jennifers body Tagged Articles at Cinematical

I picked a good year to start writing a column about women in film. More than ever before, women are gaining ground in Hollywood. We've got seasoned pros like Kathryn Bigelow finally getting mainstream clout. A number of high-profile projects are being made by women. And we're also seeing a distinct rise in the do-everything femmes like Felicia Day and Diablo Cody.

But it's not all roses. First Jennifer's Body went from long-term big-buzz to big-time flop, and now Whip It is sadly following suit. If you caught Eugene Novikov's Weekend Box Office, you might have noticed that while Zombieland kicks all sorts of living butt, and the 3-D Toy Story double feature grabbed spot #3, Drew Barrymore's kick-ass roller derby pic came in a supremely disappointing 7th Place.

One could argue that Body's questionable showing was at least partly due to the mixed reactions from critics and fans. Cody's horror pic couldn't even grab a half-and-half balance, nestling in at 42% fresh at Rotten Tomatoes. Some loved it, others hated it. But even with some really bad reviews, it still beat Drew. Whip It! earned almost double the critical love (82% fresh), but pulled in a whopping $2 million less than the Body in its opening weekend ($4.85 million). 2 mil might not mean as much when you're in the hundreds, but it sure as heck means a lot when you can't even bring in 5.

What went wrong, and how can we fix it before this excellent cinematic momentum is halted?

We know she has breasts, though the unveiling of their full bared glory remains, teasingly, for the future. We know she likes to kiss boys and girls. We know she has a face to die for, as several unlucky victims discovered this weekend in Jennifer's Body. But can Megan Fox act?

Cast in her first lead role as iconic small-town cheerleader Jennifer, Fox certainly sashays well. As directed by Karyn Kusama, Fox looks terrific in slow motion, walking down a high school hallway like it was a catwalk, or emerging from a refreshing skinny dip, smiling secretly because she knows all eyes are upon her. Her lips and tongue look very kissable in extreme close-up. Even when she looks "bad," it's still better than most could hope for, as her ostensible BFF Needy (Amanda Seyfried) observes. When called upon to emote, however, Fox says lines -- scripted by Oscar-winner Diablo Cody -- without any deep conviction or sincerity, as though she were a TV spokesperson introducing a commercial break: "We'll be right back after these important messages!" Even when her character is involved in life-and-death struggles, she comes across as breathy and vapid, drawing less upon her soul and more upon presenting her best angle to the camera. I think her co-star Amanda Seyfried blows her off the screen.

But that's just my opinion. (Cinematical's Jenni Miller has a different opinion of the movie, while our reviewer Todd Gilchrist called her "fanboy catnip," which seems about right.) What do you think? Can Megan Fox act her way out of a paper bag? Or has she just gotten an unfair rap because of her beauty and outspoken behavior? Vote in our poll and sound off in the comments!

A few weeks ago, I asked "Will Chicks Dig Jennifer's Body?" and the responses were mixed. Unfortunately for fans of the movie (like myself), its opening weekend box office results were equally mixed, with JB bringing in $6.8M, putting it in fifth place, right behind the execrable and boring Love Happens.

Plenty of people have immediately written off the movie because they loathe Diablo Cody or Megan Fox. Fox is an especially contentious figure among women because she's young, she's hot, and she's as eager to be "exploited" by the Hollywood machine as she is to give it the middle finger. And Diablo Cody, well... As the talented and smart Karyn Kusama, director of Jennifer's Body said in an interview with Cinematical's Todd Gilchrist, "I feel like the issue of [Cody's] voice being strong and people having a problem with it is very interesting to me because I think there are plenty of writers whose work generates that discussion. I have just never heard Quentin Tarantino or David Mamet or Shane Black be called a whore in people's blogs; I am shocked sometimes by the vitriol."

The cycle of slavering adoration and vicious backlash Cody has been the subject of since she was the Next Big Thing with her book Candy Girl makes my head spin, and if I were her, I'd have hocked my Oscar and headed for the hills long ago. But she hasn't, and thank goodness for that because Jennifer's Body is the coolest, weirdest thing to happen to women in horror (and the women who love horror) in a long time.

Just by virtue of her gender, Karyn Kusama is considered a feminist director; while the subject matter of her three films has certainly revolved around strong and interesting women, however, their stories certainly transcend the condescending and reductive designation of being called "women's movies." This is especially true of her latest, Jennifer's Body, which is an examination of teenage female sexuality that should certainly have considerable mainstream (i.e. male) appeal thanks to the person playing the body in question, Megan Fox.

