SPEED RACER: Gotta Go Fast

March is Women's History Month, which Post-Credit Coda will take as an opportunity for weekly reviews of films by female directors. Of all the reviews I've written in 2+ years, only four and a half of the movies have been directed by women. Women are slooooowly starting to receive better on camera roles in Hollywood, yet the lack of female directors is a continuous blight on the industry. Unskilled and inexperienced men are typically given far grander opportunities while proven, talented women are ignored. Despite the adversity, some women still manage to bring their projects to fruition. Let's hope that in the future this becomes the norm rather than the exception.

Other Reviews in this Series.

Directors: Lana and Lilly Wachowski
Writers: Lilly and Lana Wachowski
Cast: Emile Hirsch, John Goodman, Susan Sarandon, Christina Ricci, Matthew Fox, Kick Gurry, Paulie Litt, Roger Allam, Rain
Runtime: 135 mins.
2008

The film opens with a flash of color, then the camera creeps in on the back of a racer. We hear the sounds of revving engines and squealing tires. We see the racer's foot tapping in anticipation. Then, a match cut to a child's pencil tapping on a standardized test. This is a flashback that shows us a glimpse of Speed Racer's troubled youth. The teachers consider him a problem child because all he wants to do, all he can really focus on, is racing. The boy sits at his desk, his concentration ebbing, until the drab classroom transforms into multicolored streaks of light, the essence of speed, and the little boy is driving just like his older brother Rex.

What follows is an extended sequence of adult Speed Racer racing, intercut with inserts of his family cheering him on from the crowd, each of which zips us away into another propulsive flashback that fills out Speed's relationship with all of the main characters and contextualizes the importance of the race. Typically "propulsive flashback" is something of an oxymoron, but not here. This isn't like Deadpool's clever but pedestrian use of backstory in the midst of action. This sequence is edited, paced, and scored such that even when we have entered quiet character moments, we feel as if we have never left the race.

All of this adds up to a stunning twenty minutes of discovery and emotion, culminating in Speed racing the ghost of his dead older brother for the course record. It is the absolute perfect way to begin this film, an opening that perhaps only compares to Up with regard to sheer bang for your buck, emotional investment refined into the most efficient and efficacious package.

I knew from one minute in that Speed Racer would be a masterpiece.

BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE - Badman v Pooperman

Director: Zack Snyder
Writers: Chris Terrio, David S. Goyer
Cast: Henry Cavill, Ben Affleck, Jessie Eisenberg, Amy Adams, Gal Gadot, Jeremy Irons, Diane Lane, Laurence Fishburne, Holly Hunter, Scoot McNairy
Runtime: 151 mins.
2016

It's bad. Wow, it's bad. It's bad, boring, and bloated.

The real kicker is that we've been hearing about this movie ceaselessly for three years. All that time, all that buildup, just for a roasted turd of a final product. Not that it ever at any point in the development process looked at all promising. First it was the terrible idea to crib from the infamous graphic novel The Dark Knight Returns for a movie that is supposed to kick off your extended superhero universe. Returns is a mythology-killing work, not a mythology-building work. That's the point. It is the Batman and Superman stories taken to their darkest and most brutally honest conclusions. It is an evisceration of the superhero genre. How could you possibly think it would be a good idea to use that story as a scaffolding to introduce a world of superheroes who we are supposed to support as superheroes? It's almost as if Snyder and co. read The Dark Knight Returns once or twice and totally ignored every single theme, both textual and subtextual. They just thought it was cool that Batman took on Superman.

Then we got the godawful title. That alone was a harbinger of doom. The cluttered grotesquerie of it screams of corporate committee decisionmaking. The title cannot function as anything but a parody of itself. It's so bad that I find it embarrassing to say out loud. Every time I've talked to people about the film this week, the title has caught in my throat. I've just said "Batman versus Superman" or "the Batman and Superman movie." I cannot bring myself to say "Batman vee Superman" let alone the hideous appendage at the end.

10 CLOVERFIELD LANE: A Goodman Is Hard to Find

Director: Dan Trachtenberg
Writers: Josh Campbell, Matthew Stuecken, Damien Chazelle
Cast: Mary Elizabeth Winstead, John Goodman, John Gallagher Jr.
Runtime: 103 mins.
2016

10 Cloverfield Lane is a great movie with a mediocre movie tacked onto the end of it. The script is tight and the performances are excellent. John Goodman in particular is incredible as the ambiguous savior/abductor about whom our thoughts and feelings are in perpetual flux. It's too bad the ending tries too hard to deliver some incongruous spectacle, and it's too bad this tight little thriller got branded with the Cloverfield moniker.

That's my review in brief. From hereon out, expect SPOILERS aplenty, because I'd rather not talk about this secretive little movie in the vaguest of terms.

