Mulan

1998 cartoon

Rating: 16/20 (Buster: 20/20)

Plot: The titular feminist, with the help of the talking donkey from the Shrek movies, has to become a man in order to save her father's life and the future of China.

There are animation issues with this one, but it's hard to argue a movie's greatness when it features the voice work of Mr. Miyagi, the dude in the Chinese restaurant in that Seinfeld episode, and Sulu. Is Mulan a Disney princess? She's one of the better role models if she is. I mean, sure she runs away, steals, lies, and befriends a dragon, but she's a good smart and brave character who I wouldn't mind my son emulating. Her army friends--including a little fellow voiced by Harvey Fierstein who, if I made animated films, I'd have do all the voices in one of my movies just to do it--are good comic characters although her love interest is a little generic. The bad guy is menacing and brings some darkness, and I'm glad the Disney people didn't decide to unleash Gilbert Gottfried to give voice to his bird. I also like most of the songs, especially the exciting "I'll Make a Man out of You," a song which, when I first heard this in 1998, helped encourage me to urinate standing up. Some day, I will make an animated movie based on my personal urination history. Tentative title--I Pee: Stand Up for Yourself, Hotshot. Harvey Fierstein will provide the voice of young Shane and older Shane, Shane's father, Shane's mother, Shane's best friend Vernon, Shane's future wife Jennifer, "locker room bullies 1-17," and Rodolfo the Talking Toilet. And his character in Mulan if I can get the Disney people to let me borrow him.

The Libertine

 1968 sexy Italian movie

Rating: 13/20

Plot: A widow discovers that her late husband had an apartment rented solely for extracurricular shenanigans and decides to use it to explore her own sexuality.

I'm now a big fan of Catherine Spaak and her versatile hair. She's really good here though there's not nearly as much nudity as you'd expect from this. Or maybe from these other posters:

I really need to check out more Catherine Spaak movies though. This isn't really a funny movie at all. It's cute, more than a little dated. It's got a little bit of style but looks cheaply produced. There is a really cute little song that runs throughout the movie. Aside from Spaak's nice performance, a guy named Renzo Montagnani is really good as Fabrizio. I'm not sure what the message for women is here, probably because I'm not a woman living in the late-60s, but I'm sure there's some kind of feminist idea here. Or maybe not since a male wrote the original story, a male wrote the screenplay, and a male directed the thing.

This has nothing to do with the Johnny Depp movie, by the way.

I Spit on Your Grave

1978 feminist movie

Rating: 6/20

Plot: A writer retreats to the woods to work on a novel but is repeatedly assaulted and abused by four thugs. After they rape and humiliate her, three-fourths of them think she's been left for dead. Unfortunately for them, she's still alive. And pissed!

Trashy. There's a thin line, and the prolonged scenes of rapin' and killin' in this throw it firmly in the trashy category. The lack of budget isn't really a problem; as a matter of fact, if anything, it adds to the tension. So does the complete lack of music, though I suspect that it's because the makers of this couldn't afford any music or just forgot that movies are supposed to have music. This is a movie in two halves. The degradation of the protagonist goes on and on in the first half. Her story of revenge takes up the second, and the reason it didn't work for me is likely because the violence seems so unrealistic compared to what happened to her in that first half. I bet you a dollar, by the way, that I don't ever see the remake of this one.

Daisies

1966 Czech feminist film

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Two girls (Marie I and Marie II) decide that the world is bad. As a result, they decide to be bad, finding various ways to misbehave by conning perverse butterfly collectors, playing with the food, playing with their food more, breaking stuff, drowning, and being general nuisances. Honestly, you're going to be frustrated if you like movies that have plots and characters who aren't named the exact same thing.

Yet another Eastern European movie, Czech even. At times, you could accuse this of looking like a film school project that the professor didn't even like very much. It's an artsy-fartsy dadaistic clash of visual trickery and tomfoolery. You've got rapid and maddening color changes, weird sound effects (like creaking door sounds when the gals move their limbs or typewriter noises when there's nary a typewriter), lots of scenes involving the slicing and dicing of phallic symbols, the best scissor fight you're likely to see, and lots of scenes that seem to go on forever. But it does all add up to something, again with sort of an obvious film schoolish theme, and it is visually arresting and completely interesting considering the time and place it was made. It didn't last long, by the way. Czechoslovakia banned, so nobody would get to see the fantastic scene where the Maries take after Shirley Temple in The Littlest Rebel (a movie that should have been banned in Czechoslovakia and everywhere else; and I'm not even pro-censorship!) and mimic trains while in blackface. There's some Svankmajer-esque animation with the quicky-shots of things like locks, butterflies, word shavings, and colors. This is not exactly a movie that stands the test of time, and the stream-of-conscious delivery and too-lengthy scenes will annoy most people, but I'm nevertheless happy I watched it.