The MoFo Top 100 Films Directed By Women: The Countdown

Yes, it's finally here.

Many obstacles stood in the way of this countdown - perhaps the most unorthodox one this forum has seen yet due to its unusual key criteria - but now it's happened. It seemed like such a simple idea at the time - so many countdowns had been successful using no less arbitrary a detail as the decade (or decade-and-a-bit) in which a film was made, so why not shake up the established decade-genre-decade formula with a comparatively outside-the-box key criteria such as...whether or not the directors were women. If best-of-decade lists could be said to represent the best that the filmmakers of a given time period had to offer, then this list could highlight the best that female filmmakers - representing half the population while only making up about a tenth of its filmmakers - had to offer. What could possibly go wrong?

Yeah, about that...

At first, people were hesitant to go along with the idea because the criteria seemed a little too arbitary - after all, how many people really cared about a director's gender when watching a movie anyway? Factor in the question of whether or not to allow films where men and women shared directing credit (they were ultimately not allowed) or exactly which Wachowski films would be eligible (all of them) and this countdown faced an uphill battle from the day it was announced (and that's without mentioning the delays...). Anyway, none of that matters now. What matters is that we did ultimately pull together and give this countdown enough votes in order to create a full Top 100, and that's going to begin right here, right now. Titles should be revealed at a rate of two per day until it gets to the top ten. Please avoid posting your full vote until the countdown's over, chat about the entries as they're posted, and so on and so forth.


And now, let this begin...

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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

Je, tu, il, elle is mine. Insane Lesbians rolling around naked movie with random creepy trucker interlude. I dunno though, the end when she actually meets her ex is the quickest i've felt something between a couple in probably anything. She also gets diabetes from a big bag of sugar, 'tis awesome.

River of Grass is the only Reichardt i didn't like. Looked pretty and quite liked the soundtrack but it was just way too dull.

Is She-Devil that film with Roseanne Barr? My mum loves that.

Really liked Half Baked the first time i saw it but it was one of those films i didn't see for at least a decade and when i did it didn't hold up.

Half Baked was my one-pointer. What can I say, I thought it'd be funny.

Now and Then was one of my votes. It's a sweet movie about friendship and growing up.

ETA: Just checked my ballot and I'm the one that had it at 5.

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Holy crap, Now and Then was almost my #25. I wrote a big embarrassing thing about it in this thread (the other thread, this was moved while i was writing this post) which i deleted. Basically it's a Stand By Me for girls to simplify it, but i liked it much more than Stand By Me. It got me obsessed with the idea of sneaking out of my house in the middle of the night and having adventures with my friends, we planned to do so several times but it never materialized. Thank god, i would have definitely gotten kidnapped and sold into white slavery. It also has Ouija Boards, a murder mystery and a creepy/sad old man story.

Now and Then looks like something I'll need to watch. I have a soft spot for those coming of age / childhood films. Hopefully there's not too much of the "now" in there. Also who ever made that trailer probably wanted no one to see the film - the narration is horrible.

Haven't seen Now and Then but it's on my to-do list.

I remember The Invitation getting some serious go-in-cold hype a couple of years back thanks to its creepy dinner-party-gone-wrong premise and slow-burning horror that really doesn't deserve to be talked about in length, but I did ultimately find the final result rather lacking.

The "Now" is awful but there's not that much of it, and yeah the narration is by Demi Moore so it's terrible, it's very Wonder Years-esque. Thankfully it's not as prominent as it is in The Wonder Years though, it's generally only used when there's a big change in time or events iirc.

No idea what an adult would think of it for the first time, i'll probably never watch it again coz i have such good childhood memories of it which would probably be ruined.

Also one of the celebrity deaths to hit me the most was when i found out years later the actress that played the redhead kid died of a heroin overdose when she was around 20 Probably a combination of how young she was and that she was so unfortunate in the film that it affected me so much.

Glad to see you got this do me-Iro. 29 point for 100 is higher than I expected. I don’t expect that I’ve seen many from This list so im siren I’ll find some new titles to watch

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Anyone care to guess which of the one-pointers was mine?

I rewatched that about a month ago.

Honestly have no idea? I know i'm missing something i should know here.

Blood Diner.

Blood Diner


I also had one any guesses as to which one that is?

The Nativity Story? Think i've seen you mention Hardwicke before.

And yeah Cat i realized it was probably that after looking at your avatar and back at the list haha.