Reading/Watching Log #51

It’s strange to think that at the start of this month everything was pretty normal. Now I’m writing this in the middle of lockdown, forbidden to leave the house for anything but essentials. No work, no play. But at least I might finally make a dent in the endless list of books to read and shows to watch.

Due to this, I lightened up my “female writers, female leads, female directors” stipulation a bit, as right now I just want to keep my mind calm by watching/reading whatever the hell it feels like – but for the most part, my New Years Resolution still holds.

In planning to make Mulan the Women of the Month in April (and knowing that the Disney remake is delayed for a good long while) I revisited the live-action Chinese version from 2009, as well as the (slightly ill-conceived) Wild Orchid, which was part of a much larger series of fairy tale-based stories for younger readers.

Nancy Drew also makes a couple of appearances, in both a made-for-television movie and an incredibly strange CW show (which isn't finished yet, so will have to be discussed next month), as does some good movies, some bad movies, and the inescapable presence of superheroes. And I finally read Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, a novel that shares my own name, and so naturally portrays said character as a dead wife. (Honestly though, I loved it).

I hope everything’s going okay with everyone else – there’s not really much to say on that front. Stay at home!

Ladybird Tales of Superheroes by David Solomons

This is actually what inspired me to rediscover Mulan this month, as it included her story amongst six others. There are three boys, three girls featured in this book, all by different authors and with different illustrators who (as far as I can tell) come from each of the countries in which these tales take place. Why are they called superheroes? I can only assume it’s because that’s the phrase that’s making the most money these days.

So there’s Mulan (China), Hanuman (India), Inanna (Sumerian), Shahrazad (Middle-Eastern), Loki (Norse) and Anansi (Africa), who each get their most famous exploits narrated. Because I was always a mythology nerd, I knew most of them already EXCEPT the one about Inanna and her journey into the Underworld. And it’s amazing, you guys. Read the Wikipedia page!

High-Five to the Hero by Vita Murrow

Okay, I feel mean for saying this because this book was clearly written with the very best of intentions in providing a range of stories that emphasize the value of kindness and compassion in young male protagonists…BUT…

The thing is that the author retells classic fairy tales (and a few Greek myths, old legends and a 19th century French novel) instead of just making up her own, inserting what she calls “boy power” into them. This term encompasses a boy’s ability to express himself, listen to others, feel vulnerable, and overcome obstacles with compassion, understanding and integrity.

Okay, so you’re thinking: what’s wrong with that? My problem is that they’re just weak echoes of the tales they’re based on. Jack and the Beanstalk goes from a story of a boy who saves his family from poverty by using his wits to steal from a wicked giant, to one in which Jack establishes a fair-trade agreement with the giants who live in the clouds.

Rumplestiltskin is no longer about a vulnerable young girl who manages to extract herself from the terrible demands of a vindictive goblin, but a teenager who takes advantage of a boy with a gift in order to win herself popularity at school. The Emperor’s New Clothes is about the foolishness of the wealthy and the honesty of children; here it becomes a story about expressing yourself through fashion.

And The Pied Piper has always been about how important it is to keep your word and honour your debts. What’s a child more likely to remember – the disappearance of the Hamelin children after their elders fail to meet their end of the bargain with the Piper, or Murrow’s take about how he’s a stay-at-home father who leads the other home-keepers of the village on a strike?

So to be clear, it’s not like I disagree with any of Murrow’s ideas – of course there should be stories for boys that emphasis patience and understanding and compassion. But her retellings rob the original tales of their potency, as well as the perfectly good messages they’ve already been conveying for centuries.

Eight Princesses and a Magic Mirror by Natasha Farrant

Now this anthology achieves what the above work was trying to do: put a more modern spin on fairy tales without losing their inherent magic. The framing device for this is a fairy godmother, who – on being tasked with choosing a birthday gift for her god-daughter – sends her magic mirror out through time and space to discover what it means to be a true princess.

The eight stories that follow are set all over the world and in chronological order across the centuries, ranging from medieval England to contemporary New York. The girls featured all demonstrate positive values, from kindness to animal care to social responsibility, and come in a wide range of ethnicities.

Heloise goes in search of a cure for her sick sister, Leila learns to put aside practical jokes and save her city from invasion, Abayome struggles against a disapproving stepmother who has very different ideas about what a princess should be, Ellen longs to take to the seas and see the world, Tica loves animals (even the dangerous kinds), Saoirse finds her purpose in books, and Anya and her sisters escape the Russian Revolution and make a new life for themselves in Paris. Finally, a little girl nicknamed Princess finds a way to save a memorial garden in the heart of New York.

The illustrations are lovely, with each one colour-coded to match each princess, and some of the stories aren’t afraid to commit to a bittersweet ending. The girls don’t always get exactly what they want, but always what they need (though for the most part, it’s pretty upbeat).

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

Why haven’t I ever read this book before? It is Peak Gothic, Peak Intrigue, Peak Complicated Portrayal of Gender Roles. I loved every word. Everyone was so messed up. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to hug or strangle the protagonist, and I got a genuine kick out of having the same name as the titular character, who is long dead but still ruining everyone’s life. That’s the dream, you guys.

We can probably blame this book for a number of shitty Mills and Boon stories that actually take the central “romance” at face value and don’t realize how deeply messed up it is, or how miserable it makes the main character. But hey, Maxim de Winter is wealthy, handsome and tortured, and for some readers that’s all it takes.

Our poor little narrator falls for it too, and after she bids farewell to the vulgar old woman she’s been hired to nurse and marries the guy she barely knows, she’s whisked to Manderley, his seaside estate in Cornwall. She’s beside herself with nerves, having no idea how to properly behave as a lady of the house, and is immediately intimidated by the housekeeper Mrs Danvers, the quintessential example of a Creepy Housekeeper. No other character comes close.

It soon becomes apparent that the house still very much belongs to Maxim’s first wife Rebecca. Her presence from beyond the grave reaches into every room and corridor, and his second wife knows (or at least imagines) that every move she makes is judged and found wanting by everyone who ever knew the beautiful, vivacious, beloved Rebecca.

