Don't know which of these you may already have seen, but I'll have a go.
Let me start with a bunch that are female-centric, from varying genres...
Lady Macbeth (2017) and
Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)
Two period dramas.
Lady Macbeth has nothing to do with Shakespeare. The year before Florence Pugh was noticed in the trifecta of
Midsommar, Little Women, and
Fighting with My Family she was stunning at the center of
Lady Macbeth. Set in Nineteenth Century England about a wife treated as property by her loveless husband and father-in-law and a series of dark occurrences and secrets that may ultimately free her from it.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire is set in Eighteenth Century France and involves a forbidden romance between a painter and her subject.
Lady Macbeth has more dread and Hitchcockian suspense,
POALOF a striking and beautifully shot love story (cinematography by Claire Mathon).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhSnP7wRIeg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-fQPTwma9o
Love & Friendship (2016) and
The Favourite (2018)
Love & Friendship is an adaptation
Lady Susan, of one of Jane Austen's lesser-known works, through the dry comic lense of filmmaker Whit Stillman (
Barcelona, The Last Days of Disco). Nice showcase for Kate Beckinsale who stars as a Lady who charms and schemes her way around the edges of upper society trying to marry off her daughter to a decent suitor.
The Favourite is Yorgos Lanthimos' award-winning pitch-black comedy centered on two women, played by Rachel Weisz & Emma Stone, vying for the affection and attention of Olivia Colman's Queen Anne, with increasing desperation, while the Queen is going quite mad.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MaSK3POHI0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYb-wkehT1g
In A World... (2013) and
Enough Said (2013)
In A World... was written, directed by, and stars Lake Bell as one of the few women who does voice over work in Hollywood, specifically commercials and movie trailers. Her father is a legend in the niche industry. Very funny and inside look at the business and Lake shines with a terrific supporting cast. Nicole Holofcener's
Enough Said is interested in some of the other fringes in Los Angeles as Julia Louis-Dreyfus stars as a massage therapist who starts falling for a slovenly film archivist (one of James Gandolfini's final roles) but has her opinion colored by his ex-wife (Catherine Keener), a massage client who doesn't know they are dating. The plots may not sound like much but it hardly matters as these are about the characters and tone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuxApRnekWc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCFO0KreAKQ
Edge of Seventeen (2016) and
Lady Bird (2017)
A pair of coming-of-age High School flicks, but with more substance and care than the subgenre usually gets.
The Edge of Seventeen stars Hailee Steinfeld (
True Grit, "Hawkeye") as a smart but depressed girl who loses her best friend when she falls for her brother, leaving a wearily sympathetic teacher (Woody Harrelson) as her only voice of reason as she tries to negotiate her first sexual experiences.
Lady Bird is Greta Gerwig's semi-autobiographical tale of a bright if angry misfit (Saoirse Ronan) at conflict with her mother (Laurie Metcalf) as she looks to graduate high school and leave Sacremento for what she imagines will be a more inspired life. Gerwig's film got lots of awards attention, deservedly so, while Kelly Fremon Craig's debut was mostly ignored...though it got enough positive notice and love that she is now directing the long-awaited adaptation of Judy Blume's
Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aw9hlZ2uiII
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNi_HC839Wo
Frances Ha (2012),
Mistress America (2015), and
Damsels in Distress (2011)
Speaking of Greta Gerwig, on her way to becoming a writer/director in her own right she starred in some good flicks in the 2010s.
Frances Ha was co-written by Gerwig with her paramour Noah Baumbach. It follows Greta's title character, a struggling dancer in Manhattan. She is an apprentice who has never quite made it and as she gets closer to thirty she is forced to realize her dreams may be out of reach.
Mistress America is another Baumbach film co-written by the pair, this time Gerwig plays another Manhattanite who is eternally optimistic in spite of some of the obstacles reality is throwing in her path, and the young college student (Lola Kirke) she has taken under her wing begins to see the juxtaposition of those two things.
Damsels in Distress is another film by Whit Stillman (
Love & Friendship). It is set in a modern university and follows Lio Tipton as she becomes part of a weird if confident group of girls with a long set of rules and ambitions, led by Greta Gerwig.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9YKHRQkf7k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6z8MCW16uZY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UGIkWvfBEQ
20th Century Women (2016),
Gloria (2013), and
Gloria Bell (2018)
20th Century Women is directed by Mike Mills (
Beginners) and centered on Annette Bening's character, a single mother in late 1970s California whose teenage son (Lucas Jade Zumann) is educated by the young women who are drawn to her, including Greta Gerwig (again) and Elle Fanning, the latter of which he is falling in love with.
Gloria is a Chilean charmer about an aging divorce (Paulina García) who decides to start living her life with some gusto, which includes dancing. She meets an age-appropriate man (Sergio Hernández), but while that set up seems like a standard RomCom the tone and especially Gloria herself refreshingly never allows it to fall into those easy rhythms or traps. While I usually would not recommend an Americanized remake,
Gloria Bell has all of the strengths of the original and changes almost nothing, but it DOES boast my favorite Julianne Moore performance of her entire career, which is saying an awful lot as she is almost uniformly excellent.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JnFaltqnAY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KO52-rdTX-M
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCwCdQK2Qss
I'll come back with a few more crops of recommendations later.