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15 Great Female Film Critics You Ought to Be Reading

By Jason Bailey on

So come to find out, there’s not just a shortage of women acting in movies and making them; we’re also seeing fewer and fewer women writing about them. A new study conducted by San Diego State professor Martha Lauzen of Rotten Tomatoes’ “Top Critics” found women were writing a mere 18% of reviews — down from a still-ugly 30% six years ago. It’s not a new issue, but disturbing nonetheless: yet another area of the film business in which female talent is going severely underused, a self-closing loop where more often than not, men make movies for men that men review. But there are a few voices in the wilderness — a handful of female critics for outlets big and small whose words are worth seeking out and savoring. (Note: these recommendations are limited to those who primarily focus on criticism, as opposed to news and blogging and so on.) … Read More

Film

So Bad It’s Good: Vintage ’70s Cheese in ‘Avenging Disco Godfather’

By Jason Bailey on

Bad movies are not a simple matter. There are nearly as many categories of terrible movies are there are for great ones: there are films that are insultingly stupid (Batman & Robin), unintentionally funny (The Room), unintentionally, painfully unfunny (White Chicks), so bad they’re depressing (Transformers), and so on. But the most rewarding terrible movies are those we know as So Bad They’re Good — entertaining in their sheer incompetence, best braved in numbers, where the ham-fisted dramatics and tin-eared dialogue become fodder for years of random quotes and inside jokes. And in this spirit, Flavorwire brings you the latest installment in our monthly So Bad It’s Good feature: the anti-drug Blaxpoitation epic with cinema’s greatest title, Avenging Disco Godfather. … Read More

Film

The Sad, Desperate Cruelty of ‘The Hangover Part III’

By Jason Bailey on

The best thing that can be said about The Hangover Part III is that it isn’t the beat-for-beat, scene-for-scene duplication of the original film that we got in The Hangover Part II, a film less sequel than mirthless remake. Not that co-writer/director Todd Phillips will admit to that film’s miserable artistic failure: “I think it’s human nature that any time people want to try something for a second time, people go to a negative,” he told Empire recently. “I think in five or ten years time, people will come to realize how brilliant Hangover II is… My feeling is that it’s the better movie of the two.” (Surely irrelevant side note: Mr. Phillips has a screenplay credit on the second film, but not the first.) But in that same interview, he explained how much darker the franchise was going this time around. “People die in this movie,” he bragged. “Nobody’s died in them before.” Wow, so edgy. … Read More

Film

Despite the Hype, the ‘Fast/Furious’ Franchise Is Still Terrible

By Jason Bailey on

The original The Fast and the Furious, back in 2001, was a monumentally stupid summer throwaway in which handsome young Paul Walker and tough guy Vin Diesel did a lot of glaring and a lot of driving and a lot of growling. The plot was a warmed over Point Break retreat that existed solely as a clothesline upon which to hang the film’s many street racing scenes, where any displays of skill or suspense were undercut entirely by the laughable computer-assisted effects. The first sequel, 2 Fast 2 Furious, found Walker going solo (Diesel and director Rob Cohen had gone off to make the equally dense xXx) under the direction of once-promising hack John Singleton, and the film supplemented the dopiness of the original by amping up the misogyny. After that film, this viewer checked out; these movies were clearly not for me, and they could continue making them for the vroom-obsessed demo without my participation. … Read More

Film

Flavorwire Interview: ‘We Steal Secrets’ Director Alex Gibney on Julian Assange and the Wikileaks Backlash to His Film

By Jason Bailey on

In his riveting new documentary We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks, director Alex Gibney (the prolific Oscar winner behind Taxi to the Dark Side, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, and Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Elliot Spitzer) tells two stories: the thriller-like ascendency of the organization and the troubling questions it asks about government transparency, and the crumbling of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, which plays like something out of Greek tragedy — the transformation of an admirable idealist to a paranoid propagandist, injecting his own legal woes into the lofty aims of his organization, and conflating them. Gibney was unable to procure an interview with Assange; “Julian wanted money,” Gibney explains in the film, though Assange was willing to exchange his interview for information on the other people Gibney was talking to. (UPDATE: The organization has disputed this claim. Mr. Gibney notes that they’re working from an “incomplete and inaccurate transcript based on non-final version.”) The filmmaker refused, and We Steal Secrets has been under fire from Wikileaks supporters since it was unveiled at Sundance last January. I asked Gibney about that backlash, the importance of the story, and related troubling matters of transparency in the Obama administration. … Read More

