your favorite american films of the past 50 years with female protagonists

Heartland
The Trip to Bountiful

lol you like old lady movies!

killing people movies, but

ginger snaps
the descent

liquid sky

I would always walk into the video store, ask "Where the old lady movies? Passage to India? Naw, naw, seen that one already."

nine to five

all of me

Married to the Mob

crimes of passion

The Incredible Shrinking Woman

is michelle pfeiffer really the protagonist of married to the mob?

yes

Riding in Cars With Boys

Drew Barrymore is kind of amazing in it (as is Steve Zahn, but it's not about him).

http://images.moviepostershop.com/how-to-beat-the-high-cost-of-living-movie-poster-1980-1020233786.jpg

OK, here we go listing every piece of shit w/ female protagonists

I thought it was about favorites. Satisfaction is a total piece of shit, but I LOVE IT.

I just couldn't resist a three-women-in-a-barrel poster.

feel like Tarantino has been really conscientious about this:

Jackie Brown
Kill Bill
Inglorious Basterds

Fargo, obviously

Ward OTM re: 3 Women and Carrie, two of my favorites

The Sterile Cuckoo's good, though slight; also, Rachel, Rachel.

Cabaret
I'm Dancing As Fast As I Can
They Shoot Horses, Don't They

I'm kind of feeling like the exclusion criteria should be extended... Solely female protagonists (no male/female romance, no mixed ensemble), no 'girls about to be killed', nothing solely based on their psychological damage (that one's more tricky, but I look at a load of these and I just see 'women as victims' as strongly as you do with the about-to-die horror girl). And I'm certainly not saying that male protagonists never get these roles, they just get other roles too...

And I'm not saying those roles are always bad roles, or in bad films, or anything. I mean, most of my favourite films are about psychologically damaged protagonists... argh, I don't know. Whatever.

oh duh -- Sayles' Passion Fish w/ a pair of great performances by Alfre Woodard and Mary McDonnell, virtually in every scene together.

I almost mentioned this before realizing that I remember virtually nothing about it.

I guess part of my problem is that I sometimes forget that there is a man there because all I remember about the movie is related to the women (Sisters, for example). I think Margot Kidder and Jennifer Salt are the stars of that movie. In fact, I don't remember the first thing about the man in Sisters aside from the fact that he was creepy.

tank girl

Solely female's tough for an American film (unlike, say, Bergman); even obvious choices like Wanda, or An Unmarried Woman, or Fargo prominently involve men.

Stillman's new one Damsels in Distress probably passes the Bedchel test.

eXistenZ

wait no one's said Alien yet? lol

Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore

was gonna say Heavenly Creatures but I guess that isn't American :(

Freeway

Election (more of an ensemble thing I guess but Witherspoon and the other female lead whose name escapes me get as much screentime as the male protagonists)

no one likes Thelma and Louise anymore? :(

I should watch it again. Haven't seen it in probably ten years.

Can't stand Thelma and Louise, I must say...

Palindromes - more leads than I can remember, but all female

we're seeing taste overlap

more leads than I can remember, but all female

One of those was a willowy boy.

d'oh! allright well 7 out of 8 were female

Go Fish

Oh, someone was talking about that recently - sounds good (or at least, it sounded good when I established in my head it wasn't terrible '90s Brit-flick Shooting Fish).

would you guys consider jeff daniels to be the clear protagonist of something wild? i would say yes, esp. because melanie griffith is such a proto-M.P.D.G.

awesome lists here, though i must cavil that bonjour tristesse is 1959 and some of the other movies listed are objectively awful ("monster"?!).

i guess i'd add some interesting exploitation items by stephanie rothman: the student nurses and the velvet vampire (particularly the latter).

poltergeist maybe fits in here too? maybe?

Little Darlings

^^^love this movie so much

Going with what emil.y's reply earlier, I do have a problem with a lot of these films' failure to pass the Bechdel test. And while I love A Woman Under the Influence & etc., they are films all about how bitches be crazy.

I'm seriously blanking on my favorite American titles though. All I can think of right now are European films--they tend to play with the limits of female protagonists more broadly. The Dutch film A Question of Silence, for example, tackles the intense emotional reactions of three women but further explores how this may be a reaction to systematic oppression vs. inherent craziness.

Monster is the Aileen Wuornos bio, rather than any other film of the same name (or Monster's Ball, for that matter). I haven't seen it, but a lot of people seemed to like it.

they are films all about how bitches be crazy

To be fair, most of the movies not listed itt are about how men be idiots.