Archive for the Live Action Category


LGBTQ Live-Action: Call Me By Your Name and Love, Simon (English)

July 22nd, 2018

If you’ve been a reader of Okazu for any length of time, you’ll know that pretty much the only time I ever watch movies is when I’m on a plane. ^_^ And, as I have spent quite a lot of time on planes recently, I have some thoughts about two gay movies that were released recently, Call Me By Your Name and Love, Simon. Both have received critical acclaim and criticism and, having watched both, I wanted to take a stab at addressing the positive and negative issues I found with both narratives, in the context of  them being a gay movie in 2018. 

First of all, on the very positive side, neither of these movies would have been likely to be made before now. The conflicts are non-existent, external homophobia is all but completely stripped from the narratives. More importantly, look back at that first line – I watched both of these on a plane. In 2018, United Airlines felt perfectly comfortable making these movies available on their flights. For someone who remembers the controversy when an airline let the 1997 movie In and Out on their entertainment system, (a movie with one kiss at the very end) this was a very palpable reminder that things have changed. 

Call Me By Your Name takes place in a somewhat timeless 1980s, as Elio, the talented son of two talented professors summers in Italy with his family. When grad student Oliver stays with them to work on his research and assist Elio’s father, Oliver and Elio fall in love. I had a very hard time empathizing with Elio or liking Oliver. Elio’s infatuation with Oliver is believable enough, but his casual neglect of a local girl he is dating made it very hard to care about him.  The presumption has to be that Oliver and Elio must keep their relationship private, although Elio’s parents are shown repeatedly to be open-minded. When Elio finally admits what he’s feeling, they are completely supportive. The local girl also lets Elio off the hook, which frees him to wallow in his own emotions.

The entire move felt too aloof from itself for me to engender any emotion in me. Even the titular scene simply made no sense to me. No context is provided for why calling each other by their own name might be seen as especially intimate. Additionally, Oliver looks to be in his late 20s and I’m always concerned about stories that portray adults who ‘fall in love” with adolescents. Elio isn’t especially mature. Throughout the movie, he’s an awkward adolescent. I find it hard to sympathize with any adult who looks at a half-baked awkward kid and does not think, “Nope.” On a much more banal note, in scene after scene we are assured that Oliver and Elio’s father are doing “research” but I was unable to identify any particular subject they were researching. Could have been science or mathematics or literature or art or archeology. That was a tad vexxing. Pick one.

The very last few scenes, after Elio and Oliver part, finally, finally gave me some genuine emotion. Elio’s family wrapping around him, allowing him to feel and experience this love and loss were the best part of the movie. 

In the end, I felt that I had witnessed someone’s intensely personal experiences, but that I felt almost nothing about them.

Love, Simon presented a completely different raft of problems. Simon is a closeted teen in an affluent and diverse town. When an anonymous classmate comes out on a school BBS, Simon reaches out, also anonymously. He and “Blue” develop a friendship online, while Simon tries to figure out who his confidant is. Due to a lapse of judgement, Simon’s secret is found out by a manipulative and desperate classmate, who blackmails Simon into setting him up with a friend. To do this, Simon is required to keep his friend from asking his other friend out and to do this, he sets his best friend up with the guy, all so he can sell his female friend’s happiness for his own protection. 

Ultimately the whole thing comes apart, and his friends are rightfully angry at Simon for using them as pawns. But they and the school rally around Simon and Blue and, ultimately there is a happy ending for them. 

There were so many things wrong with this sweet gay romance I wanted to scream. As each of them was addressed in the narrative, I felt a little better, but the main problem was never touched on.

