Category: Reviews

Gender is Queer: A Review of ‘Boy Meets Girl’

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Boy Meets Girl (2014)
Written and Directed by Eric Schaeffer
101 min.

Spoiler-free.

Gender is weird. Think about it: there’s two types of a being, and they have to come together in order to procreate. That’s just strange as hell. Like, why isn’t it that there’s just one type of being, and when it wants to make more beings, it just makes them? There’s probably some evolutionary reason for this I guess, like that sexual reproduction makes evolution faster because DNA recombines as opposed to asexual reproduction where DNA doesn’t recombine and thus evolution takes way longer (I checked Yahoo Answers) but still, it’s weird. I don’t care that it’s why we’re here and why we continue to be here—it just doesn’t jive with our modern minds, conceptually. We like things instant. It’s lame that I can’t just tell my body to make a baby and then a baby happens. Oh well, maybe in the next update.

It’s not just that we’re all a bunch of spoiled technobrats, though—love itself makes us realize how dumb gender is. People don’t fall in love with gender—we’re not a bunch of wandering automatons with procreation as our sole directive. We’re philosophical beings looking for a person that our soul gels with. The downside of that beautiful reality is that sometimes, said person isn’t someone we’re sexually attracted to—whatever, that’s what friends are for. Another downside is that maybe said person is someone you are sexually attracted to, but they are of a gender you are not used to being sexually attracted to. That can get messy.

Here’s the thing, though. There’s a point of time in everyone’s life—whether you’re gay, straight, or bi—where even the gender, or genders, that you are currently sexually attracted to, you weren’t used to being sexually attracted to, because you weren’t used to being sexually attracted to anyone at all. This period is called early adolescence, and everyone goes through it. And because everyone goes through it, everyone should be able to relate to this film, no matter what their sexual orientation.

On top of that, when you think about it, falling in love in general is like falling in love with a gender you’re not ready to fall in love with, because it’s always just that scary, and new, and strange, and confusing, even if you’ve fallen in love several times before. Eric Schaeffer understands this, and has imbued this seemingly specifically-themed film with universal themes. As a result, Boy Meets Girl transcends its Queer Cinema sub-genre and has more to say about love than the vast majority of romance movies.

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Proposed Double Feature: ‘Wall Street’ & ‘Boiler Room’

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Continuing a series started by John D’Amico.

You could watch Wall Street first and then Boiler Room, or the other way around, or be meta and put them both on at the same time and quote the scene where everyone in Boiler Room quotes Wall Street while watching Wall Street.

However you choose, these two movies are way better than The Wolf of Wall Street or that Michael J. Fox one, the one with Helen Slater.

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Proposed Double Feature: ‘Shattered Glass’ & ’30 for 30: Big Shot’

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Continuing a series started by John D’Amico.

Shattered Glass is a wonderful movie that doesn’t get enough credit. It’s that case where an indie movie is good enough to be a real movie, so nobody notices it.  People do like it, but their eyes don’t light up the way they do when they talk about some shit that sucks like Wendy and Lucy. It’s hip to like crappy shit, whereas, it’s square to like good movies.

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Work Boots and Ballet Slippers: A Review of ‘Flashdance’

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Flashdance (1983)
Written by Thomas Hedley Jr. and Joe Eszterhas
Directed by Adrian Lyne

When mentioning having recently seen this for the first time, more than anything I hear, “Too bad you didn’t see it in the ‘80‘s—it was great then, but now it doesn’t hold up.”  Even people who like it seem to only like it ironically, for its leg warmers and soundtrack.  Few take it seriously—it’s got a 30% on Rotten Tomatoes, and the screenplay got a Razzie.

Did we see the same movie?  Because to me, Flashdance is a cohesive and universally relatable work of art.  In fact, I was so impressed by it that I watched it again a couple days later.  What gives?

I think it has to do with it being so iconic to its era that people have become blind to its timeless themes and legitimate beauty.  It’s mistaken for a glamorous romp about a girl with high heels on, when really, it’s the struggle of a woman alternating between bare feet and work boots.  It’s remembered as an ‘80’s movie’ for silly, surface reasons, but really, it’s a human movie.
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God is Dead?: A Review of ‘God’s Not Dead’

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God’s Not Dead (2014)
Directed by Harold Cronk
Written by Chuck Konzelman and Gary Solomon
113 min.

Mild spoilers, but who cares.

There’s a scene in God’s Not Dead where a woman who has been diagnosed with cancer sits down with her boyfriend for a fancy dinner at a nice restaurant.  The boyfriend smiles excitedly and says “I just made partner.”  She responds with “I have cancer.”  He replies, “Can’t this wait?” and then proceeds to break up with her for having cancer.

This is what Christians think atheists are like.

Also, apparently, just about everyone is an atheist.
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