SunBreak Roundtable: Best Movies for Girls

The New Year dawns with--what else?--a bevy of press releases geared toward the New Year. Case in point: Monday afternoon an email showed up with the subject line "Father of Cinemaparenting recommends 11 films to watch with your daughter in 2011." What followed was a pitch for Dr. Gary Solomon, aka The Movie Doctor®, who suggests movies as therapy, aka Cinematherapy®. He's written a few books on the topic, the latest aimed at parents.

With that in mind, here are 11 films Dr. Solomon is recommending you watch with your daughters in 2011 that offer healing themes, life lessons, and empowering role models:

11. The Boy with Green Hair (1948)
10. My Girl (1991)
9.   Brokedown Palace (1997)
8.   What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1994)
7.   Steel Magnolias (1989)
6.   Terms of Endearment (1983)
5.   Drop Dead Fred (1991)
4.   Benny and Joon (1993)
3.   Welcome to the Doll House (1996)
2.   Norma Rae (1979)
1.   Pretty in Pink (1986)

Given that stellar crop of femme-centric films, we at The SunBreak decided to brainstorm a list of our own best movies for girls.

Josh: BROKEDOWN PALACE?

Audrey: If you've got a better way to keep your daughter out of a Thai prison, let me know.

Roger: These are not just 10 bad films (Grape is actually pretty good), they are potentially damaging films to watch with a young daughter. This selection features no less than three films WHERE THE DAUGHTER DIES A PROLONGED, PAINFUL DEATH (My Girl, Terms, Steel). There are at least three films where young students are completely ostracized by their peers. Dysfunctional families, lecherous old men, mental illness, and Sally Field. What selection could be worse to watch with your daughter? Our Halloween picks would be better.

Josh: Does the new True Grit count?

MvB: YES JOSH IT DOES!

Clint: Where's Heathers? ("The impact of peer pressure cannot be underestimated," Dr. Solomon said. "Parents must remind young women that they need not bow to the whims of their friends and peers. In fact, the opposite is true. Your daughter should be dictating style and defining what's 'cool'—with extreme prejudice. Also," he added, "homicide always beats suicide.")

Constance: How 'bout A League of Their Own, Little Darlings, Terminator 1 & 2, Serenity, Tank Girl, But I'm a Cheerleader.... Heathers is a great choice, although I rewatched it recently, and it has aged poorly. But so has Terms of Endearment, for fuck's sake. How about Ready, OK!? And do you think The Breakfast Club might be slightly more feminist than Pretty in Pink? Who has time to apply the Bechdel Test?

Actually, I'm always surprised that Now, Voyager and Mildred Pierce don't show up more often on lists. Am I crazy for thinking of these movies as feminist? My biggest problem with the Good Doctor's picks is they lean heavily towards male protoganists and/or "girl needs boy" stories. Is that really the lesson you want to teach your daughter?

Clint: Yeah, Heathers isn't what it used to be. I loved it back in the day, but now it's actually kind of disturbing. In the not-totally-kidding category, I'd put the Alien films, with emphasis on the first two. My possible future teenage daughter would do worse than to learn from confident, resourceful, compassionate Ellen Ripley.

Audrey: I'd encourage young women to watch films made by strong female writer-directors, like Nicole Holofcener and Lisa Choldenko, who actually know how women act and think and speak to each other.  (Sorry Tarantino, I love you, but none of your female characters are actually women; they're merely ciphers and/or a geek's wet dreamgirl.)  And as for fully-realized female characters crafted by men, I'd go to Mike Leigh's Happy-Go-Lucky, with the loopy, luminous Sally Hawkins, and another film (this one directed by a woman) with the same actress, An Education, to teach a very important lesson: Never trust a smooth-talking charming man.

Seth: Did we not mention Juno yet? Juno! Heart of the Game, the documentary about the Roosevelt High girls basketball team, and also from the sports world, Bend it Like Beckham has a strong female empowerment message.

Constance: I agree about Alien--Ripley is an awesome character. In the action category, I'd also add The Long Kiss Goodnight, The Replacement Killers, and Run Lola Run. The chick in Raiders of the Lost Ark kicks ass, too. MORE SPORTS MOVIES, SETH. Bend It Like Beckham was good. Bring It On is actually a very good sports movie, in part thanks to Eliza Dushku's goofy characterization. We need more sports movies with girls. Anyone?

Josh: Um, BLUE CRUSH.

Audrey: If we're talking Ellen Page movies, I'd go Hard Candy over Juno for the Very Important Lesson on how to deal with sexual predators--namely torture, kill them.

Roger: Sports movies should include Gregory's Girl. Written and directed by Bill Forsyth, this movie is seldom shown, but is certainly one of the best high school movies of all time. Like Breakfast Club, the film displays affection for its young subjects and never looks down on them. In this way it accurately records the sometimes awkward way that boys and girls stumble into love. This movie, like all Forsyth's films, has a special humor that bubbles up at odd moments as Gregory finds himself attracted to a young woman who takes his place on the school soccer team. It's a wonderful movie that shows the strange power young girls can have on boys who are just discovering that, well, they like girls.

