One thing I’ve always had trouble with is my joint identity as a female and as a cinephile. Many films and directors I like, even love, often treat women in ways that either objectify them or seem to promote the mistreatment of them. But my anger at this is usually brought back down by the little voice inside my head screaming “but it’s such a good movie.”

On that note, yesterday, I noticed that Radar Online posted their take on the “decade’s most misogynistic movies.” Their picks ranged from Mona Lisa Smile and Wedding Crashers to She Hate Me and 13 Going on 30 and while in many cases I agree with their assessment, the list still troubles me. The fact is, despite their misogynistic nature, a lot of folks, women and men alike, went to see these films - and to me then, the questions becomes why? As long as people go to the theater, Hollywood will continue to make these films.

Of course, some might argue that people only see what’s put out there, what they have access to. With that, I present with an opposite list of sorts - “some of the decade’s more feminist movies” if you will - or to be less political about it all, films from this decade that portray real women, dealing with real issues, often showing how awesome, strong, complex and special women can be.

I picked two films per year (for each year this decade - 2000 seems so long ago!), one that was mainstream and had a box office presence and one that was smaller in the scale of it’s distribution but much larger in it’s quality and content. In a sense promoting the idea that we, as pro-women folk and consumers, should support the good movies that are available to us across the country in the multiplexes, but also addressing the fact that we need to seek out cinema that isn’t necessarily being shoved down our throats by Hollywood, cinema that portrays women as they deserve to be portrayed.

It does no good to get mad at what Hollywood routinely gives us, if you yourself don’t demand something different!

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2000 : The year I graduated high school. It should be noted that the box office results from my 18th birthday weekend had Gladiator coming in at #1, followed by a film called Battlefield Earth : A Saga in the Year 3000. Not going to comment, just thought I’d point it out.

• The Contender : Joan Allen stars as potential VP nominee for her party (the Democratic party) following the previous VP’s death. When information from her past is released, her confirmation is challenged. Allen as always is amazing, her character never shies away from her past and she stands true to what she believes. Below is a clip from the end of movie, so if you don’t want spoilers, don’t watch.

• Rosetta : For this I’ll let film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum do the talking:
  • From its opening seconds, this feature from Belgian brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (La promesse), winner of the Palme d’Or at the 1999 Cannes film festival, has to be the most visceral filmgoing experience of the past year, including all of Hollywood’s explosions and special-effects extravaganzas. It concerns the desperate efforts of the 18-year-old title heroine (played by Emilie Dequenne, a remarkable nonprofessional), who lives in a trailer park with her alcoholic mother and suffers from stomach cramps, to find a steady job; she particularly hopes to work at a waffle stand whose current employee has romantic designs on her. This may sound like the grimmest sort of neorealism, but the Dardennes keep the story so ruthlessly unsentimental and physical it would be a disservice to describe it as neo anything. You feel it in your nervous system before you get a chance to reflect on its meaning–it’s almost as if the Dardennes were intent on converting an immediate experience of the contemporary world into a breathless theme-park ride–and it makes just about every other form of movie “realism” look like trivial escapism. It’s certainly not devoid of psychological nuance either, and it’s had such an impact in Belgium that a wage law for teenagers, which passed in November 1999, is known as “the Rosetta plan.” 95 min.

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2001 - I find myself in Chicago and starting college, quite a difference from the suburbs of Ohio - mainly, I have access to better films.

• The Princess Diaries : Yes, it’s Disney, and yes it’s about a teenager named Mia who finds out she’s a princess. Nevertheless, the movie features a young woman (Anne Hathaway’s Mia) trying to figure herself out while in the sometimes horrible world that is high school. She is independent (as is her best friend) and she actually questions her role as a princess! More than that, Julie Andrews’ queen and Mia’s single mom round out the main characters, all women, all from different backgrounds, all strong and awesome. It may have the stereotypically happy ending, but getting there is a pleasant surprise.

• Under the Sand : Again I find that Jonathan Rosenbaum has said it better than I could:
  • A middle-aged Parisian who teaches English literature (Charlotte Rampling) loses her husband (Bruno Cremer) when, vacationing with her in the country, he goes off for a swim and never comes back. This impressive feature by Francois Ozon (Water Drops on Burning Rocks) is less concerned with solving the mystery than with charting the wife’s gradual adjustment to the loss, something it handles with both confidence and a remarkable feeling for psychological nuance. Rampling is extraordinary, and the screenplay (by Ozon, Emmanuelle Bernheim, Marcia Romano, and Marina de Van) gives her plenty to work with. Others in the cast include Jacques Nolot and Alexandra Stewart. In French with subtitles.

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2002 - The events of September 11 begin to change everything, even the cinema.

• Panic Room: Jodie Foster and Kristen Stewart star as Meg and Sarah Altman, two women who find themselves in a new house and in capable director David Fincher’s hands. Their new house brings them some trouble, the previous owners having left a large fortune in it. When 3 men try to get that fortune, Meg and Sarah have to work together to stay alive. It’s a thriller and a popcorn movie, but a smart one, with 3 dimensional characters and mainly 2 awesome women leading the charge.

• Morvern Callar: Lynne Ramsay’s story of a young woman (Samantha Morton) who wakes up to find her boyfriend has committed suicide and proceeds to pass his novel off as her own, leading to a journey with her best friend, is an amazing film. You’ll have to trust me when I say it gets everything right - I’ve never indirectly related to a movie more. Also, the director is one of the best female filmmakers around.

