Movie Review Fifty Shades Freed

Fifty Shades Freed (2018)

Directed by James Foley

Written by Niall Leonard 

Starring Dakota Johnson, Jamie Dornan, Rita Ora, Luke Grimes, Victor Rasuk, Jennifer Ehle, Marcia Gay Harden

Release Date February 9th, 2018 

Female sexuality remains a barrier for many men. Think about it, we still have laws in many places in this country that REQUIRES half the population to wear a shirt when they go outside, because apparently boobs have some mysterious and dangerous power to them. This is reflected in modern movie culture which, despite having gone through periods marked by movies like Last Tango in Paris and 9 and ½ Weeks, has somehow become more uptight.

This, I believe, explains part of the fascination and cultish devotion surrounding E.L James’ 'Fifty Shades' franchise. Despite what are some obvious flaws in the storytelling, the freedom of Anastasia Grey’s sexuality, in the movies at least, if not the books which I have refused to read, marks a departure from most of modern popular culture. Dakota Johnson’s assured and enjoyed nudity may happen in the form of an insipid pop melodrama but taken on its own context, it’s among the most mature displays of sexuality in modern popular culture.

This brings us to the latest film in the 'Fifty Shades' franchise, Fifty Shades Freed. I will not argue that Fifty Shades Freed is a good movie; it’s most certainly not, from the perspective of just being a movie. However, as a ripe and rare display of female sexuality, again, apart from the book which I have heard is less kind to the Anastasia character than the movies, all credit to Dakota Johnson.

Fifty Shades Freed picks up the story of Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan) at their wedding, a surprisingly austere affair. We are thrust immediately into the nuptials which aren’t nearly as lavish as you’d imagine; especially when compared to the rest of the movie which is little more than architecture porn. Ana and Christian seem to have reached a place of mutuality though his jealousy is easily peaked, as when Ana decides to go topless in San Tropez.

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Movie Review Madame Web

Madame Web (2024)

Directed by S.J Clarkson 

Written by Matt Sazama, Burk Sharpless, Claire Parker, S.J Clarkson 

Starring Dakota Johnson, Adam Scott, Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced, Celeste O'Connor 

Release Date February 14th, 2024 

Published February 16th, 2024

Madame Web is a uniquely misconceived superhero flick. Part Morbius, part Catwoman, and all terrible, this Dakota Johnson led adventure in Sony's Wish.com version of the Marvel Universe is stunningly terrible. It's the kind of bad that catches you off guard. In this day and age movies tend toward being merely mediocre. Money and careful, risk-averse studios appeared to have found away to keep the truly bad movies away from the big screen in favor of making dull, inoffensive, and forgettable into an all new kind of bad movie. And yet, Madame Web has escaped the web of the merely mediocre into the rarified air of being genuinely bad. 

Madame Web stars Dakota Johnson as Cassie Webb, an EMS worker with a murky past. Cassie's mother died in childbirth and she grew up in the foster system. As an adult, Cassie's main source of support is her partner, Ben Parker (Adam Scott). When Cassie is nearly killed while providing life saving measures she begins to have visions of the future. These brief glimpses into the very near future help Cassie see that a mad man dressed in a dark costume is stalking three teenage women, each of whom she's met before, ever so briefly. Julia (Sydney Sweeney), Anya (Isabela Merced), and Mattie (Celeste O'Connor), are from entirely different backgrounds but they share a connection, a lack of a family. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Documentary Review The Disappearance of Shere Hite

The Disappearance of Shere Hite (2023) 

Directed by Nicole Newnham

Written by Documentary 

Narrated by Dakota Johnson 

Release Date January 20th, 2023 

Published August 27th, 2023 

I pride myself on being aware of cultural phenomena, even ones that happened before I was born. I have made efforts to be aware of many odd little corners of pop ephemera from the 50s, 60s, and 70s. And, of course, there were inescapable phenomena such as Woodstock or Disco, Roots as both a book and a TV Miniseries. I made it my business to know at least a little about a lot of things. So how did I not know about Shere Hite? Her series of books called The Hite Report were a massive phenomenon. She sold millions of copies, appeared on every talk show of the 70s and 80s and into the early 90s. 