And I think the most recent Pride and Prejudice has something good going on. There have been many cinematic versions of Jane Austin's trim, skittish novel, but for my money, this one, starring the lovely Keira Knightly, is the best. Like the novel, it's a great lesson in powerful hold that love can have on people and the strange responses we all have to feelings of love. Young Elizabeth Bennett (Knightly) finds herself in the awkward position of both loving and loathing the same man. A stubborn, self-righteous person, she struggles with her responses to her feelings until she is granted a second chance and refuses to make the same mistake twice. Surely a lesson that any parent would like to share with their children. Well acted by a strong cast, it's a rewarding experience.

MvB: Foreign: Bonjour Tristesse! It's like An Education but in France, and really she digs her dad most. Which, ew. Cautionary tale.

Clint: Speaking of French: Amelie.

Seth: Speaking of Movies of Yesteryear: Breakfast at Tiffany's. His Girl Friday. Any of a dozen Katharine Hepburn movies, I'd think...Woman of the Year?

Tony: Fellow SunBreakers, you've presented some great choices already. Constance, I too adore Raiders of the Lost Ark's Marian Ravenwood; courageous, funny, resourceful, and passionate without being stupid. 

Great calls re: movies of the past, Seth. Kate Hepburn's work should be required viewing for young girls. The best in my eyes: Adam's Rib, in which two articulate and engaging grownups enjoy a complex, grownup relationship and eloquently address sexual politics. Their relationship is more layered, smart, and genuine than most anything you'd see in a typical modern rom-com.

Constance: I want to add The Color Purple. Difficult movie, but very important, and a great one to discuss. I can't think of a single issue that movie doesn't address. Also, Whale Rider is AMAZING.

Roger: Constance, The Color Purple is a fine film. Along similar lines, I'd suggest an even better movie: Sounder (1972). Directed by Martin Ritt and acted with force and passion by Cicely Tyson and Paul Winfield, it gives a realistic account of a family facing endemic racism and somehow being stronger for it. An amazing film. Be warned: you will cry at the end.

And speaking of the great Cicely Tyson, she gave one of the finest performances ever placed on film for The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (made-for-TV, 1974). The story traces the life of an American slave from the age of 23 to 110, roughly from the Civil War to the dawn of the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s. Any parent who wants to teach a daughter or son about perseverance, grace, or gumption should spend a night watching this movie. Just riveting, and the final scene, where the 110-year-old Jane walks down a sidewalk to take a drink from a "whites only" drinking fountain is about as perfect as any film ever got.

Tony: Rosalind Russell passes along inspiration and pearls of wisdom that young girls (hell, anyone) really should take to heart in Auntie Mame. Skip the Lucille Ball musical version and let Russell's unsinkable spirit weave its spell on young women.

Is it a crack smoker's notion to place Let the Right One In on this list? Yeah, it's a horror movie, but it presents two kids who blossom from each other's platonic friendship; and a young girl possessing equal parts loyalty and compassion. Plus she deals with school bullies the way that Ripley dealt with aliens.

Josh: I really like Let the Right One In, but that is not AT ALL how I interpreted it. Aside from the moral equivalence between school jerks and murderous aliens, your take requires serious flexibility in the definition of the words: blossom, platonic, friendship, compassion, young, and girl.

If this is turning into "movies where women exact spectacularly satisfying violence" (which the previous comment on Tarantino suggests that it isn't), then there's also Kick-Ass. But even though I'm not a family man, I don't think I'd schedule that one for any sort of parent-daughter movie night.

Jeremy: Yeah, just counterpointing ridiculous stereotypes of women and girls with their cartoonishly violent opposite is really just doing the same thing this author is, which is looking at skin-deep scenarios he can argue make a point he wants to make, which is a really dumb-guy way of looking at the situation. I initially thought of Let the Right One In, too, but it's true: it's not really about a girl. What about Pan's Labyrinth? It's a stretch, but I feel like all the good ones have been taken (which probably says something about the dearth of good films with strong, believable female characters).

Tony: Maybe I was smoking some high-grade rock re: Let the Right One In. I reckon a movie that poetically examines all of the pitfalls and agonies of budding pubescence in richly symbolic, sometimes gruesome fashion ain't necessarily a great family/young girl view. Then again, I watched movies that violent, strange, and outre when I was that age...

James: Also, "what films do you watch with your daughter?" Well, how old is your daughter? I'm not watching Raiders with my five-year-old, no matter how much I love it. Which is a lot. Watch good movies with your daughter that you think she'll be interested in, then talk about them with her. Lists are fine and fun, but they're not instant parenting.

MvB: You can't just say Spirited Away, can you?

James: Actually, I'm pretty sure [my daughter] would melt down if I tried to show her Spirited Away--she's still kind of moviephobic, because she finds a lot of them scary. (I still haven't seen the last hour of Up.)  Totoro, though, she loves. TOOOOOOOOOOOtoooooroooooo!