Cinematical recently sat down with Kusama to talk about her career, the themes that have run recurrent in her movies, the impact of studio politics and feedback on her films, and how much she thinks her gender plays a role in career and the creative choices she makes. (Make sure to check out Part One of this interview, where she discusses her collaborations with Megan Fox and Diablo Cody, and gives fans a first-person account of the film's infamous make-out session between Fox and co-star Amanda Seyfried.)

Cinematical: Were there any specific elements of the different relationships, both personally and socially, in the film that you knew you wanted to explore or examine? There's the interaction of the two girls with one another, and Jennifer with her victims, but there's also the idea of this being a sort of monstrous version of teenage girls exploring their sexuality.

What is Jennifer's Body, and what is it supposed to be about? I don't know, and the film doesn't seem to, either: It's not really a horror movie, because those are usually scary. Nor is it smart or self-aware enough to be a treatise on teenage girls or male fears of female sexuality. And it's not even a swing-for-the-fences, spectacular enough failure to be a death knell or even deconstruction of the severely limited appeal of either its star, Megan Fox, or its screenwriter, Diablo Cody. Jennifer's Body substitutes hipster credibility for emotional currency, confuses pop-psychology insight with substantive social commentary, and measures terror on a scale that ranges from the word boo to a dead spider; in short, Jennifer's Body just does not work.

Fox plays Jennifer, a sexpot alpha female who mercilessly presides over the boys in her high school, but only has affection for her childhood friend Needy (Amanda Seyfried). After the two of them narrowly escape a fire while attending the concert of an up-and-coming band, Jennifer takes off to parts unknown in the lead singer's tour van, only to turn up later that night ravenously hungry in Needy's kitchen, covered in blood and God knows what else. It turns out that Jennifer has been mysteriously turned into a literal man-eater, and subsequently decides that her male classmates will serve as a more than suitable smorgasbord for her feasting pleasure. But when the homicidal homecoming queen decides that Needy's boyfriend Chip (Johnny Simmons) is next on the menu, her mousy friend musters all of her own inner strength and decides to take Jennifer down a peg or two, even if it comes at the expense of their friendship, or even their lives.

Jennifer's Body is getting panned in some circles for the alleged tragic flaw of a horror movie not being particularly scary. They're mostly right -- Diablo Cody's genre follow-up to Juno doesn't really elevate the heart rate very often. But I think that's because it tips to the "high school" side of the "high school horror" balance; it's more of a teen drama with a bloody metaphorical twist than a full-on horror flick.

That may disappoint some fans, but it sort of gets at why high school horror movies work so well, so often. It's a cliche that "high school is scary," but movies that make a connection between the reasons high school is scary in real life and whatever monstrosity happens to be stalking or haunting the characters are the ones that tend to leave the biggest impression.

In honor of Jennifer's Body, which I think will be unjustly maligned in the weeks to come, here's a list of some high school horror movies that figured this out -- and a few that were just plain fun.

1. Ginger Snaps - The movie's IMDb plot summary helpfully begins: "This film uses werewolfism as a metaphor for puberty." Well, yeah -- though it is generally considered polite not to lead with something like that. (Sorry.) But it's not all allegorical navel-gazing. Ginger Snaps is an elegant, harsh piece of teen horror that brutally plays on teenage insecurities, and is a pretty good werewolf flick too. It's a shame that director John Fawcett largely disappeared into the (better-paying, I hear) abyss of television.

There's a sort of amazing nexus of visibility that Jennifer's Body is enjoying as it moves towards its opening day: men and women alike are obsessed with any- and everything Megan Fox does, and critics and audiences are curious to see how successfully Diablo Cody will follow-up her Oscar-winning script for Juno. Meanwhile, director Karyn Kusama bears the burden not only of shepherding the result of their efforts and the test for those expectations into theaters, but is in herself in search of a project that can both fulfill and overcome the preconceptions of viewers familiar with her two previous films, the acclaimed independent film Girlfight and the decidedly less-acclaimed studio opus Aeon Flux.

Cinematical recently sat down with Kusama for an epic conversation about her latest film, Jennifer's Body. In addition to discussing the project's origins and inspirations, she talked about tapping into expectations without acquiescing to them, examined the high-profile careers of her collaborators, and offered a few insights into her own creative process. (Check back tomorrow for part two, which further delves into her own feelings about the film's themes and her execution of its ideas.)

Cinematical: How did you process Diablo's writing style when you were directing and maybe even editing? Because she was kind of an unknown quantity when you started working on this but now she obviously has a style that polarizes audiences.

For the fifth time Tyler Perry scored a number one opener which was followed by the animated science fiction flick 9 in second place. Last week's other new releases, Sorority Row and Whiteout, missed the top five, landing in sixth and seventh place respectively. Here's the top five:

1. Tyler Perry's I Can Do Bad All By Myself: $23.4 million
2. 9: $10.7 million
3. Inglourious Basterds: $6.1 million
4. All About Steve: $5.6 million
5. The Final Destination: $5.5 million

Another four new releases this week:

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs
What's It All About: In this animated feature a young inventor builds a machine that causes food to rain from the sky.
Why It Might Do Well: It's based on a beloved kid's book and presented in 3D. The presence of Bruce Campbell in the voice cast is icing on the cake.
Why It Might Not Do Well: People with food allergies may be leery of this one.
Number of Theaters: 3,000
Prediction: $32 million

The Informant
What's It All About: A corporate whistle-blower thinks his cooperation with the FBI will make him a hero to the people, but it only serves to expose his own impropriety.
Why It Might Do Well: Steven Soderbergh, the director of Oceans 11 -13 is behind the camera, with Matt Damon adding star power in front of it. Also, Rottentomatoes.com gives it a 75% Fresh rating.
Why It Might Not Do Well: The mustache and glasses give Damon a kind of creepy uncle look.
Number of Theaters: 2,400
Prediction: $15 million

Tooling around online this morning I came across this pretty funny interview from National Lampoons' Matt Zaller for Jennifer's Body, where, during the junket, he sat down with both Megan Fox and Johnny Simmons, but then ignored Fox the entire time -- made her wear a paper bag over her head so she wouldn't "get in the way" -- and then proceeded to chat with Simmons about potential sequels for Hotel for Dogs ... for like four and a half minutes. I was like, um, okay, that was odd -- because it was pretty clear this wasn't a skit or a sketch, and that neither Fox nor Simmons had any idea this dude was gonna pull out this weird stuff. So, instead, they just went with it ... and if you've seen Fox interviewed before, nothing phases this girl. You could be interviewing her while on fire, and she'd use you to light her cigarette and make the best of the situation.

So I thought, should I post this? I don't know. Because I figured you all would yell and cry stuff like, "That was so lame dude -- Cinematical sucks! I've seen other people do stuff like this! Huge fail!" But then a friend of mine just passed along Zaller's interview with Matt Damon for The Informant, and, well, it's fantastic. Not only does the dude wear clothing with pictures of himself photoshopped to make it look like he was hanging with Damon at some point, but he plays this recorded song that he made ... and, yeah, you just have to watch it for yourself.

Zaller's shtick sort of reminds me of Zach Galifianakis' Between Two Ferns, except here I don't believe the celebs are aware of what's going to take place. Watch them both after the jump and let us know what you think.

Oh, and more please.

What is Jennifer's Body, and what is it supposed to be about? I don't know, and the film doesn't seem to, either: It's not really a horror movie, because those are usually scary. Nor is it smart or self-aware enough to be a treatise on teenage girls or male fears of female sexuality. And it's not even a swing-for-the-fences, spectacular enough failure to be a death knell or even deconstruction of the severely limited appeal of either its star, Megan Fox, or its screenwriter, Diablo Cody. Jennifer's Body substitutes hipster credibility for emotional currency, confuses pop-psychology insight with substantive social commentary, and measures terror on a scale that ranges from the word boo to a dead spider; in short, Jennifer's Body just does not work.

Fox plays Jennifer, a sexpot alpha female who mercilessly presides over the boys in her high school, but only has affection for her childhood friend Needy (Amanda Seyfried). After the two of them narrowly escape a fire while attending the concert of an up-and-coming band, Jennifer takes off to parts unknown in the lead singer's tour van, only to turn up later that night ravenously hungry in Needy's kitchen, covered in blood and God knows what else. It turns out that Jennifer has been mysteriously turned into a literal man-eater, and subsequently decides that her male classmates will serve as a more than suitable smorgasbord for her feasting pleasure. But when the homicidal homecoming queen decides that Needy's boyfriend Chip (Johnny Simmons) is next on the menu, her mousy friend musters all of her own inner strength and decides to take Jennifer down a peg or two, even if it comes at the expense of their friendship, or even their lives.