Suffice to say that there are plenty of twists and turns throughout, and Rebecca is ultimately many things: a ghost story without a ghost, a Romance without a romance, a Gothic novel full of appropriate melodrama (a shipwreck, a costume part, a house fire), a shrewd examination of different forms of femininity, and a grim depiction of a relationship between a man who is powerful and a woman who is not.

I loved every word, and if you get the chance, try to read it on a dark and stormy night.

Slayer by Kiersten White

It felt nice to return to the Buffyverse, for as far as I know (and don’t quote me on this) Slayer is the first novelization we’ve had based on the franchise since the cheap paperbacks that were published during the show’s run. The author takes an interesting angle: relegating Buffy and the Scoobies to the side-lines and focusing instead on a whole new group of characters.

Even though the show ended seventeen years ago, this story is set what appears to be just a short time after the events of the seventh season. It deals with the fact that the remains of the Watchers Council is obsolete, Slayers are now being called all across the world, and Buffy herself is renowned as a notorious rule-breaker.

It also calls upon events from the continuing comic books, and – what the heck has been going on there? Apparently Buffy destroyed something called the Seed of Wonder? Which has removed all magic and interdimensional portals from the Earth? Which means that no more Slayers will be called? And Giles is dead??

It’s all just window dressing, so I’ll go along with for now. This story is about is Athena (better known as Nina) and her twin sister Artemis, who live with the remnants of the Watchers Council in a remote castle in Ireland. It was down to sheer luck that they escaped the First Evil’s deliberate bombing of the Council strongholds, but their history is still fraught with pain and suffering. Their father was Merrick Jamison-Smythe, Buffy’s first Watcher (played by Donald Sutherland in the original film and briefly by Richard Riehl in the show).

Now largely obsolete after Buffy walked away from their guidance some years ago (and even more so now that all magic has disappeared), the remaining members of the Council hoard their resources and wait for a new purpose. Unsurprisingly, Nina doesn’t harbour particularly warm feelings toward Buffy, who she not only holds responsible for her father’s death, but also a new, totally unwelcome development in her life: she too is an activated Slayer.

It was Artemis who had the training and temperament required to be a Chosen One, while Nina was a healer who preferred to help people over hurting them. But now she’s saddled with the massive burden of being a Slayer amongst people who have (until very recently) defined themselves by training girls just like her. Naturally an identity crisis is imminent.

There are a lot of moving parts to this story: plenty of adults Watchers that are struggling to find a purpose in a post-Buffy world, a younger generation of Watchers-in-training that seldom interact with the outside world, a Slayer on the loose in Dublin, a demon chained up in a garden shed, an emotionally distant and secretive mother, a sister that wants to protect her twin while also being somewhat resentful of her, the inevitable Alpha Bitch that swans back into town to make our protagonist’s life miserable, and the return of a long-standing crush. Throw in a prophecy that seems to pertain to Nina and her sister, and it feels like the pilot to a Buffy spin-off.

I’m down for any post-show story that deals with the remains of the Watchers Council and the emergence of all those other Slayers, which number in their thousands and understandably would cause as many problems as they’re likely to solve. There are lots of continuity nods (particularly characters with family names like Wyndam-Pryce and Post among the Watchers) and a final chapter that leads us into…

Chosen by Kiersten White

... this, the direct sequel of the above book! It picks up the plot-threads left dangling by its predecessor, with Nina trying to deal with her newfound Slayer abilities/responsibilities and Artemis carrying out a mysterious mission of her own. The rest of the Watchers castle has been converted into a sanctuary for demons and Slayers alike (provided they play nice) which is an interesting development for this particular universe. I wish it could have been explored in more detail.

But Chosen is more interested in the prophecy that was introduced in the previous book, in which each sister is identified as either a healer or a world-breaker, though it doesn’t specify which is which. Actually, there’s not really much of a twist there, and the mole within their ranks that was revealed at the end of Slayer doesn’t have a particularly big impact on the plot either.

If you read these books it’s to revisit the Buffyverse, which I dearly miss and was very happy to rediscover. Buffy and Faith have cameos in Nina’s dreamscapes (apparently all the Slayers can wander in and out of each other’s dreams, which is a pretty cool after-effect of Buffy activating all the Potentials) and Oz shows up for a few chapters, as do a few other Slayers (including Chao-Ahn, who I thought died in the series finale, but apparently not). It seems to have been a duology, so I'm not sure if any more books about these characters are forthcoming, but it was a nice, reasonably light Buffyverse story, by a writer who clearly loves and appreciates the series. 

The Seven Sisters by Lucinda Riley

I read this book for one reason only, and that’s because the series is wildly popular among readers throughout Christchurch City Libraries at the moment, and I thought it would be nice to be able to chat with some of them about it. And… it’s definitely not my cup of tea.

Which is odd, because at first glance it absolutely is. Based on the myth of the Pleiades star cluster and the Greek goddesses they’re named for, the books are based around the adopted daughters of a mysterious millionaire called Pa Salt (an anagram for “Atlas” plus a “p” for Pleione) who return to his estate on the shores of Lake Geneva after his death.

The eldest among them is Maia D'Apliese, a shy homebody with a dark secret, who – along with her sisters – is given clues to her true heritage by their deceased father in his last will and testament. Now she must decide whether or not to journey to Rio de Janerio and investigate further. (Of course she does).

The book also includes a parallel narrative of Maia’s great-grandmother, Izabela Bonifacio, who travels to Paris in the 1920s in a bid to see the world before she’s married off to an aristocratic man she doesn’t love. There she gets caught up in the early creation of what will eventually be the Christ the Redeemer statue, meeting architect Heitor da Silva Costa and sculptor Paul Landowski (both real people) and young artist Laurent Brouilly.

You don’t need me to tell you what happens next, and as much as I could appreciate the research that goes into the development of Christ the Redeemer (which I knew next to nothing about) the love stories in both stories are pretty trite, and the writing itself… not good. So much of the dialogue is stilted and exposition-laden, where people repeat things they already know for the reader’s benefit, and awkwardly talk about the depths of their own feelings.

