Fantasy movies for March

[osprey_archer]

Because A Wrinkle in Time comes out in March, I decided that I should devote the month to fantasy & sci-fi films by women - which turn out to be harder to find than, say, female-directed rom-coms, not least because when you google any combination of “women” and “fantasy” you 100% get porn.

But I persevered! And now I have quite a list, so I thought I would share.



A Wrinkle in Time, directed by Ava DuVernay.

Wonder Woman, directed by Patty Jenkins (which I’ve seen. It was delightful.)

Big, directed by Penny Marshall, which is on my list for this month.

Embers, by Claire Carre, in which (to quote Netflix) “a worldwide epidemic kills millions and leaves the living with no memory of the past and little conception of the future.” I will not be watching this because it sounds like something I emphatically would not enjoy, but I include it here for reasons of completeness.

Everything by the Wachowskis. I’ve seen the Matrix movies and Jupiter Ascending, but haven’t seen Speed Racer so I guess I could see that one, although I feel reluctant because… Speed Racer.

Twilight (which I’ve seen), directed by Catherine Hardwicke, who also directed

Red Riding Hood! Which I haven’t seen! Although it’s described as a horror-fantasy so it may be too gory for me. It does star Amanda Seyfried so it might be worth watching even if I have to watch some of it through my fingers. Has anyone seen it?

Side note: while I was looking for fantasy films I ran across some allusions to a tradition of female-directed horror films. I didn’t follow up on this lead because I don’t watch horror films, but… that’s a thing that exists! Now you know.

(On the horror film front, Kathryn Bigelow directed Near Dark and Strange Days, both of which look too gory for me.)

I may save these more horror tinged films for October, though. I’m also considering Amy Heckerling’s Vamps for October, because it is about vampires, although it doesn’t look like a horror film. And - for a possibly more horrifying vampire movie - maybe Ana Lily Amirpour’s A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night?

But getting back on the topic of fantasy films for March. There’s also Frozen, co-directed by Jennifer Lee and Chris Buck. I love this movie and may watch it again this month on general principle.

Frozen got me onto the topic of female animators, which reminded me of Lotte Reiniger, the early twentieth-century animator who came to my attention after Google did a doodle about her last year. I watched her film The Adventures of Prince Achmed, because it was the only one Netflix had, and… I didn’t like it very much, I’m afraid.

But she did many, many fairy-tale short films, so I may watch some of those on Youtube.

Another animator who did fairy-tale shorts: Soviet director Alexandra Snezhko-Blotskaya. Also available on Youtube. And for a feature length Soviet fairy tale film, Vera Tsekhanovskaya co-directed The Wild Swans with Mikhail Tseckanovsky.

(Or maybe I should set aside a month specifically for animation. Hmm. I could add Norah Twomey’s The Breadwinner to that list. Although I might watch that for St. Patrick’s Day, as it’s an Irish production, even though the subject isn’t Irish. Does that affect its St. Patrick’s Day appropriateness?)

There were actually quite a number of female Soviet directors: I’m super looking forward to seeing Larisa Shepitko’s The Ascent, a war drama about World War II, and I’d like to see Tatyana Liozovna’s Seventeen Moments of Spring which is a World War II espionage thriller, although that might be harder to get a hold of… MAYBE I SHOULD HAVE A SOVIET MONTH… ahem, but this is wandering quite far afield, I’ll set it aside for later.

Yuliya Solntseva’s The Enchanted Desna is fantasy and it sounds, in fact, enchanting, and it might be available on Youtube! So that’s a maybe.



The upshot of all this list-making is that I have lots of good ideas for other months, and a number of things to check out on Youtube, but I've added exactly two movies to my Netflix DVD queue for March. (Big and The Breadwinner - which is for St. Patrick’s Day, because the director is Irish.) Possibly I need to try something different. An Ava DuVernay retrospective, perhaps?

Or I could take this opportunity to try out The Musketeers.

Comments

[sovay]

(On the horror film front, Kathryn Bigelow directed Near Dark and Strange Days, both of which look too gory for me.)

I would not call Strange Days either gory or horror—I'd classify it soundly as neo-noir science fiction with radical politics; I'm not sure I think of it as cyberpunk, but I understand why it's sometimes categorized that way—but seriously disturbing content is a plot point, so it might still not be something you want to watch. It is my current favorite movie by Kathryn Bigelow, though.

Antonia Bird's Ravenous (1999) is about the wendigo myth, i.e., cannibalism, and so may also exceed your horror limits, but I'm really fond of it. It is darkly funny without being any kind of spoof, which I really respect.

I haven't seen it yet, but I'm really looking forward to Agnieszka Smoczyńska's The Lure (2015). It sounds siren-song and batshit.

