Black and White Thinking

Movies: The Help and Drive

The two movies couldn't be more different, yet Drive and The Help both say powerful things about race and gender in the movies. And they don't say very nice things.

Drive, an intense and violent thriller about a stunt car driver who moonlights as a getaway driver, has been receiving rave reviews among film critics. Ryan Gosling's performance as a taciturn lone wolf who descends to Travis Bickle levels of obsession and violence in order to protect a woman he loves (and barely knows) is without a doubt astonishing and terrifying. It's hard to believe this is the same kid who wooed Rachel McAdams in The Notebook.

The Help, for those who have been living under a rock for the past year or so, is a sentimental film based on the bestselling novel by Kathryn Stockett about black maids and their white employers in 1960's Jackson, Mississippi. Although the acting is excellent, the film is predictable and, to use a phrase that I overuse, "on the nose". It tells you exactly what you need to feel about each one of its characters (especially the white characters, who fall into two stark categories: noble, liberated hero and dastardly villain).



The Help has been enormously popular among mainstream audiences and has received fair to good critical reviews. However, various media outlets, both progressive and conservative, have taken their turn crapping all over The Help. Why? For more conservative thinkers and anti-PC police, The Help represents Hollywood Liberalism and reverse racism at its worst. To this group of haters, The Help paints all blacks as saints and all whites (save the main "women's libber" character, Skeeter Phelan) as terrible, horrible, no good, very bad racists. Ironically, the more progressive and PC factions are not much kinder, seeing The Help as condescending toward black people and implying that black people--both historically and today--need help from white people to overcome societal injustice and should be damn grateful for that help.

What struck me as interesting after seeing the two films was that although I enjoyed Drive more than The Help and my instinct is to say that Drive is the superior film, I can't help but notice that while The Help has a cast full of women, both black and white, and makes a good faith attempt to examine the lives of black, white, poor, and rich women during a turbulent time in history, Drive treats women like they barely exist at all. You've heard of the Madonna/whore complex? The erroneous and subconscious belief that women are either saintly mothers or filthy sluts? Drive is a laughably textbook example of this kind of thinking.

In Drive, there are two women with speaking roles: Irene (Carey Mulligan), a young mother whose husband is in jail and who catches the eye of Ryan Gosling's character. Gosling (his character is nameless) sees Irene as someone who needs protection. He ends up getting involved way too deeply in a number of crimes that lead him to basically kill his way out of trouble. The other female character is in two scenes and comes to a very untimely and unhappy ending. Oh, and there's a scene where Gosling beats the shit out of a bad guy in the dressing room of a strip club, while wide-eyed, bare-breasted strippers silently look on. Fortunately, this scene is very intense--otherwise, I would have not been able to contain my laughter at the ridiculous misogyny of the whole situation. I mean, featuring strippers in your movie is one thing--strippers can be smart and cool and sexy (see: Marisa Tomei in The Wrestler), but a room of voluptuous, nude women just freakin' sitting there as the men folk fight, curse, and all but whip out their penises for a measuring contest just makes me laugh at the sad obtuseness of it all. Maybe director Nicolas Winding Refn was actually trying to say something about the violent world of men and how women have no place in it (actually I'm sure he was on some level), but other directors have managed to pull this off far more successfully. Martin Scorsese's The Departed was all about the violent world of violent men and had very few female roles. However, Vera Farmiga's character Madolyn, was an educated woman with a successful career who could take care of herself. Note to Refn: if you're going to have only one or two female roles in your movie, at least make them dignified. kthx!


And let's not forget race/ethnicity! Yes, The Help may treat black characters with some benevolent condescension, and that's not OK, but at least there are some meaty roles for black characters in the film. And at least these characters are fully drawn. In Drive there are no black characters. The closest Drive gets to having any "ethnic" flavor are the two greedy villains who will kill for money and power--and who are Jewish. Nice. Oh, and Irene's ne'er-do-well jailbird husband who is Latino.

So while I enjoyed Drive, a film that kept me on the edge of my seat, and merely thought The Help was a pleasant movie, there's no denying that on a practical level The Help is a better movie for women and minorities. The cast is filled with women--white, black, old, young, conventionally beautiful and not so conventionally beautiful. These women have conversations with each other, and men are rarely the focus of those conversations (the film passes the Bechdel Test with flying colors). Sure, some of the characters are two-dimensional (like Hilly Holbrook, the sociopathic mean girl), but overall the characters are far deeper than the characters that populate Drive.

