He Said/She Said: Dissecting the Gender Politics of Under the Skin

POSTCARD EDITION

*Contains Spoilers

Dear Di,

After seeing Jonathan Glazer’s new art-house/Scarlett Johansson skin-flick Under the Skin, I couldn’t stop thinking about you. I mean, come on, a heartless woman preys on men, using her sex appeal to lure lonely souls off the street and feed her seemingly insatiable appetite…

Wait, let me explain.

From your first review for Dear Cast and Crew, you’ve been able to call a spade a spade, and a dick a dick. You have a good read for female characters getting sidelined or standing-in for the audience. So help me out. I walked out of Under the Skin feeling, yes, dazzled by its technical achievements, but much more confused about its gender politics. It sure wouldn’t pass the Bechdel Test, but worse than that, I think it might be a borderline chauvinistic film. The artistry certainly makes it feel less exploitive than a film like Species, but if we break it down, I think Under the Skin might even be more offensive to women.

I will argue that, but wanted to hear your thoughts first.

Talk to you soon,

Christopher

 

Dear Christopher,

Sadly, this is not the first time a ruthless, man-eating character has caused my image to be conjured up, so I’m going to take it as a compliment.

The only thing I knew about this film prior to viewing it was that the men Scarlett Johansson’s (unnamed) character lures into her windowless white van were not actors. Glazer filmed them on the sly and got releases after. This, to me, was as fascinating an aesthetic technique as the hyper-stylized lighting and the buzzing, thumping score.

Women who have been harassed on the street by creeps in cars (yes, all women) know the feelings of violation, frustration, and guilt that come from being objectified. Watching Johansson cruise the streets of Scotland, hunting for prey among the unsuspecting young males, I must admit I felt a rush of power. Not that I agree with her motives, but it’s rare to see a female character, (outside of soap operas and cartoons) so savage and remorseless.  It was almost this feeling of: “See? We can be sociopathic murderers too!” 

If anything, I felt the men were being equally exploited here. Glazer’s guerilla-style hidden camera trick serves to reinforce the stereotype of men being so intent on getting laid, so lacking in impulse control, that they will literally let their dicks lead them to death.

Eagerly awaiting your reply,

Di

 

Dear Di,

Okay, so it sounds like you relished the way Under the Skin took the Inglorious Basterds approach to correcting women’s historical role of being preyed upon by men. Fair enough! Though I would argue that cinema’s long tradition of femme fatales, or even a character like the one Charlize Theron played in Monster, makes it strange that Glazer succumbed to the most basic stereotypes about the sexes to make his point. 

For example: what’s the very first thing Scarlett Johansson’s character does once she assumes her identity as a woman? She goes shopping. Not even for anything useful. She just browses around a mall, as if that’s some sort of female primal instinct. She rubs her hands across expensive furs, handles delicate silks, and picks up a bit of make-up. If the film is telling us she’s learning what it means to be a woman, it’s certainly a man’s perspective of what it means to be a woman. Kind of like the way the camera lingers on her ass as she struts between stores, which is probably meant to simulate the male gaze, but instead only indulges it.

I actually think the film was more concerned with creating sympathy for the men. None of them seemed to deserve what was coming. Even the brutal act that occurs against Johansson’s character at the end felt like the film’s attempt to create catharsis by dispatching the villain. Not a whole lot different than machine gun blasting Hitler in the face.

Dammit, I already invoked Godwin’s Law. Does this mean I lose?

Christopher

 

Dear Christopher,

I admit I’m not above enjoying a juicy revenge flick! And yes, femme fatales are not a modern concept. However, Theron’s serial killer, Aileen Wuornos, was a real person, with a highly publicized backstory and lamentable childhood to inform her choices.  And although that doesn’t excuse her murderous tendencies, it certainly gives us a broader scope of character that at least attempts to encourage empathy. Johansson’s character is born before our very eyes, and is the protagonist of an extraterrestrial bildungsroman. In fact, I would posit that this 21^st century female creation is a direct comment on how women are still undermined in our society. 

Assuming Johansson’s character had to learn about human females from what resources she had available to her – media in print, film and television for instance – it’s no wonder her first course of action would be a trip to the mall! Haven’t we been told for years that sex sells? Females in film and television are three times more likely to be seen in sexy attire than their male counterparts. If she typed “how to attract men” into a search engine, I doubt it would tell her to cultivate a great sense of humour and a nice personality. As for the lingering ass shot, perhaps Glazer was antagonizing the audience, particularly the males, as if to say, “Yes, she’s a heartless psycho with no obvious redeeming qualities, but admit it, you’d still hit that.”

Could it be that Glazer was taking a dig at the pervasive culture of victim blaming and shaming with his attempt to create sympathy for Johansson’s male prey? Of course they didn’t deserve to die, but then maybe they shouldn’t have been out at night, or getting into cars with strange women, or wearing baggie pants and hoodies.  Geez, it’s almost like they asked for it. The third act of the film sees Johansson’s attempt at humanization – trying food, learning to trust, engaging in intimacy, communing with nature – and for her trouble, she suffers a horror that seven in ten women have faced.  If she wanted an authentic female experience, she unfortunately found it.

