30DayMovieChallenge

Day 11: My teenage movie crush

Josh Hartnett

By Ciara Midreé — October 12, 2017

(The actual poster that hung on my bedroom wall. All I had to do was google “Josh Hartnett milk”. X’s, O’s, and hearts added by me. Thanks, Internet!)

As a kid, I had many screen loves– Freddie Prince Jr. in “She’s All That”, Jesse Bradford in “Bring it On”, even Harry Potter for a hot second. But none of them could hold a candle to Josh. Hartnett. From “Pearl Harbor” to “Lucky Number Slevin”, he was my jam. I watched “Hollywood Homicide” because he was in it. “40 Days and 40 Nights” was a major part of my [awakening as a woman]. Later on, when I got older and got over my fear of “The Mummy” (1999), I fell for Brendan Fraser in “School Ties” and “Encino Man”. I had reached peak film fanatic adolescence– I started watching older movies that came out before I was old enough to watch them or before I was born. I discovered Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn (together, apart, don’t matter!). I entertained ideas of Robert Redford, Michael Caine, Peter O’ Toole, Shah Rukh Khan, Colin Firth, and Orlando Bloom (only in that blonde wig tho).

But I’ll always have a special place in my heart for Josh. He can still get it.

HONORABLE MENTIONS:

Even though Josh Hartnett was mah main squeeze, teenage me had many loves:

Freddie Prinze, Jr. in She’s All That

Jesse Bradford in Bring It On 🎧

Oliver Wood from the Harry Potter and the Scorcer’s Stone movie

Orlando Bloom, but only in the wig. 💁🏼😄

My options really expanded after we got TCM, adding Katharine Hepburn, Michael Caine, Peter O’Toole, and Shah Rukh Khan to the mix. And of course I can’t forget Cary Grant and Colin Firth, my last teenage crushes and my forever loves. I adore them in everything they’re in; my love will never die.

Day 6: My guilty pleasure movie

White Chicks (2004)

By Ciara Midreé — October 7, 2017

Who am I kidding, this movie is just a pleasure, no guilt about it. But I probably do shrug when I mention it. I probably say something like, “I don’t know, it makes me laugh.” When Marlon and Shawn’s characters get hit on as women for the first time and they react with irrational anger, it’s more than a little problematic. Shades of racism and sexism run through this movie, along with a heavy dose of homophobia.

Buuuut those wigs are laid and those ice blue contacts are poppin, and the movie came out before I knew any better, so it got me! It’s also not as terrible as some other late 90s/early 2000s movies, or even some movies and shows that come out now which wrestle with gender roles.

So I focus on the things the movie got right. First off, I laugh way more at this movie than I do at a ton of recent comedies. I laugh out loud. I also like a lot of the things it does differently than its predecessor, Some Like it Hot (1959). Maybe they balance out the icky bits with the way they change the “love interests” of the main characters. Instead of an old fuddy-duddy pursuing Marlon’s character, they have fine-ass Terry Crews, who is comic gold in every scene he’s in. Instead of a secretly alcoholic Marilyn Monroe, they have a gorgeous investigative journalist for Shawn to woo. She doesn’t exactly have Marilyn’s screen presence, but it’s nice that he’s not just going after some airhead (or one of the White women— that’s for Crews to do, and he does it for laughs so it doesn’t look like Black women aren’t appreciated).

They also have the main characters impersonating specific women, which lessens the idea of them impersonating or mocking all women or, worse, mocking drag queens or transgender women. They then play up the absurdity of all the characters insisting that six foot-whatever Marlon and Shawn are actually two skinny White girls. In Some Like it Hot, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon were both 5’9”— in dresses they look like tall, slightly muscular women (Especially Curtis, who arguably didn’t even need a wig to bring out his feminine allure; he was a very pretty man). They pretend to be typical women, whatever that was supposed to be back in 1959. Apparently just high pitched voices, limp wrists, and navigating sexual assault from every man you meet (there’s a real rape-y vibe to that movie).

Quite differently, Marlon and Shawn intend to become two particular people, two women that they look nothing like— not in height, build, facial features, or skin tone. The fact that everyone “recognizes” these men as the sisters, even though they have a foot and at least 60 lbs of muscle on their female counterparts (and are clearly wearing masks), is what makes this movie— it’s so ridiculous that you’re forced not to take anything else seriously. It’s like Joanne the Scammer but with the race flip set to 11. Just imagine if the Wayans had tried for less realism, a la Dave Chappelle’s

news anchor on Chappelle’s Show— without the thick rubber masks, it might have been even better.

Despite this wonderful layer of absurdity, liking White Chicks makes me a little uncomfortable. In another creative team’s hands, it may have reached absurdist brilliance. It could’ve discussed the implications of middle class Black men assuming the identity of rich White women. Instead it just goes for the cheap jokes, and gets kinda gross and cringeworthy in places. Which I guess makes it as guilty a pleasure as I’m going to get.

“Bask in the ambience!”

Day 5: My favorite propaganda movie

Starship Troopers (1997)

By Ciara Midreé — October 6, 2017

I like thinking about what movies are trying to sell me. Particularly romantic comedies. What standards of heteronormativity did I mindlessly absorb just because I watched The Wedding Planner one too many times? I considered devoting this post to Love Actually and it’s blatant heterosexual propaganda (nine storylines– NINE– and not one of them describes anything other than boy-gets-or-loses-girl. Although I guess technically the one with the guy going to America may have counted as a polyamorous situation). But I eventually had to admit that no movie fits the propaganda bill better than Starship Troopers.

