What makes a movie essential viewing for women?
It isn’t necessarily a female director.
Or a female protagonist.
It certainly isn’t a romantic ending.
Sometimes it’s a woman refusing to behave the way the world expects her to.
Sometimes it’s friendship.
Ambition.
Motherhood.
Work.
Power.
Race.
Money.
Sexuality.
Creativity.
Courage.
Failure.
Reinvention.
Sometimes it’s simply the radical pleasure of watching a complicated woman be allowed to be complicated.
When Pink first created its list of 99 must-see movies nearly two decades ago, we began with an observation from The First Wives Club. Goldie Hawn’s character, an aging actress, complains that Hollywood essentially recognized three ages for women:
“Babe, District Attorney and Driving Miss Daisy.”
It was funny because there was more than a little truth underneath it.
Women on screen were too often defined by their relationship to somebody else: wife, mother, girlfriend, daughter, object of desire.
Thankfully, the picture has gotten considerably bigger.
Not perfect.
But bigger.
Today we can watch women run companies, launch revolutions, go to space, expose corruption, command armies, make art, solve crimes, lose everything, find themselves, save themselves—and occasionally behave very badly.
So we’re opening the Pink film vault again.
Some selections from our original 2008 list remain. Others have made room for women and stories we couldn’t have included then.
These aren’t necessarily the 99 “best” films ever made.
They’re movies that give us something worth watching, discussing, questioning or remembering.
Consider this your Pink watchlist.
Women Who Mean Business
1. 9 to 5
Still funny—and still painfully recognizable in its depiction of women navigating workplace power.
2. Working Girl
Ambition, class and the audacity to believe your ideas belong in the room.
3. The Devil Wears Prada
Career ambition, mentorship, identity and the complicated price of getting exactly what you thought you wanted.
4. Erin Brockovich
A reminder that credibility doesn’t always arrive in the package people expect.
5. Hidden Figures
Brilliant women doing essential work while navigating barriers designed to keep them from being recognized for it.
6. Joy
Entrepreneurship without the glossy montage: invention, family, money, rejection and persistence.
7. The Intern
An unexpectedly thoughtful look at entrepreneurship, marriage, mentorship and a woman leading a rapidly growing company.
8. North Country
What it can cost to challenge a workplace culture everyone else has agreed to tolerate.
9. Bombshell
An imperfect but provocative examination of power, harassment and what happens when women challenge powerful institutions.
10. She Said
Journalism, courage and the painstaking work behind holding powerful people accountable.
11. Fair Play
An uncomfortable look at what happens when a woman’s professional success disrupts the power dynamics of a relationship.
Women Who Refuse to Stay in Their Lane
12. Norma Rae
13. Silkwood
14. On the Basis of Sex
15. Suffragette
16. The Woman King
17. Harriet
18. Made in Dagenham
19. A League of Their Own
20. Battle of the Sexes
21. Nyad
22. Wild
These are women who were told—explicitly or implicitly—That’s not for you.
They went anyway.
Friendship Is a Love Story
Some of the most important relationships in a woman’s life have nothing to do with romance.
23. Thelma & Louise
24. Waiting to Exhale
25. Bridesmaids
26. Girls Trip
27. Fried Green Tomatoes
28. Steel Magnolias
29. Beaches
30. Booksmart
31. Someone Great
32. Wine Country
33. The First Wives Club
Different generations. Different friendships. Same truth:
Women help women survive things.
And sometimes they help each other become brave enough to change them.
Reinvention, Identity & Becoming
34. My Brilliant Career
35. Under the Tuscan Sun
36. Shirley Valentine
37. Eat Pray Love
38. Nomadland
39. The Worst Person in the World
40. The Lost Daughter
41. Good Luck to You, Leo Grande
42. Everything Everywhere All at Once
43. Poor Things
44. The Substance
Not every reinvention is pretty.
That’s precisely why these belong here.
Mothers, Daughters & the Women Who Raise Us
45. Terms of Endearment
46. Lady Bird
47. Little Women (2019)
48. The Joy Luck Club
49. Real Women Have Curves
50. Everything Everywhere All at Once
51. Petite Maman
52. The Farewell
53. Pieces of April
54. Volver
55. Crooklyn
Families give us identity.
Then sometimes we spend the rest of our lives figuring out which parts we want to keep.
Women Who Make Trouble
Thank goodness.
56. Promising Young Woman
57. Kill Bill: Vol. 1
58. Mad Max: Fury Road
59. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
60. Alien
61. Terminator 2: Judgment Day
62. The Silence of the Lambs
63. La Femme Nikita
64. Widows
65. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
66. Prey
Nobody asked these women to be agreeable.
Women, Race & Being Seen
67. Daughters of the Dust
68. Eve’s Bayou
69. The Color Purple
70. Pariah
71. Moonlight
72. Queen & Slim
73. Till
74. Passing
75. What’s Love Got to Do with It
76. The Help
77. Respect
These films don’t tell one story about women of color—and that’s exactly the point.
Love Without Pretending Love Is Everything
78. When Harry Met Sally…
79. Carol
80. Past Lives
81. Portrait of a Lady on Fire
82. Love & Basketball
83. Something’s Gotta Give
84. Brooklyn
85. The Big Sick
86. Enough Said
87. Before Sunrise
Love matters.
So does the person you remain while you’re experiencing it.
Women We Can’t Stop Watching
Some performances become part of our cultural vocabulary.
88. All About Eve
89. His Girl Friday
90. The Philadelphia Story
91. Breakfast at Tiffany’s
92. Funny Girl
93. What’s Love Got to Do with It
94. Frida
95. Jackie Brown
96. Tár
97. The Queen
98. Elizabeth
And finally…
99. Barbie
Of course.
A movie about a doll became a global conversation about womanhood, ambition, identity, expectations, motherhood, masculinity, aging and the exhausting contradictions women are expected to navigate.
Love it or hate it, everybody had something to say about it.
And perhaps that’s exactly what earns a movie a place on a list like this.
Women aren’t simply the wife waiting at home while somebody else has the adventure.
They get the adventure.
They’re not simply supporting the brilliant man.
They’re brilliant.
They’re not always likable.
Thank goodness.
They’re ambitious and selfish and generous and difficult and funny and sexual and frightened and powerful and exhausted and brave.
In other words, they’re beginning to get something male characters have enjoyed for generations:
the freedom to be fully human.
The Pink Challenge
Don’t treat this as a checklist.
Use it as a conversation starter.
Pick one you’ve never seen.
Watch one your mother loved.
Show your daughter one that changed you.
Choose a film made before you were born.
Watch something from a culture different from your own.
Rewatch something you adored at 25 and see how differently it lands at 45.
And tell another woman what she absolutely has to watch next.
Because the most interesting question isn’t whether we’ve chosen the definitive 99.
We haven’t.
It’s:
Which movie would you make No. 100?