Film

Surprising Early, Alternate Versions of Iconic Movie Posters

By Jason Bailey on

Movie posters, as we’ve discussed before, are a tricky business, and a great movie poster must serve many functions: it must capture the essence of a movie, it must be aesthetically pleasing or interesting in itself, and it must sell the product in question. Unsurprisingly, the quest for that balance can result in reworking, re-imagining, and revisions galore, which is why the new Daybees online exhibit The Iconic Movie Posters That Never Were is so fascinating. In it, the designers behind some of Hollywood’s most memorable posters share their early drafts and alternate versions of classic posters; check them out after the jump, alongside the final drafts that became part of movie history, and visit Daybees to learn more about their creators. … Read More

Books

The 20 Most Beautiful Libraries on Film and TV

By Emily Temple on

If you read this space with any frequency, you’ll know that Flavorwire is perhaps unnaturally fond of the beautiful library. Recently, Book Riot mused over which Doctor Who library is the best — or perhaps the most beautiful. But why stop at the Doctor Who universe? Countless gorgeous libraries have appeared on screens large and small (if only there were set designers in all of our homes), whether old and dusty, shiny and modern, underground, filled with water, or, um, animated. Click through for 20 of the most beautiful libraries on film and… Read More

Film

Flavorwire’s Guide to Movies You Need to Stream This Week

By Jason Bailey on

Welcome to Flavorwire’s streaming movie guide, in which we help you sift through the scores of movies streaming on Netflix, Hulu, and other services to find the best of the recently available, freshly relevant, or soon to expire. This week, there’s good stuff from Bradley Cooper, Ethan Hawke, Paul Rudd, Julie Delpy, Amy Poehler, Zach Galifanakis, and Akira Kurosawa, plus a must-see documentary and one of our favorite stand-up specials. Check them out after the jump, and follow the title links to watch them right now. … Read More

Pop Culture

7 Bitter Fandom Rivalries From Across Pop Culture

By Alison Herman on

It’s no secret that science fiction fans can get a little overexcited about their franchise of choice, but things got heated last Thursday when the local Star Wars club of Norwich, England and a delegation from the Norwich Sci Fi Club, a group of Doctor Who devotees, got into a physical altercation at the Norwich Sci-Fi and Film Convention, hosted by the Star Wars club at the University of East Anglia. Apparently, the two groups had a longstanding feud that came to blows when the Sci Fi Club decided to show up on the Star Wars group’s turf to get a signature from Gram Cole, an actor from the time-travel series that currently stars Matt Smith. Though fandom disputes don’t usually escalate to blows, this is hardly the first time otherwise peacefully geeky communities have run afoul of each other. Here are some of the most prominent fandom rivalries throughout history, from superheroes to science fiction. … Read More

Film

The Gay Bechdel Test: Why Hollywood Needs to Expand Its Representation of LGBT Characters

By Tyler Coates on

For years, I’ve enjoyed putting popular films through the Bechdel Test. Named after cartoonist Alison Bechdel, the test was introduced in her long-running comic Dykes to Watch Out For. Named “The Rule,” what became known as the Bechdel Test had three requirements: a film had to feature two named female characters, those characters had to speak to each other, and the subject of conversation had to be about something other than a man. Sounds pretty simple, right? It’s pretty astonishing how many movies fail the pretty easy test — especially in 2013. (A website that keeps track of movie releases and whether they pass the test already lists at least 38 films from 2013; only 21 pass the Bechdel test.) It got me thinking: could there be a similar test about gay characters, and how many movies would actually pass it? … Read More