There has been a lot of talk in the cinema world lately about female directors, and how Hollywood studios haven't exactly given them a fair chance in a historically male-dominated industry. The latest Academy Awards really put this issue in the spotlight, which will hopefully draw some positive results in the future. I've decided to do my part in celebrating the works of female directors with this list of my favorite films directed by women. I figured this would be the perfect week to publish it, since today is the birthday of Jane Campion, one of the most celebrated female directors in the movie industry, who also has one of her films in this top 10 of mine. I hope you enjoy my list!
Here are my honorable mentions: Bend It Like Beckham (Gurinder Chadha), Big (Penny Marshall), Fast Times At Ridgemont High (Amy Heckerling), The Babadook (Jennifer Kent), Wayne's World (Penelope Spheeris)
10. The Piano (Jane Campion)
Jane Campion's 1993 art film features beautiful scenery from New Zealand, very beautiful piano music, and extremely beautiful cinematography that captures Campion's stylistic vision with grace. This movie would be even higher on my list, but I did have some problems with the plot - everything else in the film is quite magnificent. The acting is phenomenal, as proven by Holly Hunter's Best Actress Academy Award that she earned without speaking a word (her character is mute), as well as Anna Paquin's even more impressive Best Supporting Actress award - that she earned at the age of eleven years. Better-known stars Harvey Keitel and Sam Neill play thoroughly decent supporting roles, but are totally outshined by the film's powerful women, which fits quite well into Campion's feminist message.
9. Mamma Mia! (Phyllida Lloyd)
If you're looking for a purely fun movie full of entertaining escapism, with the added spices of awesome music and a cast of numerous a-list actors, you can't do much better than Mamma Mia. The musical builds a heartfelt and hilarious plot around some of ABBA's greatest hits, making for a movie that is indeed just very fun to watch. Amanda Seyfried and Meryl Streep make for great leading performances with their combination of amiable humor, skillful acting (even if their roles here are a bit "easy" for such talented performers) and some incredible singing skills. And Pierce Brosnan, Stellan Skarsgård and Colin Firth make for one of the funniest trios in cinematic history as the group of three (potential) dads. Phyllida Lloyd does a very solid job putting all together, making for an all-in-all enjoyable and memorable musical.
8. Wonder Woman (Patty Jenkins)
The most iconic female superhero of all time was finally given a proper solo film in 2017, starring Gal Gadot as the titular hero and having the talented Patty Jenkins behind the director's chair. My expectations for the film were high, as Gadot's version of Wonder Woman had been introduced in the previous year's Batman V Superman: The Dawn Of Justice, where she stole every scene she was in. And her solo outing sure was worth the wait: Wonder Woman became one of the very best in the many films DC comics has released. Gadot is perfect in the lead role, the various supporting characters are amusing and memorable, and the lore behind the Amazon warriors that the heroine belongs to is fascinating. The film also includes one of the most awe-inspiring moments from the entire superhero genre: the scene of Wonder Woman emerging from the trenches into no man's land, fiercely fighting her opponents as the epic soundtrack and the use of slow motion in critical parts add even more momentum to the majestic sequence.
7. American Psycho (Mary Harron)
With many of the films on this list, it makes a lot of sense that they specifically are directed by women, as they deal with feminism and the status of the female gender in society in straight-forward ways. Others, like American Psycho, should prove to studios in Hollywood that women can also direct any other kinds of films just as well as men. This fascinating psychological thriller follows businessman Patrick Bateman, terrifyingly played by Christian Bale in perhaps the best performance of his impressive career, as he moonlights as a serial killer who hides his psychopathic traits as well as the bodies of his victims with varying results and chaotic dark humor. The film owes a lot of its success to Bale's unsettling performance matched with Harron's expert directing, as well as the ambiguous script: when all is said and done, a lot is left for the audience to decipher, drawing many different theories and conclusions on what really happened (and didn't happen). American Psycho is one of those films that are dark and creepy to watch, but intriguing and even fun to analyze afterwards - if you liked last year's smash hit Joker, you'll definitely like this one as well.
6. The Hurt Locker (Kathryn Bigelow)
This one is right up there with Speed (1994) and Gravity (2013) as one of the most tense, edge-of-your-seat, hold-your-breath, chills-down-your-spine-while-nervously-sweating movies I've ever seen. The movie follows a bomb squad as they make their way across the grim setting of the Iraq war, risking their lives to dispose of various explosives they come across. Before Jeremy Renner and Anthony Mackie donned their Marvel cloaks as Hawkeye and Falcon, they played two dead-serious leading roles in this heart-stopping Kathryn Bigelow war film, and they sure played the hell out of those roles.
In addition to a grim war setting, quality acting and some of cinema's best tension-building, the movie also delves deep into the addicting thrill of war that some soldiers experience - a hard concept for a pacifist like myself to relate with, but a very interesting one to explore. Protagonist William James (Renner) is a character who always goes head-first into dangerous situations for the adrenaline rush - a character archetype often glorified in less serious action movies. In Hurt Locker, we see just how dangerous such a personality can be in real life. No wonder the film won the Oscar for Best Picture, and 5 other Academy Awards (including Best Director, making Bigelow the first woman to win said award)!
