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valarltdP/f is whether the movie passes the Bechdel Test. There must be 1) Two female characters 2) who talk to each other, 3) about something besides a man.
Passing doesn't make a good movie or a feminist one. Failing doesn't mean a bad movie. I find this an interesting measure of roles for women.
1) X-Men 2: X Men United. The war between humans and mutants heats up with a raid on Xavier's school. Rewatch. (p)
2) Journey to the Center of the Earth. Trevor's brother went missing 10 years ago. Now, it's up to him and his nephew to find out what happened. (f, 2)
3) A Knight's Tale. William Thatcher is a squire trying to change his stars and become a knight. Highly entertaining anachronistic soundtrack. (f,3)
4) Dodge City. Cattleman turned sheriff cleans up the town. Big lavish technicolor western. Racist stereotypes (one black character, a porter,played for laughs), sexist banter (typical of the period, also done for comedy) both flaw what could be a great film. Excellent barroom brawl. (f, 3)
5) Resident Evil: Extinction. Zombie plague. Oded Fehr. Heavy machinery and THREE kick-ass heroines. What more do I need to say? (I could pick apart the world-building and such, I'd like to see a fourth movie where they eradicate the zombies and get civilization and, you know, FOOD, started again) (P)
6) The Cake Eaters. Lovely little indie film about a girl with Fredrick's Ataxia finding love. Beautifully shot and edited. Typical acoustic music, but really well done film. I confess, I saw it for Aaron Stanford, who looks very nice shirtless, but Kristen Stewart really impressed me a lot. (p)
7) Little Caesar. James Cagney in the role that made him famous. A gritty little gangster picture. (f,2)
8) Gods and Monsters. James Whale befriends his yardman and tries to dealk with life after a stroke. Poignant, wrenching and very tense. Brendan Frasier holds his own, in a non-typecast performance. (f,2)
9) San Antonio. Big technicolor Flynn western. He was drunk most of the shooting but it doesn't show. Not like it did on The Sun Also Rises. Rewatch, (p)
10) Desperate Journey. WWII pic about downed RAF fliers trying to escape Germany (almost on the Polish border). Not too bad. Even Ronald Reagan turned in a pretty good one this time. (f,2)
11) The Mummy Returns. Rick and Evie and their son are in trouble again. Lots of early CGI, not all of it perfect. Lots of shooting and chasing and chaos. Brendan Frasier and Rachel Weiscz sell the romance and the action. Oded Fehr at his hottest (the hair and the eyes and the beard and the mouth and GUHHHHHHHHHHHH). Delightful. Rewatch. (p, even if it's just Evie and Ankh-su-namen trading threats)
12) Resident Evil: Apocalypse. Disgraced cop Jill Valentine is the first to catch on to the problem occuring in Raccoon City. She is joined by a band of irregulars including a SWAT team member, a pimp and Alice, who has been altered by Umbrella Corp (the masterminds behind the T Virus outbreak) They work together to get a scientist's daughter out of the city so they can escape it before the tac-nuke goes off. Nice little action movie, despite some plot holes (one character was SHOT, so why is he back as a zombie?) (p. Big time pass.) 4 major female characters, who talk very little about men because there are zombies to deal with.
13) Prince Caspian. I made it through this one (unlike LWW which sent me into pure squick during the Lucy & Tumnus bits) It wasn't bad. It's been a long time since I read the books, but I thought it captured the basics. Of course the last battle felt like a second-string Two Towers remake. (p)
14) The Golden Compass. I haven't read this book, but the movie was...slow. Pretty to look at, but slow and heavy-handed. Not bad steampunk. Very anti-clerical. I can only imagine how much more the books are. Nicole Kidman is deliciously evil. (p)
15) The Wicker Man. (1974) Inspector Howie pays a visit to Summerisle to solve a mystery and runs afoul of its inhabitants. This struck me as a parable for today's economy, showing the dangers of mixing religion and desperation. The Summerisle folk may be pagan, but getting zealous about religion in times of trouble is a universal human trait. (p)
16) Jason and the Argonauts. Jason and his crew sail for the Golden Fleece. Plenty of Hercules/Hylas hoo-yay. Excellent work by Harryhausen on the creatures. Entered "too stupid to live" territory during the final fight scene. Jason, DUDE, when skeletons with swords pop out of the ground? run like Oedipus! (f, 2)
17) Dawn Patrol. Flyers come and flyers die at a WWI airbase. Typical Warner British Colony movie. Basil Rathbone actually SMILES in this and isn't evil. B&W and wrenching. (f,1 there are no female characters at all.)
18) Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Sixth in the series. Suffered from a lack of Neville. Entertaining but left out one major plot point that will have to be addressed in the next movie: WHAT is Voldemort using and why? (f, 3)
19) The Greatest Show on Earth. Cecil B. Demille gives us a grand technicolor spectacle. Cornel Wilde, Betty Hutton, Charleton Heston, Gloria Grahame, Jimmy Stewart and Dorothy Lamour head up a cast of thousands. Heston fights to keep the circus running despite monetary opposition from the brass, competitive trapeze artists and a trainwreck. Excellent, long and glorious. (p)
20) The Abominable Dr. Phibes. Vincent Price as a deranged musician who is taking vengeance for his wife's death, by killing her doctors using the Plauges of Egypt. Stylish, camp and almost as gross as when I was 11. (f, 2)
21-22) The Colour of Magic. Wizzard Rincewind is up against everything from the DiscWorld's first tourist to Cohen the Barbarian, who is a lifetime in his own legend. This was funny and brilliantly cast. Sean Astin as Twoflower the tourist, Tim Curry as Trymon, an ambitious wizard of the sort who can use "personnel" and mean it, and Christopher Lee as the voice of Death, who is having a series of near-Rincewind experiences. (f, 2) 4 hour miniseries
23) Live Free or Die. Yet another Aaron Stanford art film. John "Rugged" Rudgate is a loser scammer trying to make the big time as a criminal. Entertaining but not deep. (f, 2)
24) Deuce Bigelow: European Gigolo. DO. NOT. ASK. Sucked like a giant black hole of suckitude. (f, 2)
25) Montana. Older Flynn western. Contains a couple of really great scenes but Alexis Smith looks very very weird around the eyes. The clips from this piece influenced our "Showdown at Yellowstone River." (f, 1)
26) Grindhouse Presents: Planet Terror. Where to start. Viral warfare creates military zombies. Naveen Andrews as a biochemist, trying to do the "Middle-Eastern Badass" but coming off like Charlie Eppes with a castration fetish. Rose McGowen. And of all the things I never wanted to see, Quentin Tarantino's zombifying balls splattering all over the floor when he drops trou. Cameo by Bruce Willis. Gross beyond gross to the point the gore becomes funny. But the sex scene is well shot.(p)
27) Bolt. Brilliantly funny animated feature. jlm121 was right. The fanboy hamster MADE the movie. (f, 3)
28) Bride of Frankenstein. Horror classic. What is there to say except to quote Gods and Monsters "Dear Una, squawking her head off." Victor Frankenstein is a dumbass and Una O'Conner steals the show. Karloff is, as always, fabulous. (p)
29) The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. Danny Kaye in the classic Thurber story, with extra intrigue and romance. Funny and exciting with two unnecessary musical numbers. (p)
30) From Dusk Til Dawn. George Clooney looks so YOUNG in this. Vampire movie meets zombie apocalypse style as a pair of killers on the run take a family hostage and end up spending the night in a vampire bar in Mexico. Cheech Marin is brilliant and monster-meister Tom Savini is a hottie, although his *ahem* weapon must be seen. Selma Hayack dances with a snake and there is more carnage than really necessary. (f, 3)
31) Bloodsucking Cinema. Documentary on vampire movies.
