Reviews of movies and TV focused on women
Marriage Story features brilliant performances from Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson. The film explores the American way of divorce and how it damages a couple who want to be good parents and friends when it’s over.
This is a sad story, know that going in. It’s painful to witness. However, it’s ultimately full of hope. There are a few spoilers in my review.
Continue reading “Review: Marriage Story”Don Jon is an oddly sensitive film that ultimately has a good message. The message, however, is delivered in a complete man ‘splaining way. This makes it a man’s film much more than a woman’s film. We go through a lot with Jon, the don of sex, for him to learn something that women already know.
Spoilers ahead.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt is Jon. He is super buff, a man’s man. He takes home a different girl every night after rating the women in the bars on a scale of 1–10 with his buddies. He always gets the girl with the highest score. After a quick bang with the girl-of-the-day, Jon sneaks off to watch pr0n. (Sorry for the misspelling. Trying to keep the icky people away.) Pr0n is perfect. Big tits, big asses, both in your face 100% of the time. Nothing like real sex.
This Jersey boy (the Jersey accents in the film are dead on) goes home to dinner with the folks once a week. His dad is played by Tony Danza who is simply fabulous in this part. Jon goes to mass on Sunday with the family and confesses each week to the number of times he had intercourse outside of marriage and the number of times he jerked off while watching videos.
One night in the bar, the boys spot Barbara (Scarlett Johansson). The ass, the boobs, the lips, the hair: she’s perfect. Jon has to have her.
Surprise, she’s not easy. He has to work for it. When he finally gets it, he’s sure he’s in love. He’s so sure he’s in love, he overlooks her little flaws – like she completely takes control of his life. Like she has sex just like everyone else he’s ever met and that great body of hers is never in his face the way it is in his fantasy world.
She makes him promise to stop watching the pr0n0. When he cannot, she dumps him.
Meanwhile Jon meets Esther (Julianne Moore) in night school. In a movie full of cardboard cutouts of characters, she is the most undeveloped of all. We know she bursts into tears at inappropriate times, smokes a lot of pot, and is willing to have sex with Jon. That’s it.
Later, when we get to the brief sensitive part of the story, we learn that Esther recently lost both her husband and her son. She is the woman who finally teaches Jon how to connect with a woman and actually make love as opposed to have sex.
Thanks to Esther’s wise teachings, Jon stops being an ass and becomes a nice guy. That’s the good message I mentioned. Getting Jon to that point is a very masculine undertaking. Not surprising since the film was written and directed by the star Joseph Gordon-Levitt and is about a hyper masculine guy.
If you want to take this trip from a male point of view, this film will rate very high with you. Within those parameters, it’s an excellent film.
When I tweeted a link to this article, I was reminded of something important about this film in a return tweet. I noticed while I was watching the film how Barbara with her romantic movies was just like Jon with his videos, but then I forgot to mention it in the review. Thanks to @damnthemusicman for reminding me of this important plot point.
@OldAintDead Thought it was interesting that Barbara had her own version of Pr0n in rom-coms. Unrealistic expectations all around.
— Nicole Van Andel (@damnthemusicman) July 8, 2014
All images © 2013 Relativity Media
The film Lucy stars Scarlett Johansson and Morgan Freeman. It opens on July 25. At the film’s official site, the film is described like this:
From La Femme Nikita and The Professional to The Fifth Element, writer/director Luc Besson has created some of the toughest, most memorable female action heroes in cinematic history. Now, Besson directs Scarlett Johansson in Lucy, an action-thriller that tracks a woman accidentally caught in a dark deal who turns the tables on her captors and transforms into a merciless warrior evolved beyond human logic.
So, here’s the deal. When a woman gets super powers, like being able to use 100% of her brain, she goes on a killing rampage. Because that’s what a normal woman who could use 100% of her brain would do.
The word is out that movies starring women are making money. So I suppose the notion that making a film showing a man’s idea of how to use super powers to act out video game fantasies but starring a woman seems like a sure thing.
Really, Scarlett, you were a lot more interesting when you just sat around modeling earrings.
