The nineties was the best decade, especially for film.
Recently, spurred by this month’s IWD hoopla, I rewatched all my favourite comfort titles with kick-ass female leads, where women take centre stage. They’re confident, abrasively charming, cool, and kind to each other. In all these movies, men are always on the periphery.
First Wives Club (1996)
I was in my late 20s when I first saw this movie, and I remember thinking, “When I grow up, I want to be a divorced woman in my fifties and hang out with my trio of best girlfriends all the time.” I’ve since rewatched the movie a few times and the sentiment hasn’t waned. Who wouldn’t want to be in a club with Goldie Hawn, Diane Keaton and Bette Midler and come up with creative ways to get back at our cheating husbands?
A League of their Own (1992)
Besides being one of the best sports films of the last half century, A League of their Own is also one of the best films about sisterly love, and female friendship. The story is based on the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) — a professional women’s baseball league that lasted from 1943 till 1954.
Lori Petty and Geena Davis play a pair of siblings who enter the league while the men are off at war. Their rivalry is completely familiar, especially if you have an older, prettier, smarter sibling as Petty’s Kit does in her sister, Dottie, played by Davis. You will definitely cry by the final scene, when the women are elderly and looking at photos of their younger selves at a Baseball Hall of Fame exhibit — helped along by Madonna’s “This Used to Be My Playground” as the end credits roll.
Sister Act (1992)
Like a good workout session or a cocktail at the end of the day, this movie is an instant pick-me-up. Whoopi Goldberg leads a stellar cast including Maggie Smith, Bill Nunn and Kathy Najimy as she spices up an all-white convent in San Francisco. Escaping her violent ex is only part of the plot of this movie.
At its core, the film embraces female friendship and love. The musical numbers are sure to get you up and singing. I will praise this movie until my dying days. Here’s my longer, sexier take on it.
Thelma & Louise (1991)
It’s hard to believe that it’s been more than thirty years since this seminal feminist text erupted onto the big screen. Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon became instant feminist icons playing Thelma Dickinson and Louise Sawyer, traversing the great American outback, fleeing their ordinary lives, falling in love, and escaping the god-damn law.
But the law is chasing them because they took their lives into their own hands — they knew the risk, and seized their own power anyway. Which is why, despite this empowering story, the end is so grim. It indicates a world where a woman cannot be free from violence while possessing agency over her own body without being punished.
Clockwatchers (1997)
Lisa Kudrow, Parker Posey, and a young Toni Collette. Need I say more? Not only does this underrated comedy from the 90s contain some of the most iconic actors of that era, it’s a quirky look into the sisterhood of the corporate underlings of capitalist America.
If you’ve ever worked in an office, done a 9-5 job, felt like a misfit, felt under-appreciated, or been harassed at work by a male co-worker (erm…I suppose, every woman then…) you will love this film.
Girl, Interrupted (1999)
Based on the 1993 memoir by Susanna Kaysen, this movie made Angelina Jolie a star and every young woman chop their hair to resemble Winona Ryder’s. Ah. Remember those days?
The story follows Ryder’s character as she enters a psychiatric hospital and befriends a host of incredible female characters — played by actors who would go on to become Hollywood leading actors, including Elizabeth Moss, Brittany Murphy and Angelina Jolie.
The movie is a study of women’s mental illness and the myriad of ways we are often misdiagnosed by archaic, patriarchal medical models. It’s also about women caring for other women — and we can never have enough of those stories.
Clueless (1995)
No list about movies from the 90s is complete without the inclusion of this masterpiece. It’s the Mean Girls, before Mean Girls (which I sadly could not include since it came out in 2004); a movie that centres a good-intentioned young teenager who wants simple pleasures in life; make her daddy proud, be likeable, and look really cute in nice clothes.
Weren’t we all a little like Cher? Didn’t we all want to have a makeover, the way Brittany Murphy’s Tai undergoes, dolled up and made up by two eager girlfriends? Again, this movie pits men on the periphery, but no one can deny the spark Paul Rudd brings to this film. Without him, it’s not the same film. It’ll be less sweet, less charismatic, less comforting. But at the end of the day, female love takes centre stage.
Practical Magic (1998)
Ahhh. Another classic sister film. This time, with magic added! Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman play sisters who are witches, trying to deal with a curse their matriarch cast on them.
Imagine your great-great-great grandmother casting a spell that kills every man you ever fall in love with!
Love spells are cast, an impossibly perfect man is conjured (yay!) and another man is murdered in self-defence. It’s the 90s cult classic to turn to when you feel like embracing the supernatural.