-WHY?-

Simon has an openly liberal, white, affluent family; he lives in a liberal, affluent diverse town. His friends would clearly not reject him, his family would very obviously be 100% behind him. It’s 2018. There’s no stigma. No homophobia. He is protected in every way from any negative consequences of coming out. There is literally not one good reason presented as to why Simon, a presumably nice person, would literally spend weeks manipulating and lying to friends rather than just look at his blackmailer and say “publish and be damned.” The only possible lesson we can take from this is that Simon is….a weak jerk. He’s not a good guy. He’s not a nice person. Simon is a person who, when faced with crisis will literally destroy other people’s lives to protect himself.  And yet, we are supposed to root for him in his romance and forgive him his trespasses against the people who trusted him. Um…

In his review of Love, Simon, Daniel D’Addario asks if we need a gay teen romance. Backlash was hard, as people ran to the defense of the movie – of course, we need gay romances and happy endings! But, I have to ask, do we need them to follow the convention of externalized/internalized homophobia even when no such pressure exists? Why does Simon do what he does? Where does his internalized homophobia come from and why is it enough of a motivator for him to actively attempt to manipulate (and sell! He is selling his female friend to a manipulating jerk!) his friends? 

Love, Simon is a nice romance, if you ignore that Simon is not at all a nice person. It’s practically Shakesperian in scope and plot, and about as satisfying.

There is a lot of room to explore human failings in gay romance. And, I think it’s a very good thing that we have two such stories available to us this year, but neither addresses the nature of those failings except in the most facile way. 

We definitely need gay teen romance, but I’m not sure we need to have them with the lingering vestiges of homophobia that we, as adults, felt, when teens. Kids nowadays are capable of growing up without them. As with science fiction, I believe the role of feel-good-romance movies can (and, arguably, ought to) be showing us a better world; one that exists when these  things are past and we no longer even remember what it was like. 

Both of these movies had good moments, but both really needed to be removed from their makers’ assumption that characters live in fear, self-loathing and self-doubt, for them to make any sense.

Ratings:

Call Me By Your Name:
Cinematography – 8
Acting- 7
Story – 6
Characters – 6 Predictably, I like the local girl best and was glad to see her out of that mess
LGBTQ – 10

Overall – 6

Love, Simon:
Cinematography – 7 Very MTV
Acting – 8
Story – 7
Characters – 8 
LGBTQ – 10

Overall – 7 It would have been an 8, except for that litttttle problem of Simon selling a female friend to a blackmailer for no fucking good reason.

I’m going to make a point of watching Blue is the Warmest Color before the end of summer. While I’m being fundamentally dissatisfied with flawed LGBTQ movies, I might as well go for a trifecta. ^_^ I’ll be back next week with a great summer LGBTQ read to ease our hearts. ^_^





Live-Action: Sailor Moon Musical – Le Mouvement Final on Screen

March 11th, 2018

Sailor Moon Musical – Le Mouvement Final, at a theater near you. That’s something worth getting up and going out for. And so, we did. In a small, adorable, old theater, in a town in my state I had never before visited, I found myself joining about 100 fans for the screening of the final Sailor Moon Musical. 

My relationship with Japanese live-action stage adaptations of anime is complicated. On the one hand, I sort of enjoy them (except for Blood-C The Last Mind – which is on Amazon Prime – and STILL didn’t end! /mumbled cursing/) and I sort of find them excruciating and ridiculous…and boring when the pacing is poor. Because the musicals have naturally grown up in the shadow of the engekidan, the female musical revue troupes like Takarazuka, they have a lot of tropes built in, many of which are hard-coded, like a tendency to be extremely heteronormative. As a result of all this, they can be wonderful and annoying or just plain dreadful. ^_^

Complicating things for this particular musical is a simple fact. I don’t much like Sailor Moon Stars. In the anime, Seiya’s a dick, Yaten is an asshole and Taiki’s a jerk. I don’t find them sympathetic at all. And the end of the story in every version is a train wreck. Takeuchi-sensei had no idea how to end it. So, with all this in mind, I arrived at a small town theater-with-a-marquee all ready to be vaguely irritated. ^_^; 

I enjoyed it very much. It wasn’t excruciating, as such things go, the pacing was surprisingly good for doing an entire season of anime in two and half hours AND they managed to make the Starlights much more sympathetic than I’d ever seen.

In fact, I’d go so far as to say, I actually liked Harukawa Meiku’s Seiya. If they had done this story in the anime, my relationship with Stars would be completely different. 