And yet, I don't recall anything about her. The documentary The Disappearance of Shere Hite makes a remarkable case that Shere Hite's legacy was buried intentionally by a culture terrified of having a genuine conversation about sex and of a woman who spoke openly about male sexual insecurities. What Hite did could not have been more rigorous and thoughtful and she was punished for it with exile after a years and years of men, especially those who had not actually read her book, bashed her in print and in television interviews. It cannot be called a coordinated attack, there was no one man behind removing Shere Hite's legacy, but there were many men, a confederacy of dunces, who worked to dismiss, undermine and destroy a prominent female intellectual and feminist. 

In many ways, the story of Shere Hite is the story of a woman living her life online in 2023. Even before the invention of Twitter where anonymous pundits can share uninformed opinions from the comfort of made up personas, Shere Hite was being met by waves of men who sought any reason to discredit and demean her work, her effort, and her life in general. Whether it was pointing out that she worked as a model and occasionally posed nude, including in Playboy, or just out and out lying about the methodology behind her writing, men called Shere Hite a whore and a liar all while rarely, if ever, confronting her actual findings and what they tell us about the modern sexual attitudes of the 70s, 80s, and early 90s. 

Hite's first book, The Hite Report, sent out thousands of anonymous questionnaires with deeply personal and sexual questions specifically for women. The goal was to create a safe space for women to talk about their bodies, their desires and whether they are sexually satisfied in their current relationships. Hite received thousands of detailed responses from women addressing sex from different economic statuses, racial and religious categories, and so much more. What she found was that a lot of women were convinced that something was wrong with them and it meant that they could not reach orgasm. One of the most controversial theories the book put forward was that clitoral stimulation and not vaginal penetration was more likely to produce a satisfying orgasm. 

Find my full length review at Filthy.Media 

Movie Review Suspiria

Suspiria (2018) 

Directed by Luca Guadagnino 

Written by David Kajganich

Starring Dakota Johnson, Tilda Swinton, Chloe Grace Moretz,Mia Goth, Angela Winkler

Release Date October 26th, 2018 

Published December 15th, 2018

I’m embarrassed to say that I am completely defeated by Suspiria. I have no idea what this movie is intending to say. I recognize that the filmmaking is lush and gorgeous and a few scenes in the movie are striking and memorable, but I cannot, for the life of me, find a point in the fine filmmaking. Suspiria isn’t scary enough for full on horror, despite some high level gore, and it doesn’t appear to have much of a political message. So what the hell did I just watch? 

Suspiria stars Dakota Johnson as Susie Bannion, a former Quaker turned wannabe dancer who has moved to Berlin to study under the famed Madame Blanc (Tilda Swinton). Susie has done this on spec, she is not even guaranteed the chance to try out. The school year has already begun and there may not even be space. But, Susie takes the chance nevertheless and something in her dance strikes a chord so deep in Madame Blanc that Susie earns her way in. 

Meanwhile, in a prologue, we’ve met Patricia (Chloe Grace Moretz), a deeply troubled young girl who is visiting her psychiatrist, Dr Klemperer (also played by Tilda Swinton under heavy and convincing, old man makeup). The doctor believes that Patricia’s rants about witches at her dance school, the same one that Susie is to attend, are delusions. However, when Patricia goes missing, Dr Klemperer is forced to look at her delusions in a different manner. 

Caught in the midst of all of this, the disappearance of Patricia and the arrival of Susie, is Sara (Mia Goth). Sara was Patricia’s closest friend and has been tasked by Madame Blanc with helping Susie get situated, in Patricia’s former room no less. Sara slowly becomes suspicious and her suspicions drive much of the plot in the second act or is it the 4th? The film is divided into multiple parts with a prologue and an epilogue and an epic length, nearly an hour longer than Dario Argento’s original Suspiria. 

The style of Suspiria is top notch. The gorgeous deep focus cinematography of Call Me By Your Name cinematographer, Sayombhu Mukdeeprom takes a few notes from Argento’s original, especially with the use of the color red, but has its own unique beauty in the remarkable angles and striking use of light and dark. I have no problems whatsoever with the technical side of director Luca Guadagnino’s production. 

The issues in Suspiria arise when I attempt to bring the film into some kind of greater focus. I am trying to extract a point. One fellow critic I read said the decision to set the film in Berlin, the original was set in Freiburg, Germany, was intended to evoke the division of the city after World War 2 juxtaposed with the division of the self, i.e the public and the private, the duality at the heart of so many of us, the side we show others and the side we keep to ourselves. 

