
Jennifer’s Body 
On a precious day off from my current excuse for employment, I thought I’d treat myself to day of fun at… well, let’s not be predictable shall we. I squeezed in a triple-bill of new releases I’m worried shan’t be around for long or films already out I’ve been meaning to catch, so here is a quick wrap-up of my experience.
I began with Amelia, a rather old-fashioned biopic of Amelia Earheart. I really did have my tongue sharpened for this one, having read some scathing reviews of it and being the new vehicle of one of my least favourite actresses working at the moment, the fearsome Herman “Hilary” Swank. To get the Mr. Swank rant done quickly: she’s awful, awful in everything, rubbish in everything. Everything, everything, everything! Her best role was in Karate Kid IV and she really hasn’t progressed since then. I hated her in the 90s, where she specialised in mugging the camera in Oscar-pleading performances where she pretends to be a bit butch (see Boys Don’t Cry and Million Dollar Baby). However, I’ve hated her even more since she decided to be all effeminate and girly in the awwwwful Freedom Writers and P.S. I Love You. Now, she is back to her trouser-wearing best and, true to form, she is the worst feature in this film. Having said that, the framings around her are actually perfectly fine. Richard Gere’s natural screen charisma injects some investment in a rather bland role as her husband and some rather nice photography and pacing makes its skip along hastily enough. The final sequence of her inevitable demise in particular has a degree of tension; I found myself casually gripping me watching a sequence I already knew the outcome to. I give some credit to Mira Nair for this, who is a good director, but not too much. The film is far too unfocused, meandering between Amelia: The Lover, Amelia: The feminist icon, Amelia: The Adventurer and Amelia: The Herman Swank Story. It’s just a bit wet and bland feeling like a well-shot wikipedia entry rather than a dramatic biopic. Not terrible, but not great either.
Next up, Taking Woodstock, the new Ang Lee film, who I’m not entirely sold on. Lust, Caution: yes, Croaching Tiger, yes. Brokeback Mountain: yes, a little dull. Hulk: most definitely not, and this falls in this category I’m afraid. Telling the story surrounding the story of the Woodstock festival, the film is really nothing more than a rather broad and very, very safe look at a 60s America hippie culture that never really happened. Despite strong performances from Imelda Staunton, Liev Schreiber and comedian Dimitri Martin, the film fails to anything but nostalgically gaze at hippy culture without scrutinizing its hypocrisies or paradoxes (it was after all a movement that preached changing the world by doing a lot of self-indulgent partying). Rather than engage with these issues, it just shows the obligatory acid-dropping scene, featuring Paul Dano (of course!) and some fatuously shallow characters of wild, experimental theatre groups and troubled Vietnam vets, played by Emile Hirsch (of course!). It reminded me most of the South Park episode where Cartman has to save the town, Armageddon style, from a hippie festival, and one hour in a kind of wished the little 8 year old Nazi would turn up and spread some hate over the annoying proceedings. Ang Lee, you clearly understand American culture and history even less than I do.
Finally, after all this, the new movie Diablo Cody. The more I think about Juno the more I don’t like it. I think it’s full of itself. This isn’t, it wants to have fun and take the audience on a ripping scary adventure. It’s also a rather smartly written satire on high-school culture, how it borders on body fascism and how its obsession with aesthetics is cripplingly shallow. Jennifer literary kills to stay beautiful and without her beauty is mortally empty. However, the film is also guilty of some hypocrisy, attempting to lampoon this focus on beauty but also doing that ridiculous casting decision that teen movies often do of taking a clearly beautiful actress (Amanda Seyfried), putting glasses on her and calling her a dork as well as pandering to the teenage boy market with its advertising and the occasional unnecessary lesbian scene. However, its script is largely neat and tidy, a bit too many Juno-like-isms such as wetties and FTRY’s and diggedy-wiggidlys. However, it is nice to see Megan “I’m clearly just a well-paid pole-dancer” Fox using her shallow identity for something vaguely smart, even is she is still a vacuous force in herself. The best of a very flawed day really. Next day off? Who knows.