32) The Company of Wolves. Angela Landsbury is a creepy old country granny with tales unsuitable for her granddaughter's ears. But Granddaughter is growing up fast in her red cape and hood, and she's ready to step off the path. Dreamy Freudian werewolf movie with David Warner in one of his few sympathetic roles. (p)
33) Diary of the Dead. hand-held camera version of typical zombie movie. Bunch of college kids try to make it home in the midst of the Zombie Apocalypse. One seems to think he is invulnerable while he's filming. bleh. (p)
34) The Hills Have Eyes. (rewatch, basic cable cut edition) Family gets misdirected straight into the hands of cannibalistic radiation mutants. They kept most of the rape scene, the burning a live scene and most of the murders but deleted the scene where Stanford loses his fingers. Bizarre cutting. But less gruesome than I remembered or I'm just more inured after the slew of horror. (p)
35) Dracula Dead and Loving it. (rewatch) Mel Brooks spoof of the Dracula legend. Peter McNicol steals the movie entirely as Renfield. Funnier than I remembered. (f,3)
36) Underworld: Rise of the Lycans. Vampires hold the werewolves in thrall. Shot in an almost black and white look without the B&W aesthetic. Felt rather derivative of a lot of current book, but hot naked man at several points. Meh. (f, 2)
37) Final Destination. A high school student has a flash and saves 6 people off an airliner that explodes. They all proceed to die in hideous ways. Interesting idea of cheating death and how he always gets revenge. Although I kept hearing Christopher Lee groaning about "Another near-Rincewind experience." (f, 3)
38) Life of Brian. Monty Python gives us the tale of a man whose life parallels that of Jesus. Brian is a most unwilling messiah. The movie itself is anti-Christian, but not anti-God. It's very respectful of Jesus but thumbs its nose at religion and dogma. Also, frontal male nudity. (f,1)
39) Stagecoach. 1986. This little western features the Highwaymen supergroup: Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash and Kris Kristofferson. It also has John Schneider and Merrit Buttrick, as well as Jessi Colter and June Carter Cash. Mary Crosby, fresh from Ice Pirates, is along for the ride. Basically, the stagecoach has to get through, with Doc Holliday (Nelson), a gambler (Jennings), a US Marshal (Cash), a whore trying to find a new life (Colter), an Army officer's pregnant wife (Crosby), a crooked banker and a whiskey salesman (Anthony Newley). They pick up an escaped bank-robber, deliver the baby, weather an attack from Geronimo and generally rollick through the two hours. (p)
40) They Died with Their boots on: George Custer is in trouble from his first day at West Point until the day he dies in Montana. Rather revisionist history, making him out to be more of a decent human being than he was. Olivia Dehavilland is luminous as always. Hattie McDaniel is brilliant. (p)
41) King Kong (remake): Nothing new in this retelling, just a beaky Adrien Brody being much too hot. Idiot Plot moments abound.(f)
42) Shreck 2 (rewatch): Love this. An ogre gets turned human to thwart the plans of a selfish fairy godamother. (p)
43) X-Men (rewatch): Mutants deal with a mutant registration act about to be passed. The slash is strong with this one. "Why do you ask questions to which you already know the answers?" (f, 2)
44) X3 (rewatch): Magneto takes the war with humanity to the next level. Much love for Beast. But i still think Magneto has it right... (Now I must go write Nick... "I would have killed the professor for you." GUH!) (p)
Passing doesn't make a good movie or a feminist one. Failing doesn't mean a bad movie. I find this an interesting measure of roles for women.
1) X-Men 2: X Men United. The war between humans and mutants heats up with a raid on Xavier's school. Rewatch. (p)
2) Journey to the Center of the Earth. Trevor's brother went missing 10 years ago. Now, it's up to him and his nephew to find out what happened. (f, 2)
3) A Knight's Tale. William Thatcher is a squire trying to change his stars and become a knight. Highly entertaining anachronistic soundtrack. (f,3)
4) Dodge City. Cattleman turned sheriff cleans up the town. Big lavish technicolor western. Racist stereotypes (one black character, a porter,played for laughs), sexist banter (typical of the period, also done for comedy) both flaw what could be a great film. Excellent barroom brawl. (f, 3)
5) Resident Evil: Extinction. Zombie plague. Oded Fehr. Heavy machinery and THREE kick-ass heroines. What more do I need to say? (I could pick apart the world-building and such, I'd like to see a fourth movie where they eradicate the zombies and get civilization and, you know, FOOD, started again) (P)
6) The Cake Eaters. Lovely little indie film about a girl with Fredrick's Ataxia finding love. Beautifully shot and edited. Typical acoustic music, but really well done film. I confess, I saw it for Aaron Stanford, who looks very nice shirtless, but Kristen Stewart really impressed me a lot. (p)
7) Little Caesar. James Cagney in the role that made him famous. A gritty little gangster picture. (f,2)
8) Gods and Monsters. James Whale befriends his yardman and tries to dealk with life after a stroke. Poignant, wrenching and very tense. Brendan Frasier holds his own, in a non-typecast performance. (f,2)
9) San Antonio. Big technicolor Flynn western. He was drunk most of the shooting but it doesn't show. Not like it did on The Sun Also Rises. Rewatch, (p)
10) Desperate Journey. WWII pic about downed RAF fliers trying to escape Germany (almost on the Polish border). Not too bad. Even Ronald Reagan turned in a pretty good one this time. (f,2)
11) The Mummy Returns. Rick and Evie and their son are in trouble again. Lots of early CGI, not all of it perfect. Lots of shooting and chasing and chaos. Brendan Frasier and Rachel Weiscz sell the romance and the action. Oded Fehr at his hottest (the hair and the eyes and the beard and the mouth and GUHHHHHHHHHHHH). Delightful. Rewatch. (p, even if it's just Evie and Ankh-su-namen trading threats)
12) Resident Evil: Apocalypse. Disgraced cop Jill Valentine is the first to catch on to the problem occuring in Raccoon City. She is joined by a band of irregulars including a SWAT team member, a pimp and Alice, who has been altered by Umbrella Corp (the masterminds behind the T Virus outbreak) They work together to get a scientist's daughter out of the city so they can escape it before the tac-nuke goes off. Nice little action movie, despite some plot holes (one character was SHOT, so why is he back as a zombie?) (p. Big time pass.) 4 major female characters, who talk very little about men because there are zombies to deal with.
