Ocean's 8: The Problem with All-Female Casts

HA! Roped you in, didn't I? I bet you were all like "OMG SHE HATES FEMALE CASTS! FAKE NEWS! CLICK BAIT!" Well, I suppose you were sort of right about that last one...but I digress (as usual).

Let me be first to say I am 100% in favor of women-centered movies and casts. Look at masterpieces like Clueless, Bridesmaids, and Girl's Trip. Women's movies don't have to be all kumbaya to be relatable. They can be hilarious, they can be cool, they can be dramatic -- they can be all the things that every other kind of movie can be. But you know what they can't be? Inauthentic.

If you had to give me one word to describe a lot of the recent attempts at all-female cast movies it would be that word: inauthentic.

Honestly, I haven't seen a movie as bad as Ocean's 8 in a really long time. And I'm the girl who sat through Oliver Stone's 1981 horror The Hand (yes, that was terrible too, but far more entertaining).

Michael Caine plays a cartoonist haunted by his amputated, murderous hand.

Yes, this is the same director that did Wall Street.

To be fair, female relationships are really hard to capture on film in general. Women are weird. We're raised in a society that praises us for being pretty, teaches us to be suspicious of other women, and has a history of pitting us against each other. Manipulation has a tendency to run rampant in inauthentic female friendships. If you don't trust a girl, you can be nice to her face but you won't be her friend -- and most girls can almost always tell the different between being nice and being friends. Maybe that's why girl friendships are so damn special -- and why movies that are supposed to be about us always end up being so fucking shitty.

Ocean's 8 makes a lot of mistakes with its...well, existence, if I'm being frank.

First of all, there's no reason to add to the Ocean saga, so like let's not.

ALSO HOW COULD YOU KILL DANNY??

(I bet he died in a really cool way though...

like Thelma and Louise style with Brad Pitt...)

Second of all, it seems blatantly obvious that they made Ocean's 11, took out like 95% of the emotion driving the heist, made the guys into girls, and tried to swap "cool" for "glam." Or something.

Whatever kind of cool they try to make these women, though...it does not play. Guys may earn the respect of other guys by being cool, but I can't think of many girls I know who respond to "cool." Girls respond to respect. Think about what works so well in Bridesmaids: they attack the pettiness factor dead-on, they're honest about it, and in the end everyone ends up being friends because they respect each other.

Ocean's 8, Ghostbusters, and many other attempts at these female-driven, nonsensical reincarnations completely disregard depth for the chance to "change it up." The plot becomes irrelevant because the fans of the prior version are going to drive to the theater anyway. And the egregious error in disregarding characters and storyline in these movies is that they become painfully boring. I really don't give a shit whose jewels they are -- none of these characters have me believing that they're real because they put out zero emotion for the entire duration of the film. Oh they stole them? Oh cool, I have more emotional involvement in the fact that I ran out of popcorn.

Ya, it's prob made out of fucking rock candy, who cares.

While Bullock emulates Clooney as best as she can, the context doesn't work. Being betrayed by a former lover that she doesn't even really seem to have liked that much anyway doesn't give us a lot of emotional investment. Worse, it turns her heist into a classic "woman scorned" trope that seriously does no one any favors. And we don't even really get the impression that she's smart -- she had been pulling off a handful of deals at a community bingo over in Jersey, we learn at one point. Seriously? What is this, amateur hour? She goes from knocking over bingo to stealing jewelry at the MET GALA? I don't buy it.

Actually, I kind of had a hard time believing that any of these women were smart. Instead of getting insights into their backgrounds and them being people that the two mains know already, each basically gets accepted into the fold regardless. We don't learn hardly anything about them.

This lack of any investment in the outcome completely disintegrates what makes heist movies so fun. In Ocean's 11, the ending is a "WOAH" moment. In Ocean's 8, the ending is an "Oh." moment.

3 outa 10. Seriously, so disappointed by this film, even though I didn't really have high hopes. But not even entertaining in a stupid kind of way. Just mundane. Hollywood needs to do better for these ladies.

Gravity: Is Wooorkiiin' Against Meee--Wait, Wrong Gravity...

Just for the record, the John Mayer song was stuck in my head for days after seeing this one. But, long story short, this was pretty deserving of all the hype it's been getting, especially for a Hollywood movie.