And naturally, everyone is gorgeous and wealthy. The author tries to alleviate this somewhat by having them wince over plane tickets and have Pa Salt’s will insist that they all earn their livings, but it’s obvious they’re completely loaded. The family home on Lake Geneva is a castle for heaven’s sake!

But I don’t want to be a stick-in-the-mud about it. I can totally understand why these books are so popular, and I can’t deny that the premise is a winner. I could even be tempted into reading further…

The King of Crows by Libba Bray

This is the fourth and final book in The Diviners series, and I have to say – I’m gonna miss them. In 1920s New York, a range of people from different backgrounds, races and classes come together through their joint metaphysical abilities in order to fight evil: specifically the King of Crows, a mysterious supernatural being that has no clear plans beyond wanting to let loose an army of the dead upon the world. In this he’s unknowingly helped by American entrepreneur Jake Marlowe, whose doomsday machine is opening the boundary between dimensions.

Only our ragtag band of misfits can stop them: radio personality Evie O’Neill who can read objects by holding them, Ziegfeld girl and fire-starter Theta Knight, Jewish pickpocket Sam Lloyd who can render himself invisible, gay pianist and dream-walker Henry DuBois, super-strong Jericho Jones, asexual Chinese clairvoyant Ling Chan and black healer Memphis Campbell and his little brother Isaiah, who has visions of the future.

There are very few boxes that Libba Bray doesn’t tick off, but the special thing about The Diviners quartet is that she’s not doing it for brownie points: each character’s personal and societal problems are a part of the evil that the King of Crows relies upon to work his will (which in turn is a massive theme of the entire series). More than that, every character is three-dimensional and inherently understandable, with an established arc and plenty of development. There are no “tokens” here.

After the explosion at the end of the previous book, all the Diviners have been declared wanted criminals and forced to go on the run from the US government. This leads to quite a nice conceit, in which all get split up into smaller groups to make their way to a location that appears to each of them in visions, allowing the author to play around with some dynamics that haven’t really been explored yet (Jericho and Ling in particular make for a great team).

Not every thread is tied up neatly, and towards the end it does feel a bit rushed (I kept checking the page count and thinking “she’s running out of time to wrap this up!”) but for the most part it delivers. As I do with each instalment of this series, I was stuck by how fantastic a television series it would make. The setting, the characters, the dynamics – it would all translate brilliantly to the screen, and the multitude of subplots, the rising and falling action, the character arcs… it wouldn’t even be that much of an effort.

Wild Orchid by Cameron Dokey

This was a series written by a number of commissioned authors back in the late noughties that gave old fairy tales a new spin, either by rationalizing the magical elements or setting them in a more contemporary setting. They weren’t particularly good, but I was rather taken with them given their diminutive size and gorgeous cover art (thank you, K.Y. Craft).

Wild Orchid is Dokey’s take on Mulan, which (at the time of its publication) suggested that the writers were running out of material. Not exactly a fairy tale, this portrays Mulan in the context of a YA novel. It goes obnoxiously hard with the “not like the other girls” rhetoric and is so slim that we’re halfway through the book by the time Mulan rides off to war.

It works the angle that Mulan barely knows her father, who left the house for war after the death of her mother. When he returns and remarries (to the book’s credit, the stepmother and Mulan become friends) and the call to war goes out, Mulan goes so as to preserve their marriage. Like I said, we’re halfway through the book at this point, so her subsequent adventures in the army feel pretty rushed as a result.

Also, I’m pretty sure there was a stipulation that all these books would involve a romance, which in this case involves Mulan falling for the youngest son of the Emperor. It’s pretty superfluous, but then this book is just over two hundred pages. It fills a quota, though I give Dokey credit for using Mulan’s correct last name (Hua, as opposed to Disney’s Fa) and translating her given name as “wild orchid” (though my own research suggests it's closer to "wood orchid").

DC Superhero Girls: Season 1 – 5 (2015 – 2018)

It took me a while to really grasp what this show was and how it functioned within the larger framework of the DC universe. As it turns out, the whole thing was a web-series (which also operated as its own franchise, complete with comics, toys and other merch) made up of episodes no longer than about four minutes.

To make things even more confusing, it’s since been rebooted by Lauren Faust with a distinctive new design. There are also a few direct-to-video films thrown in the mix, which I haven’t yet been able to track down.

It’s an odd little project, whose main goal is undoubtedly to sell toys (much like the equally featherlight Forces of Destiny) which basically operates as a high school AU in which main characters Wonder Woman, Supergirl, Batgirl, Katana, Bumblebee, Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy (yes, they only go by their superhero names) attend Super Hero High in order to hone their skills at superheroing.

Of this line-up, you’ll be disappointed but not surprised to learn that the focus is overwhelmingly on the white characters (Wonder Woman, Supergirl, Batgirl and Harley monopolize most of the screen-time). You might also be wondering why the likes of Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy are in attendance – well, they’re reimagined as good guys here, as are most of the other villains of the DC universe.

There is some fun stuff done with the premise, as it’s only natural that in this primary-coloured world of a high school AU, Amanda Waller is the principal, Grodd is a history teacher and Wildcat is the P.E. coach. That does make a quirky amount of sense.

Admittedly, these are pretty cool. You'll notice there's no Katana though...

But there’s no overarching story of any kind, and certainly no character depth or development that goes beyond endless reiterations of learning to trust your friends and rely on teamwork. Characters like Mera and Jessica Cruz get big introductions, but then sort of fade out as the episodes go on (the exception is Raven, who is probably the only character who gets something vaguely resembling an arc).

And to be brutally honest, Harley Quinn is so fucking annoying in this. Maybe I’m just oversaturated by how much Harley content I consumed last month, but she really is a pain in the ass here, especially given all the screen-time she eats up. She’s constantly getting on everyone’s nerves, but the lesson to be learned is invariably: “to be a good person, you have to put up with tediously obnoxious people.” She even interrupts Darkseid while he’s in the middle of a conquer-the-earth speech.

Also, the animation is pretty crap. As I said, the best comparison is Forces of Destiny, which was also rather shoddily made and seemingly exists mainly to sell dolls to girls. And girls deserve better: better animation, better stories, better characters.