Of course the Senshi are delightful. Funny bits were funny, not cringe-y, although in several places I noticed the audience I was in laughed at different times than the live audience on the tape. Yamato Yuga in a tux is never a bad thing. Isuzu Coco as Galaxia was fantastic, with excellent “crazy eyes”. The Animamates did a very decent job with their roles – and the costumes were fantastic. It cannot be easy to render 2-D drawings in 3-D with real people. 

Staging was pretty good, and one of my favorite things about the musicals has always been the lighting effects which stand in for all special effects. They were a lot of fun, especially during battle scenes. (As an aside, it dawned on me that anyone who can make cosplay items that have their own Foley will be a millionaire. Capes that go “whoosh” and sleeves that go “pow!” when you punch would be brilliant.) Okubo Satomi, the woman who first played Sailor Moon in this series of musicals, returning as Sailor Cosmos was a really nice touch. We all enjoyed seeing the costume come to life. Kakyuu-hime had a lovely voice, but didn’t have staying power, so the end bits were a little painful. And Natsu Chise as Chibi-chibi was, dare I say it? Cute. She was cute.

But for me, the question was simple – would this be as Yuri as the anime? The answer was…good heavens, yes. I mean like crazy yes.

Haruka and Michiru are touchy-feely throughout the story. Forget dying together, they are all arms around shoulders and stroking cheeks. Haruka explaining her dislike for the Starlights became amusing when – among all other suspicions – Taiki had insulted Michiru’s lipstick color. Michiru got to use the line “Haruka doesn’t like popular guys” and also the “I’ll make it up to you later…in private” line, which made the anime worth watching. That scene was hot enough that the other Senshi all fan themselves and say “hot!” which the translators decided reasonably on as “Get a room.” ^_^ Shiotsuki Syu and Fujioka Sayaka do a great job of presenting a long-term relationship, with multiple affirmations of “as long as I’m with you…” often enough that it was deeply satisfying. Thank you writers of this musical, and Takeuchi-sensei for that. The world – well us, anyway – is more than ready for a Haruka and Michiru who are physically affectionate on stage. 

For the Usagi x Mamoru fans, there was plenty of love-dovey between them, including a wedding scene at the end. That scene, which included all the Senshi in wedding dresses (“Why?” Usagi asks. “Because we wanted to!” replies Minako. “They’re pretty!”) and a dream sequence, were strongly reminiscent of two recognizable images from the artbooks. 

 

 

Not the same dresses, at all, but we immediately went there in our minds, at least.

There were a few significant changes from the original story that I thought were notable. In this version, the Outers do not take the position that the Starlights are an enemy, but actually want to work together. That’s a major change – and a positive one, because I really hated that we re-played the “we can’t work together” thing from Sailor Moon S. Setsuna and Haruka instantly grok that the Starlights are Senshi when they touch Seiya in separate scenes. Haruka also notes that they are women passing as men, which is true to the manga and was Takeuchi-sensei’s original intent. (It doesn’t negate the validity of this story as a trans narrative, in any way. However we interpret the characters is valid.) I liked that the story was shifted from “They need our help, but are strangers, so we’ll fight them” to “We’re all Senshi, let’s help them” and Usagi only had to argue that the Animamates were also Senshi, we shouldn’t fight them, either. It’s a much-needed expression of maturity on all of the Senshi’s parts. I assume Takeuchi-sensei has been thinking about this for 20 years, so I’m very glad this was her decision.

The ending of the story was still a trainwreck, but at least it was a completely different trainwreck than ever before. So that was a thing.

There was a short “revue” portion, while Yamato Yuga showed off a number of different tuxedos and the ensemble sang “Koi Suru Starlight,” “Moonlight Densetsu” (I looked around to see if anyone else in the theater was singing, but only the two of us were) and ended on “Ai no Starshine.”

When the movie was over, I stood at the door to ask if people enjoyed the movie, and who their favorite Senshi were. Everyone enjoyed it, and the most popular Senshi in this crowd was Sailor Moon herself. 

