Naked Among Wolves (1967)

Too often writers struggle with writing believable female characters in the action genre. Either they are masculinized(GI Jane)which defeats the purpose of their existence or their costumes are just ridiculously tight and it feels like someone dropped a fashion model in the middle of a battlefield(Wonder Woman). So when they get it right, it should be celebrated.

I hesitate to applaud Taylor Sheridan after seeing his previous projects that do nothing more than prop up the Confederacy. However, Lioness is turning out to be believable and exciting to watch. The third season has dropped and aside from the gratuitous nudity it has been as good as the previous two seasons.

Zoe Saldaña is a CIA operative who leads a special program that recruits women to infiltrateand dismantle international criminal enterprises, with a QRT(Quick Response Team) providing operational security that shoots people and blows things up on a weekly basis. This is an action series, to be sure, but it is also filled with the drama and intrigue of a Tom Clancy political thriller.

The Olivia Wilde renaissance is upon us. After her personal life controversy that weighed down the fairly mediocre Don’t Worry Darling, the actor/director took a four year hiatus before coming back into the spotlight this summer. The box-office success of A24’s The Invite has taken center stage, but the campy erotic thriller I Want Your Sex is an equally delightful display of Wilde’s talent. 

The film opens with a young man named Elliot (Cooper Hoffman) running through a house in women’s lingerie, his nose bleeding. When he gets outside, he finds Erika (Wilde), naked and floating in the pool. She appears dead, and Elliot screams in horror. This sets the basis for the plot of the film, which spans the 9 ½ weeks before the incident intercut with the police interrogation afterwards. 

It turns out Erika and Elliot’s relationship was even more unconventional than their outfit choices might suggest. Erika is a well-known artist who revels in creating provocative multimedia pieces that stretch the boundaries between artwork and pornography. Elliot comes into her life when he is fresh out of college and looking for a job as an assistant. The dynamic is instantly predatory, with Erika making sexual comments in the interview and deciding to have sex with him mere days later.

This isn’t the first workplace erotic thriller to feature an older woman and a younger man, but it’s by far the best. Where Babygirl (2024) flips the power dynamic when it comes to sex, positioning Kidman’s character as submissive enough to blow up her entire life for a man, I Want Your Sex keeps the woman in charge. Director Gregg Araki understands the inherent subversiveness of the dynamic and allows Erika to emanate power. She is a boss in the boardroom and in bed. Her bitchy, confident demeanor isn’t an act, it’s the way she approaches the world. Her dominance makes the film sexy even as she clearly behaves immorally and takes advantage of her employee. In the police interrogations, Detective Zola (Margaret Cho) serves as the moral voice of clarity, pointing out just how messed up the dynamic was despite the initial appeal it had to both sides.

TW: Sexual Assault, Body Horror, Animal Violence // Spoilers below

There is no more delicate a topic to portray than sexual assault and, because of its heaviness, it seldom gets the attention and discussion it deserves. However, when it is represented in some capacity, it is usually in an explicit and exploitative way that is both incredibly disturbing and detrimental. Often, it's shown in extremes to shock audiences by mixing taboo and the male gaze for some sinister reactionary experiment (stares at Game of Thrones for embodying all of this). Even in the sub-genre that targets this issue specifically, Rape Revenge Films, there is campy violence used by many of these films to transform the topic into a horror story for men and less an exploration of this widespread pandemic that has been plaguing society since inception. So when Shudder picked up Violation for distribution, I was ultimately skeptical. Is this just going to be a modern-day I Spit on Your Grave or a post-horror, A-24 wannabe about sexual assault? It ended up being both — leaving me disappointed and underwhelmed. It begs the question: what is the point of making films about sexual assault if you’re not bringing a realistic or ignored viewpoint to the forefront?

The film follows a pair of once-close, now estranged sisters whose bond is tested when one of their husbands rapes her sister. The protagonist and victim, Miriam, reverses the roles by murdering her brother-in-law, Dylan. What could’ve been a compelling short film is drawn out into an hour and 42 minutes of stock forest footage, over-color-corrected sequences, and excruciatingly long, redundant, gross-out scenes. There is no tension or fear about Miriam getting caught and you don’t know enough about her to care if it happens. The only thing that is crystal clear is that Dylan is horrible — which was obvious right from the beginning with his hunting obsession and implied slight distaste toward Miriam for “controlling” (?) Greta, his wife. The plot is extremely heavy-handed and tries to make the rape a “reveal”, halfway through the film, which is both insulting and incredibly odd considering both the logline and title make it pretty obvious what the film is about. It could’ve been interesting from a psychological perspective if we were able to be inside Miriam’s mind and feel with her. Instead, it provides the audience a large distance between every character and them - alongside harboring the general suspicion subconsciously that the ensemble unjustifiedly has toward Miriam. The result: a lack of empathy from viewers or vitality from the plot. There is no subversion, winding arch, or even explanation. Just straight, predictable, and disgusting violence.

The characters and acting are just as flat as the film. The wolf eating the rabbit in the beyond obvious metaphor and the spider dying in a cup (again smack in the face) has more range and emotional pull than any of the personages at play. Despite there being lengthy scenes for Greta (Anna Maguire) and Miriam (Madeleine Sims-Fewer) reminiscing about their childhood and father, little is known about them presently and before, besides Miriam being called Greta’s “White Knight” (not subtle whatsoever) and that there was some sort of falling out between the once inseparable sisters. Miriam, herself, is perceived by others to be deceiving and controlling yet, we seldom see her act that way beyond a bit selfish and gives a poor portrayal of sexual assault survivors. Alongside that, the editing jumps between points in the timeline and has viewers confused on what is happening and when it is taking place - making Miriam's account of events start to seem unreliable. Instead of making a statement about how survivors must be heard, regardless of reputation, it enforces the cruel perception of Miriam and gives her a vicious persona by having her kill Dylan (Jesse LaVercombe). However, she regrets murdering him immediately - almost freeing him and puking and crying when she both kills and has to dispose of him. It is just grueling to watch instead of providing a sense of justice or empathy.

The absence of live theatre this year has left a gaping, red-curtain-sized hole in my heart. Now that I’m desperately missing one of my favorite things, I rely on film adaptations of musicals to supplement those long-missing endorphins and make that magic more accessible.

New to Netflix, The Prom seemed like it could be the answer to my prayers. The glitz, glam, and star-power definitely acted as a draw, but my hopefulness almost immediately soured upon starting the film. With the perfect formula to succeed, how did this film not only fall flat but become hard to sit through? Too many ill-fitted choices add up to an off-putting and distracting experience.

In this film, four has-beens of the Broadway community (played by Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman, James Corden, and Andrew Rannells) attempt to boost their image by becoming the faces of a small-scale social justice movement. They come across the story of Emma (Jo Ellen Pellman), a teen in Indiana whose wish to take her girlfriend to Prom develops into a major source of contention in her community, canceling the event altogether.

Acknowledging that this film draws deeply from the source material, I can’t help but notice that, in true Ryan Murphy fashion, this narrative is packed with dramatic tricks that don’t know when to quit, and barely enough laugh-out-loud one-liners for me to count on one hand. As the group of thespians tries to persuade the town to be more inclusive, what could have been a heartwarming tale descents into cliches and problematic undoings. Most concerning of all, Emma is cast aside and wholly invalidated when she truly deserves to be the heroine of this story.

It’s almost the end of the first month of 2021, and just over a week since the U.S. saw a new president take office. In light of the occasion, some of us highlighted our favorite political films below!

Bombshell (2019)