Coincidentally, in 2010, while engaging in a year-long shopping abstinence to prove, among other things, that women are complicit in succumbing to media persuasion, I created my own version of Godwin’s Law. Called Golding’s Law, I theorized that the sooner you get a hyperbolic Nazi/Hitler reference out of the way, the sooner you can get back to intelligent discourse and respectful debate. Just acknowledge the elephant in the room and get on with it.

Word to the wise: steer clear of goose-stepping elephants. And sexy aliens in hot-pants.

Regards,

Di

 

Dear Di,

Golding’s Law. I can see the Reddit thread now: “Revenge-loving feminist encourages Nazi talk!” I just hope the backlash doesn’t touch me. But seriously, I love your take on the reverse victim-blaming. There’s probably more to that if we dissect the “sex” scenes in the film. 

The climax scenes are – strangely, beautifully – completely sexless. Stranger yet, they’re completely joyless. Johansson’s character is never allowed to enjoy her sexuality. I think Glazer hoped this would help him avoid turning this into a sexploitation film, but, in the end, it might do something even worse: instead of having ownership over her man-eating tendencies, he frames them as just another compulsion – like needing fur jackets and expensive silks. And becauser of that, the film seems to be saying, in the way it closes, that she’s the one who deserves to be punished.

One could argue that rather than understanding the real power of being a woman, she’s simply existing as women do in a patriarchal world. But why should she?  Can’t we assume she’s a higher form of intelligence? If not, what’s the point of making her non-human? Not just so we can justify a long mirror sequence where Johansson marvels over her own naked body, I hope. Because even though the nudity isn’t salacious, there’s just as much of it here as there is in Species.

But then again, I am a man, so I shouldn’t complain about where I get it from, right? 

Christopher

 

Dear Christopher,

I conceived the tongue-in-cheek Golding’s Law to be used in any discussion, not just those regarding gender, but if the trolls on Reddit so desperately need to be fed, I’m happy to oblige. Just wait til they find out I’m vegan. A feminist/nazi/vegan thread is troll-bait nirvana. It’s so perfect they’ll think it’s a trap. 

On the topic of intelligent beings setting traps, even higher life forms need their dirty work done. I saw Johansson’s character as a worker bee, a drone sent to do a seemingly simple job which she executes in the most expedient way. Her actions aren’t the product of compulsion, but are simply how she completes the tasks she’s been assigned. Enjoying sex isn’t even a consideration, so why should she have a functioning libido or organs that aren’t just for show? It isn’t until she walks off the job that she begins to have agency over her decisions.

When Johansson asks her prey, “Do you think I’m pretty?”, she’s not being coy. She genuinely doesn’t know, or even understand why she might be perceived that way. When she stands naked before the mirror and inspects her body, it’s like she’s trying to decipher a code: what is it that men find attractive? It’s a question as old as time, and thankfully, for the fashion and beauty industries, there is no right answer.

What makes Johansson’s character so compelling is that she’s an alien, and not a woman. That she flirts with so many female stereotypes and yet never manages to get the balance right is a reflection of how impossible it is to define womanhood in the 21^st century. Had Glazer conceived of the lead role as a male, he’d have delivered yet another misogynistic slasher flick, albeit a pretty one.  I’d be willing to wager it wouldn’t have been interesting enough to warrant this kind of rollicking exchange.

Sincerely,

Di

 

Dear Di,

No question, Under the Skin is worth dissecting. All this room for interpretation is great, but wouldn’t you have appreciated just a little more clarity? A slightly more focused social commentary? I don’t think the film would have sacrificed any of its intelligence by giving the audience a bit more of a narrative thread to hold onto, and perhaps a more defined political stance to debate.

Even the fact that she’s not human isn’t explicit until the last moment. A lot of our discussion has hinged on that understanding, but what’s actually “under the skin” certainly isn’t what Glazer cares about. If you go in to this film cold, you’d think you were watching My Psycho Sex Vacation in Edinburgh. And in a way, I think that’s closer to the story Glazer wants to tell. As soon as we justify Johansson’s actions with sci-fi logic, then the commentary becomes secondary. Glazer’s forcing it right to the surface. He wants her character to stand for something more than just an alien drone trying to figure out why men are attracted to women. He puts her through this terrible cycle of murdering men, only to have her see man’s inner beauty when she encounters an extra-lonely social misfit with a heart-of-gold. It’s actually pretty clichéd when you spell it out. Which I guess is why he didn’t.

Ultimately, the film does has a lot to say, but I think Glazer wants us to read his mind instead of just coming out and saying it.

Wait, maybe he understands women better than I thought!

Oh boy. I better leave the last word to you.

