You have no problem with that. Note that, amazingly, my review is not about your opinions.
Your review is about your opinion, so I asked for your reasons, none of which transcend the realm of subjectivity. Note that your opinion is not merely "I didn't like it because it's not my thing". It was a very precise indictment of the objectification of the female body by using it as a set dressing. Your words. It seems like your issue is not with just this one film, but a larger group of similar films. Therefore, since I haven't seen the film, I formulated my questions in broader strokes.
Not everything has to relate to the story.
Didn't say it had to.
You literally listed it as one of two reasons why nude bodies in this film don't work for you.
Isn't the object of the presentation artful enough in itself?
Nope.
So your position is that the human body cannot be a work of art itself? You're treading on thin ice here. What follows is the question of what makes the presentation artful and whether art can be transgressive. It's all connected.
I didn't say anything about censoring it. I almost wonder if you are so upset at the idea of me objecting to these sequences that you aren't at all paying attention to why.
OK, so your position is you hate it but directors should be able to portray whatever they want. A film can objectify female bodies and involve women being threatened with rape and looking scared and/or defiant. Thanks for letting me know my upcoming New Pink Wave film has your sign of approval.
But you seem to be coming from a social perspective. And if there's no possible action you want to take, the whole thing is just words (tokenism), and such inaction is something any serious activist would dismiss. Fine if you're working in the social framework of honing your writing skills for the next big thing, but your review doesn't need the feminist edge for you to voice your highly subjective dismissal of B-movie nudity.
This movie has a lot of places where it needed more. More character development, more interesting action. And instead it takes a lot of time with either (1) parading anonymous female bodies in front of the camera or (2) redundant conversations between characters.
Ha! But the lack of character development is tied to portraying women in an objectifying way, right? It's the heroine you'd like to see as something more than just a set dressing. Character development can be a nice thing in some films. In others, not so much. Also, there's something I don't understand. You say it needs more interesting action and then you say it resorts to parading anonymous female bodies in front of the camera. You also said it portrayed rape. Sounds like plenty of interesting action to me. But yes, I get it. Dark Fantasy written by 14 yos is not your thing. It requires imagination and the ability to disassociate the whole thing from the real world - something most modern film watchers are unable to do.
Maybe for some people, random naked women is an acceptable use of runtime.
For the record, random naked men is an acceptable use of runtime, too. I believe that a director has the right to use the runtime of their film in any way they want to, including just showing a blank screen for 2 hours. It's up to the viewer to respond to it and love or like or dislike or hate it, but gluing some wobbly social theories to a piece of cookie-cutter cash-grab entertainment is never a good idea. Sure, art doesn't exist in a vacuum. Instead, it exists in the viewer's imagination, and the imagination should have no boundaries.
You wrote a really long response about a movie you haven't even seen.
At this point I don't even have to watch movies. For the most part, I know the modus operandi of film reviewers and what to expect after reading what they wrote. I also know my taste and I'm sure I can rely on it. Lastly, my foolproof intuition always directs me in all the right places. Watching this film will only be a formality. 😏
Seriously, though, my initial questions weren't about this specific film. They were much broader in scope. I was trying to navigate the landscape to try and pinpoint your approach to this thing, only to find out it was exactly the way I expected.
many genres have an overrepresentation of male voices and ideas. Which is good, I think, because it literally makes the few female voices more original and therefore more unique in comparison
I hope you reread this and realize just how terrible it is on all levels.
Women directors are just inferior to men directors.
But you know, they make for great actresses. They're almost as good at music, though. Sorry for being misogynist just because I have good taste in film.
inb4 "I didn't say you're a misogynist", yeah, but I kinda feel like one myself after I realized there's no female in my TOP 15 directors of all time. What can a man do, I have to be faithful to my taste, can't keep up appearances just to seem progressive and get accepted by my leftist friends. There are some female director geniuses, though, and paradoxically they all come from the time it was harder for a woman to land a director job. Modern women just can't make movies. And I very well know the reason. If they actually focused on the beauty of their craft instead of focusing on a ham-fisted feminist message, they'd do better. You know, not every woman can be Akerman.