• Also see Real Women Have Curves!

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2003 - I’m writing movie reviews for my school paper - seeing movies for free and interviewing awesome movie folks

• X2: A super-hero movie? I know, the women are all wearing tight outfits and blah blah blah. The X-Men are a little different though (and yes I know MEN is the word in the title). The fact is that comic book/super hero movies are here to stay and this franchise does a pretty good job of having complicated and strong female characters. Dr. Grey, Rogue, Storm etc.. they’re all smart, yet all struggling with their identity a bit and figuring out how to navigate their “careers” along with desires for love. Plus, if your going to sit through a movie where the men lead the good guys and the bad guys, it might as well be one where those leaders are Ian McKellan and Patrick Stewart - two guys who I would bet my last dollar on being completely anti-misogynistic.

• Demonlover: Olivier Assayas’s exploration of the changing face of media based porn through a virtual reality thriller at first sounds supremely misogynistic - and yes all of the women in the film are gorgeous and often wear tight clothes. But keep in mind this is a movie about an industry that treats women horribly and in turn to have strong women at the center of the plot and at the head of a huge corporation (somewhere they never are) is a statement on itself about such an industry. Men are never at an advantage in this film that runs a fine line between fantasy and fact. I for one, think any film that causes one to really consider the sex industry, media and and how far people are willing to go with them, is a good thing for women.

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2004 - I graduate from college- what next?

• Kill Bill 2: I do hate Quentin Tarantino but I can’t deny that this franchise painted women in a different light (maybe it’s because Uma Thurman helped to write it). Our heroine is a mother and a women who is fighting back, for her child and herself. Of course we again have to deal with the issue that all of the women are super attractive, although in a sense, I would argue that any women in shape enough to do what these women do, would have to look pretty good. Uma Thurman gives a strong and nuanced performance that can make any woman proud.

• Moolaade: Don’t know who Ousmane Sembene is? You should stop reading and find out:
  • This masterwork by Ousmane Sembene, the 81-year-old father of African cinema and one of Senegal’s greatest novelists, is the second film in a trilogy celebrating African women (after Faat Kiné, a 2000 comedy about a sassy, self-made city woman). It focuses on the defiant second wife of an elder in a West African village who refuses to allow four little girls to undergo the traditional circumcision ceremony. Among Sembene’s strengths as a storyteller are deceptive simplicity and apparent looseness, which allow his drama to steadily gather momentum and political force. His ambiguous, multilayered treatment of a flirtatious local merchant who partially represents the world outside the village is emblematic of his virtuosity. In Bambara with subtitles. 120 min. (Jonathan Rosenbaum)

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2005 - Next is New York City, a cinephile’s dream.

• The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants: On the surface just another typical teen girl movie but look a little deeper and you’ll see:
  • a lyrical celebration of female friendship, based on the popular novel by Ann Brashares. TV regulars Amber Tamblyn (Joan of Arcadia) and Alexis Bledel (Gilmore Girls) are joined by the effervescent America Ferrera (Real Women Have Curves) and newcomer Blake Lively as four best pals who stay in touch during their first summer apart by circulating a lucky pair of thrift-store jeans. The overall tone is sunny, but the comic stretches pale beside the artful dramatic scenes, which examine such tests of young womanhood as first love, mixed families, early loss, and denial. Except for one manipulative deathbed scene, Ken Kwapis directs with sensitivity, steering the multiple story lines toward a satisfying conclusion. PG, 119 min. [Andrea Gronvall]

• Funny Ha Ha: This story of a 24 year old women, navigating the awkardness of her age and of romantic encounters may not be the most serious film on the subject, but it hits all the right notes. Kate Dollenmayer paints a genuine portrait of twenty something life in the city, full of not knowing what one wants in life.

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2006 - I become a member of The Film Society of Lincoln Center, yes, I’m a dork.

• Children of Men: Humanity is in trouble and only a woman can save us (and a minority woman at that!). Even though it has to do with giving birth, women are the symbol of life in this movie, both through the pregnant woman Clive Owen’s character must lead to safety and through the women, including Pam Ferris and Julianne Moore’s characters that take charge to help deliver the pregnant woman to that safety. The women are real here, they are strong and the future of humanity rests on their shoulders.

• Climates: Ebru Ceylan gives an extraordinary performance as a Turkish woman in love with someone she perhaps shouldn’t be. But despite this, she is strong and beautiful (in a non stereotypical way). More than that, when she wavers and tries to give into that love again, she isn’t weak or betraying herself - she is instead simple trying to navigate life, like we all are.

2007 - Add memberships to Film Forum and MOMA to the list, I’m a big dork.

• No Country For Old Men: It’s without a doubt a masculine movie, in a year of a very masculine movies. But I chose it for two reasons, 1) Radar riffs on it in their title, 2) In a movie filled with tough men, Kelly MacDonald’s Carla Jean is the only person that stands up and questions the serial killer. She is the only one who seems to see through his coin toss justification of mass murder.

• 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days: Two young women in 1987 Romania have to deal with an unwanted pregnancy. While both characters are strong and both women give great performances, I chose this film because, better than any other, it speaks to women needing control of their bodies - women deserving that control. 1987 Romania is a time when women didn’t have the right to be empowered about their body and I haven’t seen a film in a long time that so perfectly illustrated why female empowerment is so necessary.

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Check out some of the movies above and to help women behind the camera (that’s a whole different blog post !)