Sincerely,

Christopher 

 

Dear Christopher,

I just heard that Michael Bay is attached to direct My Psycho Sex Vacation in Edinburgh. Man, he works fast!

I’m fairly certain I speak for both of us when I admit that the downside of watching so many films is that we can smell a contrived plot twist or superfluous character arc from miles away. I enjoyed that Under the Skin wasn’t spoon-fed to me. In no way was it predictable, or easy, and, as such, I felt constantly challenged, both intellectually and emotionally. A stronger narrative might have made some audience members more comfortable, but I fear it would have alienated (pun intended) filmgoers like me who too often feel underserved.

In the first act of the film, before I realized Johansson was not who she appeared to be, I thought we were dealing with a Bernardo/Homolka scenario. I thought she was an uber-sociopath, a monster completely devoid of humanity. And yet I found her wholly compelling. When she first coaxed a man to his inky demise, I thought the death was being portrayed metaphorically. When it became clear she wasn’t of this earth, I didn’t feel like Glazer was being cute, nor did I think Johansson’s primary objective was to answer any deep questions about the human psyche. I struggled to understand her motives until I realized, hey, maybe I don’t have to.

The voyeuristic implications say more about the audience than they do about the filmmaker.  Watching anyone, whether they’re male, female or alien, as they stalk human prey is both repugnant and utterly fascinating. So many moments – the abandoned toddler, the disfigured man, the attempted rape – play with our sympathies and force us to question where our collective moral compass should point. Johansson’s character doesn’t do anything that a human isn’t capable of doing. Is it easier to accept her horrible actions when we realize she’s an alien? Or is it less difficult than coming to the grim realization that, under the skin, maybe we aren’t that different from her. 

With highest regards,

Di

Kung Fu Elliot

Dear Matthew Bauckman and Jaret Belliveau, Directors,

As Kung Fu Elliot came to (what I suppose are) it’s shocking final moments, I was left with a few questions. Two questions, really. Neither of them particularly charitable towards your film: (1) Was this alleged documentary even real? And, (2) How much of Elliot ‘White Lightning’ Scott’s story did you know before filming his story?

Regarding the first question: I just can’t help but feel that the resolution of Kung Fu Ellliot was a bit… staged. A little too action movie-ish. Sure, it’s fitting considering Elliot Scott, the subject of the film, has fashioned himself to be “Canada’s first action hero”. In scene after scene in the movie’s first half, the zero-grade movies he makes with his partner Linda Lum are based entirely on cliche and contrivance (and incompetence). Scott claims to be a seven-time all Canadian kickboxing champion, and he wants to bring his expertise and love of martial arts movies to the possibly make-believe audience he constantly refers to as his “his fans”. Kung Fu Elliot finds Scott and Lum working on their latest – and what Scott hopes to be their most successful – film, Blood Fight.

You guys both know that what he’s making is terrible, and you seem to get a lot of joy from showing terrible scenes from his derivative, lesser films as he explains his grand plans for these opuses.

Which is more than a little ironic, since your own film is so clearly based on the model of American Movie—a previous, better work. That comparison was at the top of my mind as I watched Kung Fu Elliot, and it it did your film no favours. You do your best to fill the screen with a motley cast of goofy, enthusiastic characters, including Scott’s “method-trained” (he read a book) best friend,who plays Blood Fight’s villain, and the music composer whose title song is clearly not the anthem he believes it to be. But even though these elements are all present, the personalities are so dead when they’re onscreen, the pacing is so lazy, and the staging of the interviews so awkward (you seem to favour two shots of Scott and Lum together staring at the camera as Scott explains his dreams), it all lands with a thud instead of a pop.

For a person so obsessed with turning himself into an action star, so focused on creating a fan base through Facebook, so happy to brag that he has starred in such homegrown travesties as They Killed My Cat, I found it hard to believe that Elliot Scott would have an IMDB page that listed only one credit: your film.

That, mixed with Kung Fu Elliot’s bizarre, too-perfect twist-ending, made everything feel… I don’t know, a little off.

But perhaps my gut reaction is a bit hasty; maybe truth can be stranger than fiction. And one should never underestimate some people’s consuming hunger for fame. After the humiliation Scott endures in his film, it’s entirely reasonable to believe that he removed any internet presence my meagre research uncovered.

The question of research, though, brings me to my second question: how much of this story did you know going in? This is important because it speaks to your objective’s as documentarians: what were you trying to accomplish with this film? Kung Fu Elliot moves from its dull-but-goofy first two acts – the bungled filming of Blood Fight and a trip to China – eventually lead to a dark turn. Secrets are revealed, lies are uncovered, Scott starts to change from well-meaning (possibly brain-damaged) enthusiast to narcissistic manipulator.

