I don't like Easter eggs

I'm actually really sick of the concept of Easter eggs in popular culture. I thought they were really buried within a particular frame and you had to artfully pause the DVD to see it at the right second. Now they just seem to be barely even deep cut, nudge nudge, wink wink see what we did there references. I thought one of the Blade Runner 2049 moments was kind of clever until I watched one of those "You missed all the cool shit" Looper videos that patronises their audience with how much they learnt from FUCKING REDDIT.

These people don't know anything. They go on Reddit and take notes and then act like they knew all along. They're not even really film reviewers, they just happen to present on these popular channels and have some of the most annoying, non-radio friendly voices. And they never get busted for fair use because they're popular and aren't making any major statements against companies, just actors. Who the industry doesn't give a fuck about ultimately. They always think they know what happened to certain actors, and most of it again is just lifted from other sites. I was rolling my eyes listening to a couple of videos that weren't telling me much I hadn't actually determined from only paying about 80% attention to the movie. And some of their theories are farfetched, but they are also FAN theories they basically steal from spending their days doing "research".

Did you figure out I also hate Looper?

Blade Runner and the Problem with nostalgia

I learnt recently nostalgia used to be considered a psychological illness, an affliction based on the want for a happier time when one was in a general malaise or depression. If you're happy, you're not leaning towards the past. Based on this emotion, or rather this state of mind, Hollywood is making a fucking killing.

I want research on what percentage of genuinely original films have been made in the last ten years. No reboots, no re-imaginings, no affiliated brand names or comics. One hundred percent original. I guess it's less than half, I'm sure there are more movies I personally haven't heard of. I miss heaps. But I think I'm blinded by reboots and franchises. Thor Ragnarok looks kinda cool, but I've just spent almost three hours in a theatre to watch Blade Runner 2049, and I'm done. You don't have to wait for the director's cut, kids. I think there's about two minutes of deleted material. I'm pretty sure the whole thing is there on film. I watched one of the original cuts this past week, over two days since one of my streams went down. It's an okay movie but I'm not in love with it. The people who are going to this have to be fans of the original. It's not a date movie unless your date is your live in partner and you've both been fanatical about the original. I was with someone who had no frame of reference and someone who was more clued in. The former was getting very bored and I do not blame her. I was really dedicated to this until towards the end of the second act, which was just dragging. I know the original was based around some heavy, philosophical dialogue, but some of it was stretched. And we did not need nearly a minute of a giant naked hologram to explain Gosling's heartbreak over losing his hologram girlfriend and realising love can be a construct too. The twists were probably more obvious way before I saw them, but by then there was nothing new to learn. The point was made. It was thematically bathed in theological references, heavy-handed at times, and lingering shots that went well past the point being conveyed. It was self-indulgent, and Ridley Scott was only exec producer. Even the plot was weak and kinda hack. I wasn't thrilled by it.

We all thought Lucas was doing the good work when he remastered the original trilogy. My understanding was they were rescuing the film stocks that were deteriorating for a straight remaster when he suddenly decided to just add stupid things, and stupid scenes that looked bad, because he had the opportunity to do so, when all most people wanted was the splody shit to look cooler than it did in the original. And it did. The splody stuff was great. It was the incidental back/foreground shit we didn't need. Or Han "stepping" on Jaba's tail... Ok it meant younger kids like me who missed the whole thing got to go to the movies and see the "originals", and I enjoyed them, but the first cuts were fine.

We think we'll feel as good as we did back then, but it's like your first high of anything, by rights, it's never replicated. We'd have to wipe our own brains clean to see something again with fresh eyes. And if those were our adult eyes, would they see what we saw as kids? Probably not.

Luc Besson makes a lot of hot garbage

I've only now just realised Luc Besson is really fucking overrated. He's had some hits and misses, and I loved Leon and defended it to a lot of people without realising it was based on his real life relationship with an underage girl. Ah, the French. So liberal with their movie rating systems and love of the young.

So now I don't think I can defend it much. The Fifth Element is a great film, but I don't think it's amazing. It's a lot of fun to watch. But after posting my essay which included references to his movie about Joan of Arc, The Messenger, I saw his name in my references and went, oh I didn't remember he directed it.

It's not as good as I remember. I can see he wants to paint a picture of a dubious schizophrenic by using a lot of fever dream imagery. And I like some of the philosophical aspects he raises around death and how it's romanticisied. I think he had a lot of good ideas that culminated in a very long, not very well paced narrative. Some of it was for shock value, but the acting wasn't really good. John Malcovich and Faye Dunaway are probably the best in this, and the hot detective from Dexter kind of played a pseudo love interest for Joan, who was very wooden then very dramatic but I actually enjoyed his performance. Mila Jovovich is... a problem.

She's a problem because she was actually quite amazing in Fifth Element while they could play on her English being bad so they make her like the baby woman, enfant, ingenue - an archetype which has now been heavily critiqued as possibly exploitative - so if we look at the director's history, yeah it gets a bit on the nose. But she is a fun character who grows up and learns as quickly as she can, and isn't always necessarily in danger but probably ends up rescued a touch too often. But I'm not here to trash The Fifth Element.

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets has been met with an underwhelming response. It looks gorgeous and the story sounds interesting, but it's all style over substance apparently. I was interested in it when I saw he was directing, I mean, he's the right guy really, it's a French comic series. But he wanted another Fifth Element. I think he does a lot of his own writing, and his scripts aren't brilliant. They have moments of brilliance then tend to fall down. Which is why the conceit of Lucy bothered me so much, given we've moved on from the 10% brain theory ages ago. He could've capitalised on it back when it was plausible, but I think he personally stumbled on it recently and went, that's a cool premise, and then crammed in a heap of evolutionary theory. So what to we get? According to Dan Harmon, it's a film with no stakes. Once she's jacked up on the blue shit, she's unstoppable. It does look very pretty. Hot garbage basically. But I have no interest in seeing it because the concept frustrated me from day one. (In fact I even questioned whether it was still a thing and thought maybe it wasn't debunked. It was.)

I think it's about time we stop separating directors from their work for art's sake. Much like Woody Allen and Roman Polanski, the former apparently never reading any articles or criticism of his films or his relationship with his adopted daughter, and some of the Hollywood alum refuse to stop giving him a pass because he makes all these amazing movies. But that's difficult when he, Polanski and Besson persistently allude to these type of older man, particularly young girl relationships, and end up fetishising them rather than condemning them. I'm not a fan of Allen, I didn't like Rosemary's Baby, which turns out to be the only Polanski movie I've seen. I don't enjoy 60s to 70s horror, I hated the Omen. I did sort of like Psycho but I'm just not interested in Hitchcock.

I have my favourite directors: Hal Hartley, Lynch on a good day (he can be a bit indefensible especially after the new Twin Peaks), Todd Solodnoz; mostly ultra indie types who went a little maverick but still received a lot of praise. I keep forgetting the Henry Fool trilogy will soon be mine, I think I'll spent a post dedicated to my love of this trilogy. 

But I don't think I'm going to hold Besson up as being an amazing director because he did one thing I happened to love and another thing I think was more brilliant than it probably was.

Observations on Mind over Body Essay (2001)

The medical model of psychology has been conceptualised and redeveloped extensively since its advent. Where there were once misconceptions and misdiagnoses now lie redefinitions and new techniques to better understand the intricacies of mental illnesses. Psychosis is one such illness that has been shrouded in misunderstanding. This illness can be the result of varying disorders and can lead the sufferer to behave irrationally and without any sense of reality. For this reason, many sufferers were once seen to be demonically possessed, because of a lack of understanding concerning mental disorders. This has placed a stigma on sufferers, putting them under the definition of deviant or insane. The Western medical model is now more capable of defining and treating psychosis through medication and therapy and also by looking at the correlation between physical and mental health. By looking at representations of psychosis and demonic possession in such texts as The Exorcist, Girl Interrupted and The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc as well as arguments formed by practitioners and theorists, it will become more evident how the mental state of the sufferer could possibly relate to their physical well being and how this may be misconstrued as possession.

