Thursday Movie Picks: Movies with Strong Female Characters

Happy Thursday!!! I took a couple weeks off from this little exercise, but I'm back, mostly because of the topic - movies with strong female characters. Our Thursday Movie Picks host, Wanderer at Wandering Through the Shelves has pretty good timing. Without any prompting from me, she chose this week for this topic. It's a perfect warm-up for what I have coming up on this site next week - Girl Week 2017. So let's talk about some strong ladies, shall we?

American Violet

(2008)

Dee Roberts (Nicole Beharie) is a young, single mother of four living in the projects and working in a nearby diner. After she's unfairly implicated and arrested in a drug sweep of her building, she finds herself at a crossroads. Does she take a plea bargain to get back to her kids as fast as possible? Doing so means she will forever be branded a convicted felon. Or, does she fight the charges with the possibility of a lengthy prison sentence looming over her head? Beharie, known to most as Abbie Mills on TV's Sleepy Hollow, turns in what is probably the strongest performance of her unheralded career. Her character is filled with resolve. And she needs it to navigate an-all-too familiar road.

Chocolate

(2008)

Zen is a young, autistic girl with a penchant for watching martial arts movies. She's particularly fond of Ong-Bak, which makes sense because the same guy directed both films. I digress. The point is her sick mom needs money to pay for medical expenses and, as it turns out, a lot of dangerous and shady people owe her big bucks. Zen sets out to collect from these folks, armed only with what she's learned from watching those movies. Man, has she learned a lot! If the plot sounds like rubbish, it's because it is. That still doesn't stop this goofy flick from being an absolute blast to watch. (Full Review)

Sunshine Cleaning

(2008)

Rose (Amy Adams) is a single mom who works as a maid. Her sister Norah (Emily Blunt) is something of a slacker and just lost her job. In order to be able to send her son to a private school, Rose recruits Norah and the two begin a crime-scene cleanup service. Adams and Blunt have a really nice chemistry and it helps this quirky dramedy from when both were still up and coming actresses.



I'm not quite finished.

Last week's topic was Adaptations You'd Like to See. I think I've got a few.

The Father

poems by Sharon Olds

(1992)

As an African-American poet, yup I'm one of those, I did what most of us do. My teeth were cut on the words of Langston Hughes and others from The Harlem Renaissance, then the artists of The Black Arts Movement helped me come of age. Someone from either of those eras is supposed to be my favorite writer. I love many of them dearly, but the poet I find myself reading most often is Sharon Olds, a white woman who grew up in the aftermath of WWII with strict, abusive parents. If you've seen 2007's Into the Wild, you heard some of her work as it was used pretty extensively in that movie. Her bibliography is filled with extremely personal poems. This book is no different. It details her relationship with her father from the time she was a little girl until his death. In the right hands, it could make a marvelous, and gut-wrenching, film.

Larry Doby: The Struggle of the American League’s First Black Player 

by Joseph Thomas Moore 

(2011)

If you're not familiar with the name Larry Doby, it's okay. Most people aren't. This includes baseball fans, the most notoriously history-driven group of sports enthusiasts known to man. He became the second black player in Major League Baseball history when he made his debut for the Cleveland Indians in 1947, a mere three weeks after the iconic Jackie Robinson made his for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Back then, Cleveland being an American League team, and Brooklyn a National League one, meant the two teams could not play each other unless both reached the World Series. They played in a completely different set of stadiums. While Robinson was being verbally abused and worse in cities all over the country for simply having the audacity to be a black man playing baseball with whites, Doby was getting the exact same treatment. However, since he wasn't first, he's been largely forgotten. Most of the recognition he's gotten has been of the "Oops, here's something to make us feel better over forgetting you" variety. He's got an interesting life story, but perhaps without the spit and polish of Robinson's. Still, it deserves to come to the big screen.

 

What If...?

(Marvel Comics, 1977-???)

This comic features The Watcher as a Rod Serling type narrator. He wonders aloud what if some plot point or another in the Marvel Universe had turned out differently and away we go. I mention Serling because the best way to think about this series is as a comic book version of The Twilight Zone. Yes, I know that Marvel rules the world and basically prints money with the help of the Disney machine. That said, I don't know if we'll ever see this series hit theaters. The bottom line is it appears to be difficult to film. Let me rephrase that. I don't think it's all that difficult to film, but it's likely difficult to sell to kids without infringing upon the images of the characters represented, or gasp, be wholly separate from the MCU while simultaneously playing with its story-lines. I'd love it if they try, though.

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