Neither movie is perfect, but what I found fascinating was the media (including my beloved liberal media outlets, like http://bitchmagazine.org/ and http://www.salon.com/ ) was so willing to jump on a movie filled with women and minorities for not being feminist and racially sensitive enough, while ignoring or even offering slavering praise to Drive, a film that offers women and minorities less than nothing.

My enjoyment:
Drive: 4 out of 5 stars
The Help: 3 out of 5 stars

Treatment of women and minorities:
Drive: 1 out of 5 stars
The Help: 4 out of 5 stars

Aliens, Innit?

Movies: Attack the Block

Just as Shaun of the Dead was a fresh, funny, and very British take on the zombie genre, Attack the Block is a fresh, funny, and very British take on the alien invasion genre. Set in a working class neighborhood in South London, Attack the Block sets itself up as different from other alien movies right away. The heroes of this film are not the white, middle-aged American men we're accustomed to seeing in movies like Signs, War of the Worlds, and The Day the Earth Stood Still. The heroes of Attack the Block are young, black (with a token white kid), poor hoodlums who terrorize and mug a nurse on her way home from work in the first scene.

I liked how director Joe Cornish took the conventions of the alien invasion genre and turned them on their head. Not only does he play with moral ambiguity--i.e. the "bad guys" turn out to be good and the criminals become the protectors; he also makes a point that the most vulnerable and, presumably, weakest members of society--minorities, inner-city youth, kids from bad families--are stronger, smarter, and braver than we might think.

In addition to the unique spin, Attack the Block has plenty of laughs ("What's Ron's weed room?" "It's a room, filled with weed, that belongs to Ron...") and a few scenes of horror that seem all the more horrific given that they take place in a comedy. To use Shaun of the Dead once again as a comparison, the scene where a character gets his intestines ripped out by zombies is especially shocking because it comes right after a scene where they beat up a zombie to the jukebox strains of Queen's "Don't Stop Me Now". In these two movies, the humor serves to both alleviate and exacerbate the violence and dread.

The main problem I had with Attack the Block was simply that I had trouble understanding the dialogue. The thick, English accents and slang made it damn near impossible to understand what the hell people were saying half (or more like 60 percent) of the time. And sadly, this diminished my appreciation and enjoyment of the movie.

Also, although Attack the Block is funny and scary, it was never THAT funny and scary to me. I giggled, I chuckled, I covered my eyes. But in the end, the movie was more forgettable than I expected it to be. I don't think it has the rewatchability factor that Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, or other similar comedies have.

So in conclusion, I like what Joe Cornish did with this movie, and I would recommend it to fans of alien movies and genre-defying flicks, but personally I wasn't crazy in love with it.

3 out of 5 stars

Black and Green and Red All Over

Movies: Black Dynamite, Greenberg, and Deep Red

Black Dynamite

Black Dynamite is a spot-on spoof of blaxploitation films of the 1970's and one of the more hilarious movies I've seen recently. Michael Jai White plays Black Dynamite, a former CIA agent, Vietnam vet, and all-around BAMF, who is on a mission to avenge his brother's death at the hands of drug dealers. Along the way, he uncovers a top secret operation called "Code Kansas" that goes all the way to the White House, leading to a final confrontation between Black Dynamite and Tricky Dick himself.


Black Dynamite was born out of White's affection for over-the-top blaxploitation movies and even though the film mocks this particular genre, it does so with love in its heart. Black Dynamite was shot in Super 16 Color Reversal Kodak film (thank you Wikipedia!) to give it that color-saturated look of cheaply shot 1970's exploitation movies. The script is cheesy and slangy ("We're gonna fricassee their honky asses!"). And the plot twists are downright absurd in the best possible way (the scene where Black Dynamite and a gang of pimps deduce what "Code Kansas" stands for is just...words cannot describe how funny it is).

I was in hysterics for most of Black Dynamite and as soon as it was over, I wanted to watch it again immediately. You can't say that for a lot of movies. Michael Jai White and director Scott Sanders really put their brains and hearts into this film--and it shows.

5 out of 5 stars

Greenberg

From indie screenwriter and director Noah Baumbach comes Greenberg, a comedy about a misanthropic manchild, Roger Greenberg (Ben Stiller), who comes to live at his rich brother's house after having a nervous breakdown. What could have verged very quickly into cutesy, "aren't emotions just cah-raaazy!?" territory is saved by Stiller's performance and a pared down script free of too much affected quirkyness. However, Greenberg left me with a feeling of "it's all been done before". As in Baumbach's other films (Margot at the Wedding and The Squid and the Whale), the audience is expected to sympathize with irritating, immature, and downright selfish characters. Over the course of the film, Greenberg begins an affair with his brother's assistant/nanny, the much-younger Florence (played by Greta Gerwig, who does a fine job). He emotionally manipulates her and their relationship resembles something freshmen in college would go through: drama, pointless fights, and really horrible sex. It's hard to see why either one would want to be with the other and why we the audience should care. While Florence is the more sympathetic, "nice" character, I almost liked her less because she willingly put up with Greenberg's hot-and-cold (mostly cold) behavior.