Remember the good ole days of disaster flicks in the late 90s? Volcano, Titanic, Deep Impact, Dante's Peak. So many choices! But they've kind of gone out of style in the past couple of years.

UNTIL NOW.

(God, doesn't this poster give you acute anxiety?)

Gravity is the perfect opportunity to bring them back. Instead of natural disaster (which may be a little bit too close to home after the extreme environmental crises of the past couple of years), this one takes place in space. Instead of volcanos and super storms, the initial accident that spurs the action of the movie is a missile launch gone awry. Hitting a huge satellite, the lack of GRAVITY (heh) sends a chain reaction through the world's many satellites, creating a technological tidal wave of sorts. The unfortunate victims of this chain of events are Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) and Matt Kowalski (George Clooney).  Dr. Stone goes careening into space after the satellite shards hit their ship and the rest of the film follows her (and Kowalski) trying to find a way back to a safe spaceship/station.

And if you let go, you're doomed. No pressure.

The cool thing about this movie is how well it's set up. I know some people may be turned off from watching this film because of the small cast (I mean, you really only are exposed to Ryan Stone and Matt Kowalski). But that is what makes the movie so incredibly captivating. Instead of watching Houston trying to bring them back down or intercuts between space and Earth, they fix the camera on the two main characters and don't leave the realm of space for nearly the entire movie. And because of their interactions and isolation, you end up really bonding with their characters in a way that wouldn't work if the cast was bigger.

Bff.

This movie also had some intense suspense. Watching this after seeing All Is Lost was really interesting because, despite their being a similar plot, Gravity really pumps up the drama. The relationships are stronger, there is a more dynamic denouement, and (to put it bluntly) the accidents are bigger. The vast openness of space creates a terrifying landscape in which all of these accidents happen. And the need for them to be as resourceful as ever is absolutely paramount.

Very, very well done, Hollywood. My hopes were not high but you proved me wrong. Good job.

8.5 outa 10. I liked that Dr. Ryan Stone talks to herself (and to Houston, who is offline) when she's alone as well. Keeps the movie from getting too boring.

The Heat: See? Girls Can Be Funny Cops Too!

Two posts in two days? I know what you're thinking...

But I'm not gonna. Cuz I ALSO saw ANOTHER movie last week and didn't have the opportunity to write about it. It was a sneak peak from Philly Film Society so I want to take advantage of the fact that ya'll probably haven't seen it.

What movie, you ask?

See above.

Riding the tails of the crazy success that Bridesmaids was, this movie takes a crack at the buddy cop genre with the first buddy cop film to feature two female leads (feminism. hell yeah.).

Our plot follows two lady cops who couldn't be any more different (I know, who's ever heard of a movie with characters like those before??!). One, Sarah Ashburn (Bullock) is a special agent in the FBI who never misses the tiny details and has a reputation for being by-the-book, narcissistic, and a pain in the ass. Opposite her, in the dregs of Boston, we have Officer Shannon Mullins, a hellcat with no tolerance for opposition to the law or anything else that she finds annoying. Thrown together by several circumstances, they end up working together on a case to uncover a covert crime syndicate that has been taking over Boston's drug scene. Together, I've gotta admit...they make one hell of a hilarious team.

Boom baby.

This movie seems to be following predecessors that include The Other Guys  and 21 Jump Street and I really have to hand it to them: they've really found a hilarious formula here.  Mixing the absurd (Mullins at one point pantomimes going through her police chief's office looking for his "teeny tiny" balls) with a liiiiittle bit of compassion (scenes including Mullins's brother who was formerly in a drug ring, and Ashburn's total cluelessness when it comes to being not-weird), this movie was nothing if not 100% entertaining.

I think this picture says it all.

The true star here is Melissa McCarthy. Her ad-libbing skills are unmatchable. The character that everyone found so funny in Bridesmaids is exacerbated in this, made more badass and totally ruthless. With all of her insults she is so incredibly sharp that it's hard to take your eyes off of her comedic genius. Bullock is her usually quirky funny self, a mixture of Miss Congeniality's Gracie Hart and Two Weeks Notice's awkward turtle, Lucy Kelson. Incredibly, she still manages to hold her own, but as more of a sidekick to McCarthy's brash character.

Please go see this movie. Omg. It was so funny. Never has there been more loling.

9 outa 10. Pure entertainment.

Just watch the trailer even. I promise, it's hilarious.