Some of my favorites are:

Winter's Bone
North Country
All About Eve
Zero Dark Thirty
Places in the Heart
The Incredibles
Miss Congeniality

Beloved

Step ford housewives

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I thought this might be a fun list to generate...those movies over the years that really set the tone and moved the dialogue forward on feminist ideals. This is my starter list, which I realize is really incomplete and way too white, but it's what I came up with in three minutes of thought.

His Girl Friday
Maybe Adam's Rib (been a while since I've seen that one)
Norma Rae
Silkwood
9 to 5
maybe Broadcast News (again, I'd like to rewatch this one)
Joy Luck Club
Aliens

What am I missing?! It also occurs to me, looking at this list, that it's all about women in the workplace with the exception of Joy Luck Club. I think for inclusion they also should be affirmatively GOOD movies, and hopefully avoid the easy "girl power!" flicks (like the Pitch Perfect movies, which are really fun, but not really what I'm thinking of....).

Was just coming here to list Aliens. Also was surprised when I finally saw Poltergeist that it was really about the mom coming to the rescue - which at the time in the early 80s was quite remarkable. But I don't know if it is technically that important. Oh and I loved Broadcast News - which to me was about being a workaholic and the destruction it wreaks on a person's life. That was an issue central to my life at the time! But I don't know that I wold call it an iconic feminist movie.

I need to rewatch Broadcast News, but it's actually how I started thinking about the list. I was thinking about her bursting into tears, and I remember seeing that as a teen and just being gobsmacked. I think it was the first time I'd seen a depiction of a strong, incredibly articulate professional person that was also emotional, hormonal, flawed, whatever. I was thinking today about the whole "is it okay to cry at work" question, and remembered that movie. So then I started thinking about other movies that sort of changed the way I thought about women. And my memory is that her character was really a focal point of discussion when that movie came out, for precisely that reason -- how much do women have to act like men in order to make it in a man's world? And what's the cost?

Color Purple is one I should have included...but of course that's a book first and foremost. (And it's also a movie that, like Sophie's Choice, I just find SO HARD to watch that I'm not sure I can rewatch it.)
Some of the others mentioned here just felt to me like too much bubble gum girl power (Wonder Women, the new Star Wars, Working Girl, Erin Brokovitch....).
Fargo is phenomenal and probably one of the best female characters I can think of in the movies. She's just so real.
Dangerous Liaisons is also maybe one to rewatch....it's been ages since I've seen that one, but I remember being blown away by the Machiavellian Glenn Close. Just unlike anything I'd ever seen a woman in a movie do before.

One True Thing

Working Girl
Baby Boom
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (each woman gets what she wants in the end, at least)

Fargo, she’s a pregnant cop.
Anything by Greta Gerwig
Melancholia
The Proposal

Use this website to find more, at least those that have fully formed, talking female characters!

https://bechdeltest.com/

My Brilliant Career
Bound
Wonder Woman
Shut Up and Sing
Fargo
Entre Nous
Battle of the Sexes

Cléo from 5 to 7
The Women (1939)
Outrage (Ida Lupino)
A Lonely Woman (Agnieszka Holland)
An Unmarried Woman
The Divorcee
A Woman is a Woman
Leon Morin, Priest

Whale Rider

Brave

What's Love Got to Do With It

Antonia's Line - about a Dutch matriarchal family

Anonymous wrote:Waiting to Exhale

Daughters of the Dust

Silence of the Lambs
Working Girl
Frozen
Moana
Wonder Woman
Terminator 2

For discussion:
The Intern
The Devil Wears Prada

I have issues with aspects of both of the last two, but still enjoy them as feminist movies.

Moana and Frozen