Girl Week: The Leading Ladies of 2016

For the second year running, king of blogathons Dell at Dell on Movies is dedicating this week to movies with female protagonists. It’s Girl Week! From 21st - 27th November he’s aiming to post every single day, so be sure to bookmark his blog if you aren’t already to check his posts out. Dell has been kind enough to ask us all to contribute to this special week, so I thought I’d put together a list of my favourite leading ladies of movies released this year, so far at least!

It was actually quite shocking looking through my film journal for the year and seeing just how few of those movies have a woman in the leading role. Nonetheless, there are a few, and plenty others I haven’t actually seen yet, so let’s kick this off shall we?

Amy Adams (Nocturnal Animals, Arrival)

I didn’t think I would love an Amy Adams character any more than Mary in The Muppets. That probably sounds sarcastic, but I love that movie so much. So no, I didn’t think she could top that for me, and then November came along and brought not one, but two movies with Amy Adams as the lead, and she plays completely different roles in each. Susan in Nocturnal Animals is cold, and cruel, whereas Louise in Arrival is warm and kind, someone we can look up to. November 2016 shall forever be remembered as Amy Adams month in my eyes.

Mila Kunis, Kathryn Hahn & Kristen Bell (Bad Moms)

Too many times it’s been said that women can’t be funny. When the trailer for Bad Moms came out though I felt apprehensive. After the deeply disappointing How to be Single, this looked like the typical comedy where the only funny moments are in the trailer. Yet I think Bad Moms surprised a lot of people in the end. It’s funny from start to finish, with several scenes that had me holding my stomach to stop it from aching. Not only does this movie have an all-female leading cast, it has some great supporting actresses too!

Meryl Streep (Florence Foster Jenkins)

We can always count on the ever wonderful Meryl Streep to put on a good performance. Whilst Florence Foster Jenkins won’t make my Top 10 Movies of 2016 list, it’s still absolutely worth a watch just to see Meryl Streep do what she does best. It’s guaranteed to bring a smile to your face, and I still can’t comprehend just how difficult it must be to deliberately sing badly when you actually have an amazing amount of talent in that area.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead (10 Cloverfield Lane)

Until this year I’ve only seen Mary Elizabeth Winstead in smaller roles, and it wasn’t until after watching 10 Cloverfield Lane that I recognised her at all. She really holds her own as the leading character in this thriller. After being rescued/kidnapped and locked in a bunker, Mary plays a fighter trying to discover the truth, rather than a damsel in distress waiting to be rescued. It looks like she’s landed a big role in Season 3 of Fargo next year too, so I’m looking forward to that!

Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon & Leslie Jones (Ghostbusters)

Maybe it’s because I’d never seen the original (I have now) but I felt indifferent about the announcement of a remake of Ghostbusters. There was a lot of noise about an all-female cast and a lot of upset hardcore Ghostbusters fans, and then a rush to score the movie as low as possible days before it was even released. I loved it, for the record, and I watched the extended version with my family over the weekend and still loved it. Point proven, women are funny as hell!

Ellen Page & Allison Janney (Tallulah)

Tallulah is a movie that makes me so grateful for this blogging community, because I don’t think I would have even heard of it otherwise. I’d read glowing reviews and sometimes that’s all I need to go out (or stay in actually, this was on Netflix) and watch a movie straight away. Ellen Page might be the lead in this heartbreaking story about motherhood, but her co-star Allison Janney gives a performance just as strong.

So there you have it, my favourite leading ladies of the year so far. I’m sure if I re-visited this list at the end of year I’ll be adding at least Felicity Jones to it! Don’t forget to check out Dell’s blog to see his Girl Week posts.

Review: Tallulah (2016)

Oh boy, I hope I don’t make a habit of watching movies about terrible parents. A couple of weeks ago I watched Hungry Hearts (2014), a movie about a terrible mother who refused to feed her baby anything other than oils and vegetables, and it was awful. The movie itself was okay, but it was heartbreaking watching something like that, even knowing it was fiction. So of course, when I heard about Tallulah (2016) and read a few reviews, all positive, and then discovered it was available on Netflix, I had to give it a try. Plus I love Ellen Page!  Gosh that Hungry Hearts sounds awful, I don't think I could watch it to be fair!  There was some confusion with this as Allie thought I had recommended it to her so when she asked me about it, I was completely confused until she realised it wasn't me at all.  However, it did peak my interest so I parked myself with a glass of wine and Netflix!

The movie tells the story of 3 struggling women. Tallulah (Ellen Page) is a drifter, living out of her van with her boyfriend Nico (Evan Jonigkeit) and has dreams of travelling to India. One night, the living situation becomes too much for Nico and he leaves to go back home to New York to see his mother. With no money or food, Tallulah drives to New York to find Nico, scavenging food from left-out room services in hotels. This is where she meets Carolyn (Tammy Blanchard), AKA runner up for the Worst Mother in the World award.

