Entertainment
Hailee Steinfeld Joins 'Barely Lethal' and the Ranks of High School's Most Wanted
Hailee Steinfeld, star of True Grit, has just signed on to the new movie Barely Legal. Although the name's a bit of a groaner, Hailee will play a 16-year-old international assassin who fakes her own death to have a normal high school experience. Jessica Alba is set to play the film's villain, and Samuel L. Jackson will play Steinfeld's mentor. The plot sounds interesting, although good movies containing Alba are few and far between. But hey, it's not so far-fetched. Teenage girl criminals are all the rage now, and they're bigger and badder than ever before...
Hailee Steinfeld to Play Teen Assasin
Hailee Steinfeld, star of True Grit, has just signed on to the new movie Barely Legal. Although the name's a bit of a groaner, Hailee will play a 16-year-old international assassin who fakes her own death to have a normal high school experience. Jessica Alba is set to play the film's villain, and Samuel L. Jackson will play Steinfeld's mentor. The plot sounds interesting, although good movies containing Alba are few and far between. But hey, it's not so far-fetched. Teenage girl criminals are all the rage now, and they're bigger and badder than ever before...
'Kick-Ass'
One of the youngest female criminals on the movie screen, Hit Girl has been serving up vigilante justice since she was in diapers. Kick Ass was the origin story of the 11-year-old crime fighter, but Kick Ass 2 sees the fierce heroine hitting the halls of high school. Is the a hacky, borderline-sexist joke about tampons? Yeah. But tampon jokes aside, Hit Girl is a well-rounded, badass character, and that's pretty unprecedented for a female character so young.
'Heathers'
Veronica's motives are questionable throughout Heathers — after all, you can only stage the your boyfriend's murders of the popular kids as suicides for so long until you realize something's up, right? And that's part of the reason why the movie has become a cult classic: Veronica's a relatable character who just sort of stumbles into crime and spends most of the movie in a vague, panicked moral uncertainty. Yeah, she finds her way eventually, but her revenge at the end of the movie is far from pretty.
'Spring Breakers'
The movie was both lauded and panned, but regardless of what you think of the film critically, the twist revealed early in the film is pretty phenomenal. It's not the young teenage girls who are being taken advantage of by Riff-Raff-esque criminal; it's the other way around. While the film is unmistakably shot through the male gaze (so many butt shots), it does at least take these girls seriously as heartless criminals.
'Sugar & Spice'
Sugar & Spice would've been a great Spring Breakers before Spring Breakers was even made — but instead, it just ended up as a terrible movie. The film follows five cheerleaders rob a bank after one of them learns she's pregnant. The premise sounds like it could be deliciously dark, but it ends up as cheery as a high school pep rally. Seriously, they do cheerleading stunts to cover up the cameras during the robbery.
