Inspiring Female-Led Films Worth a Rewatch

While the men were off fighting World War II, the way forward in baseball suddenly involved sliding into home plate in a skirt. This Penny Marshall classic is loosely based on the true story of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, where talent met resistance at every base. Funny, messy and completely irresistible, it also proves that there is crying in baseball.

Julia Roberts won her Oscar playing a real woman who took on Pacific Gas and Electric with nothing but determination, an impressive push-up bra and a talent for refusing to be dismissed by anybody. Erin Brockovich secured the largest settlement ever paid in a direct-action lawsuit in U.S. history at the time: $333 million. No law degree, no problem.

Elle Woods enrolled at Harvard Law School to win back a boy, walking in like she just stepped out of a Barbie shampoo commercial, and accidentally dismantled the idea that intelligence comes in only one aesthetic. Reese Witherspoon's performance is funnier and sharper than it gets credit for, and Elle's closing argument in the Windham trial holds its own against the courtroom great "You can't handle the truth"... and she did it in heels.

Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis play two friends whose relaxing weekend getaway takes a sharp left turn that changes both of them permanently. "You get what you settle for" is the film's thesis, its warning label and its battle cry all at once. If you’re one of the 12 people who don’t know the ending of this movie, let's just say they did not settle.

Three Black women mathematicians at NASA helped change the trajectory of space exploration while being told, in every possible way, to stay in their lane. Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson did the math that sent John Glenn to orbit, and the U.S. space program spent decades not mentioning their names.

Angela Bassett plays Rosa Parks in this CBS film that tells it like it was: Rosa Parks was not a tired seamstress who acted on impulse; she was a trained civil rights activist who chose her moment with surgical precision. The Montgomery Bus Boycott didn't start because one woman's feet hurt; it started because one woman decided today was the day.

Katniss Everdeen volunteers for a televised death match to save her little sister and ends up as the face of a revolution. She also shoots better under pressure than most people function under mild inconvenience. Jennifer Lawrence brings a bone-tired determination to the role, playing Katniss less like a hero and more like someone who's absolutely done with everyone's nonsense.

Before Chanel was a brand on every airport duty-free shelf, she was Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel: an orphan from Saumur with a talent for tailoring and an absolute refusal to wear what everyone expected her to wear. Audrey Tautou plays a young Coco clawing her way into early 20th-century Parisian society on her own terms, which mostly meant rejecting corsets and the men who preferred them.

Cheryl Strayed hiked an absurd amount of miles of the Pacific Crest Trail alone, grieving her mother, her marriage and the version of herself she used to be, which is one way to handle a rough patch. Reese Witherspoon carries nearly every scene on her back, literally and otherwise, making you feel every single blister. It’s not a feel-good movie so much as a feel-everything movie. Fair warning, you’ll need a drink and a moment afterward.

Sally Field plays a textile worker in a North Carolina mill who looks around one day, decides enough is enough and starts a union with the energy of someone who has absolutely nothing left to lose. She won her first Academy Award for the role, and the scene where she stands on a factory workbench holding a hand-lettered "UNION" sign in complete silence is the kind of moment that makes you want to stand up in your living room and start a slow clap.