Carolyn is out of her mind, clearly. Her husband isn’t aware that she’s galavanting out and about and she’s determined to have a good time, and to do so, she has no problems at all hiring a complete stranger to babysit her 1 year old daughter while she goes out to party. This scene was the only one I really didn’t like. Watching Carolyn rant and constantly ask Tallulah if she looks pretty just got far too uncomfortable for me. Eventually, Carolyn returns home horrendously drunk, and that’s when Tallulah takes the baby to sleep in the van with her to keep her safe.

The next morning, Tallulah goes to return the baby, but nopes the hell out of there when she spots no less than 5 police officers in the hotel lobby. And so begins the game of her just making the situation worse with every given minute. I honestly didn’t know how to feel at this point, I mean, is it still kidnap when she’s just doing what’s best for the baby?  I found it so hard to watch, I was just willing her to admit to what she had done so she could take her back, I was on the edge of my seat the whole.  The problem was I wanted Tallulah to tell the truth so badly just so that Margo wasn't let down again.  I felt like she was one of those characters that just keeps getting knocked down just as she is getting back up and it broke my heart.

Our 3rd leading lady is Nico’s mother, Margo (Allison Janney). I love this woman. Poor Margo is lost in life. Her husband came out as gay, cheated on her and now has a happy life elsewhere, her son left home on bad terms, her turtle just died, and a very unexpected visitor has arrived on her doorstep. I’ll let you watch the movie for yourself to find out who, and why.  

I wanted so badly to be mad at Tallulah for what she was doing, but I just felt such a strong connection to her, it was impossible. She had such a horrible upbringing herself that she couldn’t just walk away and let that happen to someone else. What would you do in that situation? I honestly don’t know what I would do. The story had me gripped from start to finish, and I had no idea what direction it would head in, or how it would end. My husband was giving me funny looks across the sofa as I was wailing ‘this isn’t going to have a happy ending’ over and over again.  I was totally on the edge of my seat, wailing at the TV, it all just got  too much and I had to pause for a cuppa (totally British, nothing in the world that can't be solved with a cup of tea!).  I wanted everyone to have a happy ending.

The performances all round were absolutely amazing, and as much as I love Ellen Page Allison Janney was the MVP for me here. It was the little qwirks in her character that gave me the much needed comical relief every now and again. Plus it was lovely to see some of my favourite faces (Zachary Quinto, Uzo Aduba & David Zayas) pop up for their small roles. Highly recommended! In fact, I made Jenna watch it the very next day after I did!

Ellen Page just wins everything for me, she is such an amazing actress and in this when you knew what the character was wrong in what she was doing you still wanted to reach out and help her.  It takes serious skills to pull of a character that no matter how bad their behavior, you are always on their side.  Alison Janney is one of my favourite female actors and these two together was just awesome, they need to do more work together....like now!

Review: The DUFF (2015)

Does anyone else miss the days of teen rom-coms overrunning the local theatres – before the days of superhero mania and reboot hysteria the cinemas were filled with She’s all That’s, the 10 things I hate about you’s and other generic geek girl/boy takes off glasses to reveal all the hotness underneath and happens to get the cool/hot/popular guy/girl to fall in love with them.  Well these were the days when I first started loving cinema, on Friday afternoons after school we would get the number 4 bus (approximately 90 minutes apart!!) to the local theatre and watch one of these gems!  This is why I was so excited about The DUFF because it reminded me so much of those visits to the big screen.

 Do I really need to explain the sorry?! Geek chic (we’ve improved from plain old geek back in the 90’s) Bianca (Mae Whitman) has known her neighbour and resident popular guy Wes (Robbie Amell) her whole life and he is the one who happens to inform her that she is a DUFF – designated ugly fat friend (how considerate I know!).  This is the friend that guys can approach to ask about their hot friends because they are ugly and fat (although the definition used in the movie implies that the person isn’t necessarily ugly or fat but just less hot that their friends!!).  You can pretty much guess the rest, Bianca proceeds to realise the truth and argue with her friends and try to eliminate her DUFF status with various approaches (one involving humping a store mannequin) only to find that her true love was right under her nose.

Now, you may have noticed a bit of sarcasm in my synopsis (if I didn’t make it obvious enough!) but I actually really enjoyed this movie.  Whitman is a fantastic actress and works well with the limited script offered to her and manages to steal every scene that she was in.  The film did have its ridiculous moments, the mall montage being the worst offender and I almost turned it off at that point because I was actually getting annoyed.  However, I stuck it out and enjoyed the rest of it enough, maybe not enough to ever watch it again but it was comical in places (the fake porn scene had me crying with laughter) and kept my attention.

 
The supporting cast were pretty rubbish and Bianca's mom (Allison Janney) was MASSIVELY under-utilised, her talents are endless and her lines weren’t even funny from her – which is saying something.  The friends only seemed to be included to make the story viable (a DUFF can’t be a DUFF if she has no friends!) but you can’t understand why she would ever be friends with these girls who she has nothing in common with but I may be overthinking the concept a bit too much.  Amell however surprised me, I have always found him irritating not the best actor but he seems to have improved since his last outing in The Flash and managed to hold a lead role well – and he wasn’t too bad to look at!

It was exactly what I expected, therefore I wasn’t disappointed – which I would say is a win