I keep asking myself, how could you two have not known any of this going into filmmaking? All of Scott’s claims, with the exception of his “one-fifth Japanese” heritage, can be proven or disproven extremely easily. And even without any additional research, it doesn’t take a martial arts expert to see that Scott’s fighting skills are laughably amateur (a fact that becomes even more painfully obvious when a Shao Lin monk admonishes Scott for his poor form). This means you either didn’t bother to research your subject before committing a year to documenting him, or that you went into filming knowing everything, with plans to ridicule this pathetic character, then eventually tear him down completely.

One of these is simply bad filmmaking. The other is sociopathy.

When the secrets start coming out, they don’t happen organically, as part of the film. Linda Lum, Scott’s long-term partner, discovers most of this information off-screen. Did you inform her of all this simply to give your film a better narrative arc? It certainly seems that way. I might have assumed you had better intentions — and wouldn’t even go down the route of questioning a filmmaker’s motives, which is a specious strategy — if it wasn’t for Kung Fu Elliot’s conclusion, in which you force yourself into the action (while remaining off camera), egging Scott and Lum on as their relationship falls apart, adding fuel to an already volatile situation and breaking the holiest of journalistic rules.

Because of this, when the situation finally explodes it‘s not shock it should be. Yes, Scott might had a lot of this coming – he is the architect of this house of lies – but it’s all mitigated and corrupted by the fact that you showed up with a wrecking ball and asked the audience to take that same smug satisfaction in these two lives being destroyed.

It kind of makes me wish you had just made it all up.

Casey

Rating: Return to Sender (2/5)

I Origins

Dear Eisenia Fetida (aka. Earthworm), Performer, 

I just wanted to congratulate you on a job well-done in the new film I Origins. The way you wriggled in just the right way in that slippery Petri dish, with all those hot lights shining on you? Very professional. I wouldn’t be surprised if bigger projects came knocking after this.

I’m sure when your assistant read you the script (because, as the movie makes clear, you don’t actually have any eyes), you were intrigued by the premise: a molecular biologist seeks to disprove the existence of god by creating eyes in a creature that didn’t have them before—and, in the process, begins to question his own dogma. Your agent must have been excited by the co-starring role you were being offered. It probably meant a healthy commission. 

But did you have any say in the structure of the story after that point? Things were going so well for your character – spoiler alert: you evolved eyes! – and then you suddenly disappeared. Didn’t you think to question whether that might undercut the importance of your role within the story’s larger eschatological themes? Whether the audience might question what, in the end, your character had to do with…anything?

As an aside, woman-to-hermaphroditic worm, I’m sure you wish as much as I do that Brit Marling (you know, the actress who played Karen) had been involved with writing the script, as she has been on previous projects with her friend and collaborator, writer/director Mike Cahill. I’m sure all the female roles would have been more fully-fleshed out. The themes, too. But Mike certainly does have a gift for dialogue, I’ll give him that.

In the end, I want to reassure you that your work was brilliant, even if the film surrounding it often lost its train of thought, like someone who speaks in unfinished sentences.

You were part of a project that will certainly make people think about their systems of belief, and that’s more than Sylvester Stallone can say.

Sincerely,

Diane

Status: Air Mail (3/5)

PS. If you’re still in contact with Mike, thank him for introducing hundreds of people to the novel concept of being phobic of elevators. From now on I will likely be taking the stairs.

The Zero Theorem

Dear Andre Jacquemin, Sound Designer,

You’ve worked at almost every end of the sound spectrum: designer, composer/arranger, editor and mixer, and as a music producer on many Monty Python-related projects—you even wrote the music for Every Sperm Is Sacred  from The Meaning of Life. It’s obvious that one of the things that both you and director Terry Gilliam absorbed from your Python days is a penchant for tempering even the darkest circumstances with a touch of whimsy. This must be why Gilliam chose you for The Zero Theorem, his latest musing on the human condition. Because when life gets heavy, we need a machine that goes ping.

The only thing that socially disinclined genius programmer Qohen Leth wants from his Orwellian employer, Mancom, is permission to work from home. The Management – a twisted Oz-like figure — grants Qohen his wish, but in exchange requires him to ‘hunt entities’, chasing down the elusive Zero Theorem. When Qohen starts to crack under pressure, The Management sends in Bob – his own 15-year-old prodigy son – and Bainsley, a perky sex worker. But in order to solve the Zero Theorem, Qohen’s biggest obstacle will be learning to have faith in others and in himself.

Audiences have come to expect Gilliam’s visuals to be weird and wondrous, and he doesn’t disappoint. But in this film, it’s what we hear that occurs in technicolor. Gilliam doesn’t deal in negative space. Every inch of screen is filled with colour, light, and pattern, and like his trademark use of Dutch angles and a fisheye lens, the effect is only momentarily distracting. We subconsciously acclimatize to it. So, too, is your constant soundscape of blips, burbles, clicks, and chirps, all layered over the omnipresent racket outside Qohen’s walls. It’s a reflection of how our uninterrupted connectivity has become literal and figurative white noise; a way to shut out the physical world so we can escape to a virtual one.