We chatted with Allie and her boyfriend who had never seen a Sera Myu before. Allie explained how life-changing Sailor Moon had been for her when she saw it as a kid. Of course we understood. I asked the gathered crowd how many people had been fans forever and most hands went up. ^_^ 

Someone cleverly thought to grab a picture of those of us hanging out in the lobby!

It was a wonderful show and we had an absolute blast. 

Ratings: 

Overall – 9

OH, AND the theater was showing three young-people-, people of color- and LGBTQ-friendly movies: Black Panther, Wrinkle in Time and Sailor Moon Musical that afternoon. The place was full of young people and it was absolutely delightful.





Live-Action: Wonder Woman

June 13th, 2017

Wonder Woman 2017, directed by Patti Jenkins, starring Gal Gadot, was a very decent movie.

I will say that periodically, as a refrain, lest you get caught up in my comments about its imperfections and think it wasn’t good. It was good. It was – and I say this with no irony or sarcasm – the best superhero movie I have seen since Christopher Reeve’s Superman in 1978. In many ways, Wonder Woman is the retrofit superhero movies desperately needed, having been choked to an almost intolerable point by “gritty,” “dark,” “serious”and shitty writing. Despite grimness of the setting, Wonder Woman manages to be optimistic and hopeful, even despite some occasionally shitty writing.

I’ll do my best to have no spoilers in this review and will therefore speak of things in the abstract from worst to best, ending with the top notes.

The worst thing about the movie is…the shitty writing.

 

Lazy Writing

Even aside from sex jokes which just need to never be included ever again in any movie ever made, the writing occasionally lapses into a specific kind of laziness in which I imagine the Zach Snyders of the world think they are brilliant and the mes of the world think the Zach Snyders should get less creative work, they aren’t terribly bright.

Among the most egregious moments of lazy writing is Steve Trevor shushing and hushing Diana once they reach London. This is not sexism…this is a team of idiots who never once thought, “Diana’s obviously incredibly intelligent and, while stuck on a boat with him for hours would *obviously* ask Steve to explain the war and the world they were going to and what she needed to know before getting there.” But no. Instead we’re treated to tired sexist tropes meant to be seen as tired sexist tropes but is actually just plain old lazy writing.

I was not okay with the obligatory romance. Along with sex jokes, this needs to go away. Permanently. Forever. Just… stop, please. For pity’s sake, let me watch a stupid movie about people beating the crap out of things without a fucking romance shoved in there. Lazy ass writing, meet lazy ass thinking. Gawd.

Because I can, I blame all the shitty writing on Zach Snyder. ^_^

 

History, Part 1

No.  Do not assume your audience knows nothing more about World War I than what they saw on Downton Abbey. Luddendorf died in 1937, long after to movie takes place (thanks, Jon Mixon, for that fact.) If you’re going to use historical figures, get the history right. A number of the scenes I had to chalk up to a view of World War I as seen through the lens of the victor in which the Christmas Truce became adverts for soda and Sainsbury’s.  

 

History, Part 2

They tried so hard. They really did. SO many things got shoved into those visuals: The crappy conditions at the Front, trench warfare, the utter and complete destruction of the Belgian landscape, the gassing, the injuries, the remnants of 19th century warfare, as the officers rode up on horses, the plight of various peoples of various ethnicities, (I have a special little rant about Samir and the German HQ, but that will wait for another day. I will say only that they made a bad choice about his Fez. That is all. And, oh, Chief sending up smoke signals makes me rage. WTF white people? WTF is wrong with us dealing with Native Americans? We had him light a signal fire?!? That was so UGH. Niobe worked because she was just a great Amazonian warrior. The Chief did not work because he was still a bundle of stereotypes.) They tried to get it all across. And maybe some of it might have gotten across. But it’s hard to convince Americans who still think of all wars as World War II, in which we were the good guys and USA! USA!  – even the actual Nazis in America now think of themselves as the good guys in WWII. It’s amazing, but they actually do. So A for effort, C on execution.

