‘Ocean’s Eight’: Feminist Sea of Possibility or Sexist Swamp?

Hearing about an all-star chick reboot of the Ocean's Eleven franchise triggered my gag reflex. Sure, I'm just a movie freak who thinks franchises are for fried chicken not film. But that doesn't entirely explain my post-Ghostbusters repulsion at Warner Brothers' corralling of female talent for Ocean's Eight with sorority sister Sandra Bullock in the George Clooney spot, and Oscar-winners Cate Blanchett and Anne Hathaway, and singer Rihanna. IndieWire Film Editor Kate Erbland told the Observer: "To me, true diversity doesn't mean pillaging what has come before and attempting to stuff it into a new narrative -- though, of course, there are always possible exceptions, and I am hardly opposed to remakes or reboots that really do venture for something new -- but touting something as the 'female whatever' doesn't do it for me in the slightest."