February 25, 2007
factory girl
Giving the objectification of women an even worse name. In general this is not a warpath we cruise — if one attends to Hollywood films, one must do a little negotiating between the baby and the bathwater. The problem with this film is, in short: it lacks a baby.
Jim Lewis, for all his you-still-don't-get-Warhol keening, is quite right about the utterly invidious dynamic that the film sets up between Warhol and crypto-Dylan, larded with the hateful folkie-organicist worldview that it's hard to believe still survives: let's all go back to Eden-Woodstock, and when I say "all," I don't mean it!
At least as vexing, however, is the simple fact that the stakes of Edie's life have to be routed through two dudes; it's a pretend form of thinking special to mentally inept boys (speaking of mentally inept boys, who was the casting genius behind Hayden Christenson-as-Dylan? What absurdity must we suffer next — Ryan Phillippe as a cunning intel agent?)
But worse than all this from where we sit (for all these complaints really do regard tertiary matters) is just how tedious the movie is, and it is almost incomprehensibly tedious. Dear Hollywood: when you make movies featuring, e.g., Sienna Miller's tits, could you please include something else appealing in the 100-minute window, so that it isn't transparently obvious that everything else in the film is bare pretext? Which is to say, this isn't exactly a bad mainstream release, but among the world's worst porn films.
8) Smokin' Aces (nothing)
7) Factory Girl (wasn't Smokin' Aces)
6) Dreamgirls (the club sets; Eddie Murphy's Marvin Gaye skullcap)
5) Notes on a Scandal (Bill Nighy dancing)
4) Alpha Dog (Justin Timberlake in general)
3) Backstage (Isild LeBesco's facial physiognomy; plausibility of such drecky pop being huge in France)
2) Children of Men (blood on the lens for long tracking shot; Clive Owen's slumped shoulders)
1) Pan's Labyrinth (Spanish Winona Ryder; Harold & the Purple Crayon riff; title better in English)