[osprey_archer]

The Lure looks super weird but probably in a good way. Their fish tails are so long! It's like they're half eel rather than half fish.

[sovay]

Their fish tails are so long! It's like they're half eel rather than half fish.

That's what they look like to me, too! And I've never seen that in a movie.

[ladyherenya]

I didn't get far enough into Red Riding Hood to find out if it is horror; I stopped watching because it didn't seem very good. I can't remember now why I thought that, just that I'd wanted to like it, or at least enjoy watching it, and had been disappointed.

[osprey_archer]

I've heard before that it's not very good, so I may end up giving it a miss. It's too bad! I've really liked Amanda Seyfried in other things. But sometimes even a good actor can't save a movie from itself.

[thawrecka]

Vamps is basically a low budget vampire chick flick/rom com. It is zero percent horror, though there are a bunch of silly monster tropes in there. Also, it has Sigourney Weaver, who is almost always very fun.

Red Riding Hood is pretty much terrible but enjoyable if you're in the mood for a pulpy werewolf romance aimed at 14 year olds. Everyone in it is very pretty.

[osprey_archer]

Honestly silly monster tropes is probably far more my bag than anything that was actually horror. Embrace the silly monster tropes, girls! Run wild over the city being weird and fangy!

[evelyn_b]

"leaves the living with no memory of the past and little conception of the future.”

Does it also destroy all libraries, because I know information overload is a problem but it shouldn't be that hard to get a handle on the basics.

I'm really excited for A Wrinkle in Time. I didn't think I had this many feelings about Meg and Calvin but it turns out I do.

(I'm not that thrilled with the sparkly design of the Ws but whatever, it's a movie, do what you want).

[osprey_archer]

I think the idea is that hey not only lose their memories of the past, but also lose the ability to form new long-term memories - so they could read this stuff at the library but it wouldn't stick.

However, I have not seen the movie and do not plan to see the movie because that sounds so soul-crushingly depressing to me, so I may be quite off.

Aren't the Ws supposed to look like homeless ladies, basically? I think it's going to be a good movie, but in between the sparkly W costumes and the prominence of Meg's dad in early trailers (although they seem to have scaled that back), I'm not sure it's going to be a good adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time - if that makes sense.

[evelyn_b]

Ok, that makes more sense, but also sounds really sad. :(

Aren't the Ws supposed to look like homeless ladies, basically?

They are! Or at least like very eccentric ladies who wear a lot of clothes one on top of the other and whose home is ramshackle and full of weird taxidermy and expensive-looking china with mysterious cheeses baked on. At least that's how they are in the beginning; it turns out they are not human and can take on other forms. I like their dusty incarnation and I'm not feeling the sparkles. But I'll probably accept it in the movie because hey, it's a movie.

It makes plenty of sense! I guess I don't mind Meg's dad being foregrounded a little? It's hard to tell from the trailers what they're going to do, but he was an important damsel in distress in the book even if he didn't have that many lines. I hope they have at least a little about Meg's mother, too, I always liked the idea of her.

Probably it won't be a totally faithful adaptation. If nothing else, the Ws are going to be covered in glitter instead of shabby, and that is a little disappointing.

But I'm easy to please. Meg and Calvin look exactly right and that's apparently all I need to be happy. I'm sorry that we haven't gotten any real dialogue from them in the trailers that I've seen - it's been all sparkle and spectacle. I especially like that Meg (at least in the glimpses we get in the trailer) looks like she really needs those glasses.

(I haven't mentioned Charles Wallace because I don't care about Charles Wallace very much at all. :( Maybe this movie will change that? I'm sure he's tucked into the trailers somewhere but I barely noticed him).

[osprey_archer]

I think he must be in the trailer somewhere, given that he's the book's final damsel in distress and saving him is Meg's Big Hero Moment, but he's not very prominent if he's there at all. It always just seems to be Meg and Calvin running away from the big sparkly monsters.

Maybe Meg's dad will be the damsel-in-distress whom Meg saves with the power of love? That would def. explain why he's a bit more foregrounded and Charles Wallace is nowhere in sight.

It would throw a monkey wrench in any possible sequels, though, given that Charles Wallace only gets more and more prominent as the books go on.

[littlerhymes]

I LOVE SPEED RACER, UNIRONICALLY. It's really underrated, imo. It just took its own very particular path and voice which was very hard to market or find an audience for...

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night isn't very scary. It's very languid and beautiful and slowly creepy.

[osprey_archer]

My roommate likes Speed Racer too. It seems to be sort of a cult phenomenon: most people have forgotten about it or remember it mostly as a flop, but it has its ferocious fans... Maybe I should try it after all.