It did however, teach me one astounding fact: Wonder Woman has a pet kangaroo, and in fact, always has. Man, I thought the invisible jet was the weirdest thing in her repertoire.

Mulan (2009)

SPOILERS

I have it on good authority that China wasn’t particularly impressed with Disney’s take on their legendary woman warrior, and it’s not difficult to see why. In a culture that so heavily emphasizes honour and the greater good, Disney’s spin on the material made it an empowering journey of self-discovery and personal fulfilment. Mulan even says at one point that she didn’t take her father’s place for his sake, but to give herself a confidence boost.

And of course, by the end of her adventures, she’s been given validation from her father (she’s more important than the family’s honour!) and a cute boyfriend.

This movie is better than that, requiring sacrifices from Mulan that would never get passed the first draft in the Disney script-writing room. Working more closely with the 1st century original ballad, the villains in this film are the Rouran tribes (not the Huns), Mulan’s last name is Hua (not Fa) and she spends many years away from home, eventually returning to her home with honour but not necessarily happiness.

The anti-war message is even more pronounced here (barring that one scene in the Disney film, you know the one I'm talking about) with Mulan struggling to find the strength to fight day after day, and eventually feeling the effects of PTSD after the death of her greatest friend Wentai, a prince of China.

The thing is, Wentai hasn’t actually died, only faked his death because he feels that Mulan cannot become a great general while she’s compromised by feelings of fear, love and anger. You don’t need me to tell you this is a profoundly dick move, though it does have its intended effect in making Mulan stronger and more stoic. It’s hard to know what to make of this – does she specifically have an emotional tie that needs to be severed because she’s a woman?

It plays out in a fairly gender-neutral way, as the fact of her womanhood certainly isn’t brought up by Wentai when he concocts his little “let’s pretend I’m dead to make her stronger” scheme, and after a stint of her playing Achilles in his Tent, his death does have the desired effect of making her take up the burden of leadership once more.

Naturally the truth all comes out when a dust storm and an ambush trap Mulan’s army, and the final act works in another ingenious idea: Mulan sneaks into the enemy camp to speak with the Rouran princess, a like-minded young woman that’s been trying to secure peace for the duration of the war. Together the two of them come up with a plan to kill the Rouran leader and save Prince Wentai – and of course, because Mulan is dressed a woman and a slave, she’s completely beneath everyone’s notice when she enters the tent.

But there’s one last twist of the knife: during the course of the war Mulan’s childhood friend Tiger (along with many other soldiers and friends) have died in the attempt to hold back the Rouran tribes, and so it’s for their sakes she refuses to run away with Wentai when he suggests he end his engagement to the Rouran princess (arranged as part of the peace treaty). But Mulan has fought too long and hard for peace just to see it all destroyed for the sake of love, and so lets him go. Even after everything she’s done on the battlefield, this is her act of truest bravery.

It’s tragic and beautiful and totally fitting – certainly not something you’d ever see happen in a Disney Princess film, which is too invested in the personal happiness of their heroines and the very American idea that being a good person will bring you karmic rewards, but (as with their take on The Little Mermaid) you can kind of feel that it’s not the right tone for the story that’s being told.

Zhao Wei carries the movie on her back, and everything Mulan goes through – pain, fear, indecision, is right there on her face, though she’s helped out by Chen Kun as Wentai, who has the soulful warrior archetype down pat, and so makes Mulan’s final decision genuinely gut-wrenching.

All that said, the pacing in this film is awful (there’s no lead-up whatsoever to Mulan’s decision to take her father’s armour and go to war; this is the one thing Disney’s version did right, especially with the Mulan’s Decision sequence). There are also weird transitions between scenes involving white flashes, which often blot out actors right in the middle of an emotive moment and are generally just very strange.

But don’t let that stop you – as far as I know this is the most faithful retelling of Mulan’s story that’s readily available to audiences, and the scene between Mulan and the Rouran princess alone is worth the price of admission (or rental, whatever).

Brave (2012)

This was next on the list of Disney Princess films I’ve been watching with my friend (before lockdown, obviously), and though I remember enjoying it back when I saw it in 2012 – I took my mum for Mother’s Day – it had a glaring problem this time around.

Okay, so I truly appreciate that the focus of Brave is the relationship between a mother and a daughter; that the two have a personality clash that leads to a conflict that in turn is happily resolved by the end of the story. But the problem is the nature of the conflict itself: simply that Merida doesn’t want to get married, and Elinor says she must because of the expectations and responsibilities placed upon her as a princess.

First of all, let’s put that whole “this is what society was like back in those days” argument aside. We’re talking about a Disney Princess movie, complete with witches, spirits and sentient animals. We’re not meant to take it seriously, or judge it by any standards other than our own. And those standards tell us that forcing a girl into a marriage she doesn’t want is reprehensible.

Which means that the central conflict in this film is hedged totally and utterly in Merida’s favour. All she has to say is: “I don’t want to get married and have sex with a complete stranger.” Boom, she’s won the argument in the minds of everyone who watches. How could any modern audience condemn her for that perfectly reasonable assertion? And once you see the suitors that have come to win Merida’s hand...

Seriously, Elinor? You’re happy to shackle your lovely daughter to one of THESE duds for the rest of her life?

But of course, the writing room KNOWS that Merida has the absolute moral high-ground in this particular instance, which means they have to compensate. Firstly, by never once having Merida actually voice the above statement (instead it becomes all about vague longings for “freedom”) and secondly by making her rather bratty to start with, thereby winning some sympathy for Elinor and requiring Merida to grow up over the course of the story.

Throughout the film, Merida has to work through her inability to take responsibility for changing her mother into a bear – even though she has no idea the cake would have that effect, she only wanted her mother to understand her point of view, so technically it ISN’T her fault, especially when you consider her actions were out of sheer desperation for – once again – not wanting to be married off to a complete stranger.

And she’s right – it’s not her fault that her society demands she marry a man she doesn’t know or like. Why shouldn’t she take steps to prevents that from happening? (Again, we’re in a Disney Princess movie here. There’s plenty of room in the world for more historically realistic stories of women grappling with arranged marriages, and trying to manoeuvre their way to power and/or happiness once they’ve taken place. But in this case, we couldn’t respect Merida if she just shrugged her shoulders and went along with it).