5. Citizenfour (Laura Poitras)
This is my second week in a row discussing Citizenfour, as it also made it to last week's list of my top 10 favorite documentaries of all time. Laura Poitras does an impeccable job directing this documentary, bravely putting herself in the midst of the setting as she travels to Hong Kong with her camera and two reporters to interview Edward Snowden. Moments of this important interview are then juxtaposed with footage from related political meetings, news clips, and various other media, to fully tell the necessary story detailing both the reasons of Snowden's actions and the fallout from the material he leaked. Citizenfour is a magnificent documentary, very much deserving the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature that it won.
4. Lady Bird (Greta Gerwig)
This critically acclaimed coming-of-age comedy-drama from 2017 just hits the spot in a lot of ways. Pretty much everyone will find something to relate to in the film's realistic characters and depiction of youthful struggles, especially if you happen to be an artistically inclined individual. The more dramatic side of the film can be heartbreaking at times, especially in the rift between protagonist Lady Bird (Saoirse Ronan) and her mother (Laurie Metcalf), as both actresses deliver phenomenal, Oscar-nominated performances. As a nice balance to the heavier parts, the film has a good chunk of humor and a whole lot of heart, making it an ultimately cozy film to watch. With a thoroughly nice atmosphere, great acting and the artistic directorial style of Greta Gerwig, Lady Bird is a sweet and memorable movie worth watching to any viewer who appreciates good cinema.
3. Zero Dark Thirty (Kathryn Bigelow)
Kathryn Bigelow appears on this list for a second time with a movie that many consider to be the crown jewel of her filmography: Zero Dark Thirty. This ambitious chronicle of the Osama Bin Laden manhunt answers the question "What if Showtime's Homeland (2011-2020) was based on true events and featured a more stable lead character?". Jessica Chastain shines in a career-defining performance as CIA operative Maya, as we follow the years of the manhunt from the aftermath of 9/11 all the way to the climactic raid of Bin Laden's hiding place in 2011, largely from her perspective and her role in the proceedings. While the movie is filled with tension, thrills and a-list actors, it strongly avoids the simplified morals and over-romanticizing nature of many movies in the biopic genre; the film is thoroughly gripping and honest in the dirty work that went into the manhunt, and what it cost to the people involved. All in all, Zero Dark Thirty is an intense and impeccably directed dramatization of a dark yet thrilling true story.
2. Lost In Translation (Sofia Coppola)
Sofia Coppola's masterful drama about human connection strikes a unique tone with its style: the film's Tokyo setting feels vibrant and buzzing, yet the film's story and directorial choices simultaneously make it one of the most subtle and low key -feeling movies I've seen. Lost In Translation is a piece of art that isn't exactly entertaining in the word's conventional meaning, but one of those well-crafted slow-paced movies that suck you into its world when watched in the right mood. Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson are brilliant in the lead roles as two people in unhappy marriages who come across one another and begin to bond. The film isn't a typical romance yet it does tell a surprisingly sweet story of these two lost souls finding meaning and a sense of belonging through their interactions.
Even the film's dialogue is very unconventional, as many of Murray and Johansson's conversations consist of individual philosophical sentences and phrases uttered by both in turns, which makes for a strange but compelling form of conversation. It might not sound normal to the viewer, yet the two characters clearly understand one another, forming a deep and meaningful connection throughout the film. Rightfully winning an Oscar for best screenwriting, Lost In Translation is a quiet and mellow film quite unlike any other, thanks to Sofia Coppola's unique vision and the powerful leading performances.
1. The Matrix (Wachowski Sisters)
Sure, back when this film was released in 1999 (the year of my birth!), they were known as the Wachowski brothers. But after officially coming out as trans women in later years, they have admitted to always feeling a belonging to the female gender, and so they have a spot on this list. With that cleared up, I will now explain why The Matrix is one of the best films of all time.
The premise of The Matrix is mind-blowing. The idea of a dystopian future where machines rule humankind has been explored quite a few times in the science fiction genre, but this film gives it a paranoia-inducing twist: what if we were living in that world already, but just didn't know that because the reality we perceive is a simulation fabricated by the machines to hide the fact that we're really slaves working for them? I think the great Keanu Reeves sums this creative concept and its dark, mind-bending implications up quite eloquently with his iconic quote from this film:
"Woah".
But despite the darkness of the concept, this is no 1984 - the Wachowskis dodge the bullet (pun intended) of making the film too depressing by simply pouring tons of fun into the mix. Early on in the movie, we're introduced to a group of heroes fighting against these machines, on a mission from their base in the last remaining free human city. Keanu's character Neo (who may or may not be the cinema world's most badass Jesus metaphor) joins these characters, who are played by some of Hollywood's best talent: Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss and Joe Pantaliano all turn out some awesome performances, as does Hugo Weaving as Agent Smith, one of the greatest villains in science fiction. The aforementioned fun elements include some impeccably choreographed Kung fu sequences, often humorous chemistry between the main cast, and a soundtrack ranging from Django Reindhart and Duke Ellington's jazz standards to the raw power of Rage Against The Machine's Wake Up - which fits this movie's atmosphere and themes like a glove.
With its oddly perfect mixture of philosophy, Kung fu and Keanu, The Matrix is a science fiction masterpiece, one of my all-time favorite movies, and in my subjective opinion, the best film to come from a female director (or in this case, two female directors). A majority of the movies on my list were quite new ones, which reflects the fact the female directors are slowly but surely becoming a more usual thing and less of an anomaly, which is undoubtedly a good sign for Hollywood's future - like with many societal issues, there's still a long way to go, but at least the direction is right.
Thank you for reading! Tune in next week as I celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Friday The 13th series by ranking every movie from the iconic, hockey-masked slasher franchise.
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