AMERICAN PSYCHO: Cutthroat Businessman

March is Women's History Month, which Post-Credit Coda will take as an opportunity for weekly reviews of films by female directors. Of all the reviews I've written in 2+ years, only four and a half of the movies have been directed by women. Women are slooooowly starting to receive better on camera roles in Hollywood, yet the lack of female directors is a continuous blight on the industry. Unskilled and inexperienced men are typically given far grander opportunities while proven, talented women are ignored. Despite the adversity, some women still manage to bring their projects to fruition. Let's hope that in the future this becomes the norm rather than the exception.

Other Reviews in this Series.

Director: Mary Harron
Writers: Mary Harron, Guinevere Turner
Cast: Christian Bale, Justin Theroux, Josh Lucas, Bill Sage, Chloe Sevigny, Reese Witherspoon, Samantha Mathis, Matt Ross, Jared Leto, Willem Dafoe
Runtime: 102 mins.
2000

I was surprised to find out, in preparation for my second viewing of the film, that American Psycho was directed by a woman. By all appearances it has the hallmarks of hypermasculine filmmaking: A psycho-thriller about the powerful male id brutalizing (primarily) female bodies, in which the only speaking roles for women go to prostitutes, secretaries, and girlfriends. Yet, the fact that it was helmed by a woman makes sense of why American Psycho succeeds as pitch perfect satire despite all the potential pitfalls of such a gratuitous story. In fact, Harron pulls off the neat trick of avoiding gratuitousness on the story level by seating that gratuitousness firmly at the level of character.

American Psycho features Christian Bale's career defining role as Patrick Bateman, a high-ranking executive at a large corporation that apparently does very little of anything useful, as we only see its employees lunching or snorting coke, never working. Of course, this is part and parcel of the all too real satire. Work isn't about work for Patrick or his colleagues. It's about power, status, and style.

But that isn't enough for Patrick, or perhaps it is too much. He is driven by an uncontrollable bloodlust that pushes him to brutally murder other human beings. He has no feelings of empathy, and he is so alienated that he thrives on destroying humanity. We watch him as he tears through a corporate chic lifestyle in public, and tears through flesh in private. As the bodies pile up and the murders becomes more elaborate, we begin to wonder how this obviously imbalanced high status businessman doesn't get caught.

ZOOTOPIA: Prey v Predator: Dawn of Justice

Directors: Byron Howard, Rich Moore, Jared Bush (co-director)
Writers: Byron Howard, Jared Bush, Rich Moore, Josie Trinidad, Jim Reardon, Phil Johnston, Jennifer Lee
Cast: Ginnifer Goodwin, Jason Bateman, Idris Elba, Jenny Slate, J. K. Simmons, Nate Torrence
2016

Zootopia is structured around its message. Without the message, it becomes yet another run-of-the-mill, albeit impeccably crafted, Disney movie about anthropomorphic animals who learn to be themselves. With the message, it's a refreshingly smart and political mystery that has a lot to teach a lot of people. Unfortunately, I'm not fully on board with how the movie handles the message. Thankfully, I'm mostly on board with it!

The story begins simply enough, with small town rabbit Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin) setting out to prove herself at the Police Academy. No bunny has ever joined the police force, you see, on account of their diminutive stature. Judy proves that it can be done, even in the face of harsh adversity from the academy, and gentle adversity from her parents. She graduates and receives assignment in Zootopia, a bustling metropolis with lush biomes for every kind of mammal. Centuries ago predator and prey were locked in an eternal battle for survival, but Zootopia was where they first banded together and decided to become one healthy community.

Except, Judy finds, the community is not all that healthy. Predators may not eat prey anymore, but there is still plenty of discrimination and corruption at the heart of the city. After dealing with the condescending Chief Bogo (Idris Elba) and a friendly fox named Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman) who turns out to be a con artist, Officer Judy Hopps has just about reached rock bottom with her optimism. But when some predators start disappearing, and others begin to revert back to their rabid predatorial instinct, Judy needs the help of Nick to unravel the mystery at the heart of the city.

A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT: Every Good Boy Does Fine

March is Women's History Month, which Post-Credit Coda will take as an opportunity for weekly reviews of films by female directors. Of all the reviews I've written in 2+ years, only four and a half of the movies have been directed by women. Women are slooooowly starting to receive better on camera roles in Hollywood, yet the lack of female directors is a continuous blight on the industry. Unskilled and inexperienced men are typically given far grander opportunities while proven, talented women are ignored. Despite the adversity, some women still manage to bring their projects to fruition. Let's hope that in the future this becomes the norm rather than the exception.

Other Reviews in this Series.

Director: Ana Lily Amirpour
Writer: Ana Lily Amirpour
Cast: Sheila Vand, Arash Marandi, Marshall Manesh, Mozhan Marno, Dominic Rains
Runtime: 101 mins.
2014

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night has, first and foremost, a killer title. Amirpour could have easily gone with something bluntly evocative like The Vampire, but instead she went the route of a flashy eight syllable name that makes this movie something of a commitment to bring up in casual conversation. Marketers hate that sort of thing, but as this article about naming conventions suggests, we wouldn't want Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind to be called The Dream, would we?