To top it all off, by the end of the story it doesn’t really feel like the problem is solved – only postponed. Elinor and Merida have successful bought Merida more time, but what remains is the very heavy implication that Merida is still expected to marry at some point, even though she’s made it clear throughout this film that she doesn’t want to marry at all.

It’s also interesting to examine the depiction of the power that Elinor commands as queen – at one point she quells a brawl just by walking regally through the room and looking at the men disapprovingly. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great scene, and a move that Merida also uses later on: a tribute to soft power and the influence women can have over men just by being dignified and “lady-like.”

But here’s the catch: Elinor and Merida have the ability to assert such power over the menfolk because they’re a queen and princess respectively. Nanny, for instance, or any of the other women living in the castle could not have done this. And the power that Elinor and Merida wield comes to them through their father/husband. It’s still a power that flows to them down patriarchal channels – and so it’s odd that throughout all of this King Fergus is silent on the subject of Merida’s impending marriage.

At any point Fergus could say: “we’re not doing this,” and back up his daughter’s wishes, and Elinor could do nothing about it. Or he could take his wife’s side and tell Merida: “this is happening, so deal with it,” and the argument would be over (in which case she would have bypassed Elinor and given the enchanted cake to HIM instead, since he’s technically the guy who’s calling all the shots. Then of course, we’d be looking at another father/daughter film – and to avoid that, Fergus has to be a largely disinterested party, more concerned with the hunting of bears than the future happiness of his daughter).

Basically, the story given to Elinor and Merida is what strangles them – they spend the film’s duration fighting each other instead of their mutual enemy: the patriarchal system that’s forcing them to behave in ways they don’t want to behave, whether it’s Merida having to get married, or Elinor nagging her to do so. Ultimately, the issue is resolved when Merida (through some charades performed by her mother) convinces the visiting clans to call off an immediate engagement.

As one of them says: “let these lads try and win her heart before they win her hand – if they can.” That “if” is very important, since it hopefully suggests that if Merida isn’t interested in any of them, they’ll leave her alone. But it still sounds like she’s going to have to put up with some unwanted attention in future, and at the end of the day Merida can only free herself from her forced engagement by convincing the men to let her do so. Her continued freedom is entirely in their hands.

And honestly, all the writers had to do was make the conflict between Merida and Elinor have more to do with her responsibilities as a future queen, which she keeps slacking off. Elinor could still be nagging and hectoring, but also right about Merida's future role. Merida could have longed for more freedom but still come to realize that she has a social duty to her people. It was such an easy fix.

***

So am I overthinking all this? Yeah, probably. It is however interesting to look back and remember the kerfuffle that occurred over Brenda Chapman being removed as director at the behest of John Lasseter. What would her original vision for these characters have been?

All those gendered power dynamics aside, it’s a fun story. I love the Scottish setting and the floaty wisps, Julie Walters as the old witch (she’s gotta have more stories to tell) and Billy Connelly as the boisterous Fergus. The animation is beautiful, especially the work that went into Merida’s distinctive hair. And in 2012, this just skirted the line with some of its jokes – I seriously doubt we’ll ever see a small boy swan-dive into a woman’s buxom cleavage ever again.

As villains go, Mor’du is suitably scary without impinging on the real meat of the story (Elinor’s transformation), but he also fits in thematically well and I liked the little note of grace the film leaves him on. Between Elinor’s combat with him and Merida saving the day at least in part through embroidery, the film succeeds by depicting the women as triumphing where the man failed, largely by working together.

I also watched The Legend of Mor’du with this, a short film that came out with the Brave DVD release (and is also on Disney+), and is essentially just a more fleshed-out version of the villain’s story than was told in the film itself, as narrated by Julie Walters as the witch. It’s a nice bonus, but pretty non-essential. 

Terminator: Dark Fate (2019)

The franchise that Hollywood just can’t leave alone, even though absolutely everything that could ever be possibly done with its premise was wrapped up at the conclusion of Terminator 2: Judgment Day. The first movie dealt with a consistent time-loop, one that the second one obliterated to such an extent that it had to end on a note of extreme ambiguity just to justify the continued existence of John Connor, who by the rules of stable time-travel, should have been wiped from reality. 

You really can't move forward from that point, but Hollywood’s determination to grind this franchise into the ground has continued, though this time around they at least have the trump card of Linda Hamilton returning for the first time in twenty-eight years.

And hey, it’s not like it isn’t great to see her again, or to watch a woman in her sixties as an action hero. But there’s not much to this sequel; as usual it completely ignores the existence of all those other misbegotten attempts to continue a story that had already come to a definitive close, and so really can’t do anything but negate the events of the previous films: John is killed off within the opening minutes, and there’s another robot apocalypse on the horizon that has nothing to do with Skynet.

Why do sequels keep doing this? WHY? Whether it’s killing the survivors in Alien 3, or wiping out all the X-Men in Logan, or destroying the lives of Luke, Han and Leia in Star Wars, it would seem that screenwriters everywhere are utterly incapable of letting a happy ending stick.

In this case, it does lead to a nice (albeit obvious) twist: that the woman the terminators are targeting isn’t going to be the mother of the new Resistance leader, but the Resistance leader herself. And yet, in the year 2019, in a franchise that’s lauded for its ground-breaking female lead, OF COURSE that’s going to be the case.

More frustratingly, even with this “twist”, it’s apparent that John didn’t actually have to die. They could have quite easily have kept him off-screen for the duration of the story, and whatever pathos they try to create with Arnie’s return doesn’t work considering he’s not the Terminator we bonded with throughout the second film (plus he’s the one that’s responsible for John’s death, something that gets kinda forgotten along the way).

Oh, and there’s the inevitable repetition of certain catchphrases, which don’t really make much sense in their new contexts.

There is, however, some enjoyment to be found in the mostly-female cast. Mackenzie Davis is the standout, with a deliberately androgynous look that brings an interesting subtext to her protective relationship with Natalia Reyes. Unfortunately, Reyes herself get nothing like the development that was afforded to Linda Hamilton across the first two movies – because why would she? They’ve already done that in those first two movies.