You can hear the metaphors in this film coming a mile away. Qohen lives in a derelict church formerly inhabited by monastic monks, who, when it went up in flames, would not break their vow of silence to yell fire. At a party, synth-heavy pop music blares in the background, yet everyone is connected to their own devices and dances to disparate beats. When Qohen is in his virtual happy-place with Bainsley, you take things down a notch, overlapping soothing ocean waves and chirping birds over a floating, child-like score. When he is in crisis, we hear the sodium hum of the harsh lights, his hands scratching his hairless head, rats scurrying underfoot, and constant computer beeps under pizzicato strings intensifying his angst until he unleashes a primal (yet silent) scream.

I wanted to scream, too, because for me, being a Gilliam fan means being prepared for disappointment. I want desperately to love all of his films, and yet there are just as many hits as misses. That’s okay, though, because even his misses are spectacular and uniquely his own. Still, even at his best, Gilliam leaves something out. Perhaps Qohen is a stand in for Gilliam, here, and The Management is a representative of every studio head he has ever clashed with over budget and creative control. Qohen must toil away on a Sisyphean program designed so that when one thing fits, something else gets destroyed. A clipped, disembodied voice represented by ruby red lips constantly reminds Qohen that “Zero must equal 100%”. 

Regardless of how hard you twisted the knobs or how far you slid the fader, this film struggles, tonally, to find equilibrium between broad satire and intimate revelation. Many of the pieces are pitch perfect – the doleful yet adorable Christoph Waltz as Qohen, the depressingly flashy set design, the surprisingly understated special effects – and yet somehow, maddeningly, they fail to equal 100%.

Gilliam is widely regarded as a modern day Quixote, tilting at cinematic windmills, and I’ve always been one of his biggest cheerleaders. No doubt you are as well. But maybe it’s time to quit hoping that each new opus is going to be the Second Coming of Brazil. Sure, every sperm may be sacred, but not every Gilliam film is.

Tuning out, 

Di

Status: Standard Delivery (3/5)

Lucy

Dear Arnaud Hémery, Data Manager, 

That must have been one hell of a database you had to sort through! Most people would have a difficult enough time managing all the normal files for this type of film. You know: CarFlip_Camera4_Take12.xml, ThroatPunch17_AsianGang_Blooper.xml, ScarJo_LegSpread_MoneyShot.xml, etc.

But then someone like writer/director Luc Besson comes along and says: “That’s not enough! I want shots of dolphins flipping out of the water! Lions ripping out a gazelle’s throat! Beetles humping on a leaf!”

And so, while scrambling to keep all the files in order, you probably thought: “Okay, he wants to draw some parallels between the action of the film and the natural world. That might work.” But poor you—you hadn’t even scratched the surface of your post-production adventure on Lucy.

The story begins slowly, until the first interstitial nature shots come out of nowhere. Some douche in a cowboy hat doesn’t want to drop off a mysterious suitcase himself, so he hands it off to his girlfriend, Scarlett Johansson. As she walks into an expensive Taiwanese hotel lobby, Besson intercuts scenes of an impala being hunted by cheetah. Foreshadowing! It’s pretty heavy-handed, but, even worse, there’s no character motivation for these flashes. Instead, Besson is simply setting up the montage barrage he’s going to unleash in the second half of the film.

That, I assume, is when your real nightmare began. We get shots of tornadoes and floods and eagles and iguanas and mousetraps and cavemen and magicians and fighter jets and bustling cities and man-made islands and more shots that aren’t just inspired by Ron Fricke, but actually licensed from Baraka and Samsara. All in the service of showing us the broad, wild, and wonderful range of life on earth that Lucy learns to experience when the secret thing she was delivering – a synthetic super-drug – unleashes the full potential of her brain. 

Lucy is a prototypical high-concept action movie, meaning the “concept” is the market differentiator, and the “action” puts butts in seats. Besson probably imagined it as The Tree of Life meets The Matrix, though it turned out more like Limitless meets La Femme Nikita—which, when everything starts coming together, turns out to be a perfectly serviceable model. Johansson gets all of her heavy dramatics out of the way early, then embarks on her path to enlightenment and ass-kicking. This is punctuated by ascending numbers that show up every 10 minutes or so , telling us what percentage of her brain has been unlocked (nice even intervals of 10%, 20%, 30%, etc). You probably loved cataloguing those shots for the same reason anyone watching will enjoy them: they’re clean and simple, come in a logical progression, and actually build tension/excitement.

They’re just maybe not as fun as all that other stuff. 

Managing this film just fine, 

Christopher

Status: Air Mail (3.5/5)

Tammy

Dear Linda D. Flowers, Hair Department Head

There’s a moment at the end of Tammy (in the gag reel, naturally) when Melissa McCarthy’s wig makes a break for it. It flies off the back of her head at a speed rivaled only by the speed with which the audience went flying out the back of the theatre at the end of the screening. 100 minutes of falling down followed by 5 minutes of unscripted falling down? You kept McCarthy’s wig glued to her head about as well as the film kept us glued to our seats.