Psychosis stems from various mental disorders which can include schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and depression. It can present itself through the sufferer’s delusions or irrational behaviours which have an adverse effect on their everyday functioning. Because of an impaired perception of reality, the sufferer can experience hallucinations which include any sensory perception that has no outside stimulus. Therefore, the sufferer can see visions or hear voices that would be considered by others to be inside their head. Delusions formed by psychotics are the result of fixations that are deemed unrealistic by others. This includes paranoia, delusions of grandeur, or the belief they are suffering from a terminal illness (Psychosis, pg. 1, 2001, http//www.aacap.org/about/glossary/Psychosis.htm).

These symptoms can be related to reports of possession. Melissa A. Bromwell illustrates these notions in her essay on demonic possession which explains in medical terminology how the sufferer is seen to be under the influence of an evil entity. She points out in the essay:
[g]eneral psychotic episodes . . . can also closely simulate a state of demonic possession by hallucinations or delusions. The delusions can be ones of thought insertion . . . delusions of guilt, delusions of grandeur, such as being God (or a demon), or delusions that God (or a demon) is speaking to the person and giving commands for a special mission. (Demonic Possession, pg. 1, 1999, http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/neauro/neauro99/web3/
Bromwell.html).
These notions are evident in The Messenger where Joan believes she is acting on a mission sent to her from God. Her hallucinations and delusions were seen to make her act irrationally, but because this could not be extensively proven through medicine, many believed she was a messenger from God.

Bromwell also illustrates how psychotics react to religious artifacts or symbols because of their demonic delusions. Examples of this can be seen in The Exorcist, in which it becomes evident that the character Regan is actually possessed by the devil and her mother’s only final option is to consult a priest to perform an exorcism. Bromwell makes mention of this phenomenon in which family members can also come under the delusion that the sufferer is possessed when no other treatment for them is effective. (Bromwell, pg. 2, 1999).

The character of Regan has become a stereotype for demonic possession and her reactions to certain religious symbols not only demonstrates aspects of this stereotype but perpetuates them as well. It is interesting that Regan is known to have been suffering flu symptoms before any of the manifestations of the devil present themselves. The other interesting fact is that she has also reached the point of puberty, and her hormonal changes were argued to account for her erratic behaviour. The study carried out on menstrual functioning and psychopathology proved that menstruation does affect psychological disorders like depression and obsessive compulsive disorder. (Bisaga, K., et al. pg. 1, 2002)

The representation of Regan as a possessed woman, as argued by Creed, “becomes the excuse for legitimising a display of aberrant feminine behaviour which is depicted as depraved, monstrous, abject - and perversely appealing.” (1993, pg. 31). Regan’s physical debilitation and hormonal maturation, as well as her innocence, are seen to make her vulnerable to demonic influences, but Creed is arguing against this negative depiction, saying that the representation of Regan as the possessed monster seems to justify her behaviour as an erratic woman. The film sets up the dichotomy between psychology and religion because of science’s inability to fully explain Regan’s conditions in relation to the bizarre occurrences in the house. In this case the film seems to be saying that since psychology could not always explain the erratic nature of women, perhaps religion has the only answers.

Susanna Kasen’s story of her time in a mental institution which was adapted into the film Girl Interrupted illustrates not only the operations of the sixties mental asylum for women but also the disassociation the women have from the rest of the world because of the diagnoses that have been placed on them. It takes Susanna’s view of the other girls to bring them out of themselves to make a recovery and she eventually considers each of them and herself to be sane in their own rights. The character Daisy is repulsed by eating with the other girls because she believes “it’s like being in a room full of people all taking a dump at once.” Her somatic disorder comes about from her human need for privacy, but because the patients at hospital have to be watched over she cannot function correctly within the hospital. Her character demonstrates how beliefs can be strong enough to disrupt the body’s regulatory functions and Daisy has conditioned her body to become sick when ingesting anything other than chicken.

The other instance where the mind’s functioning can be seen to directly impinge on the body through belief alone can be seen with the notion explored by Hirst and Woolley concerning voodoo death. This presented the “possibility that death could occur as a consequence of beliefs”. (1982, pg. 26) The sympathico-adrenal system can be over-worked by beliefs to the point where blood pressure eventually drops causing the body to fall into a comatosed state. These beliefs or fears were instigated by the threat of a curse or foretelling that supposedly could not be avoided. The possibility that the mind can actually “think” the body into a coma is a strong example of how psychology can relate to physical functioning.

It is reasonable to say that emotional stress can affect the body’s nervous system to the point where nausea, vomiting, and dizziness can ensue. Case studies on psycho-somatic disorders documented by psychiatrists often reiterate the common symptoms of depression and psychosis. These symptoms can include the previous mentioned, plus constipation, urinary complications, decreased or increased appetite, dehydration and sleep impairment. Psychosis can almost always lead the sufferer to disregard their normal functions to the point where they shut down. Inactivity during moments of lucidity can slow metabolism causing digestive problems. Holly McCord has studied how people have a tendency to eat more during times of depression and mentions in her study that: “Depressed or anxious women tend to eat less fruits and vegetables. . . try to trade one high calorie snack for a low calorie one.” (pg. 1, 2002). Part of some therapies now is to work on the body through exercise and proper diet and information on maintaining a healthy body is now giving out in acute therapy sessions for patients to consider.

The side effects of drugs used to treat psychosis such as Rispidal and Haloperidol can be dizziness and fainting, nausea, dehydration and swelling of the tongue, constipation, blurred vision and urinary impairment, as well as acute memory loss which are similar symptoms of the illness being treated. These particular side effects wear off in one to two weeks, leaving the patient with a “deadened feeling” within themselves. Their thinking is no longer impaired by the chemical imbalance of neurotransmitters and they are able to carry out normal lives.

Michael Lesser has covered some specific examples of how vitamin therapy has helped people suffering from psychosis and depression to reorder their mental health so they can cope with their lives. He mentions a case of one woman suffering from psychosis after a nervous breakdown and was receiving tranquillisers and other medications for her condition. It is interesting that when she came to visit him, she considered him the devil and that drawing blood would kill her. Her diet included high amounts of fatty red meat, beer and coffee. Once this diet was altered to exclude these elements and she was put on niacin supplements, she slowly recovered and was weaned off her tranquillisers. When she failed to take the niacin supplements and reverted to drinking beer, her mental health regressed, so it was evident her change in physiological functions worked to alter her psychological imbalance. (Nutrition and Vitamin Therapy, 1980, pg. 58). In the cases that Michael Lesser displayed, his patients often came out with a better sense of wellness within themselves after their medication was lowered and they changed their diet, while patients under heavy medical treatments complained that they felt flat and unmotivated. (Lesser, pg. 39, 1980).

While exorcisms were considered a last resort, to view them as a treatment would seem somewhat unfounded. It is true, however, that some African tribes still rely on a voodoo priest or witch doctor to perform exorcisms on sufferers of physical disorders like pain and illness. They see the sickness to be the result of an evil force or entity and the only means of curing the sufferer is to drive the spirit out of the body. Once this has occurred, the body will instantly be well again. In Japan, depression was described as “the soul catching a cold” to make the illness sound more acceptable. In describing the illness as something spiritual, the manufacturers of Prozac managed to alleviate the stigma of mental illness and encouraged more people to seek medical advice. (Landers, pg. 2, 2002).

Western doctors still firmly believe in their chemical treatments because of the definitive proof that they work. While this is largely true that Western medicine can most of the time effectively treat illnesses, be they psychological or physical, there has already been some basis for the mind’s ability to believe the body into a state of sickness through stress and over-excitation. In this case, if certain beliefs can have an adverse affect on the body, so to could the belief that the body has been exorcised of any demons causing the illness. Banishing bad spirits or praying for the sick can also work as a means of comfort for family members, so Western medicine has in some ways tried to be more accepting of other culture’s beliefs about the body and spirit or soul.