I kind of see that but it doesn’t help me understand the film's final act of blood and dance. I genuinely have no clue what happened in the final act of the movie. I could describe it in full spoiler mode because I don’t know what I would be spoiling if anything. The final blood-soaked scenes are striking but what they have to do with anything either in the story the film is telling in text or metaphorically in subtext. 

I’m embarrassed because I am usually rather adept at sussing out metaphors and deeper meanings, it’s kind of my thing. If I can’t suss one directly, I can usually assign one but for the life of me, I can’t figure out what Suspiria is intended to say about women, sexuality, dance, or witches. Maybe it’s not intended to mean anything and is just an experiment in form. If that’s the case, it’s not very clear from the characters who seem to be striding toward some kind of point, even if I can’t seem to follow it. 

Movie Review: Beastly

Beastly (2011) 

Directed by Daniel Barnz 

Written by Daniel Barnz 

Starring Alex Pettyfer, Vanessa Hudgens, Mary Kate Olson, Neil Patrick Harris, Dakota Johnson

Release Date March 4th, 2011 

Published March 3rd, 2011 

Take the legendary French faery tale “Beauty and the Beast” and cross it with the elegant and joyous Disney cartoon and Jean Cocteau's artist's rendering of the story from 1946 and then throw all of it in the trash save for the very barest bones of the original premise and you find “Beastly,” a dreary rendering of a 2007 novel that was already a shallow recreation of what came before.

”Beastly” stars Alex Pettyfer as Kyle an ugly on the inside Big Man on Campus who tells anyone who will listen how easy life is when you are incredibly good looking. He's ‘Zoolander’ without the irony and dumber. Kyle is cursed by Kendra (Mary Kate Olson), a witch, who sentences Kyle to magically become as ugly on the outside as he is inside.

Suddenly, Kyle has scars all over his head and weird tattoos that cohere to the seasons as they pass. Kyle has one year from the beginning of his curse to find a woman who will love him despite his hideousness.  The top candidate for this gig is Lindy (Vanessa Hudgens), a not so popular but pretty girl who cares about the environment.

How Lindy comes to live in Kyle's posh riverside digs, paid for by his news anchor daddy (Peter Krause), is one of a litany of contrivances in “Beastly.” Briefly, Kyle becomes a stalker Batman who rescues Lindy from drug dealers and saves her druggie dad from a murder rap. The filmmakers craft this scenario with a deathly seriousness that only underlines how over the top nutty it all is.

Then there is Kyle and Lindy's eventual romance which happens as they spend several months with Kyle's tutor, played by Neil Patrick Harris as a blind man, studying one single poem. Now, to be fair, with the amount of depth given to these two characters one cannot be surprised that it would take them several months to read a single poem but one would think they would eventually move on to the meanings and themes at least.

Now, no one wants to watch these two pretty folks learn anything; we want to watch them fall in love. And what a treat that is as after their months of poem reading, Kyle and Lindy do fall in love but her daddy gets in the way leaving Kyle only days to get her to say 'I love you.’ This leads to the film's next bizarre contrivance called 'why doesn't dorko just answer his stupid phone instead of waiting to confess his love at the last minute of the last day.' But that is a little too spoilery, so I won't go into it.

”Beastly” is a serious bit of foolishness, a post-ironic love story that begs for a little knowing wink and someone other than Neil Patrick Harris to puncture the pompous sincerity on display. Nothing against Mr. Harris who has the film's only sense of humor but he is merely playing his ‘How I Met Your Mother’ character as a blind guy. It's a lazy performance but then Harris is likely the only one who saw the writing on the wall and figured 'why bother with my best effort.'

Alex Pettyfer sure is pretty and with “Beastly” and last month's “I Am Number 4” Hollywood seems dedicated to making him happen. That's lucky for Mr. Pettyfer because if Hollywood were merit based rather than 'look at me' based he might be struggling for a TV pilot right now. Instead I am sure Mr. Pettyfer is readying some sort of summer or fall picture that will once again show off his shirtlessness.

In fairness to Alex Pettyfer, Hollywood did the same thing to Johnny Depp and Heath Ledger and both reacted by going into their heads, rebelling against the system and finding depths that no one expected of them. Mr. Ledger's sad fate aside, Mr. Pettyfer still has a chance to rebel against the image makers and craft his own path to real stardom.