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The Strongest “Strong Female Leads” Are Those With More Than Physical Strength
Female-led action films of the last five years have started showing that empathy is also an integral part of the heroic scaffolding. It’s noteworthy that by combining physical and emotional strength, films like Wonder Woman, Captain Marvel, and Mad Max: Fury Road, demonstrate that women do not have to be emotional vacuums in order to live up to their heroic ideals.
The Bling Ring, Debbie Ocean, and Why We Can’t Help But Love CInema’s Designer Thieves
Whether it’s stealing for fun or stealing for profit, a major draw of the Designer Thief is the way she is depicted. The highly stylized treatment of these characters transforms them from figures we judge into figures of envy. They are successful thieves, able to live in beautiful homes and swan around in beautiful clothes, and through them we can imagine what our lives would be like if we also had access to unfettered wealth. These criminal characters permit us to enjoy the thrill of their ill-gotten gains, minus the guilt or responsibility of actually committing any crimes.
What Happened to Cinema’s Virginal Final Girl?
The original Final Girl is slowly but surely being crowded out by a newer, more progressive iteration that acknowledges the restrictive ideas that initially gave birth to her. Over the last couple of decades, and particularly in the last 10 years, the last girl standing has looked a lot different from the final girls of the past. Progressively, in films like Scream, The Cabin In The Woods and It Follows, final girls have complicated the existing frame of the trope by pushing against its restrictions.
9 Festival Favorites From 2019 Still On The Horizon
The next few months are going to be dominated by big “awards” movies (think Bombshell, Little Women) and even bigger blockbusters (The Rise of Skywalker). But they’re not the only films worthy of your attention, and money, on the horizon. There is some great indie fare, much of which debuted on the festival circuit this year, coming to theaters and streaming services soon. So mark these dates down – at least the ones we have; we’re still waiting for release info on some of them – to get your quality indie fill.