In The Exorcist, Regan is taken to various psychologists and psychiatrists who speak to her and the devil that is communicating through her. The doctors all meet to discuss her symptoms, only to have one sheepishly suggest the possibility of demonic possession. The threat to their ordered state of medical model is presented in Regan, so the notion of her actually being possessed is deemed preposterous. They consider the mother to be actively hallucinating when she recounts the episode with the moving bed. As it has been mentioned, Regan’s possession seems to be an excuse for her physiological differences as a woman. Since the film is a work of fiction, Creed’s case can be argued against on the basis of the murders Regan commits while she is possessed. In the real world, she would be tried for the murders if no evidence arose of demonic possession, and all she could do is plead insanity.

The Mission displays Joan of Arc’s life as a descent into madness and guilt. Her English enemies refused to consider her anything but a witch who was acting under the influence of evil while priests’ judgment was impaired by fear that Joan was a messenger from God and any harm that they placed on her would lead to their punishment. Beliefs in that period were also subject to mass hysteria and the idea that witchcraft and other secular practices were always seen to be evil was hard to dispel. The film did not touch upon any real evidence that Joan may have suffered from a physical malfunction in the brain that caused her to hallucinate manifestations of God, or to hear the voices she called her “counsel” (Dittman, M., pg. 1, 1999), but the evidence in her history cannot disprove this possibility. This particular version of Joan’s story largely depicted her as mentally unstable, perhaps as an intention of proving she was in some way psychotic.

Hallucinogens have also been used in ritualistic ceremonies and spirit invocations. With these specific uses it became acceptable in these cultures to use these drugs as it was believed they would allow for some access to a spirit realm. Practitioners of Sufism were known to use deprivation of food and water to achieve contact with spirits as part of their enlightenment. The deprivation of water and food can be known to cause hallucinogenic and manic episodes that can work to make the sufferer believe their reality has been altered in some way. This is another form of evidence that can back the claim that the mind’s stability is dependent on the proper functioning of the body.

The process of sublimation or detachment of the brain and its higher functioning from the lower more animalistic processes of the lower body is more a Western preposition that works to cover the fact that the mind and body dualism is actually extremely important. In the past, western medicine has worked extensively on the body without regard to how the mind may have come to effect it. Only recently have doctors been able to acknowledge psycho-somatic disorders, but there is still some reluctance to say whether or not the relation between mind and body chemistry can be the direct cause of physical stress such as ulcers or even tumours. Patients are more likely to visit the doctor with a physical problem, and when all other treatments fail, the psychology of the suffer may be taken into consideration. Rod Giblett has mentioned in Postmodern Wetlands:
"The process of sublimation can be seen to be the extension of the symptom in that it moves the subject further away from the unconscious." (pg. 34, 1996)
In saying this it becomes clearer that unconscious thoughts or stresses, if not discussed, can adversely effect the body through ignorance of the illness as a whole. Because the study of psychosis and the workings of the brain is still in development it is too soon to rule out or set in stone claims that the body could have a direct link to the functioning of the mind. The study of the chemistry of the body and the brain would have to be further developed to make this relation clear.

Western medicine has a firm foothold in reality which means demonic possession is seldom brought into consideration when treating the sufferer of psychosis. The processes involved in bringing the psychotic back to a state of sound mental health does now rely on some notion of the health of the body, and taking care of both seems to be the best means to a full recovery. It is evident now that drugs and certain foods can adversely effect the functioning of the brain. Patriarchal thinking has placed women similar to Joan, Regan and Susanna in the realm of the mentally unbalanced or possessed because of this lack of understanding towards the mind/body dualism that seems integral for the continuance of a fully healthy body. Their representations, especially in the case of Joan, may then have done them an injustice. The body must include the mind and the brain as part of the whole, and once that notion is set in place, it would be much easier to see any underlying problems that can be treated correctly and with minimal damage or deprivation of liberty to the sufferer of psychosis. In this instance, generalisations would cease to be made by society. Psychosis therefore needs to be better understood and even more accurately presented as an illness before it can be treated effectively and without the stigma of public ignorance acting as a hindrance.






References
Bromwell, M. A. (1999) Demonic Possession 1999 Final Web Reports on Serendip Biology 202 (pgs.. 1, 2)
http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/neauro/neauro99/web3/Bromwell.html

Bisaga, K. et al. (2002) Menstrual functioning and psychopathology in a country-wide population of high school girls in Journal of American Academy of child and adolescent psychiatry (pg. 1) http://proquest.umi.com

Creed, B. (1993) Woman as Possessed Monster; The Exorcist in The Monstrous Feminine; film feminism psychoanalysis. (pg. 31) Lancen, Routledge

Dittman, M (1999) St Joan of Arc in The Catholic Encyclopaedia vol VIII Robert Appleton Company New York (pg. 1) http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08409c.html

Foucault, M. (1977). The body of the condemned. In his Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. Sheriden, A. (Trans.) London: Penguin (pp. 3 - 31)

Giblett, R. (1996)Post Modern Wetlands : Culture , History , Ecology Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh (pg. 34)

Hirst, P. and Wooley, P (1982) The social formation and maintenance of human attributes. In their Social Relations and human attributes (pg. 26) London: Tavistock

Hislop, J (1991) Stress, distress and illness. (pgs. 111-113) Australia: McGraw-Hill Company

Jefferson, P. (2001) Demonic Possession on The Psychics Spot (pg. 1) http://www.thepsychicspot.com/demonic_possession.htm

Landers, P. (2002) Waiting for Prozac. Drug Firms push Japan to change view of depression. (pgs. 1-4) http://proquest.umi.com

Lesser, L. M. (1980) Nutrition and Vitamin Therapy Grove Press New York (pgs.. 39, 58)

Author withheld, (2001) Psychosis - from the Glossary of Symptoms and Mental Illnesses Affecting Teenagers (pg. 1) http://www.aacap.org/about/glossary/Psychosis. htm

Movies
Girl Interrupted D: James Mangold
The Exorcist D: William Friedkin
The Mission: The Story of Joan of Arc D: Luc Besson

The Craft

My history with this movie is really stupid. During its release in my country, I wasn't old enough to see it in a theatre without a parent present, and these were my formative years where I wanted them to leave me alone, so I had to settle for Hackers just so I could go in by myself. I didn't see The Craft until my brother bought the VHS copy home, and I think we were making a copy while I was watching it. Either way, I got one.

I was coming off my vampire obsession, it was really ebbing by then, so watching this I was like, "Fuck vampires, man. I'm all about witches now". I even went on to re-enact the glamour spell, and I bought a book on runes. I wanted the clothes, the hair, the boots the jewellery; the dog collars. I coveted it all.

Another interesting story I have relating to this movie is, one of my friend's mother honestly believed she was a witch. She had even cast an "effective" love spell on another man. This woman wasn't very smart, she was addicted to coke - by which I mean coca cola - and when she was with us watching the film, she basically considered it educational. When Sarah is asking about undoing the love spell, and Lirio explains it can't be done and must run its course, my friend actually asked so how do you do it? Her mother's response: "Were you even listening!" That's my Craft story. I couldn't have made it up if I tried.

I'm not going to do a piece by piece, scene by scene review here. I'm coming here to vent over an article I just read praising this as a female empowerment movie. Yes, it drew heavily on Heathers for its suicide theme, but it did not represent the issues surrounding this very well at all.

Sarah has come to town for some reason we're not entirely sure of, it's just dad wanted to move so they moved. There's a step-mother in there somewhere, she's not evil. She's barely even visible. She plays no part in this. In fact, she's completely redundant. Her name's Jenny and I don't remember us learning this until much later in the film. My guess is she made cutting room floor material.