I seem to be a big fan of movies that walk that fine line of satire without explicitly stating their intent. You know, the type of films that may be confusing, upsetting, or even encouraging to those who don’t understand that the movie is actually criticizing what it’s depicting. Starship Troopers is one of those movies. If right-wing politics, fascism, and gung-ho militarization weren’t already on your shit-list, you probably won’t understand that Troopers is satirizing these topics.

For years as a baby film lover, I lumped Starship Troopers in with films like Gigli (2003) and Howard the Duck (1986) as movies that are just the worst– and I hadn’t even seen it. I based my opinion off of the “popular opinion” of people who clearly didn’t get what director Paul Verhoeven was going for. When you see the film, you can see that the actors are ridiculously attractive and they speak mostly in cliches and catchphrases because those are the tools of a propaganda machine, what they use to hook an audience. You later find that the characters are empty shells who engage in ridiculously tragic action, because the most potent propaganda is ultimately a facade for devastating, unreasonable deeds. (You should definitely watch this clip and LISTEN to what the teacher says. Don’t just watch Rico draw— the trick, always, is not to get distracted.)

In one of the most telling sequences, we see the bugs and the humans mirror each other exactly. In an attempt to better understand the bugs, Neil Patrick Harris’s character punctures a bug’s brain to gain its knowledge. Later, we see a bug do the exact same thing to a human, in exactly the same manner. There are some who may have watched this film and seen the bugs only as some monstrous Other, but here Verhoeven clearly points out that the bugs and the humans are one and the same— the humans are just as monstrous, just as destructive, and just as dumb.

The recent teaser trailer for Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018) has a similar jingoist feel to the Would You Like to Know More? segments in Starship Troopers, but I fear it has none of the satirical intention. That’s why watching and understanding movies like Starship Troopers is weirdly important. Starship Troopers is horrifically violent not because it looks cool but because mindless, endless killing is horrific. It’s funny not because it’s corny but because jingoistic fascist ideals are like some sick joke. The film is a must-watch especially with the terror of 45 and the rise of alt-right misinformation. #educateyourself

Day 3: My fake life in a movie

Midnight in Paris (2011)

By Ciara Midreé — October 4, 2017

Trying to think of a movie that represents my idea of my life is hard. What is my fake life? It is probably one in which I’m a confident and productive writer who writes all the time while still managing to go out every weekend, meet new people, and make new friends at the drop of a hat. Or does my fake life movie show a world I would like to live in? Multiple people I would like to be? Times I would like to live through?

If so, if my fake life is all of these things, then I would have to say my fake life in a movie is Midnight in Paris. Putting Woody Allen himself aside (it’s difficult, but his work got into my head before I knew anything of his abuses), putting him aside, I look to his art and I see people who are just as tragically human as me, but who somehow manage to function beautifully. Some movies feature characters coping less than others (I tend to look past Interiors in favor of Hannah and Her Sisters, skip Match Point in favor of Scoop, look past the painful Blue Jasmine back to the much more emotionally manageable Annie Hall, so that everything remains happy go-neurotic for longer). The movie that I turn to the most, just for escapism, is Midnight in Paris.

I love this film. Unlike other writer/directors who rely primarily on their dialogue and characters to carry their movies, Allen actually grew in visual expertise, and he presents something truly fascinating here. All warm color, inviting characters, and magical realism, the film drinks you in, much like ideas of nostalgia do. The feeling reminds me of when I was twelve and I started reading The Sorcerer’s Stone. For months, I wished (and waited) for a letter from Hogwarts. Midnight in Paris is Harry Potter for adults.

Just the notion that I could wander around a city, never be seen writing, yet somehow produce a manuscript worthy of Gertrude Stein’s attention— that’s magical. In this world, I could happen upon a random street one night and, quite by chance, be whisked away into a magnificent past that is welcoming, encouraging, and perfectly suited to me. That’s a fake life I would love to lead.

Day 1: My Motivational Movie

The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)

By Ciara Midreé — October 2, 2017

Let’s kick October off with the spookiest horror of all: capitalism. When I stepped into the theater to watch The Wolf of Wall Street, I figured I’d see a cautionary tale of how an 80s stock broker lost it all.

What I ended up seeing in this movie were the sickening delights of power and excess. There’s too much of this movie– it has a run time of 3 hours and everything that can happen does. You want a midget toss? Done. You want your main character snorting coke off his mistress? You got it. It’s the 80s and Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a Wall Street broker who gets whatever he wants while making millions from defrauding people. Belfort is wealthy, White, and wasted– and man is he inspired. It’s like watching The Godfather if the Godfather was coked up and skanky and never suffered any consequences. It’s like watching the rise of a debauched and glutinous Rome, only the fall never comes.

Somehow I did manage to get the lesson in the movie– power corrupts; bad guys actually have fun even though they shouldn’t; white collar crime is under prosecuted, and even when it is, it’s often just a slap on the wrist. When Belfort is finally prosecuted for his crimes, he gets sent to a prison that looks like club med. He ends up serving only a year and a half and goes on to make millions as a public speaker for, you guessed it, sales. Fairy tale ending, in my opinion. He doesn’t overcome anything. He doesn’t struggle with anything except for the challenges involved in hiding giant amounts of money and doing too many drugs.

Yet, even in my hatred of this person, I’m inspired. Even though Belfort’s privilege is positively revolting, I couldn’t help but feel pumped after I walked out of the theater. The Wolf of Wall Street is a rush to watch. I went to see this movie with my brother and I’m telling you we left that theater feeling like motherfucking lions and tigers and bears. Dammit.