A surprisingly strong summer for women
From the Middle East to outer space, the roles are rich and uninhibited
Every year around this time we hear the complaints: There aren't enough good parts for women, actresses are relegated to decorative supporting roles, the movies have become a man's world. We beg to differ, at least for the moment.
"Sex and the City" has already proved there's a vast female audience desperate for entertainment, and "Wanted" has unexpectedly posited Angelina Jolie as the season's new action hero. (The movie's opening weekend attracted a 52 percent female audience, thank you very much.) Between Charlize Theron in "Hancock" and the stars of the following films, summer '08 is suddenly looking like the Ride of the Valkyries at the box office.
Eve in "WALL-E"
Guys: Have you ever met a woman who was just out of your league? That's what the look in WALL-E's lenticular eyes says when he meets the gleaming, laser-slinging space probe from the mothership. Yet "WALL-E" works as a literally star-crossed romance while convincing us that Eve (voiced by Elissa Knight) could save the human race from its own worst impulses. Just don't get her angry.
Abigail Breslin in "Kit Kittredge: An American Girl"
She wields a typewriter instead of a gun, but Breslin's Kit Kittredge is exactly as tough as you need to be to get through the Great Depression with family and soul intact. The movie lets the character skate along the edge of despair but refreshingly saves Kit from cynicism. The hardest task in this movie is keeping faith, and Breslin channels the courage and everyday decency of an earlier era.
Anne Hathaway in "Get Smart"
Yes, Steve Carell gets most of the laughs. And yes, he and his stunt double get most of the action sequences. But playing Special Agent 99 in this so-so version of the 1960s TV show, Hathaway stands beside Carell more than she stands next to him. Contrary to Jolie's example, the definition of strength is not a woman's ability to hold a pistol. It's her ability to resist using it on a shamelessly funny co-star.
Hiam Abbass in "The Visitor"
The best news about the movie's unhappy detour to an immigrant detention center is Abbass's arrival as the inmate's mother. Her refined beauty and mannerly carriage make her seem too delicate for the outrageous situation into which she's been swept. But by the end, you're floored by the realization that this patient, thoughtful woman is the strongest character in the film.
Galina Vishnevskaya in "Alexandra"
The movie about the babushka who drops in on her soldier grandson at his barracks could have been some kind of sitcom. But not when the granny is the grand dame Vishnevskaya. The Russian opera diva's maternal force dominates Alexander Sokurov's dreamy antiwar picture. She looks fearsome when holding a rifle, but she's even more moving when wondering why men need such stupid things.
Ronit Elkabetz in "The Band's Visit"
The leader of an Egyptian police band - a prim, sad man (Sasson Gabai) - is marooned with his men in a flyspeck Israeli town and forced to shack up with the local cafe owner (Elkabetz). She is everything he isn't: wild-haired, funky, oozing humor and weariness and sex. Is this a love story? Of sorts, but it's really a comedy about a cautious man confronted with a gloriously uninhibited woman.
Angelina Jolie in "Wanted"
They call her . . . Fox. Go ahead and laugh; she'll laugh with you, and then break your spine. Jolie's cool-eyed assassin is much the best part of this resplendently noisy summer boy's-toy, mostly because she's the only one who seems to know how silly it all is. Regally insinuating herself into the mayhem, the star riffs on her Amazonian public image and amps it up a few notches. There's no sex scene, though - who'd have the nerve?
Cate Blanchett in "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull"
It's great to see Karen Allen back, but the fourth Indy adventure only kicks into gear when Blanchett's Colonel Dr. Irina Spalko is strutting about barking orders like an S&M fusion of Natasha Fatale and Fearless Leader from "Rocky and Bullwinkle." She's handy with a sword, too, making her possibly Indiana's most closely-matched adversary ever. Blanchett has played more indomitable characters - Queen Elizabeth, Bob Dylan - but none this alluringly scary.
Nurgül Yesilçay in "The Edge of Heaven"
In Fatih Akin's great melodrama, the fierce Yesilçay plays Gül, a Turkish political revolutionary. She's volatile, she's on the run, and she just fell in lust with a girl. She learns to balance aching political outrage with an increasing awareness that good judgment is expanding her heart. Yesilçay also does some of the sanest women's-prison acting you're ever likely to see.
Lainie Kazan in "You Don't Mess With the Zohan"
If women who go to movies are underserved, women who appear in them are undersexed. So it's Adam Sandler's Israeli assassin-turned-hairstylist to the rescue. He makes love to half the seniors in New York, and Kazan is his first and most unflappable partner, holding court with the hilarious wisdom of a dame who's been around the block. If not sexually, then comedically for sure.