What annoyed me about this article, was it completely glossed over the role of Sarah's dad, who has taken the maternal role over in Sarah's life. The most macho thing we do is see him chase off the vagrant snake man and stab his snake with a charcoal poker. From this point on, he's around but not explicitly enough to even acknowledge Sarah's new friends or her newfound powers. I know she's in a secret coven, but she's hanging out late sometimes. He doesn't care because Sarah needs friends and he won't begrudge her that. We know Sarah's mother died in childbirth, its integral to Sarah's character. But her father is also in the background. He drops Sarah off at school, offering her a few more days at home while jokingly saying he could watch daytime TV all day, not such a male thing to do. When Chris begins stalking Sarah, the dad points a flashlight at him, all annoyed, and asks, "Can I help you?" He's got a rapist staking his daughter (we're aware Chris has these tendencies before Sarah's spell and it's implied he may have acted on them) but the dad just shrugs it off. He's working on Sarah's reactions rather than intervene, so he clearly trusts Sarah's judgement otherwise he'd be far more protective of her. After Chris's death, the inconsolable Sarah demands her father not touch her and to leave her alone, and here we see the dad making a concerned effort to comfort his only child. He knows his role in her life, he sees his child in pain, but he can't do anything about it. And by framing Sarah as the heroine, we know he isn't supposed to.

By the end of the film, he hasn't changed, and hey, his house got trashed by two girls having a major magic showdown, and Sarah's not grounded. He just ignores it. But my point is, he is not an antagonistic male. You might argue he was ineffective so that makes him bad, but again, Sarah is the hero, she doesn't need daddy swooping in and saving her. That's the punchline. She has her "I want my mommy and daddy" moment before she evokes Manon by way of her mother's guidance. The mother doesn't use any powers of her own from the grave, she encourages Sarah to do it alone. Sarah can still be daddy's little girl and a strong independent woman. She is a very well-rounded character and Robin Tunney portrays her almost perfectly. I like Sarah's character, I've always felt more connected to her because my female friends were the first to turn on me and leave me out in the cold.

The only other gripe I had with this article was how it was praising the movie for having a discussion about suicide, rape and racism. All of these things are explored in the film, but not on any grandiose level. The article states it deals with suicide better than Heathers did, I disagree. I'd argue there is a moment The Craft clearly condones it, perhaps even more so in the final showdown between Nancy and Sarah. We learn of Sarah's attempt at slitting her wrist when Nancy calls her on it. Sarah's response induces marvel from Bonnie, who is amazed she "even did it the right way". Nancy has to break Sarah's tension with a very cavalier "Punk rock!", and Rochelle bugs Bonnie on how she knew about this "right way", Bonnie demanding Rochelle shut up. So here we get a two second glimpse into Bonnie's past: she's either attempted, or contemplated attempting, suicide. Then the scene ends.

I do realise this is all fleshed out in the montage portraying each girls life: Sarah dreaming about her suicide, Bonnie at the hospital for the millionth time about her scars, Rochelle bugged by Laura Linney, the blonde female antagonist, over the fact she's black. (There is a scene that was cut which has Nancy mentioning Rochelle is the only black girl in the school, and if you look close enough, I think this is genuine); and finally, Nancy's living in a white trash world, complete with an alcoholic mother, a fat, abusive step-father called Ray, and a trailer. Her complaint is she doesn't want to be white trash anymore. That's it. She wants "power". We never truly find out what her original motivation is. (In another article I found it suggested Nancy's praying for money, so the only way to get it is if she kinda kills her dad for the insurance she and her mother know nothing about. It's also bogus since once they have financial security, Nancy's still miserable, she hates her mother even more, and both of them are just living large with no thought to the future. The total they get is really nothing by today's standards. Maybe it is suggesting careful what you wish for but there's no real motive from Nancy that suggests money itself is her desire. She jokes when she pays for the invocation book she has money, but it doesn't mean anything to her, she'd have stolen the book otherwise) In fact, we never really learn why they got into witchcraft. The deleted scene is on YouTube, it explains about the group's past and how it came to be, and includes a moment when Sarah is trying to convince Bonnie and Rochelle Nancy's getting dangerous. Nancy catches Sarah out, and this whole moment is the catalyst for Sarah and Nancy becoming the absolute hero and villain. The film becomes disjointed without this scene, we see Sarah in the car uncomfortable about Nancy's growing obsession, but we never see Sarah really trying to "win them over". By this time Rochelle and Bonnie are just kicking it and enjoying Nancy's new lifestyle and having superpowers, which they never use on their own and always work within coven "rules".

Why I feel this movie doesn't really do much for suicide, is because Nancy uses Sarah's confessions of her mother and her attempted suicide to get back at her in the end. Her thought process is basically, "Hey, you were suicidal, I'll forge the note basically incriminating you in the murder of Chris, slit your wrists, terrorise you with hallucinations of your biggest fear (another thing Sarah has told the group in confidence) and leave you to die. No one will think I murdered anyone, and you're just a little piece of shit anyway who should've killed themselves ages ago. So "you should get on with it." This isn't about suicide, it's about bullying. It's about girls bullying other girls. It's why we don't give a damn about Bonnie and Rochelle by the end of the film, they're pretty superfluous too. They show up at the party to "stop" Nancy doing something bad, but Laura blocks them off. They lie to the cops, which is inferred in the bathroom scene, and now they have the precious powers they wanted, they don't need a fourth, but they'll happily invade her dreams, orchestrate a glamour of a plane crash and pass it off as a practical joke, run away when things get too real, and then try and trick Sarah into helping get their powers back. Looking over the narrative, Sarah does everything for them, she's the reason the spells are working, but then, when the others can work magic on their own, she's disposable. And PS: we don't know that much about Bonnie and Rochelle. I'll get to that later.

Then, finally, we get the crazy-person cliche with Nancy strapped to a bed, apparently now successfully "bound", which fits the mise en scene of this shot, but still this makes a mockery of mental illness and adds to the stereotype pile. You can't get too mad at a 90s movie for this, Mad Love probably did it more, there's a perception and then there's reality. But don't forget, it's Nancy who condones suicide and ultimately uses it as a tool to try and defeat Sarah.

The character of Rochelle has no substance as this article claims. We don't have room for her other that she's on third or second base of the coven's trio, and she's booted down with Sarah's induction. Rochelle's being picked on, she's not doing well on the dive team, but we don't know what her home life is like. Her whole character is wound up in the race issue, she is literally the token black who has to play out the racism theme in the film. I like her character, I like she's there and I do think they tackle the race issue relatively well, but that's the only reason we feel sorry for her, and when Laura is truly suffering, Rochelle only has one moment of guilt when her own reflection turns on her. She doesn't learn anything until Sarah makes her see her crime times three. She's superficial enough to run away rather than change her mind about killing Sarah and helping her instead. And she tries to get her powers back. So she's not a good black character at all. She's actually pretty shallow and in the end, she learns nothing, because what would she do with her power? Kill any white people who are mean to her, or just make their hair fall out? Something to consider. So basically, it's not a good representation of racial issues. Rochelle turns out to be petty and Laura "learns her lesson", by which time, Rochelle doesn't even really care. She feels bad for a nanosecond. I have to admit I really thought about this more after listening to the I Hate It but I Love It podcast. Before, I just accepted Rochelle as she's presented.