“My secrets!” Melissa McCarthy screams, clutching her wigless scalp. Get it? Big hair is full of secrets. But what about your secrets, Linda? For instance:

How much of a salary did you command for deep-frying every strand on Melissa McCarthy’s head until it resembled the wig equivalent of a cronut burger?  

Did you give Susan Sarandon the exact same wig Vicki Lawrence wore on “Mama’s Family” or was it simply a pre-packaged store-bought Mama’s Family Halloween costume?

How do you sleep at night? 

Melissa McCarthy is not Jennifer Aniston; she doesn’t need to rely on her hair. That’s why you’re not entirely to blame for this disaster, Linda. Because while Tammy’s wig certainly struggles with its tone (blonde? brunette?) it’s nothing compared to the ever-changing tone of this movie. Tammy tries to be everything: a buddy comedy, a family drama, a romance, a road trip adventure. Other films – certainly films starring Susan Sarandon – have pulled it off. But where this one strives to be Tammy and Louise it ends up more like Tammy Boy.

(Speaking of bad wigs, have you ever worked with David Spade?) 

The roots of this movie are dark (just like the wigs! AND THAT’S ON YOU, LINDA). Adultery, alcoholism, and abandonment are just some of the issues that are touched upon early on to explain Tammy and Grandma’s dysfunctional behaviour. But by the time they actually get to do something funny, we know so much about their secret pain that laughing seems cruel. Watching Susan Sarandon get hammered off a Slurpee? Funny! Watching it after she shamefully admits to being an alcoholic? I cringed. And if I wanted to cringe at a movie, I’d watch my own demo reel. 

At most, Tammy deserves to be a 7-minute SNL sketch. And those wigs deserve to be relegated to the sketch comedy wig graveyard alongside Massive Headwound Harry’s.

Best Wigshes,

Heidi

Status: Junk Mail (1/5)

Supermensch

Dear Derek Shook, Paparazzi,

You’re one of the many people interviewed about the titular Hollywood agent in the documentary Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon. Though your IMDb profile doesn’t come right out and say that you’re a paparazzi, it mentions that your “iconic photos and videos have been published in magazines and newspapers and can be seen on web sites and television programs around the world, a benchmark in any artist’s career.” Not once does it allude to the fact that these pictures are usually taken when you are hiding in a shrubbery. But the beauty of showbiz is that you can constantly reinvent yourself. It’s all about spin.

In 1968 Shep Gordon checked into the Landmark Motor Hotel in Hollywood, the kind of place that, if it existed now, would find you and your pap brethren camped outside on the regular. On his first day, Shep met fellow guests Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison, and a casual suggestion from Jimi started him down his career path; “Are you Jewish?”, Jimi asked, “You should be a manager.” When asked who he should manage, Jimi pointed up at a hotel balcony that housed a very broke Alice Cooper and his band. Their professional arrangement began with a handshake – the two have never had a contract – and has lasted over forty years. Shep’s mantra; “Get the money. Always remember to get the money. Never forget to always remember to get the money,” the brazen publicity stunts he orchestrated, and his famous, “No Head, No Backstage Pass” t-shirt, made him – for better or worse – the prototype for every aspiring manager since.

Mensch is a Yiddish term for a decent, mature and responsible person. What makes Shep Gordon so super, or at least unusual, is that his commitment to clients goes above and beyond what we’ve come to expect from the stereotypical sleazy Hollywood suit. After years of living a clichéed Hollywood life of sex, drugs and rock and roll, he moved to Maui where he changed course, becoming a Buddhist, a professionally trained chef, and the adopted father to an ex’s grandchildren. He is a trusted confidante and adored friend to huge Hollywood hitters like Sly Stallone and Michael Douglas, who marvel at Shep’s ability to stay grounded in an industry that seems to reward bad behavior.

At the other end of the ‘adored by huge Hollywood hitters’ spectrum, there’s you, Derek. You make a living stalking famous people and photographing them, usually when they are at their most vulnerable, which is how you met Shep. Shep’s Maui compound has become a home away from home for countless stars needing to escape the madness of L.A. — Shep and you have an informal agreement wherein you won’t film anyone on his property. But who needs a scandal sheet when you’ve got a storyteller like Shep? In a career spanning over forty years, this guy is the King of Juicy Anecdotes. In fact, this doc relies so heavily on anecdotes and back slapping that it wallows in superficiality. Kind of like those, ‘Stars: They’re Just Like Us!’ photo spreads your magazines are known for. 