That the bond between the two female leads comes down to a life-saving friendship is nice enough, but it simply doesn’t carry the weight of Kyle Reese coming back in time to father his future commander. (Speaking of whom, shouldn’t Kyle Reese be walking around in the present day? Wouldn’t he be the same age as Reyes’s character?) And because Linda and Arnie are tagging along, there’s not enough room to explore any of the characters in much depth.

One other set-piece is worth mentioning, and that’s when our heroes try to sneak across the Mexican border and get held up in a detainment facility. Although the message is pointed: that the world may end because of American border patrol, it becomes increasingly clear that nearly every single border guard is played by either a woman, a person of colour, or both. It’s staggeringly obvious, and there’s no way it’s not on purpose.  

As my friend said when we were watching: if there’s a woman or person of colour in a lead role (in this case, they had both) then nobody can bring themselves to cast white male villains to oppose them (the film’s requisite Terminator is a shapeshifter who disguises himself as two Latino men, even though there are times in which he would have benefited from the freedom and access a white male would have).

It feels like they’re trying to placate certain parts of the audience by saying: “you’re not the good guys, but don’t worry – you’re not the bad guys either!”

In all, I didn’t hate it, but my God it’s SO past time to leave this franchise alone. And much like my enjoyment of Ghostbusters and Ocean’s Eight, it’s great to have a range of women in lead roles, but I’d much prefer women to have their OWN vehicles that aren’t just piggybacking off the success of already-established franchises. As with DC Superhero Girls, we deserve better.

Us (2019)

I’m always nervous about watching horror movies, as sometimes it takes just one particularly disturbing scene in a film I’d otherwise be okay with to keep me up at night. And it’s annoying, because I really like the suspense, psychology and supernatural elements of horror, but I have to stagger them across the course of several years to prevent nightmares.

Thankfully Us isn’t too horrific (at times it’s pretty funny) and I definitely wanted to see it after Jordan Peele’s Get Out. Sadly, I also went in knowing about the film’s big twist, which meant I was on the lookout for all the seeded clues throughout the story. If you don’t want to be spoiled, stop now.

SPOILERS

As a child Adelaide had a disturbing encounter with what appeared to be her doppelganger in a house of mirrors on Santa Cruz’s Boardwalk. As an adult she’s incredibly jumpy about returning there with her husband Gabe, daughter Zora and son Jason on their vacation, and as the strange coincidences begin to pile up, her fears are validated when a terrifying home invasion sees four identical strangers dressed in red jumpsuits and carrying gold scissors attack the family.

From that point it’s a fight for their lives as each member of the family is separated, forced to outsmart their counterpart, and finally come to grasps with the fact that this is a countrywide occurrence. We learn along the way that there’s something special about the Wilsons: not only can Adelaide’s counterpart talk, but they’re being toyed with in a way the rest of the Santa Cruz residents aren’t.

As with Get Out, there’s a pretty obvious thematic subtext at work. In that movie it was racially motivated violence and white privilege, here it’s more about class. The Wilson family are affluent and comfortable; in their first confrontation with the Tethered, “Red” explains how her people are a (literal) underclass subjected to hunger, abuse, poverty and deprivation. It’s clear then, that they embody the social anxiety that maybe, just maybe, all those needy people we ignore on a daily basis might one day rise up to forcibly take what we’ve greedily hoarded from them for so long.

The reveal that takes place almost right before the credits adds a deeper layer to this reading: it turns out that the Adelaide we’ve been following for the duration of the film, the woman we’ve been egging on in her desperate attempts to defend her family from violent interlopers, was one of the Tethered all along. SHE was the doppelganger that the real Adelaide saw in the house of mirrors as a child, and she knocked her out, dragged her underground and left her handcuffed to a bed while she escaped the tunnels and integrated herself into Adelaide’s family unit.

The woman identified in the credits as “Red” had her life stolen from her; the worst she can be accused of is returning to reclaim it. If you interpret the Tethered as the underclass, then Adelaide’s backstory means that they’re not just taking what they want, but taking what was rightfully theirs all along. And deep down, Adelaide knew it. Her overwhelming fear was born out of knowledge that one day her terrible crime would catch up with her.

So there is a ton of symbolism and motifs throughout Us, and I’m not even sure what most of it means, but it’s an intoxicating story with plenty of black humour, held together by an incredible performance by Lupita Nyong'o as both Adelaide and Red. When the latter speaks, it’s genuinely terrifying in a way that'll stay with you long after watching.

Knives Out (2019)

One day, years from now, I might have the mental and emotional energy required to finally talk about Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi. Till then, let me say that Knives Out is great! A film that showcases Johnson’s love of subversions and deconstructions, twists and turns, social commentary and complex characterization, while simultaneously demonstrating that none of this stuff worked within the context of a Star Wars movie, much less the second instalment in an ongoing trilogy.

What works for a murder-mystery doesn’t translate to a melodramatic space opera. It’s like getting Nora Ephron to write a slasher film, or Michael Bay to direct a romance. When asked to sum up the sequel trilogy in its entirety, I’ll say that JJ Abrams wanted to retell the original trilogy with a cast of new characters, Rian Johnson wanted to subvert familiar Star Wars tropes within an inch of their lives, and those two visions went together like oil and water. Also, neither one was a good fit for the continuing franchise. Bummer.

But as for Knives Out – it’s great! An old school murder mystery centred around the death of eighty-five year old family patriarch Harlan Thromby, father to Linda and Walt, father-in-law to Joni, Donna and Richard, and grandfather to Jacob, Molly and Ransom. Everyone has a motive and most everyone had an opportunity – but all the evidence points to suicide. Enter Daniel Craig as Detective Benoit Blanc with a truly extraordinary Southern accent, who has been asked to investigate the death by persons unknown.

To say more would be to give the game away, and I don’t want to do that. Suffice to say that most of the story is told through the (big brown) eyes of Marta Cabrera, the young nurse that was hired to be Harlan’s caretaker, whose relationship with the various members of the family provides the narrative and thematic crux of the film.

Okay, I can’t resist: SPOILERS...

