies. In one of the movie's more problematic story lines, Thelma goes to bed with a young Brad Pitt just a day or two after she is nearly raped. Any survivor of rape will tell you that's most likely not going to happen, even if it's Brad Pitt!
The film builds the relationship between the women but never releases the latent homoerotic nature of their relationship. This is also a flaw.
And, as stated, the women are not allowed to get away clean despite the fact that they wished none of the horrible things that happened to them on themselves.
Oh, and Harvey Keitel is thrown in to appease all the uncomfortable men who still believe they are somehow not complicit in patriarchal oppression.
For entertainment, this is a great movie. For political purposes, it fails tremendously.
Seinfeld: The Shoes (1993)
Elaine reduced to sex object. No thanks.
I have to be careful -- IMDb didn't post my last review. Obviously, there's an agenda on this site.
Anyway, this episode really brings the whole series into the gutter. As I am proud of stating, I am a feminist accidentally born with testicles. I loathe and despise when film and television objectifies women. This episode hinged on the objectification of women. In fact, it went further than that -- It hinged on the fracturing and objectification of women. If you've taken any women's studies courses, you know what I'm talking about.
So George gets caught leering at the 15 year old daughter of the head of NBC. This endangers Jerry and George's pilot deal with the network. The scene is creepy enough, I mean, a middle- aged man leering at a 15 year old girls' breasts? I realize it was the 1990s, but men were sort of evolved then, weren't they? But no, it's Seinfeld, and even in the 90s, they weren't willing to go along with political correctness. So in addition to the scene being creepy as all get out, they play it for laughs. Yes, they expect you to laugh at an old man ogling a young girl.
If that weren't bad enough, in order to correct the situation, they "set up" the NBC executive by having Elaine broadcast her cleavage in his face until he realizes that, "hey, boys will be boys and women are here for our entertainment!"
I really don't know if the Elaine character was ever asked to stoop this low in any other episode. For the most part, I thought she was a nice, progressive female character. Her actions in this episode seem quite unusual. Considering nothing was moved forward with respect to the story arc of the pilot with NBC, you can safely skip this episode.
Fight Club (1999)
Anti-feminism propaganda
Wow, if ever a movie should be banned, it's probably Fight Club. This movie tries to bury its right-wing message under heaps of strained hip and pretend satire. But watching this movie closely, you'll see, the message is quite clear:
Western civilization has been feminized and a violent revolution (led, apparently, by white males) is the only way to turn the clock back to the prehistoric cave times of patriarchy.
Ed Norton plays a victim of the consumer society. When the pressures of being completely phony overwhelms him, he invents an alter-ego, played by Brad Pitt. They begin their journey toward liberation from the enlightened, feminist stage of human development, by starting a fight club where men beat each other senseless and find some sort of spiritual release. Some of my feminist friends insist there is latent homoeroticism in this movie, but I wouldn't go so far as to give it that much credit. These men don't love anything, especially each other. No, this is about white men being upset that their day is over and engaging in insanely childish activities in attempt to reclaim their lost power.
As a feminist accidentally born with testicles, I can assure you there is no place for movies like this in today's feminist, enlightened society. Ban it if possible. By all means, don't watch it.
Inland Empire (2006)
Lynch Responds to Feminist Critcism
David Lynch has long been attacked for his treatment of women in his films. INLAND EMPIRE, the last feature film he made (and, it's beginning to look as though it will be the last feature film he ever makes) responds to these criticisms with a brilliant, 3-hour epic on the treatment of women around the world.
At one point, a homeless woman on Hollywood Boulevard tells one of several Laura Dern characters, "Woman, you're dying." In a hodge-podge of what look like unfinished David Lynch projects, INLAND EMPIRE explains exactly how and why women around the world suffer. The most prominent storyline in the film, if such a masterpiece of abstraction can even be limited to the term film, is that of a movie production in which a cast and crew attempt to film a movie that was filmed decades earlier with disastrous consequences. The trials and tribulations the Laura Dern characters go through represent all the hassles we horrid, patriarchal s.o.b.'s put them through (yes, I'm a feminist who was accidentally born with testicles...)
The film ends brilliantly with Dern assaulting her masked, unknown assailant, and then a joyous musical number featuring women of all shapes and sizes, clapping their hands and singing along to a Nina Simone tune (not much more radical than that, eh?)
The only part of the movie I struggled with were the scenes that took place in Poland (?). One has to expect a certain amount of confusion when watching a Lynch film, though.
Lost Highway (1997)
Sometimes it takes a misstep to move toward greateness
Lost Highway finds Lynch just as confused as his audience. He exploits Patricia Arquette to no end, showing us her naked body as though it were a Star Wars special effect every few minutes. As a feminist accidentally born with testicles, I found this very offensive. Furthermore, I couldn't help but feel this movie has a conservative message underneath all the flash and weirdness. When we see Patricia Arquette on a movie screen, in a porno film, near the end of the movie, a harsh, seeming gregorian chant from a Ramstein song (and let's not pretend we don't know what THOSE GUYS represent..,) plays on the soundtrack. In an almost Spielbergian gesture of fascist filmmaking, the audience is forced to find something negative in a woman's choice to do with her body what she wants. Shame on you, Mr. Lynch!
When you pull apart the pieces of Lost Highway and examine them, the movie doesn't make much sense, I'm afraid to say. I'm one of those people who loves to claim that, "If you didn't like it, you didn't get it!" But I'm afraid here, I can't defend modern art with that old standby. The fact of the matter is, Mr. Lynch's warmup for his masterpiece, Mulholland Dr., is an emperor with no clothes.