13) Prince Caspian. I made it through this one (unlike LWW which sent me into pure squick during the Lucy & Tumnus bits) It wasn't bad. It's been a long time since I read the books, but I thought it captured the basics. Of course the last battle felt like a second-string Two Towers remake. (p)
14) The Golden Compass. I haven't read this book, but the movie was...slow. Pretty to look at, but slow and heavy-handed. Not bad steampunk. Very anti-clerical. I can only imagine how much more the books are. Nicole Kidman is deliciously evil. (p)
15) The Wicker Man. (1974) Inspector Howie pays a visit to Summerisle to solve a mystery and runs afoul of its inhabitants. This struck me as a parable for today's economy, showing the dangers of mixing religion and desperation. The Summerisle folk may be pagan, but getting zealous about religion in times of trouble is a universal human trait. (p)
16) Jason and the Argonauts. Jason and his crew sail for the Golden Fleece. Plenty of Hercules/Hylas hoo-yay. Excellent work by Harryhausen on the creatures. Entered "too stupid to live" territory during the final fight scene. Jason, DUDE, when skeletons with swords pop out of the ground? run like Oedipus! (f, 2)
17) Dawn Patrol. Flyers come and flyers die at a WWI airbase. Typical Warner British Colony movie. Basil Rathbone actually SMILES in this and isn't evil. B&W and wrenching. (f,1 there are no female characters at all.)
18) Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Sixth in the series. Suffered from a lack of Neville. Entertaining but left out one major plot point that will have to be addressed in the next movie: WHAT is Voldemort using and why? (f, 3)
19) The Greatest Show on Earth. Cecil B. Demille gives us a grand technicolor spectacle. Cornel Wilde, Betty Hutton, Charleton Heston, Gloria Grahame, Jimmy Stewart and Dorothy Lamour head up a cast of thousands. Heston fights to keep the circus running despite monetary opposition from the brass, competitive trapeze artists and a trainwreck. Excellent, long and glorious. (p)
20) The Abominable Dr. Phibes. Vincent Price as a deranged musician who is taking vengeance for his wife's death, by killing her doctors using the Plauges of Egypt. Stylish, camp and almost as gross as when I was 11. (f, 2)
21-22) The Colour of Magic. Wizzard Rincewind is up against everything from the DiscWorld's first tourist to Cohen the Barbarian, who is a lifetime in his own legend. This was funny and brilliantly cast. Sean Astin as Twoflower the tourist, Tim Curry as Trymon, an ambitious wizard of the sort who can use "personnel" and mean it, and Christopher Lee as the voice of Death, who is having a series of near-Rincewind experiences. (f, 2) 4 hour miniseries
23) Live Free or Die. Yet another Aaron Stanford art film. John "Rugged" Rudgate is a loser scammer trying to make the big time as a criminal. Entertaining but not deep. (f, 2)
24) Deuce Bigelow: European Gigolo. DO. NOT. ASK. Sucked like a giant black hole of suckitude. (f, 2)
25) Montana. Older Flynn western. Contains a couple of really great scenes but Alexis Smith looks very very weird around the eyes. The clips from this piece influenced our "Showdown at Yellowstone River." (f, 1)
26) Grindhouse Presents: Planet Terror. Where to start. Viral warfare creates military zombies. Naveen Andrews as a biochemist, trying to do the "Middle-Eastern Badass" but coming off like Charlie Eppes with a castration fetish. Rose McGowen. And of all the things I never wanted to see, Quentin Tarantino's zombifying balls splattering all over the floor when he drops trou. Cameo by Bruce Willis. Gross beyond gross to the point the gore becomes funny. But the sex scene is well shot.(p)
27) Bolt. Brilliantly funny animated feature. jlm121 was right. The fanboy hamster MADE the movie. (f, 3)
28) Bride of Frankenstein. Horror classic. What is there to say except to quote Gods and Monsters "Dear Una, squawking her head off." Victor Frankenstein is a dumbass and Una O'Conner steals the show. Karloff is, as always, fabulous. (p)
29) The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. Danny Kaye in the classic Thurber story, with extra intrigue and romance. Funny and exciting with two unnecessary musical numbers. (p)
30) From Dusk Til Dawn. George Clooney looks so YOUNG in this. Vampire movie meets zombie apocalypse style as a pair of killers on the run take a family hostage and end up spending the night in a vampire bar in Mexico. Cheech Marin is brilliant and monster-meister Tom Savini is a hottie, although his *ahem* weapon must be seen. Selma Hayack dances with a snake and there is more carnage than really necessary. (f, 3)
31) Bloodsucking Cinema. Documentary on vampire movies.