On a precious day off from my current excuse for employment, I thought I’d treat myself to day of fun at… well, let’s not be predictable shall we. I squeezed in a triple-bill of new releases I’m worried shan’t be around for long or films already out I’ve been meaning to catch, so here is a quick wrap-up of my experience.
I began with Amelia, a rather old-fashioned biopic of Amelia Earheart. I really did have my tongue sharpened for this one, having read some scathing reviews of it and being the new vehicle of one of my least favourite actresses working at the moment, the fearsome Herman “Hilary” Swank. To get the Mr. Swank rant done quickly: she’s awful, awful in everything, rubbish in everything. Everything, everything, everything! Her best role was in Karate Kid IV and she really hasn’t progressed since then. I hated her in the 90s, where she specialised in mugging the camera in Oscar-pleading performances where she pretends to be a bit butch (see Boys Don’t Cry and Million Dollar Baby). However, I’ve hated her even more since she decided to be all effeminate and girly in the awwwwful Freedom Writers and P.S. I Love You. Now, she is back to her trouser-wearing best and, true to form, she is the worst feature in this film. Having said that, the framings around her are actually perfectly fine. Richard Gere’s natural screen charisma injects some investment in a rather bland role as her husband and some rather nice photography and pacing makes its skip along hastily enough. The final sequence of her inevitable demise in particular has a degree of tension; I found myself casually gripping me watching a sequence I already knew the outcome to. I give some credit to Mira Nair for this, who is a good director, but not too much. The film is far too unfocused, meandering between Amelia: The Lover, Amelia: The feminist icon, Amelia: The Adventurer and Amelia: The Herman Swank Story. It’s just a bit wet and bland feeling like a well-shot wikipedia entry rather than a dramatic biopic. Not terrible, but not great either.
Next up, Taking Woodstock, the new Ang Lee film, who I’m not entirely sold on. Lust, Caution: yes, Croaching Tiger, yes. Brokeback Mountain: yes, a little dull. Hulk: most definitely not, and this falls in this category I’m afraid. Telling the story surrounding the story of the Woodstock festival, the film is really nothing more than a rather broad and very, very safe look at a 60s America hippie culture that never really happened. Despite strong performances from Imelda Staunton, Liev Schreiber and comedian Dimitri Martin, the film fails to anything but nostalgically gaze at hippy culture without scrutinizing its hypocrisies or paradoxes (it was after all a movement that preached changing the world by doing a lot of self-indulgent partying). Rather than engage with these issues, it just shows the obligatory acid-dropping scene, featuring Paul Dano (of course!) and some fatuously shallow characters of wild, experimental theatre groups and troubled Vietnam vets, played by Emile Hirsch (of course!). It reminded me most of the South Park episode where Cartman has to save the town, Armageddon style, from a hippie festival, and one hour in a kind of wished the little 8 year old Nazi would turn up and spread some hate over the annoying proceedings. Ang Lee, you clearly understand American culture and history even less than I do.
Finally, after all this, the new movie Diablo Cody. The more I think about Juno the more I don’t like it. I think it’s full of itself. This isn’t, it wants to have fun and take the audience on a ripping scary adventure. It’s also a rather smartly written satire on high-school culture, how it borders on body fascism and how its obsession with aesthetics is cripplingly shallow. Jennifer literary kills to stay beautiful and without her beauty is mortally empty. However, the film is also guilty of some hypocrisy, attempting to lampoon this focus on beauty but also doing that ridiculous casting decision that teen movies often do of taking a clearly beautiful actress (Amanda Seyfried), putting glasses on her and calling her a dork as well as pandering to the teenage boy market with its advertising and the occasional unnecessary lesbian scene. However, its script is largely neat and tidy, a bit too many Juno-like-isms such as wetties and FTRY’s and diggedy-wiggidlys. However, it is nice to see Megan “I’m clearly just a well-paid pole-dancer” Fox using her shallow identity for something vaguely smart, even is she is still a vacuous force in herself. The best of a very flawed day really. Next day off? Who knows.
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