On the topic of rape, I have to be careful about what I say. Disclaimer: my observations of Sarah's character do not mean I condone rape. Sarah's path to victimhood is a major plot in this movie. Cookie-cutter, white, suburban (possibly rich) football hero Chris finds her attractive, and Sarah's relatively interested. He imparts the backstory of the Bitches of Eastwick, and while Sarah agrees to a date with him, Nancy tries to warn her later he's no good. Nancy's jealousy also plays a major role in this story line. Seeing Sarah get stepped on by the evil guy/ex convinces Nancy Sarah is now worthy of their time, even after the two have already butted heads over Sarah's incredulity towards magic. Sarah is brought into the circle, we see her cast a very vague "love spell" by way of wanting to love herself more and open herself to love from others, especially the guy who kicked her down. Nancy has sympathy for Sarah in this moment, it is a rather touching scene. But as we rarely see Sarah and Nancy alone together until they face each other off, and we never see them bond as true friends. They're all seen together laughing and having fun, even after there's concern they're responsible for Ray's death. (You'll note here they were more willing to accept hitting the vagrant with the car than they are of actual murder, they can still deny it saying it was "natural causes".). But this is where the threads of the group are coming apart. So by the time Sarah's out in the cold, Chris's invitation is more appealing. She begrudgingly agrees to go on the date, and Chris attacks her. The audience may or may not have seen this coming, but the film is framing this as Sarah's moment it all comes back to her times three. They are NOT saying she deserved this. No one is saying that.

What I feel is, Sarah could've cast another spell entirely to make Chris seem really unattractive to other girls, or really bad at football, thus attacking something close and personal to him. There's still a moment of comedy to be gained in his humiliation, but in saying that, this plotline would go nowhere. Making Chris fall in love with her to a higher degree than she wants brings Sarah amusement for a moment, but then she's unable to justify it. Nancy is on the sidelines trying to convince Sarah he had it coming. Nancy's the one who wants revenge, and she uses Chris's attempted rape of Sarah as the excuse. She's been looking for one, she wants to hurt him, and now's her chance. Sarah has to be the nice girl in this scenario, she has to be the one begging Nancy not to kill Chris, hence her abject guilt over his death. She blames herself for the spell and for not doing more to save him. She never truly hated him. Nancy did. Nancy got her way. Do we side with Nancy and cheer her on for killing the bad guy blockhead rapist, or do we remain on Sarah's side and offer her sympathy for never wanting to hurt Chris? We're always on Sarah's side, while we're encouraged to have a moment of sympathy for Nancy and her being rejected by Chris, whom has hurt her on a deeper level, implying she may have genuinely been in love with him (it was also hinted Chris gave her an STD when she said he spreads disease, but I always took it as a metaphor). Otherwise, why kill him? Throughout the film, Nancy has moments of fixation about hurting Chris, then she's dismissive of him. Her big speech about treating women as whores is probably the clincher for the female audience, and perhaps a "warning" to men this is why you don't disrespect women. #metoo #IwishIhadwitchpowerstokillallthemen. But is her way the right way to express this? Therein lies the conflict.

As for Bonnie, she probably has more substance than Rochelle. We know she has a mother, perhaps her father is absent due to problems caused over her disfigurement or he died in the fire she was burned in. We don't know. We're not really allowed to know about her or Rochelle since the movie isn't about them. The surgeries and procedures she goes through are really weird and vague, she's "suffering", but we never see any of the students genuinely pick on her, they just consider her odd, and won't accept her until she's no longer a freak, which this article mentions and I feel is a really good point. Her value as a character is superficiality, and when she herself expresses superficiality and vanity, which is all we end up getting from her, we never really know if she was ever a nice person as Sarah claims. There is another deleted scene where Sarah goes to the hospital to comfort Bonnie with gifts, and this is where Bonnie confesses she wakes up thinking she's normal every day before remembering she's not. She begs Sarah to do the spell, Sarah saying she doesn't want to make things worse. This scene has a lot of problems, it's not convincing, it involves Sarah burning sage but somehow not setting off the fire alarms, and her bringing wine for them to get drunk, not a good idea the day before a procedure. It ends with Bonnie complaining of her scars burning then an all too cliched window flying open from a storm. We do see Bonnie return, convinced Sarah healed her and not the doctors, and Sarah is still bashful. In the film, we only see Nancy moving her hands around Bonnie's naked back while she cries and begs for Menon to "take her scars". Nancy's working on her but Sarah "did it" because she has all the real powers. We probably would've gotten more sympathy for Bonnie from the deleted scene, but in the theatrical release, like I said, she's player number three or four. Nancy's the leader, it was her idea to begin with, (classic power-play among teens), and the other two are just hoping to get what they want because they're unhappy. Ultimately, Bonnie learns nothing either. Her development goes nowhere and she's in the same position as Rochelle, selfish and vain and annoyed she's not able to do magic now. (We don't know why specifically, one would assume Sarah's absence is all it took to nullify their powers, or Sarah did another binding spell on the two of them. Apparently an original shoot script stated the other three had no powers and were only capable by leaching off Sarah). Still, the audience hates Bonnie and thinks she's a bitch, now left to delight in Sarah's mockery of her and Rochelle.

I've said as much as I would ever say on this, and I loved the shit out of this movie in high school. I see its flaws and its triumphs, and its dedication to the portrayal of the Craft itself. But I don't see why it gets all this praise for being about female empowerment. It's there, but it's not a good example, especially when three of the girls turn on the fourth. At least with Mean Girls, there was reconciliation and burying of hatchets. And with Heathers, Veronica and Heather M reconcile over Heather's attempted suicide, there was never really a hate or rivalry between them, Heather M was as much a victim of Heather C's bullshit. Heather D becomes the new bad guy. There's no room for togetherness in the Craft. And yes, they did talk about more than boys, but technically they still talked about a boy. (Did we also forget Bonnie scopes out some guy and tells him he has a nice ass? That's talking about a boy. It's also objectifying a boy but we're allowed to do this as women because shoe's on the other foot now, suckas. It wasn't the primary goal of the movie but wasn't anyone insulted they did have a romance story line in a female empowerment movie). What if Sarah was gay and had her heart broken by a mean girl? Sure, the boys only talk about girls, that's the whole conceit with this movie, men walk around with their dicks in their hands looking for a nice wet hole, we get that, it's been done to death. I just don't think it's worthy of that level championing.

Congrats for passing the Bechdel test... I guess. I wish this wasn't used as a test at all, it doesn't make the film a good film, it just makes you feel triumphant that it exists to prove a point.

Addendum: I recently found out that the creator of the test, Alison Bechdel, mentions this in a throwaway comment in one of her comics on lesbian dating, and was never meant to be taken seriously at all. So I feel better knowing it was never meant to be a formal appraisal of any film. And her favourite movie doesn't pass the test.

Anyway, cut to 2021. I refused to touch the Craft Legacy. I decided to give it a shot, it's nothing like the trailer. (The Polaroid/photo which is an actual headshot/screenshot from the original film lark infuriates me-  Look here's a picture of so and so. It's so comical considering it's a shot we know wasn't taken by an actual camera. Such BS. I appreciate they left that out). The three main girls are political mouthpieces with no character development. The trans girl is just the trans girl (the Bonnie) but at least they cast an actual trans girl, you don't see the black girl getting shit for being black (the Rochelle), and the other one, who I would call the Nancy, isn't really anybody but an obnoxious twit who dresses in animal print. 

You only see the girls get shit once at a party, it's not systemic bullying at school, they're not suffering from anything (unless general sexism and racism counts, they're not suffering from it directly, they just don't like it the way Gen Z doesn't like it). The dialogue is copy/paste political dog whistling.  The trans girl swoons over the bad boy they've made woke refer to himself as a cis boy. The black girl literally thinks she's in a coven to build a sense of community (she literally uses this word, that they're in the Craft to build community. If this were true, you'd recruit more people to become witches so you could go after the bad guys). It's completely vapid in its desperation to be topical. They more or less adopt the guy who bullies Lily and make him part of the group, you keep waiting for it to be a case of, sorry bro, we need girl time, but then he just gradually confesses his basic humanity and then we never see him again. I liked this to a point, but it was like they were trying to correct how horrible they were to Chris when he became their Stepford boy. I was waiting for him to find evidence of their spell they stupidly left behind and that's when he realises he's under a spell and he goes nuts, but that just never came up again.

