Summer softcore porn movies:

Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life
Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle
2003

These summer films deserve to be reviewed together because they are basically the
same idea: sexy wimmin in revealing outfits performing outrageous stunts
to fight the bad guys and save humanity from impending doom. Overall MIM
opposes the pornography that is so prevalent is this patriarchal
capitalist society. This is not because of some Christian purism or moral
code, but because we can see that pornographic portrayals of wimmin in
mainstream culture perpetuate gender oppression and inequality. Even
looking beyond the pornography there is little redeeming in either of
these films.

The doom that they are saving us from is reactionary in both movies. Lara
Croft has to stop the opening of Pandora's Box, and so the plot explains
that humyn life actually did come from some mythic source, refuting
science in the process. But at least this evil will decimate the masses of
the world and, if it were real, is worth fighting against. The Angels
have to save the FBI's list of people in protective custody, not exactly a
calamity for humanity if it gets out and not an organization MIM would be
helping regardless. But at least Charlie's Angels had the decency to put a
high ranking FBI member as the cause of all the troubles. Unfortunately he
was just a rogue agent and the rest of the agency is portrayed as be
beyond reproach.

Lara Croft works for herself, mostly searching for archeological wonders
but saving the world whenever she comes across a situation that calls for
it. Not exactly a revolutionary superhero. The Angels work for Charlie,
who anonymously runs an independent agency that fights evil, without
explaining why they don't just join up with the cops or some other
government agency. Not exactly a model of feminism having three sexy
wimmin running to Charlie for advice and orders. And again, not
revolutionary superheros.

Charlie's Angels plot was pretty sparse, but at once point they did
introduce some drama by putting a former Angel as the mastermind behind
the for plan to steal the FBI list. She went to work for herself so that
she won't have to take orders but instead could give them, as she
explained.

She is confronted by Charlie who tells her that she needs to work for the
good of the group and that there must still be some good in her. She
responds emotionally, and this, combined with one of the Angels mentioning
that she faced some severe trauma years before, implies that this one
Angel went bad after psychological problems.

MIM doesn't care to psychoanalyze those who are perpetuating harm against
humanity. We look for materialist reasons, like profit and power. We can
not say what part of individuals' behavior is attributed to chemical
imbalance as long as we have a culture influencing them that teaches and
encourages oppression. In general it is not a psychological disease that
causes people to do these things, and pretending that it is only leads
people down the wrong path to end the problems in the world. In the end
the evil Angel wasn't put in therapy: they killed her, so at least
Charlie's Angels got that right.

MIM recommends sending us your $20 to help produce revolutionary feminist
action films instead of spending your money seeing these films.