Recent rock-docs like It Might Get Loud and Joe Strummer:The Future Is Unwritten manage, quite surprisingly, to strike an emotional chord. With Supermensch it’s all reverb. We learn very little about Shep’s life before his fateful stop at the Landmark, other than that his mother was, in his words, “cruel”. Shep’s brush with death and his regrets over not having his own children are as deep as first time director Mike Myers is willing to take us, delivering what amounts to a celluloid love letter. Instead, Myers gives us the cinematic equivalent of a tabloid; it’s fun, gossipy and light, but in the end is only supermeh.

Don’t get overexposed,

Di

Status: Standard Delivery (3/5)

Wish I Was Here

Dear Zach Braff, Writer/Director/Actor/Producer, 

Let’s get this out of the way: I was not a Garden State fan. When I first heard there would be a follow-up to your directorial debut, my initial thought was: “Oh dear.” But I was pleasantly surprised by Wish I Was Here. It charmed me in spite of my usual visceral rejection of all things schmaltzy and earnest. It is undeniably schmaltzy, as family dramedies tend to be.

You’ve put Aidan Bloom’s life in disarray when the film opens, and it unravels even further as he struggles to cope with an acting career that has failed to launch, a terminally ill father, and a strained marriage—on top of which he decides, on a whim, to start homeschooling his two children. What Aidan goes through isn’t quite a midlife crisis, but a crisis I think is unique to thirtysomethings; the expectation of having achieved a certain degree of wisdom and stability clashes spectacularly with the realization that you still have no idea what you’re doing.

While the melodrama edges a bit close to being overwrought – especially when you incorporate those heavier questions of faith, belief, and spirituality – I appreciated the relief valves you installed in the narrative. They keep things from tipping over into preachiness. Moments of sitcom humour and physical comedy (like a rabbi on a Segway) might seem out of place at first, but they occur at just the right time: right before my eyes rolled into the back of my head.

Your caustic, irreverent dialogue also helps to keep everything on the right side of earnestness. When characters relentlessly wisecrack in the face of tragedy or hardship it can often feel jaded,  but you manage to maintain the characters’ sense of warmth and empathy.

But while the comedy is welcome, I can’t say the same for most of the film’s various subplots. With the exception of Aidan’s wife gradually coming into her own by, intriguingly enough, finding her bliss in a degree of independence from her family, the subplots centered around supporting characters like Aidan’s brother feel forced and unnecessary. Aidan’s sci-fi dream sequences felt a lot like cut scenes in a video game—I wanted to skip over them, but was powerless to do so. 

For a light-hearted story of a family in crisis, you bring a lot of heavy baggage. But I applaud your ability to avoid whacking the audience over the head with excessive epiphanies and neatly tied-up endings. By the end of the film, there is catharsis for all involved. But I wouldn’t go as far as to say the characters – Aidan in particular – are any wiser than when we first meet them. I appreciated that. The heart of the film lies in its characters finding strength by standing on their own while they stand together. It’s a touch saccharine—but not so much that your teeth hurt. 

Best,

Nat.

Status: Air Mail (3.5/5)

Planes: Fires & Rescue

Dear Amy Ross, Music Clearance,

That was a dirty trick you pulled. About a half hour into Planes: Fire & Rescue, I suddenly found myself excited – invested, even – in the action that was unfolding. The aerial team was flying to their first forest fire and I thought to myself “shit, this good!” Of course, I didn’t actually swear out loud (since I was surrounded by six-year-olds)—but this time, to my amazement, my urge to curse wasn’t provoked by the film’s shortcomings. A second later, I realized why. I’d been… Thunderstruck.

That damn AC/DC song. Works every time. Doesn’t matter if it’s pumping up sports teams, salvaging a blockbuster, or coming out of flaming bagpipes. When that famous guitar lick kicks in, my adrenaline soars. I would argue that it rivals – and maybe surpasses – “Eye of the Tiger” as the greatest musical trigger for kicking things into hero mode.

I suppose it could also be argued that paying for this overused opus was the sort of lazy move that one should expect from a DisneyToon Studios film (a.k.a. Disney’s direct-to-video division, largely outsourced to India). Except this wasn’t a one-off moment of pleasure. Many of the jokes actually landed. The entire plot wasn’t simply telegraphed from the opening scenes. The animation, at times, was surprisingly impressive. I even genuinely felt like these stupidly conceived characters were in true mortal peril (sadly, I’m still not sold on this nonsense world of Cars). In other words, this was a… film. One that I can actually recommend.

Part of what worked in the film’s favour was the somber and sincere dedication to all firefighters. In order for that dedication to mean anything, however, the film would need to respect the danger of fighting fires and not treat it as a childish adventure. Sure enough, I found myself fascinated by the strategies employed by the planes as they created formations to contain the blaze and drop in ground crews to clear the path for trapped civilians and wildlife (like deer, which in this film are John Deer tractors).

The Wall of Heroes where Dusty goes for training also helps establish the stakes. His instructors correct his enthusiasm by explaining that only those who have crashed in the line of duty get their pictures hung. None of this would feel out of place in a Pixar picture, but for an animated film intended for a much younger audience, it surprised me. Kids besdie me were clutching their parents during key scenes when the danger felt real; a feeling that was enhanced by the absence of catchy pop music.