They also swapped the roles, so now the black girl deals in fire and not water, and I wasn't paying any attention to the other girls, but they conveniently used coloured smoke to represent their auras and powers. True story, I used this analogy writing a story about girls who wielded elements, and yes, it was used to a point in Avatar the Last Airbender, but the point of the original movie was its subtlety in representing each corner/element, i.e. animal representations, which is more in line with the actual Craft, not this butchered, watered down version. They use THE Book from the original movie but spend more time looking at the pages, and it's not a tome or grimoire, it's like a trade paperback. It's just another nod to the original. 

We don't care enough about these girls, we just see them having fun with somatic spells and pyromancy and general mischief, and it's not even mayhem, they're just making bullies suffer in the way you wish you could've destroyed your bullies with magic powers. It's fantasy for kids who got picked on without understanding the struggle of being picked on. The main girl kinda saves it, it's nice she's the focus when the others are cardboard cutouts moving around her. It's nice they made it about solidarity and didn't go with the mean girls principle. It felt like it could've been a different movie and as it transpires, they ripped off the ending of another Blumhouse movie. The trailer isn't anything like the final product, the Polaroid of Nancy is taken out just so we can have a two second reveal of her at the end, when we don't find out anything beyond she left Lily with her adoptive mother, we don't know who the mother is to Nancy, there's no developed story. They could've worked the angle that the stepdad (David Duchovnay) tricked the adoptive mother into bringing Lily into his house so he could steal her innate powers.... Which she SHOULDN'T have because Sarah was the natural witch and the others weren't. Once Nancy's bound and Sarah's gone the inference is Nancy's just crazy. So it was a terrible way of shoehorning her in. It feels like Fairuza Balk was tricked into being part of it with a promise she'd have more of a contribution than sitting in her crazy house bedroom and looking at the camera. I think she said she'd do another movie if there was something of substance done with her character, I thought there was some kind of sad back story as to how she got pregnant, like it would be tasteless, it could've been via rape from some asshole male nurse at the hospital, but that's crass. According to this article, the adoptive mother was her psychiatrist, which is absolutely absurd and completely outside the bounds of appropriate doctor/patient relationships. She actually said she would only do another movie if the script was good but god, if this one is the best you'll get, that's unlikely. Apparently she never has and never will watch Legacy, mostly because she doesn't watch her own movies, which is fair. (She also loved the Last Unicorn and appreciates seeing Nancy as a drag character).

It had a cliffhanger vibe but they're not making more of these. It's a total wasted opportunity to do something interesting, the sequelitis is strong with this one, it's a soft reboot that wants the glory of nostalgia with none of the work or cleverness. It's a TV movie at best. Lily was perhaps the only thing saving this, there were too many instances of dropped ideas and threads that could've made the movie interesting. The music was okay but it's used to such overblown effect, there's an Avengers moment with a sting that is just offensive. They have moments of moral quandary but it's all based around a blanket idea of using magic for bad even though they make some stupid tenet they think about what they want more before they do it, before realising later, they really fucking didn't. Then they bind each other all at once to effectively make them powerless, but they undo it so easily to fight the big bad, it's not even a point of real tension, it would've made more sense that they had to focus with each other to break the bond, not just say, oh it's lifted. If it's trying to make a commentary on when revenge is appropriate, it doesn't work here at all. I'm waiting for the day we can have movies that aren't blatantly trying to force a message with hackneyed dialogue and just allowing a story to be a story with a moral subtext. People do not talk the way these characters do, it's a version of the kind of conversations adults think kids have.

I'm glad I watched it so I could rip on it now, won't be watching it again.

Side note, I found another pointless article pointing out things "you only notice as an adult" about the Craft, basically highlighting all the social issues, most of which would be obvious to an educated kid as well. I remember arguing with someone else in high school over there being no morals, and I at least said, well it tells you not to fuck with shit you don't understand. In terms of "addressing" these issues, I still don't think it starts a conversation about suicide, it glorifies it, it doesn't address domestic violence well, like this person forgets the perps are killed by the victims and just brushes over Nancy's act by saying she's "escaping" it. But then it argues she's an underdeveloped teen with no impulse control, not that we're condoning murder. It kind of jokes about the "pamphlet" book however the sequel lauds over this book and shows pages of it on screen longer than the original does. Then it contradicts itself about its good portrayal of suicide by pointing out the ending is bad by comparison in terms of stereotype. I still think it's not good on either points, bringing it up as an issue a la 13 Reasons Why tends to accidentally (at least) glorify something you're supposed to be painting negatively. Calling someone's self-harm scars "punk rock" isn't the kind of positive reinforcement people need.

I could write for these websites but it would be a slog to find shit to make up pap for a deadline.

I feel like this has become a living document for my opinions on the Craft, particularly now I've found a shooting script which has some interesting points: (I said some, I was wrong)

• Sarah starts stuff in a Veronica Sawyer Dear Diary monologue (it's brief)
• Bonnie's scars are shown off and "something horrible's happened"
• Rochelle has a family (with no names, just brother, mother, father of Rochelle), and she's also bulimic.
• Nancy lives in a trailer behind a bungalow of a Hispanic family, which seems unnecessary unless they are integral to the plot later. She's also a blonde.
• Chris doesn't seem like that big a toad, yet.
  
• That line in French Sarah says is "Like hell you did, you pig." (According to Google translate that line sounds nothing like what she actually said)
• Bonnie's the one who holds the pencil in place with her mind, or Sarah keeps it in the air and doesn't realise it's her. That makes no fucking sense, and Bonnie also knows Chris talks about her scars to Sarah despite being out of earshot (seriously this is not as good as the movie so far)
• Chris is actually more of a toad and sniffs Sarah's hair. She still goes to watch him.
• The girls have a ritual of stealing shit based on colour (the dialogue is terrible) and they just go to a mall to steal clothes initially and Sarah uses some kind of Jedi mind trick on the sales guy to leave her alone
  
• We don't see a scar and Sarah's pretty glib about her suicide attempt.
• Lirio's Latina and the actress is from Barcelona so that tracks. They go to the magic store anyway which makes the mall scene completely redundant.
• Nancy gives Sarah shit for paying Lirio
• Sarah's dad is more of a dick/Jenny has more lines and seems more involved. Sarah's just a brat. He's very stereotypical showing concern for the fact she might off herself again, and Jenny tries to defend his behaviour, it's cliche.
  
• Chris is a total sleaze and is basically stalking Sarah now by calling her up and asking her out while joking about jerking off after asking what she was wearing. They go make out, she rejects him, he tells everyone she has a giant vag and then Rochelle gives Nancy shit for dating him
• The flashback of Sarah's cutting is actually some kind of hallucination. The others are there to pick her up for a movie and that's when they actually go out on the town.
• Manon is like a "transexual" entity (thank fuck that never stayed in)
• Sarah says straight out her mother was a witch, which is crap, it makes for a better reveal when Lirio tells her
• Rochelle wouldn't be on the swim team if her dad wasn't on the board. The coach is more of a jerk to her about the bullying, Sarah pulls Laura's hair out in a scene immediately after, like there's no build up to that moment, they're just out to get her now.
  