The film is ultimately a scathing indictment of white privilege, in which the family is happy to be friendly and magnanimous to a foreign immigrant while she’s “in her place”, but instantly loses their minds the moment she finds herself in a position of power over them. Even the best of them, liberal arts student Molly, flips the second she realizes her expensive college education is now reliant on Marta’s charity.

They’re not monstrous caricatures, in fact they do have moments of sincere (if not patronizing) generosity and remorse, but the film never lets you forget that they’re so far up their own privileged assholes that they genuinely exist in a completely different world from Marta. And the best part is that Marta wins the fortune due to the fact that she’s a good person – not just in her demeanour, but through her actions, which have a crucially important impact on the way the story plays out.

It’s not often you see goodness rewarded – goodness that’s not just general niceness, but which is consistently proactive – and though it’s validated via the mouthpiece of a benevolent white male, it’s still profoundly satisfying to watch it play out. I can’t tell you how much better it works than trying to convince the audience of a false equivalency between the Empire and the Rebellion because they buy their weapons from the same manufacturers.

The cast is great, particularly Ana de Armas as Marta and Chris Evans playing utterly against type, but a lot of the big-name stars aren’t entirely necessary. I mean, Jamie Lee Curtis and Michael Shannon are great, but I don’t think they brought anything to the roles that a lesser-known actor couldn't have (that said, famous people are always easier to tell apart in big ensemble pieces).

In all, a great movie for watching during the shutdown.

The College Admissions Scandal (2019)

Some of the people involved in this controversy are still on trial or waiting to be sentenced, but the folks at Lifetime wasted no time in churning out the requisite “ripped from the headlines” movie – bless them. The script feels like it was written in a week because it probably was (I looked it up, and it’s only been seven months between the scandal breaking and the movie airing) and the only good actor involved is Penelope Ann Miller (who will always be the girl who accidentally picked up the giant sewer rat in Adventures in Babysitting).

It highlights the extreme measures some parents are willing to go to in order for their little darlings to get into their college of choice, which says just as much about how the system (and society) operates as it does about them. The story follows two families – or rather, the matriarchs of said families: Caroline DeVere, who is afraid her son is more interested in music than in his grades, and Bethany Slade, who is an over-achiever who (you suspect) is desperate to prove herself superior to her drug-addicted ex-husband.

They’re essentially the Betty and Veronica (or more archetypically, the Madonna and Whore) of the story, right down to their hair colours and basic personalities, with both women going about paying a “fixer” to ensure that their children get pimped-out college applications, a process which included forged SAT scores, fabricated sports records, and bribes to college athletic coaches.

There’s one crucial difference between them: Caroline goes about it without informing her son what she’s up to, while Bethany strongarms her daughter into participating. Is it a good movie? Of course not. But there are some nice little touches throughout, as when Caroline tells her husband how the process works, and both automatically speak in stage whispers, even though they’re alone in their kitchen. Love of their kid be damned, they knew they were doing wrong.

Another scene showcases Bethany expertly manipulating her fair-minded daughter into participating, first by pointing out that minority students have their own set of advantages, then hitting her with the possibility that her boyfriend will lose interest if they go to different colleges.

There’s even a funny moment in which Caroline's in-the-dark son reacts to his heightened SAT scores… and can’t even correctly calculate the difference. You’d think this would throw up a red flag for him, but nope. Despite his general good-naturedness, he’s too swathed in privilege to realize something’s fishy.

Of course, there is no small degree of Schadenfreude at work when it comes to watching the squirming members of the 1-percent actually have to deal with the consequences of their actions, but the whole thing is ultimately rather sordid. As much as you pity the kids who are pulled into their parents’ voyeuristic dreams, the real victims are the ones that don’t get any screen-time: the hardworking students whose spots have been stolen.

Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase (2019)

I think I must have downloaded this one accidentally when I was getting hold of episodes of the CW’s Nancy Drew because I had no idea this movie even existed. Apparently it saw theatres, but certainly not in this country!

It’s basically just a modern update of Nancy Drew’s second published adventure The Hidden Staircase (first published in 1930, though there was a significantly different republication in 1959). In updating it again, this movie images Nancy as a teenage delinquent with a skateboard, straying far from her traditional characterization as The Ace.

It’s kind of a shame, as what I’ve always liked about Nancy is that she’s a complete girl scout; a straight-shooter with impeccable manners and immaculate appearance. That clearly doesn’t fly these days, but what I wouldn’t give for a faithful rendition of this character in an actual period piece.

On the other hand, I suppose it is more realistic that a teenage girl who goes prying into other people’s business would not be eyed favourably by the community or law enforcement, and Sophie Lilias has a warmth and charm about her that almost makes up for the fact she’s kinda a disrespectful brat.

Wonder Woman: Bloodlines (2019)

I was getting geared up for Wonder Woman: 1984, but apparently that’s going to take until at least August (and perhaps longer). The good news is that this direct-to-video animated movie is much better than the 2009 version with Keri Russell. The bad is that it’s not all that great. That’s the odd thing with these DC animated films, despite the market being completely oversaturated with comic book films and shows, they each act like nobody has ever heard of these characters before.

So we get yet another depiction of Steve Trevor crash landing on Themyscira, of Diana fighting with her mother over whether or not to leave the island, and subsequently trying to find her identity as a superhero in the world of men. The big difference is that this takes place in the modern day as opposed to WWI, but the first fifteen minutes or so are just a condensed re-tread of what we already saw in 2017.

It gets better once Diana finds her groove as a public servant vigilante, assisted by Steve while staying at the home of Doctor Julia Kapatelis and her daughter Vanessa, who soon grows resentful of the attention that Diana receives from her mother. In fiction land, that’s a good enough reason for an otherwise well-adjusted teenage to become a supervillain, and five years later Diana is called in to prevent Julia from selling off a stolen relic to a mystery buyer.

From this point on the story is… pretty good? We get a whole host of characters from Wonder Woman’s rogue gallery, from Cheetah to Doctor Poison to Veronica Cale to Medusa to Silver Swan, and one of the advantages of not being hugely familiar with her mythos is that I remained off-guard as to where exactly all their storylines would lead them. The plot chugs along at a nice pace, with a couple of surprises along the way, and reaches a satisfying conclusion when it comes to Diana’s heroism and who she’s prepared to offer a second chance to.

