North Country

I don't like movies that chase Oscars and I don't like movies about tough women who aren't really all that tough.

i like movies with strong ass-kicking women like Sigourney Weaver, Uma Thurman, Angelina Jolie or Jodie Foster. Those women don't cry every time something bad happens they just keep on fighting.

I liked alot about North Country but I mostly liked the woman lawyer defending the mining company because she was a tough mother-fucker. And I loved Frances McDormand as the union rep because she gave as good as she got but the character Charlize Theron plays is one big ole cry-baby. She cries and cries and cries and I just didn't believe it.

I don't believe a cry-baby would sign up to work in a coal mine.

Charlize wants another Oscar and that's what you get in North Country, you get lots of Oscar chasing.

The movie is very good much of the time but it constantly takes the easy way out painting the men as pigs and the women as victims. We all know that life is more complex than that but what fun is complexity? If you want complicated characters go see Capote, or better yet, rent Monster and watch Charlize do the kind of work I was hoping she would do in North Country. I wanted to see a tough, complicated, angry portrait of a woman on a mission but instead I got tears and tears and more tears and by the end I just didn't care.

Look at the picture of the female miners up top. Do those women look like cry babies to you? To me they look like tough, funny, bright women who wouldn't take shit off no man. Those are the kind of women that inspire me and those are the kind of women I want to see on the big screen.

Oscar loves victims but I don't.