• Rochelle gives Nancy so much fucking shit it's amazing (and awful) Nancy's a recovering alcoholic/drug addict (her mother's a bigger mess, Ray's the same perv)
• Chris goes on about Sarah's scabby vag to the point you have to wonder why he's boasting about sticking his dick in it. That's when Bonnie and Sarah randomly take a picture of him which is used for a revenge spell and not a love spell (seriously someone else must've taken a sharpie to this script because it's fucking bad). The picture gets cut into a pentagram and glued into the spell book with wax (which now seems more like the Mean Girls burn book)
• In the same spell, Bonnie randomly decides she doesn't want to be ugly anymore and Rochelle makes a comment about men using beauty as a trap, like I swear it's a line that should've been in the sequel.
• The spell they're doing to fix Bonnie is practically herbs for a pasta dinner, like Rochelle tells her mother. Sarah's more confident sooner and she later uses the same Jedi mind trick on a bus driver, Nancy asking when she's going to teach her. So it's so confusing whether Sarah's known this all along and only bothered to do more now like she's suddenly the cool one.
• Bonnie says "We're the weirdos". Like Nancy has far less agency in this, she's almost like the most picked on while Bonnie and Rochelle are cooler.
• They get naked in the national park and Bonnie feels up a rock, because the Etheric energy gets absorbed into your clothes so they gotta be naked. Seriously, the guy who wrote this must've been put in his place by Fairuza Balk because she's clearly prevented so much of this male fantasy of naked witches from being realised. They have little confessionals while conjuring, Bonnie saying Manon saved her from the fire. Eventually she's the last to strip. They're all reading from their own books I think. All of this is done SOOOOOOO much better in the movie. Like I cannot believe how bad this script is. There's barely any actual recognisable dialogue or action at this point.
• Apparently Nancy's done a love spell on Chris before similar to what they did earlier, and Rochelle just gives her grief over it, like honestly Rochelle is an absolute bitch compared to Nancy, who's just a ball of chagrin right now.
• We cut to Bonnie finally getting her procedure, she gets the needle job, then she's in overnight which is when they do the ritual scene that was cut out, which is totally fine I prefer how it's executed in the movie (I also thought this was done the night before but I think it's after the procedure). Then the scars come off. (Doc is also a man of course so props who whoever cast them as a woman). Apparently Bonnie comes in the next day in a cape and not just a jacket she takes off to reveal herself. Then later the doctor's on the news about this miraculous skin treatment, when Nancy says it wasn't him to her mother
• That's when the lights go out at the Downs residence. Then Ray basically rapes Nancy's mother (Grace) when she gets shitty about the power. Nancy runs off to be with her friends, she's actually the most pitiful one among them. She decides she wants to stop being white trash because she can't think of anything to "wish for", Rochelle gets another dig in about it. Still better handled in the movie. Why are they treating Manon like a goddamn genie? They also keep referring to a Noah which I don't know if this is someone's transcript and they keep saying Noah and not Manon (like they forgot to do a find replace). Nancy wants "more" so they go back to the mountains to conjure. (Okay, the reason I looked this up was to figure out Nancy's "chant" she does alone before Ray is killed. This mountain scene replaces it, I think Balk had a hand in this moment too, I can actually picture her going through this script going, nope, nope, nope...). That scene with the fire and Ray having a heart attack plays out the same.
• The insurer comes but he's introduced by the owner of the bungalow (seriously this Hispanic family are 1000% redundant, apparently the woman hangs around to praise Jesus for the windfall, like she thinks since she's renting out the trailer this is her money now? She's never heard from again, and the kids Nancy passes on her way to school don't get another mention. Did the writer think a white family loaning a trailer from an Hispanic family somehow made them more lowly?)
• We miss out on Bonnie sexually harassing that guy but not the Connie Francis jukebox. (there's a song playing that's pertinent).
• Nancy's very insistent Sarah teaches them shit. Seriously, I prefer that she kinda learns then gets confident, but all through this she's the one telling them "how" to show it's instinctual, she honestly doesn't regard the book as sacred or necessary. Sarah, instead of changing her hair/eye colour turns into a male version of herself and says something gross (I'm still reeling over people thinking this was a feminist movie, I almost wish this did happen to make their heads explode, because now it would've meant dressing Sarah up as a boy momentarily just to mock men, and that would not sit right with the trans community). Then suddenly a snake's on Sarah's back and Nancy's all "whoops, sorry" after Bonnie says "we don't use magic on each other". Which I think was also in the other movie. So now I'm thinking the sequel is more in line with what the writer wanted.
• Rochelle finds Laura freaking out. The mirror trick doesn't happen she just locks eyes with Laura.
• Then we cut to "light as a feather", like this late in the game. Makes no sense. They all start floating around comically besides Nancy, eventually she gets up in the air and now you're thinking shouldn't this be in a fucking kids movie or the Worst Witch or some shit? Bonnie's mom makes the "they're getting high" gag with the father we never meet (and assume is absent)
• Nancy's convertible is yellow, not red. They cruise and have fun and give some guy shit, then they drag race him, and he hallucinates their faces as DOGS, because Nancy says they're all bitches. Like WHAT THE FUCK? How did this get greenlit to begin with?? They cause the guy to crash and THAT'S when Sarah's all, maybe you shouldn't have done that. They're written like 14 year old bratty bitches too. 
• Chris comes by and Sarah just ices him out. Her dad literally shoos him off with a broom
• Nancy's mom just goes back to being a junkie, and Nancy briefly considers it.
• Nancy's wanted to conjure a god from the first scene in the magic shop, which wasn't shown, she gets drawn in by an animated image of a witch. The book coming to life was subtle. Lirio tells her not to fill the hole with drugs or the spirit. Nancy does anyway. But she hangs around the shop so she can rob it later without Sarah realising that's the plan Nancy was supposed to tell her about. A bunch of fetal pigs fall out. Lirio notices all this but doesn't intervene. They go back into the shop and through the curtained door to be teleported to next Thursday at school. So this is all in replacement of the beach scene at this stage. Nancy's got teleportation/time bending powers. 
• Sarah's still, hey we still shouldn't. They have the argument in the car, because Nancy "wants shit". Nancy gets pissy about the theological conversation then just totals her car like it's nothing. She goes home and mommy's off to Vegas with her new supplier, and Nancy's drinking again
• We cut to the "field trip" scene in science which is just them passing notes about going to the beach, which is a trip to "give back" to Menon. They bring the same animals but at dawn and not dusk. Nancy says "Serpent of old" and not Savage. Sarah's been duped into invoking the spirit, which is pretty stupid, Nancy has to beg her to stay then she just gets filled with the Spirit. I'm glad they skipped the earthquake and just went with the lightening. Nancy's crazy act is better executed in the movie, here she's kissing the sand like it's consecrated ground. Nancy then fucks with the bus on the ride home, and we get the "Oh shit, Nancy's crazy" smile because it's not obvious yet?
  
• Chris and Sarah go to a restaurant before the ride to the mountains. She squeezes his dick to get him to stop after tricking him into being okay with having sex, he doesn't get so pissed and runs after her, it's played out almost comically. Rochelle's mother answers the door then Rochelle shows up (so her family is especially redundant. So's the eating disorder). Sarah wants to hide it from Nancy who shows up and makes another feminist statement about men getting away with it for centuries. She busts a streetlight on the way to the party.
• Laura's head bleeds after she speaks to Rochelle.
• Nancy has lured Chris but now the bedroom's full of floating stuff and they're having sex and not just dry humping on the bed. Nancy says she's there to "cure him of Sarah". I remember people thinking Nancy screaming "he's sorry" was comical but it's not written well here, Chris has a terminal case of assholeness, according to Nancy, who can't save him, and he dies the same way after apologising.
• Sarah tells two detectives he was drunk and fell, but then they go to speak to Nancy and fuck with her brain saying Sarah said Nancy pushed him. So now Nancy wants revenge. This is awful. They still fly in through the window to kill her but they're there to talk about her suicide. She's seen the exacto knife fall on the ground.
• The bathroom scene plays out badly because of Nancy being pissed about what Sarah didn't tell the cops, so why have the cops lied to her in the first place. It's all very dumb. The gang makes out like they're going to strangle her, it's not subtle at all, they call the circle the ring, Nancy mentions the coven rule, they walk out with bad 90s lines like "see ya, don't wanna be ya"
• Lirio apparently can't help Sarah despite knowing Nancy was trouble, the curtain says otherwise. Lirio's got some old toothless, blind bitch in an atrium who's a witch, so again thank fuck they dumped that. Honestly, should I write an email to Fairuza asking if she actually rewrote this because it's seeming that way. Apparently the old woman put a trance on Sarah the night Nancy robbed the store. The witch speaks Spanish and Lirio translates, seriously this is awful. Nancy runs by and makes the fireball, the old woman's like "amateur hour over here" but Lirio is pointlessly impressed.  Sarah's then told nobody can use magic against her if she doesn't want them to but she'll figure that out later, then it's all, 'K Bye, Sarah.
• Sarah runs rather conveniently into Bonnie and Rochelle who claim Nancy's out of control and may kill Sarah. She gets in only to have Nancy POP UP IN THE CAR BEHIND HER. This is like a fucking B-grade horror movie. Nancy plants a glamour-axe in Sarah's sternum (which I think something similar happened in the deleted scenes, I'd have to dig out the DVD). Sarah bails from the car, they grab some hair but she gets away
• She goes home (a woman won't stop for her). Her voice is on the answering machine saying she's gone back home. Nancy taunts her on the phone instead of being all "look at your TV it's bad". The news glamour is the same, the doorbell rings while the snakes take over the house, but then some massive beast is supposedly climbing the stairs to get her then Nancy pops up and makes it stop to soak Sarah in the shower.
  