32) The Company of Wolves. Angela Landsbury is a creepy old country granny with tales unsuitable for her granddaughter's ears. But Granddaughter is growing up fast in her red cape and hood, and she's ready to step off the path. Dreamy Freudian werewolf movie with David Warner in one of his few sympathetic roles. (p)
33) Diary of the Dead. hand-held camera version of typical zombie movie. Bunch of college kids try to make it home in the midst of the Zombie Apocalypse. One seems to think he is invulnerable while he's filming. bleh. (p)
34) The Hills Have Eyes. (rewatch, basic cable cut edition) Family gets misdirected straight into the hands of cannibalistic radiation mutants. They kept most of the rape scene, the burning a live scene and most of the murders but deleted the scene where Stanford loses his fingers. Bizarre cutting. But less gruesome than I remembered or I'm just more inured after the slew of horror. (p)
35) Dracula Dead and Loving it. (rewatch) Mel Brooks spoof of the Dracula legend. Peter McNicol steals the movie entirely as Renfield. Funnier than I remembered. (f,3)
36) Underworld: Rise of the Lycans. Vampires hold the werewolves in thrall. Shot in an almost black and white look without the B&W aesthetic. Felt rather derivative of a lot of current book, but hot naked man at several points. Meh. (f, 2)
37) Final Destination. A high school student has a flash and saves 6 people off an airliner that explodes. They all proceed to die in hideous ways. Interesting idea of cheating death and how he always gets revenge. Although I kept hearing Christopher Lee groaning about "Another near-Rincewind experience." (f, 3)
38) Life of Brian. Monty Python gives us the tale of a man whose life parallels that of Jesus. Brian is a most unwilling messiah. The movie itself is anti-Christian, but not anti-God. It's very respectful of Jesus but thumbs its nose at religion and dogma. Also, frontal male nudity. (f,1)
39) Stagecoach. 1986. This little western features the Highwaymen supergroup: Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash and Kris Kristofferson. It also has John Schneider and Merrit Buttrick, as well as Jessi Colter and June Carter Cash. Mary Crosby, fresh from Ice Pirates, is along for the ride. Basically, the stagecoach has to get through, with Doc Holliday (Nelson), a gambler (Jennings), a US Marshal (Cash), a whore trying to find a new life (Colter), an Army officer's pregnant wife (Crosby), a crooked banker and a whiskey salesman (Anthony Newley). They pick up an escaped bank-robber, deliver the baby, weather an attack from Geronimo and generally rollick through the two hours. (p)
40) They Died with Their boots on: George Custer is in trouble from his first day at West Point until the day he dies in Montana. Rather revisionist history, making him out to be more of a decent human being than he was. Olivia Dehavilland is luminous as always. Hattie McDaniel is brilliant. (p)
41) King Kong (remake): Nothing new in this retelling, just a beaky Adrien Brody being much too hot. Idiot Plot moments abound.(f)
42) Shreck 2 (rewatch): Love this. An ogre gets turned human to thwart the plans of a selfish fairy godamother. (p)
43) X-Men (rewatch): Mutants deal with a mutant registration act about to be passed. The slash is strong with this one. "Why do you ask questions to which you already know the answers?" (f, 2)
44) X3 (rewatch): Magneto takes the war with humanity to the next level. Much love for Beast. But i still think Magneto has it right... (Now I must go write Nick... "I would have killed the professor for you." GUH!) (p)