Sure, the voice work is rather bland and perfunctory, especially by Dane Cook, whose usual antic delivery is strangely sedate. The jokes are mainly dependent on puns, but some of them were half decent (especially turning dirty pick-up trucks into dirty pick-up artists at a bar). And for all the high stakes, the consequences never really materialize—although some key characters suffer worse fates than those in Toy Story 3’s famous incinerator scene. 

In the end, the music you cleared was effective and appropriate – particularly since lightning is what causes most of the forest fires, (the lyrics for the first verse are actually pretty spot-on for the story). It also didn’t hurt to hire Bobs Gannaway as director, who has been an in-house director for Disney’s direct-to-video work for the past 20 years. It felt like he – and Dusty – actually had something to prove.

Clearing you for landing,

Christopher 

Status: Air Mail (3.5/5)

Sex Tape

Dear Apple iPad, Co-star,

The poster for Sex Tape really focuses on the pairing of Jason Segel and Cameron Diaz. But you’re there, too. Front and centre, quite literally.

It’s appropriate, too, because you really are the star of the film. 

It’s a performance worthy of Peter Sellers – you appear as multiple different versions of yourself – in which you instigate and resolve the film’s entire plot—and even do your own stunts along the way, getting tossed out of windows and chased by vicious guard dogs.

That’s a lot for an inanimate object made out of glass, aluminum, and silicon.

Like Francis McDormand in Fargo, you don’t make your first appearance until well into the film (and if your fortunes mirror hers any further, Andy Serkis may not be the only controversial Oscar talk of this year’s ceremony) 

Sex Tape is ostensibly the story of Annie and Jay, a couple who used to live for nothing more than long, hot marathon sessions of sex anywhere conceivable. That is, of course, until they got married and had two kids who wrecked everything. All of this exposition is told in flashbacks as Annie types it up for her popular mommy blog, using a MacBook Pro, natch (don’t worry: your sibling does not upstage you). 

This is where you come in. Jay, a music professional of some sort (I was never quite sure what his actual job was, but his house had a lot of concert posters and we are introduced to him at a radio station) receives a pair of new iPads that he needs “for his music collection” (or something). He receives new iPads so often that he gives the old ones away (because in a movie written by wealthy Hollywood types, the only logical thing for a music professional and an unemployed blogger to do with a bunch of extra iPads is to give them away to people who are barely acquaintances—the mailman, for instance).

These new iPads give Annie an idea: she suggests using your “amazing new camera” to create the titular film clip. You know—to spice up the evening. Three hours later, you’ve become the world’s best marital aid. Annie, feeling slightly embarrassed by the whole endeavour, asks Jay to erase the evidence. He does exactly that, and the movie ends after thirty minutes with the couple returned to their salad days of nothing but boring, undocumented sex…

…no, of course that doesn’t happen. And not only does Jay not erase the xxx clip, he also manages to use your insanely great interface to sync the video across all the iPads he has given away (it “just works,” after all). This is where the film really begins: the horny couple must track down and destroy the evidence—all of it.

Will hijinks ensue? We don’t need your A7 64-bit processor to see where this story’s headed.

Like the complaints levelled against your yearly launch events, Sex Tape is entirely predictable. Actually, it’s worse than predictable. It’s predictable and aimless. The script by Segel, Nicholas Stoller, and Kate Angelo is too lazy to even provide enough incident to keep us distracted while we await the inevitable. Everyone involved seems to have recognized this; even director Jake Kasdan lets scenes play out well past the point where they offer any kind of return. Sure, Rob Lowe is amusing as the not-quite-as-wholesome-as-he-seems CEO looking to buy Annie’s blog. But that one joke is not strong enough to carry the 20-minute sequence in which Annie and Jay conspire to rescue you from his clutches. For a movie that clocks in at a scant 94 minutes, Sex Tape takes forever.

I’m not blaming you for any of this. Even the characters of Sex Tape don’t blame you; they take great pains to assure us that everyone is just using you wrong. Your virtues are praised so often, and with such conviction, that Sex Tape seems to be a feature-length infomercial for Apple. Until it doesn’t. In a strange twist, Sex Tape also makes a case for the healing power of YouPorn. No, that wasn’t a Freudian slip. I typed that correctly. I found myself wondering how you feel about this endorsement, being the product of such a notoriously sex-shy corporation.

No, there aren’t many bright spots in Sex Tape. Rob Cordry and Ellie Kemper provide a few laughs, and Kumail Nanjiani is funny as always—but his presence only made me wish I could see you out to better use on his show, Silicon Valley. Maybe there you’d be less of a distraction and more of a character actor, nailing your small role in order to make the stars look good.

Revisiting my backup strategy,

Casey

Status: Return to sender (2/5)