• Rather than slit her wrists, another giant snake comes down to choke her like a noose, which becomes a rope, which becomes yet another hallucination because Sarah's "thinking about it anyway". She doesn't use magic, according to Nancy, because she knows it won't work (not about weakness). But then she turns into Sarah from Labyrinth and literally says, no shit, "You have no power over me." Nancy then glamours her dead mother, her dad and Jenny at the front door, Sarah thinking she's saved and grateful to see them but they're all really dead with her. That's when Nancy manages to slash her wrists. We see Nancy writing the note in Sarah's hand writing, it's not just there a la Heathers.
• Bonnie and Rochelle aren't having fun anymore, Rochelle has to suddenly stick up for herself now Nancy's calling her stupid all the time, (seriously there is no reason for Rochelle and Nancy to be friends, there's no mention of Nancy taking her in as the only black girl. Bonnie and Nancy make more sense, Nancy shows sympathy to Bonnie like they could've been friends forever, but there isn't much backstory as to how they became a clique. I get the movie doesn't elaborate but it's still believable). They go upstairs and rather than getting it back times 3 (3 isn't in this anywhere) Sarah just creates an imaginary maze. Screaming can be heard. Nancy throws a book to break the illusion. Sarah then comes out screaming and shoves her out the double doors and she's dead, Bonnie and Rochelle confused in the bushes outside, I think they were all shoved out of the house and only Nancy is killed. Sarah's still bleeding. She passes out in her dad's arms. 
• We cut to the hospital. Sarah's bandaged up, Bonnie and Rochelle turn up, Bonnie's arm in a sling. They're all "wasn't our idea to kill you, wasn't what the craft is about" (i.e. like the sequel). Rochelle then asks if she still has powers and Sarah screams at them to get out. They stumble away
• Then we cut to a library alcove where Sarah's reading books to a bunch of girls, no adults around, and she brings the story to life in a glamour with a whole scene of forest animals emerging, awing the girls as she ends the story about kids going in a well despite an old woman saying not to.

THE END. BOOOOO

Yes,  I could link this document but trust me, it's so bad. You want to end with a Disney movie conclusion? I'm sure this all looked great in the writer's head but Jesus H this is so much worse than the final movie. Like, who fixed this? There must've been copious notes. But I can't help seeing what couldn't get into the original appearing in the sequel like how it was intended. So, when you thought this guy wrote a progressive feminist movie, you find out he was just a pervy guy fetishising teenage witches. NAKED teenage witches. BOOOOO. I was only expecting a few dot points but WOW.

I was trying to make Shining Nikki versions of the main cast and managed to find another article that supported my thesis this isn't a feminist movie. I don't even see how you can give it a pass on the test, they talk about shit other than guys but the two main characters put a guy between them and make him a bone of contention over supposed jealousy. Nancy's using Chris to punish Sarah and get back at him at the same time, Sarah's acting like he wasn't a bad guy after he's dead, when he absolutely was. The article rightly pointed out this wasn't sisters helping sisters. Sarah's a bad guy since she doesn't use her powers to help Nancy, she uses it to be the baddie. Which is fun. But Nancy's not bad until she gets magic in her veins. They made a dumb point about Sarah not practicing "good" magic, and my immediate thought was, "Did you not listen to the magic shop lady? Nobody listens to her. Good or bad exists in the heart of the witch, the magic itself isn't one or the other." I pointed that out to the person in school the movie was supposed to make you respect magic as a construct and the consequences of abusing it, which is bogus because magic isn't real but I defended this movie vehemently. Either way, it's not a feminist film.

Palindromes and Welcome.

To elaborate, I have a bad habit of yelling at movies for being poorly written, directed badly, or for simply not living up to the genre or hype. 

I've put the post below on my first blog, and I did have this idea at the time only to get distracted. But now I've been exposed a myriad critics via their vlogs about movies, I've remembered how analytical I was about films. And now I'm critiquing these critics on their methods. Some gloss over so many points, others are so in depth you basically want to hold their opinion as the most correct one.

And if you think I have no background myself, you are wrong. My minor in university was Film and Video, so I have had some genuine education in this subject. I have essays. I may even post them here at some point.

So to begin, here is my review/critique of Todd Solondez's Palindromes. I might come back and do Welcome to the Dollhouse later.


Palindromes:

The unofficial sequel to Welcome to the Dollhouse, Palindromes reintroduces us to the Weiner family, sadly at the funeral of Dawn, who has committed suicide. Terrified she'll end up exactly like Dawn, her 12 year old cousin Aviva becomes determined to bring a child into the world that will be loved and cherished. While she becomes successful in her mission, her over-protective mother convinces her to terminate the pregnancy, though the operation comes at a cost. The parents protect Aviva from the truth, and believing she can still be a mother, Aviva runs away from home, eventually coming to stay with Mama Sunshine at an orphanage for disabled, unwanted children. The father of the household becomes aware through the family doctor that Aviva is not as innocent as she first appears, but then neither is he. He has hired an assassin to execute abortion doctors, who ironically transpires to be the trucker Aviva slept with during her travels. Aviva accompanies him on the assassination of the doctor who terminated her pregnancy, but soon after the pair become separated in a dramatic conclusion to the crime and Aviva ends back at home. There she learns her cousin Mark, Dawn's geeky older brother, has been arrested for molesting his younger sister, Missy's, baby. Aviva once again meets up with the boy she lost her virginity to, this time certain she will be a mother.

Todd Solondez has an amazing talent for making us feel for characters that in reality would be spurned by society. Much like he did in Happiness, he creates a mood that connects us with the human side of these otherwise perverted and misguided people. Mark says to Aviva, people don't really change be they 13 or 50, essentially they come back to themselves and remain as they were when they began, hence the notion of palindromes. What differenciates Palindromes is that the character Aviva is played by several different young actresses, each giving fantastic performances as the ingenue desperately trying to become a mother against all odds, including her physical disadvantage. One particular actress became so mature in her demeanor, you could mistake her as a woman.

At the crux of the movie are the two main issues, abortion and pedophilia, and Solondez has brought all the key aspects of these themes to light, most importantly the human ones. Aviva is not a poster child for pro-life, nor is she the misguided and enamored participant Joseph Gorden-Levitt played in Gregg Araki's Mysterious Skin. Despite her ignorance to the truth, she still has an immense understanding of the situation, concluding in her guise played by Jennifer Jason Lee that she knows her cousin is not a paedophile because a paedophile loves children. Only Solondez would bring this to the front, a fact neglected to be discussed in an issue as touchy as child molestation.

Powerful and painful, but with Solondez's usual penchant for tragic humour, Palindromes isn't a slap in the face so much as a careful reminder that there are human beings in the middle of these heated societal conundrums. Of course, nothing illegal is advocated, just presented in a light that makes us realise we are all human with the desire to love and be loved in spite of our darker aspects. Solondez has succeeded once again in bringing this home to the viewer, and Palindromes is worth the moments of discomfort and pain to reach this inalienable truth.