It has a range of good, bad or in-between female characters, and Rosario Dawson and Marie Avgeropoulos are good as Diana and Vanessa respectively. Like I said, it’s not great, but if you need something to scratch that Wonder Woman itch, it’ll do.

Fresh Off The Boat: Season 2 (2015 – 2016)

It’s always difficult to know what to say about sitcoms. If anything, the major change in season two is that the perspective shifts from Eddie (complete with his voiceover as an adult) to more of an ensemble cast. Eddie’s friends at school, the staff at Cattleman’s Ranch, the neighbours Marvin and Honey – it really expands to explore a whole range of people getting on with nineties life. Sigh. I miss the nineties.

The best episode is by far the hilarious send-up of Melrose Place, in which the characters not only get embroiled in a soap opera plot, but start reacting to the musical stings and engaging in those odd footage-stretching moments when they react dramatically to something just before the ad breaks.

And though the focus is still largely on the family unit, it turns out that the friendship between Jessica and Honey is unexpectedly rewarding, especially when they band together to start flipping houses.

Avenue 5 (2020)

This doesn’t exactly adhere to my strictly female writers/directors/leads requirements, but it comes pretty close with three female directors (working on five of the nine episodes) and at least two female writers, as well as Lenora Critchlow in a key role.

Avenue 5 is an interplanetary luxury cruise ship on a round trip to Saturn and back, with all passengers and crew in the capable hands of Captain Ryan Clark (Hugh Laurie). But due to an unforeseen malfunction, the ship loses its trajectory and is instead put on a course that’ll take it three years to return home. Why the heck can’t this issue be easily resolved? It’s not immediately clear, but it might have something to do with the billionaire owner of the ship, Herman Judd (Josh Gad) who seems to have designed the entire thing on the basis of whatever whim passes through his head.

Problems pile up: it turns out that Ryan Clark isn’t the captain at all, but an actor hired for his ability to project a calm and efficient demeanour. The ship was actually being run by the head engineer, who unfortunately did not survive the anti-gravity breakdown that threw the ship off-course. To keep the passengers calm, Ryan must maintain the façade, helped only by Billie McEvoy, the second engineer (Lenora Critchlow).

So goes this comedy of errors, which runs on the formula of a new problem to solve each episode while tracking the gradual psychological meltdowns of its ensemble cast. Needless to say, some are more interesting than others: I loved Rebecca Front as Karen Kelly (her name has to be deliberate, as she’s the embodiment of the Karen meme), but squabbling separated couple Mia and Doug, not so much. (I’ll never understand why writers think audiences would ever want to watch a couple on the verge of divorce).

It apparently only got middling reviews but I really enjoyed it, and there are some genuine LOL moments throughout. It makes you walk the thin line between dismissing humanity as a waste of oxygen and wanting to spare it at least for Billie’s sake, and whatever else it’s doing, the distant future at least seems to be free of racism and homophobia.

Also, Nikki Amuka-Bird is in this and I LOVE HER. Totally random comment, but I would kill to see her as Sherlock Holmes.

The Pale Horse (2020)

SPOILERS

I’ll admit I no longer have any idea what Sarah Phelps is trying to do with her Agatha Christie adaptations. I get wanting to change things around a little, just to distinguish them from the mountain of other Agatha Christie adaptations out there, but not only has The Pale Horse been adapted only twice in the last three decades, they didn't do it all that faithfully either. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

It’s especially disappointing since The Pale Horse is one of her best works, with a wonderful commentary on the true nature of good and evil running throughout: how the former seems unglamorous and weak and the latter deep and dark and powerful – but how in actuality the opposite is true. She sums it up with one of my favourite quotes: “Evil is not something superhuman, it’s something less than human. Your criminal is someone who wants to be important, but who never will be important, because he’ll always be less than a man.”

Her timely commentary is chucked aside in this take on the material, with Mark Easterbrook characterized as (*deep weary sigh*) a man whose first wife dies under suspicious circumstances (yup, he killed her in a fit of unwarranted jealous) and who treats his second one like shit. When another woman is found dead (another fabrication from Phelps) he’s told that a list was found in her shoe, upon which is written a list of names, including his own. Yet the most unsettling thing is that the owners of those names are consistently being found dead.

Clues eventually lead him to a trio of could-be-for-real witches living in a small country village, at which point the production starts to lean heavily into a folk-horror Wickerman vibe. As the bodies pile up and the small straw dolls accumulate, Mark feels his sanity slipping.

The problem is, he’s not a sympathetic protagonist – quite the opposite in fact – leaving us to wonder why we should care about what happens to him. It’s a great performance from Rufus Sewell, and I liked what this AV Club review had to say about his characterization…

When confronted by unwanted questions he lies with the casual confidence of a man for whom consequences have typically been little more than an abstract concern; when a character describes him, late in the series’ run-time, as a man upon whom “nothing snags,” Sewell’s face registers confusion at the idea that it could ever be any other way.

… but ultimately, what’s the point of it? Without the presence of a good honest man to stand against the dark and frightening forces of evil that are (initially) beyond his ken, then Christie’s sharp observations on the nature of good and evil mean nothing. Neither is this theme replaced with anything else of interest (like perhaps masculine rationality being threatened by feminine mystique). It’s just a morass of unpleasant people doing shitty things to each other.

And it ends on a limp note, in which the mastermind is never brought to justice and the protagonist left… stuck in purgatory? Seriously what the heck was that about? The good thing is it’s only two episodes long and the production values are very high, with Henry Lloyd-Hughes in serious danger of being typecast as an Upperclass Asshole, Bertie Carvel completely unrecognizable behind fake false teeth, and Kaya Scodelario wringing a good performance out of a script that’s deeply unkind to its female characters (I thought her star in Hollywood was rising, but this seems a bit of a step down).

After the masterful And Then There Were None was followed by a string of disappointments, I’m starting to get worried about Death Comes as the End, which I’ve never seen adapted and would love to see done right.