Update: I am mistaken in the above rant about Chief. I have edited and want to be clear that I defer to Native American opinion on his character. and on the portrayal of his skills and language. (Thank you Caroline Small for the links.) I still found the writing to rely heavily on stereotyping, which bothered me, but it appears to have more to do with my lack of knowledge than anything else. Fair enough. 

Just as a reminder, Wonder Woman 2017, directed by Patti Jenkins, starring Gal Gadot, was a very decent movie.

 

Acting

The acting was excellent. I can’t think of the last time I said that about an American movie. Even the minor roles did their best. I want to particularly call attention to Elena Anaya’s outstanding performance as Doctor Poison. I could write a novel about how much she got out of that role. Her eyes had to do everything, and they did.

Which I guess means I should talk about Chris Pine. He was good as Steve Trevor, and he did his best with the role and I really think the role was not all that great. He could have been amazing with like three tweaks, but they left him sort of superficial. I was actually glad, but also sad, that they didn’t damsel him. I did like that he got that Diana was better at everything than everyone was and got out of her way.

 

The Mythology

Please Hollywood, keep your 2-dimensional Judeo-Christian good/evil dichotomies and saviors and Father Good make humans good, then Evil Deity make them bad, simplicity out of my nuanced and complicated mythologies. Megathanks. But, then as obvious as the Ares thing was (seriously obvious, like the moment he appeared on screen, wife and I were like, “Oh, it’s him.”) he added some of the nuance back. I really appreciated that.

While I’m at it, the other reveal in that scene – also the most obvious thing ever. Hollywood, you kind of stink at making things that have to be revealed later. Perhaps you should read about the Gun on the Wall before any more movies are made. I did like Ares’ armor and some of the dialogue in that scene, so I forgive you. But really.

I’m not going to bitch about the rewrite to Diana’s origin, because while I prefer Marston’s origin story, I won’t whine. It’s just a comic. Could have been worse. 

***

Enjoy today’s post? Subscribe to Okazu with Patreon!
Subcribe with Patreon

***

Wonder Woman 2017, directed by Patti Jenkins, starring Gal Gadot, is still a very decent movie.

 

The Amazons

The Amazons were amazeballs and had the entire movie just been Amazons living and no conflict bigger than a disagreement about what to eat for dinner, I would have been happy. Antiope is my boom. You know the deal with her, right? She’s played by Robin Wright, who played Buttercup in Princess Bride. And yes, that made me grin like a loon as I watched her and the Amazons fight. 

The Amazons were populated with a ton of athletes and again, they sort of shoved that fact into the visuals. In this, it worked.

 

The Fighting

Yes, I said that the fight scenes are good. Me, the person who complains bitterly about fight scenes in movies. Even the big background training scenes, watch them fight – they are fighting multiple enemies and fighting like they are fighting multiple enemies! No Kung-fu flick one-opponent-at-a-time trope going on. I kvelled so hard at those women. I’d pay twice as much to watch “Amazons show you how to fucking randori” for 2 hours.

Best scene of the movie is the fight on the beach. Brilliant. Needed way more of that. But that really was the second-best thing about the movie.

 

Intermision

The movie needed less Zeus, some Athena and more Etta Candy. Etta’s line during Diana’s dress-up scene was one of two lines that actually made me laugh out loud. No one else in the theater noticed it. Needed some lesbianism on Themiscyra. It seemed to me that they kind of sort of implied it in one half-second thing that happened that would be a spoiler, but I also could be projecting.

 

Wonder Woman

Gal Gadot as Diana and Wonder Woman made this a movie I do not cringe at the idea of seeing again. She is physically strong and, as befits a smart, capable woman raised to be a leader, explains what has to be done and does it. There was power in her line, “What I do is not up to you.”

But at the heart of her role there is joy. It’s the kind of optimism and – dare I say it? – heroism – we have not seen in a long, long time in our superhero movies, which, like so much media right now, seem to be glorifying the selfish asshat without the bit where he becomes a good person and wants to help people for no other reason than power hath it’s responsibility. Diana can’t save the world, but she’ll be there to help us save ourselves. That is what I want from Wonder Woman. We don’t need more revenge scenarios for female leads. This Wonder Woman reminds us that can do what we know is right and do it because it’s the right thing to do. No other reason need apply.

