Galentine’s Day movie picks

Happy Galentine’s Day! Looking for movies that celebrate female friendships this Galentine’s Day? These movie picks include a few (and sometimes all) of the following: a female gaze, several significant female characters, affection and congeniality between females, exchanges between women about things besides men and little to no violence against women and girls (VAWG) or hypersexualization of the female characters. They may not all contain every one of these inclusions (and exclusions) but they are all enjoyable mainstream feature films, have much to offer female viewers and celebrate female friendships.

Click on the underlined text to watch enjoyable clips from these movies (leave me a comment after the video—this is my YouTube channel). In no particular order:

1. Fried Green Tomatoes (1991): Jessica Tandy tells her new friend, Kathy Bates, the story of the friendship between Idgie (Mary Stuart Masterson) and Ruth (Marie-Louise Parker). The screenplay by Carol Sobieski is based on a novel by Fannie Flagg.
2. Thelma & Louise (1991): A feminist classic about two best friends (Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis) on a road trip. Screenplay by Callie Khouri.
3. 9 to 5 (1980): Three office workers (Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin and Dolly Parton) vastly improve their working conditions while they have their boss (Dabney Coleman) sequestered in his home. Patricia Resnick co-wrote the screenplay with a man.
4. The Help (2011): An aspiring white writer (Emma Stone) who teams up with two black maids (Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer) in 1963 to write a book about the lives of black maids in Jackson, Mississippi. Based on the novel by Kathryn Stockett.
5. The First Wives Club (1996): Three New Yorkers (Goldie Hawn, Bette Midler and Diane Keaton) band together to make their ex-husbands pay for treating them poorly. Based on the novel by Olivia Goldsmith.
6. Hidden Figures (2016): The story of the three mathematicians who worked for NASA and played an important role in the American space program in the 1960s (Taraji P. Henson as Katherine G. Johnson, Octavia Spencer as Dorothy Vaughan and Janelle Monae as Mary Jackson). The screenplay by Allison Schroeder (and one male writer) is based on a novel by Margot Lee Shetterly.
7. Beaches (1998): The lifelong friendship between two women (Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey) that began when they were eleven. The screenplay by Mary Agnes Donoghue is based on a novel by Iris Rainer.
8. Ocean’s Eight (2018): Eight women plan a jewellery heist at a museum’s gala in New York City. Olivia Milch co-wrote the screenplay with a man.
9. Ghostbusters (2016): Four women team up to catch ghosts in New York City (Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones). Katie Dippold co-wrote the screenplay with two men.

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