The title also perfectly plays upon our preconceived notions. When presented with the image of a girl walking home alone at night, especially in the context of a horror movie, we assume she will be the victim of some perverse attack. Every signifier in that string of words is meant to evoke vulnerability. The joke's on us, though. In this movie the girl is the aggressor, the shadowy figure out for blood.

THE HITCH-HIKER: Thumbs Up

March is Women's History Month, which Post-Credit Coda will take as an opportunity for weekly reviews of films by female directors. Of all the reviews I've written in 2+ years, only four and a half of the movies have been directed by women. Women are slooooowly starting to receive better on camera roles in Hollywood, yet the lack of female directors is a continuous blight on the industry. Unskilled and inexperienced men are typically given far grander opportunities while proven, talented women are ignored. Despite the adversity, some women still manage to bring their projects to fruition. Let's hope that in the future this becomes the norm rather than the exception.

Other Reviews in this Series.

Director: Ida Lupino
Writers: Collier Young, Ida Lupino, Robert L. Joseph
Cast: Frank Lovejoy, Edmond O'Brien, William Talman
Runtime: 70 mins.
1953

When Ida Lupino was a child, her father told her, "You're a strange, interesting girl. Your mother and I, to be honest with you, prayed... we would have a son. I think you're going to end up doing what my son would have done. You will write, direct, and produce." This would turn out to be prescient, or perhaps something of a self-fulfilling prophecy, as Lupino would grow up to become an actress who was dissatisfied with the limits of a Hollywood acting career. She was frequently suspended by Warner Bros. for not making the movies they wanted her to make, and during that time she familiarized herself with the technical processes of filmmaking. In her words, while she was sitting around being bored on set, "someone else seemed to be doing all the interesting work."

Lupino transitioned into producing, writing, and directing with her own production company, an unheard of feat for a woman in Hollywood during that era. In the earliest years of film female filmmakers were fairly common, but by the '40s and '50s Hollywood had become a boys' club, with women primarily relegated to acting and editing. Seventy years later and women are still by and large unwelcome in the director's chair, which makes Lupino's achievements all the more extraordinary. Not only was she prolific, but she was uncompromising in a way that was unpalatable to the gender roles of the time, yet she still managed to toe the line enough to keep finding opportunities to make her art. She was interested in creating strong female characters, "[not] women who have masculine qualities about them, but [a role] that has intestinal fortitude, some guts to it." Again, seventy years later and this is still a concept that big budget writers and studio execs cannot wrap their minds around, instead construing the term Strong Female Character as a hot woman who can punch things hard. Lupino accessed the power of the feminine in a masculine-dominated world, preferring to be called "mother" while on set, which she considered emblematic of the act of creation.

All this is fascinating to keep in mind when looking at The Hitch-Hiker, Lupino's sixth (though only fourth credited) directorial effort. The film follows two fishing buddies who pick up a dangerous hitchhiker, the psychopathic killer Emmett Myers (William Talman). The film chronicles their captivity, in which they are forced at gunpoint to aid Myers' escape across Baja California. Snippets of the police pursuit are sprinkled throughout, but for the most part we are trapped in pressure cooker situation after situation, in which Myers abuses his captives both physically and psychologically. He considers them weak, you see, too dependent upon the love and support of others, whereas he is strong because he's always made his own way and never taken any help from anybody.

CAROL: Les Be Honest

Director: Todd Haynes
Writer: Phyllis Nagy
Cast: Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, Kyle Chandler, Sarah Paulson, Jake Lacy, John Magaro
Runtime: 118 mins.
2015

As far as I can tell there are two ways for people to develop empathy: through experience and through stories. For those who lead sheltered existences, sometimes life experience is not a viable option. That's why we need narrative. Stories allow for cultural growth across demographics and situations. Stories shape our worldview, especially if they're artfully constructed and have real heart behind them. As such, I can't imagine how anyone could walk away from Carol without a great deal of empathy for the LGBTQ movement unless they are trapped in a dogma that does not allow them to break free.

Carol follows the romance of two closeted women in the 1950's. Therese Belivet (Rooney Mara) is our initial POV character, a reserved young woman who floats through life acquiescing to things she doesn't have any feelings about. Over the course of the movie our perspective transfers to that of Carol Aird (Cate Blachett), an older woman going through a divorce and entering a custody battle for her daughter. Both of our main characters are stuck in relationships with basically good men who nonetheless find themselves in the role of the oppressor because of the regressive gender norms of the time. One of the many incredible traits of Carol is that it doesn't demonize anybody, not even its villain; the pressure and prominence of social forces is always kept at the forefront.