 

Ratings:

Visual – 9 It was a nice-looking movie, and I could follow the fight scenes. That’s all I really care about
Characters – 8
Service – Some dress up with Diana in London, the futzing about her clothing is a sort of service, by calling attention to the lack of coverage. I would have liked the armor to look more hoplyte-ish, but no one asks me. I weep for the greaves we never got.
Yuri – 0 Needed some lesbians on Themiscyra.

Overall – I came in to this review at 7.5, but have talked myself up to an 8. ^_^

It was more good than bad, the bad was mostly throwaway shit you could ignore, but it gets points off for 1) forcing me to ignore it and 2) crappy stereotypes in a story so desperate to be cool with characters of color.

Would I suggest you go see it? Yes. you should go see it in the theater. If it gets a third weekend at #1, it’ll confuse DC and Warner Brothers. ^_^

Wonder Woman 2017, directed by Patti Jenkins, starring Gal Gadot, is a very decent movie.

 





Live Action: Mystère à la Tour Eiffel (French)

May 7th, 2017

Back in March, The Mary Sue proclaimed Here It Is, the Victorian-Era Interracial Lesbian Murder Mystery Movie You’ve Always Wanted. I’m not gonna argue with a headline like that, so I threw Mystère à la Tour Eiffel onto my-to-watch list. I’m going to cut to the chase – it was good enough that I watched it twice. ^_^

Louise Massart is a (gasp!) divorced woman in Paris in 1889, just as the Eiffel Tower has been completed (and, loathed by most of Paris,) for the 1889 World’s Fair. (I cannot even begin to tell you how much I adored the Eiffel Tower in real life. It was a sugar confection of a building. And at night it sparkles, so cute.)

A friend of Louise’s is arrested for killing her husband; although she was found in a closed elevator, holding the weapon, she had no recollection of doing the deed. Louise is convinced that Charlotte has been set up and proceeds to investigate. When she is arrested for her father’s murder, she understands that this is much bigger than just her or Charlotte. 

The plot takes her to a lesbian bar in late 19th century Paris, in the company of a magician’s assistant Henriette who takes no shit about her race from Louise. The two later conspire to free Louise from a madhouse, where she has been sentenced for murder. The plot was complicated enough that it was worth watching the story a second time to catch what I had missed the first time around. And it made an awesome watch on the plane to Queers & Comics. Very appropriate, as the story is somewhere between comic booky- and Mystery! on PBS.  

The sexual tension between Henriette and Louise is handled better by the actresses than by the plot, which tries to shoehorn them into a relationship, when the one they were building on their own, was actually better. Both Marie Denarnaud and Aïssa Maïga did a lovely job of watching each other hungrily. I quite enjoyed that. ^_^

So, was Mystère à la Tour Eiffel the Victorian-Era interracial lesbian murder mystery movie I’ve always wanted? It certainly was damned close. If I could have a Henriette and Louise mystery series (and if Louise would just wear that one teal dress a lot, it was so fetching and Henriette that dark red dress which looked just brilliant on her,) I would be a very happy person. ^_^

Ratings:

Cinematography – 6 It looked like a TV costume drama mystery, you know the sort….
Character – 9 Even the bad guy was…good.
Story – 8 Absurd? yes. But exactly just the right kind of absurd
Service – 4 Yes, Victorian underwear is so exciting
Lesbian – 9 A lot of flirting, little making out, and a happy ending.

Overall – 9

It was a lot of fun and I highly recommend it when you need to think about nothing much except the pretty clothing on the pretty Victorian Parisian lesbians.





Live-Action: Ghost in the Shell Movie Trailer

November 18th, 2016

Here is my summation of the new Ghost in the Shell live-action movie trailer: The three scenes fans remember, oh look they left a lesbian scene in,  a tepid Hollywood plot without much substance, and a dollop of service, just the way fans like.

My conclusion – if Oshii Mamoru and Shirow Masamune are happy with it, I’m happy for them.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments!