Category: movies

9 more kick-ass women movies

Here is the next installment of my compilation of lists of movies and shows prominently featuring kick-ass women. (The first two have more of my all-time favorites, but this list still has a bunch of great movies where the women have great kick-ass roles.)

9 more kick-ass women movies

  1. Peking Opera Blues/Do ma daan (1986)
    Brigitte Lin, Cherie Chung, Sally Yeh in 1920’s China. I don’t actually remember too much about this movie just now, but I do remember that I enjoyed it. (An added bonus was the entertaining subtitles, with lines like “you see the uppest window…”) I look forward to watching this one again.
  2. Batman Returns (1992)
    Even though she’s no Eartha Kitt, I actually really like Michelle Pfeiffer in her role as Catwoman. (The rest of the movie is so-so, though I appreciate Tim Burton’s style.)
  3. Bride with White Hair/Bai fa mo nu zhuan (1993)
    Brigitte Lin stars in this beautiful Hong Kong fantasy. Lots of swordplay.
  4. Heroic Trio/Dung fong saam hap (1993) Maggie Cheung, Anita Mui, Michelle Yeoh kick ass in gloriously dark Hong Kong style.
  5. The Replacement Killers (1998)
    Mira Sorvino was great in this movie. Too bad she doesn’t do more action movie roles.
  6. Hero/Ying xiong (2002)
    Maggie Cheung and Ziyi Zhang show some impressive martial arts skills in this interesting, complex, and beautifully made film.
  7. X2/X-men 2 (2003)
    While the first X-men movie will make it onto a list at some point, I actually thought the women made a better showing in the second movie. Halle Berry (Storm) and Famke Janssen (Jean Grey) do a decent job of kicking ass. Rebecca Romijn (Mystique) does a better one.
  8. Kill Bill, Volume 2 (2004)
    The first one is already on an earlier list, but this one deserves mention also. Uma kicks ass reasonably well in this one, too. There is not quite so much action as in the first, but I do like the homage to the Hong Kong cinema martial arts training tradition. (Hmm. Hong Kong cinema martial arts training tradition. There’s a long compound for you.)
  9. The Incredibles (2004)
    Elastigirl (voiced by Holly Hunter) makes a decent show of it in this fun Pixar production.

brains stuck in my head

I have a song stuck in my head. (Heya Tom, it’s Bob from the office down the hall..) Really stuck in my head. (Good to see you buddy, how’ve you been?) It’s going on days now. The current soundtrack playing in my brain is “re: your brains” by Jonathan Coulton. It’s a perky, catchy little song told from the perspective of an office worker proactively proposing a workplan by which he hopes to achieve his vision, should the negotiations conclude favorably, of eating the brains of his coworker. (Things have been OK for me except that I’m a zombie now.) It’s how one might imagine a merger of Shaun of the Dead with Office Space. I particularly like this bit:

I’ve got another meeting Tom, maybe we could wrap it up
I know we’ll get to common ground somehow
Meanwhile I’ll report back to my colleagues who were chewing on the doors
I guess we’ll table this for now
I’m glad to see you take constructive criticism well
Thank you for your time I know we’re all busy as hell
And we’ll put this thing to bed
When I bash your head open

And this bit, which uses the corporate definition of compromise, meaning “let’s figure out a solution in our mutual best interests whereby you agree to do what I want:”

We’re at an impasse here
Maybe we should compromise
If you open the doors
we’ll all come inside and eat your brains

A bunch of folks have made videos for it, which you can watch/listen on YouTube. (These are just a few of them…) (By the way, I cannot be held responsible if you also get this song stuck in your head. Follow these links at your own risk):

  • This is the first one I saw. It’s a computer-game style video, with a sort of mideval looking style. (Not the contemporary cubicle-world vision I have).
  • I like this one better, which uses a bunch of movie clips.
  • This other one uses anime, and is pretty cool.
  • There’s also this version of Jonathan Coulton playing in a club.

I think a PowerPoint presentation of would make an appropriate medium for a video. Anyone want to make one?

While I quite like the song, I do hope I get it out of my head soon. It’s like to drive me bonkers.

I generally recover from situations like this, where a song gets stuck in my head for days. But there have been a couple of instances that have left scars. My mind shies away from even the thought of listening to them. I was once tormented by the song Peaches, by the Presidents of the United States, which got stuck in my head for days around the time I worked an all-night inventory in a bookstore. The memory of the song and the bleary-eyed hungover feel of the messed-up sleep schedule are forever linked. The song “Oh yeah” by Yellow (as featured in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off) is another one that nearly killed me. And that one doesn’t even have lyrics. (Womp, womp…chktchktkkaawww…)

time warped

I seem to be having trouble accurately perceiving the passage of time lately. Just a couple of weeks ago (or perhaps it was months), I was in a meeting at work. We were discussing the agenda for the day, and various upcoming scheduled events of the day. I looked at my watch. (A normal thing to do when talking about times.) However, my watch did not have the answers I sought. While it is quite a nice watch, with hands and numbers and well-crafted internal mechanisms, it had not been wound, nor the time changed, since some time in February. It was, in fact, the first time I had managed to wear my watch in many months. It seemed like a great accomplishment, a step towards recapturing the structure of my previous life. When I grabbed my watch, in a fit of inspiration, I figured I would “get around” to setting the time before heading to work. Well, hours passed (I presume), and there I was, sitting in a meeting looking at watch that reflected the time of some moment from my past. A metaphor perhaps?

Time has been racing by like you would not believe. (Just now, since writing that first paragraph, I’m pretty sure I lost at least half a day.) There have been a number of times when I’ve thought “I should respond to that email from [insert name here] that I received a couple days ago.” When I actually then dig up said email in my inbox, it is often weeks or even months since I received it. Yes, send me an email, and I will get back to you right away. Within the year.

And then there was this whole bizarre time warp I experienced shortly after my daughter was born. The first few weeks absolutely crawled by. Every day felt like a week. It was a haze of feeding and comforting (lots of bouncing) with not much sleep or much of anything else. And then at some point, vroom, time took off. The first 6 weeks and the subsequent 6 months seem of approximately equal duration in my mind.

So now, in spite of looming deadlines (the damn Incomplete is due next week), I am compelled to put together a small collection of stories (TV episodes, movies and more) reflecting my sense of the world passing me by.

Movies, shows and other stories of warped time:

These further seem to group into 3 main chunks.

1. I overslept.
Comas and long naps. In the tradition of Rip Van Winkle and Sleeping Beauty. (Wikipedia has some great lists of other takes on these tales.)

  • Dead Zone (book, movie, TV show)
    A guy wakes up from a coma. Has special powers. (Where are my special powers?)
  • Kill Bill, volume 1 (2003)
    Woman wakes up from a coma. Pissed off.
  • Bear Snores On
    This is a book I read to my daughter. Bear in hibernation misses out on a party.

2. I was a popsicle.
Things in the tradition of Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer.

  • Forever Young (1992)
    I’m not actually sure I saw this whole movie. Mel freezes, Mel melts.
  • Late for Dinner (1991)
    Only vaguely remember this one, too. I seem to remember it was cute. Had Peter Gallagher. (Strange, he was in another coma movie.)
  • Futurama (1999-??)
    The whole premise of the show. Fry freezes, unfreezes.
  • Austin Powers (1997)
    You know this one.

3. I lost track of time.
Miscellaneous time warps.

  • Blast from the past (1999)
    Brendan Fraser grows up in a bomb shelter, and emerges decades later in complete ignorance of the progress of time.
  • Buffy, season 6 “Smashed” (2001)
    Having been a rat for several years, Amy comments: “I felt like I was in that cage for weeks.”
  • Buffy, season 6 “Life Serial” (2001)
    I’m thinking of the part of the episode where Buffy is taken out of time, and what seem like seconds to her translate to hours for the rest of the world.
  • Stargate, season 2 “A Matter of Time” (1999)
    A black hole messes up the passage of time.
  • She’s had a baby (2006) A grad student suffers from baby-induced time warping, and falls even further behind in her school and work obligations by blogging rather than doing things she’s supposed to be doing.

More of my favorite kick-ass women movies

Here is list two of the long-anticipated project on which I’ve finally embarked: to catalog (review, rate, rank and otherwise write about) movies and TV shows that prominently feature kick-ass women.

The following movies are (again) listed in order of appearance (i.e. chronologically) and are not intended to reflect a ranking of my favorites. (Though I would say that my first list contains more of my overall favorites than this list.)

9 more of Alejna’s favorite kick-ass women movies

  1. Silence of the Lambs (1991)
    Everybody knows this one. Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) kicks ass by keeping her wits about her.
  2. Terminator 2 (1991)
    I particularly like the transformation of Linda Hamilton’s character from the first movie. Sadly, I can barely stomach watching this now due to my loathing of Arnold. (I’m partial to definition 3 on that link, if you decide to follow it.)
  3. Wing Chun/Yong Chun (1994)
    Michelle Yeoh serves up bean curd and ass-kicking in this historic costume drama.
  4. Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)
    Calling Michelle Yeoh a Bond Girl doesn’t do her justice. She could so kick Pierce Brosnan’s skinny ass. (I don’t buy her need of rescuing at the end.)
  5. Mulan (1998)
    Not Disney’s typical I-need-a-man (to borrow a term from a friend) animated fare.
  6. Run Lola Run/Lola Rennt (1998)
    Franka Potente runs to the rescue, and runs and runs.
  7. The Matrix (1999)
    Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) kicks ass through most of the movie, but I have issues with the way she turns into a puddle of goo over Keanu.
  8. Mystery Men (1999)
    Janeane Garofalo doesn’t have as big of role as I’d like, but she kicks ass in so many ways, I had to have her on a list soon. Plus, the movie is just so much fun.
  9. Charlie’s Angels (2000)
    Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz, Lucy Liu get extra points for having done intensive martial arts training for this movie, and doing their own stunts. Plus I appreciate the tongue-in-cheek tone.

9 of my favorite kick-ass women movies

As I recently mentioned, I’m planning to catalog (review, rate, rank and otherwise write about) movies and TV shows that prominently feature kick-ass women. Since I love lists, I thought I’d start the process by giving some lists. Here’s a list of some of the lists I’m planning on writing:

  1. A to do list. (Always gotta have one of those. (And by the way, it’s not uncommon for me to have “write to do list” at the top of my to do list.) However, I will spare you that list at this point. Because that is not the point of this list.)
  2. A list of some of my favorite movies with kick-ass women.
  3. A similar list with some more of my favorites of the type mentioned in item 2. (I think I may have mentioned my trouble with commitment. I fear that if I have a single list of my all-time favorites I will be continually editing the list, and never get a list finished. So the lists will be smaller, and non-exhaustive.)
  4. A list of some favorite kick-ass women TV shows
  5. Some lists of other movies and TV shows that feature kick-ass women, but aren’t necessarily my favorites

The plan is to work my way through the lists and start rating these movies. Probably fairly gradually. Anyhow, below is the first list on the topic of kick-ass women. The following movies are listed in order of appearance (i.e. chronologically) and are not intended to reflect a ranking of my favorites. It’s hard for me to rank my favorites. Some movies are better than others overall, some of the women are more kick-ass, and some of the movies are just more fun. But here’s the list:

9 of Alejna’s favorite kick-ass women movies

  1. Supercop (1992)
    Michelle Yeoh steals the show from Jackie Chan.
  2. The Professional (1994)
    More of a kick-ass girl movie. At 12, Natalie Portman shows that you don’t have to be old enough to drive to kick some ass.
  3. Strange Days (1995)
    Angela Bassett saves the day (and Ralph Fienne’s undeserving ass).
  4. Tank Girl (1995)
    Lori Petty shows some serious attitude in a seriously fun movie.
  5. Fargo (1996)
    Frances McDormand is more about brains than brawn as a pregnant sheriff in this Cohen brothers masterpiece.
  6. The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996)
    Another fun movie, with lots of action. Geena Davis plays an amnesiac spy/assassin. (Sound familiar, Matt Damon?)
  7. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)
    Michelle Yeoh and Zhang Ziyi (and more, even!) in a truly beautiful martial arts movie.
  8. Kill Bill, volume 1 (2003)
    For her role in this movie, I’m almost able to forgive Uma Thurman for her betrayal portrayal of Emma Peel in 1998.
  9. Serenity (2005)
    Gina Torres and Summer Glau kick ass in space. (Also in the show, but I’m not talking about TV right now.)