Greenberg has some really funny moments, such as when the 40-something Greenberg attends a party with a bunch of 20-somethings and asks if it's ok to do coke when you're on Zoloft. But in the end, it's a forgettable movie about two random people who carelessly bump into each other while stumbling through life.

3.5 out of 5 stars

Deep Red

Italian director and master of horror Dario Argento considered Deep Red to be his best film. I've only seen one other Argento film, Suspiria, and I did indeed enjoy Deep Red more. Deep Red combines the gore and creepy-ass atmosphere of Suspiria with the taut murder mystery of Blow-Up. In fact, David Hemmings, the star of Blow-Up, also plays the lead in Deep Red.


Marcus Daly (Hemmings) witnesses a murder one night and when he goes to investigate, he notices something that he can't put his finger on is amiss in the murder scene. He becomes obsessed with figuring out what he saw that night and with solving the murder. Over the course of his investigation, more grisly killings occur and it seems like the killer is one always one step ahead...

I like Argento because his films contain enough gore to get a reaction out of the audience while still relying on atmosphere and plot to heighten the tension. If you're a fan of horror films, especially horror of the late 60's and 70's, Argento's Deep Red is definitely worth checking out.

4 out of 5 stars

Wisdom of a Fool

Movies: Our Idiot Brother

Our Idiot Brother, starring lovable Paul Rudd as the titular lovable idiot, is such a breath of fresh air after a summer of mean comedies. By no means perfect, the film and its laid-back attitude seem miles away from misanthropic, trying-too-hard yuks in movies like Horrible Bosses and The Change-Up (full disclouse: I did not see The Change-Up, but I feel no qualms about judging it anyway).


Paul Rudd plays Ned, who is labeled by the film as an idiot because he is overly trusting and not cynical enough towards humankind, as evidenced in the first scene where he sells pot to a uniformed cop. 8 months later, Ned is let out of prison early for good behavior, only to find that his hippie girlfriend is shacking up with a new man on the communal farm that used to be Ned's home. She kicks Ned out of the commune and, to add insult to injury, claims possession of Ned's beloved Golden Retriever, Willie Nelson.

Now that Ned is homeless and penniless, he takes turns living with members of his family--first his passive-aggressive, might-be-an-alcoholic mom; then his depressed sister Liz (Emily Mortimer) who is married to a grade-A asshole (Steve Coogan) and their young son; next his bitchy, bossy, career-driven sister Miranda (Elizabeth Banks); and finally his bohemian, lesbian, might-actually-be-bisexual sister Natalie (Zooey Deschanel) and her frickin' awesome girlfriend Cindy (Rashida Jones). Got all that?

Wherever Ned goes, it seems that chaos follows. However, it becomes clear that Ned does not create this chaos, but merely inconveniently brings it to light--such as when he catches Liz's husband in a (very) compromising position with another woman, and explains what he saw to another sister who then brings it up to Liz. Liz is so angry at the situation, that she immediately blames Ned. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that the real idiots are Ned's sisters who lie, deceive themselves, and fail to take other people into consideration--and thus end up hurting themselves and others. Ned's only failure is that he is too good for this world.

I read a review of this movie that labeled Paul Rudd as cinema's first Manic Pixie Dream Boy, in that he is a magically quirky character whose job it is to encourage other people to be better, or to bring meaning to others' lives. I think there might be something to this. Although Ned certainly has interesting qualities, he serves less as a well-rounded character with a distinct arc than as an agent of change for the other characters. It would have been nice to see some of Ned's truly bad qualities. Although his foolishness and gullibility are apparent, Ned is fundamentally a good person. We never see any darkness or resentment--even when Ned blows up in anger at his family. Our Idiot Brother was a very fun, entertaining film, but I think it would have been better if Ned was allowed to be a bit more human and bit less of a magical hippie earth sprite.

Overall, Our Idiot Brother lives up to its intended purpose. It's a funny, light-hearted, end of summer comedy that has a better attitude (and funnier script) than many other similar comedies. Like Ned, it may not be the deepest movie, but it has a good heart.

4 out of 5 stars.