There’s been a glimmer of feminism in many of the year’s best films. The most overtly feminist is Mustang, a fierce assault on the patriarchy of a traditional culture. But Brooklyn and Carolshare a feminist point of view. It’s no coincidence that the character that revolts in Ex Machinahas a female form. Ex Machina, Mustang and Brooklyn are are on my Best Movies of 2015.
Mad Max: Fury Road, a movie loved by critics (especially the female ones), is a rock ’em, sock’em action movie where women characters flee for their safety from male atrocities and then exact their revenge.
Testament of Youth is a biopic of the pioneering woman who leads a social movement. And from the 19th Century, there was the proto-feminist bodice ripper Far from the Madding Crowd. Chi-raq, Spike Lee’s modern inner city version of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, also has women taking charge of their society.
All of these movies are primarily about women and have female leads.
Even the protagonist’s love interest (usually a thankless and peripheral role) in Creed is accomplished and only interested in embracing the title character on her own terms.
What does this mean? Not that Hollywood is now the paradigm of gender equity. Just that there were some high quality movies this year, some women-centered, with a welcome perspective.
Don’t miss Fabrice Luchini in the delightfully dark comedy Gemma Bovery. The coming of age comedy Dopeis a nice little movie that trashes stereotypes. Alicia Vikander’s strong performance carries the anti-war memoir Testament of Youth. This summer’s animated Pixar blockbuster Inside Out is very smart, but a little preachy, often very sad and underwhelming. The Melissa McCarthy spy spoof Spy is a very funny diversion. Mad Max: Fury Roadis a rock ’em sock ’em action tour de force but ultimately empty-headed and empty-hearted.
My DVD/Stream of the Week is the year’s best thriller so far – ’71, a harrowing tale set in the Troubles of Northern Ireland. ’71 is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming on Amazon Instant Video, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.
Don’t forget that Turner Classic Movies is filling each June and July Friday with film noir in its Summer of Darkness series, hosted by Film Noir Foundation president Eddie Muller – the Czar of Noir. The series schedule includes several favorites of my Overlooked Noir. Tonight features next Friday, look out for 99 River Street.
Saturday night, Saturday, July 18, TCM is presenting THREE of the greatest films about politics: The Dark Horse, The Last Hurrah and The Candidate. On the 21st, TCM brings us that classic suspense Western 3:10 to Yuma, along with Peeping Tom – still one of the very best serial killer movies after 50 years.
On July 24, Turner Classic Movies will show the groundbreaking French noirElevator to the Gallows. It’s a groundbreaking film with so many outstanding elements that I’ll be writing about it next week. But set your DVR now.
Don’t miss Fabrice Luchini in the delightfully dark comedy Gemma Bovery. The coming of age comedy Dopeis a nice little movie that trashes stereotypes. Alicia Vikander’s strong performance carries the anti-war memoir Testament of Youth. This summer’s animated Pixar blockbuster Inside Out is very smart, but a little preachy, often very sad and underwhelming. The Melissa McCarthy spy spoof Spy is a very funny diversion. Mad Max: Fury Roadis a rock ’em sock ’em action tour de force but ultimately empty-headed and empty-hearted.
My Stream of the Week is the thriller Nightcrawler, with Jake Gyllenhaal as a highly functioning psychotic. You can stream it from Amazon Instant Video, iTunes and Vudu and rent it on DirecTV PPV.
Don’t forget that Turner Classic Movies is filling each June and July Friday with film noir in its Summer of Darkness series, hosted by Film Noir Foundation president Eddie Muller – the Czar of Noir. The series schedule includes several favorites of my Overlooked Noir. Tonight I recommend D.O.A. and Caged; next Friday, look out for 99 River Street.
On July 15, Turner Classic Movies features the 1948 film noirPitfall. Dick Powell plays a bored middle class married guy who is aching for some excitement. In his humdrum job as an insurance investigator, he investigates an embezzlement and meets the captivating Lizabeth Scott, the girlfriend of the imprisoned embezzler. They fall into a torrid but short-lived affair. Just when Powell thinks that he’s back to his normal family life, both he and Scott are dragged into a thriller by two baddies – the sexually obsessed sickie of a private eye (Raymond Burr) and the nasty and very jealous embezzler (Byron Barr), just released from the hoosegow. Jane Wyatt plays Powell’s wife.
Pitfall is especially interesting because it deviates from two prototypical characterizations. Unlike the usual noir sap, Powell doesn’t fall for Scott “all in”; although he has a brief extramarital fling, he’s never going to leave his family for her. And Scott, although she allures Powell, is not femme fatale. She’s not a Bad Girl, just an unlucky one. She has horrible taste in a boyfriend and the bad luck to attract a menacing stalker (Burr), but she’s fundamentally decent. Will her sexual promiscuity be punished at the end of this 1948 movie?
Alicia Viksander bids farewell to Kit Harington in TESTAMENT OF YOUTH
In Testament of Youth, Alicia Viksander plays Vera, a gifted and determined young British woman who overcomes the conventions of the day and the objections of her father to attend Oxford in the 1910s. In 1914, Vera’s brother, fiance and closest male friends all enlist in Britain’s WW I army. No one at the time could have imagined the industrialized carnage that WW I would become, and it’s poignant when the young men say that the war will probably be over before they’ve completed their basic training. The war is, of course, an unspeakable horror. We don’t expect the young men to fare well in the War, and they don’t. Vera suspends her Oxford education to work as a nurse, first in Britain and later at the front. She is in position to observe the effects of war both at the front and on the home front, where her parents are especially impacted.
Testament of Youth is based on Vera Brittain’s popular and influential 1933 memoir of the same name, which is also an icon of feminist literature. Brittain became a pacifist leader.
This story follows a familiar arc, and I often ask “why did someone feel the need to make this movie?”. Testament of Youth, however, is fairly compelling. Credit goes to Viksander and to director James Kent, who somehow prevent the film from slipping into an unwatchable slog of grimness.
The most impressive element of Testament of Youth is the performance of Alicia Viksander as Vera Brittain. Viksander is onscreen in every scene, often in close-up and she carries the film with a flawless performance. As good as she is here, Viksander is even better in this year’s sci-fi hit Ex Machina, where she plays a machine embedded with artificial intelligence. (Ex Machina is the best American movie of the year so far.)
With Ex Machina, Viksander is exploding into cinema as a major star. Most Americans first saw the 26-year-old Swede in two 2012 movies. She played a key supporting role in Anna Karenina and a lead in the Mads Mikkelsen period drama A Royal Affair. Although I thought it too long, A Royal Affair won the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. Now she has five films completed or in post-production, including upcoming Derek Cianfrance film The Light Between the Oscars, co-starring Michael Fassbender, who she ihas been dating. She also has the top credit in the upcoming The Man from U.N.C.L.E., which looks wretched from the trailer. Plus, she slated to co-star with Matt Damon in the next Bourne movie. It’s quite a career trajectory, and from what I’ve seen, richly deserved.
Americans will find this odd, but the Swedish Viksander reportedly had to struggle to learn Danish for A Royal Affair. It seems especially odd, given that she speaks English with a perfect American accent in Ex Machina and perfect middle class British accent in Testament of Youth.
Back to Last Testament of Youth – it’s not a Must See, but it is a well-made and evocative treatment of the tragedy of war.
