Despite its genesis on TV, 'Sex and the City', with its second big-screen outing, is now firmly established as the apotheosis of the chick flick. But surely the genre can do better than the usual reliance on shopping-as-porn and all the other staples – you know, emotional incontinence, the pursuit of happy-ever-after and all that sort of nonsense.
Here are Marc Lee ’s suggestions, in chronological order, for the top 10 Real Chick Flicks.
‘The African Queen’ (1951)
Almost any of firebrand Katharine Hepburn ’s films could feature in this list, but her protracted onboard scrap with pickled old seadog Humphrey Bogart as they float down the river in a battered old steamboat is a monument to feisty femininity.
‘I Want to Live!’ (1958)
This is a long way from Carrie & co’s designer-label feelgood world, but Susan Hayward is incandescent in her Oscar-winning performance as a killer on death row. The build-up to her execution is almost unbearably painful to witness.
‘Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!’ (1965)
Breast-obsessed Russ Meyer may not have contributed much to the feminist cause, but this early exploitation flick features a terrific performance from Tura Satana as the Amazon leader of a trio of strippers on a murderous rampage in the desert.
‘Alien’ (1979)
In the first and best of the space-horror franchise, the most devilish creature in the galaxy, with acid for blood is no match for Sigourney Weaver ’s ferocious Ripley, a cat-lover and dab hand with a flame-thrower.
‘The Terminator’ (1984)
Few mothers face a challenge as demanding as this: Sarah Connor, who will one day give birth to a son who holds the fate of mankind in his hands, is visited by a cyborg from the future on a mission to kill her. Linda Hamilton is the waitress-warrior.
‘Nikita’ (1990)
Anne Parillaud plays a tough street kid who ends up a cop-killer. However, her death sentence is faked and she is enrolled in a secret government programme set up to trains super-assassins. Balletic mayhem ensues. She also learns how to be a woman.
‘The River Wild’ (1994)
Meryl Streep has played intense-and-emotional in a vast range of movies from The French Lieutenant’s Woman to The Bridges of Madison County, but here she gets impressively physical as she guides her imperilled family through the roaring rapids.
‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’ (2000)
Dazzling and dizzying martial-arts epic with female characters as adept at the ancient skills as any man. The gravity-defying fights are beautiful to behold, and the final scene in which Jen ( Zhang Ziyi ) leaps from a mountain top is heart-stopping.
‘Kill Bill’ (2003, 2004)
More martial arts in Quentin Tarantino’s two-parter, a cornucopia of catfights. The Bride ( Uma Thurman ) wakes from a coma to seek revenge on the ladies of Deadly Viper Assassination Squad – Vivica A Fox, Lucy Liu and Daryl Hannah. Meeow.
‘The Queen’ (2006)
Her Majesty faces unprecedented challenges in the wake of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales: Helen Mirren ’s nuanced and rapturously received performance showed that a Real Chick Flick can embrace sensitivity, maturity and dignity.