What lies behind current feminist discontent with contemporary cinema? Through a combination of cultural and industry analysis, Hilary Radner’s Neo-Feminist Cinema: Girly Films, Chick Flicks and Consumer Culture shows how the needs of conglomerate Hollywood have encouraged an emphasis on consumer culture within films made for women. By exploring a number of representative "girly films," including Pretty Woman, Legally Blonde, Maid in Manhattan, The Devil Wears Prada, and Sex and the City: The Movie, Radner proposes that rather than being "post-feminist," as is usually assumed, such films are better described as "neo-feminist." Examining their narrative format, as it revolves around the story of an ambitious unmarried woman who defines herself through consumer culture as much as through work or romance, Radner argues that these films exemplify neo-liberalist values rather than those of feminism. As such, Neo-Feminist Cinema offers a new explanation as to why feminist-oriented scholars and audiences who are seeking more than "labels and love" from their film experience have viewed recent "girly films" as a betrayal of second-wave feminism, and why, on the other hand, such films have proven to be so successful at the box office.

The Nasty Woman and the Neo Femme Fatale in Contemporary Cinema puts forward the theoretical notion of the ‘nasty woman’ as a means of examining female protagonists in contemporary culture and cinema, particularly films directed by women. The phrase is taken from an insult thrown at Hillary Clinton during the 2016 Presidential election debates and reclaimed by the feminists worldwide. The volume also draws from the figure of the femme fatale in film noir. Piotrowska presents ‘the nasty woman’ across cultural and mythical landscape as a figure fighting against the entitlement of the patriarchy. The writer argues that in films such as Zero Dark Thirty, Red Road, Stories We Tell, and even Gone Girl the ‘nastiness’ of female characters creates a new space for reflection on contemporary society and its struggles against patriarchal systems. The nasty woman or neo femme fatale is a figure who disrupts stable situations and norms; she is pro-active and self-determining, and at times unafraid to use dubious means to achieve her goals. She is often single, but when married she subverts and undermines the fundamental principles of this patriarchal institution. For students and researchers in Cultural Studies, Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Film Studies and Psychoanalysis in Film Studies, The Nasty Woman and the Neo Femme Fatale in Contemporary Cinema offers an original way of thinking about female creativity and subjectivity. It is also a proud celebration of feminist and female authorship in contemporary Hollywood.

By analyzing the negotiation of femininities and masculinities within contemporary Hollywood cinema, Postfeminism and Contemporary Hollywood Cinema presents diverse interrogations of popular cinema and illustrates the need for a renewed scholarly focus on contemporary film production.

This book is a thought-provoking study that expands on film scholarship on noir and feminist scholarship on postfeminism, subjectivity, and representation to provide an inclusive, sophisticated, and up-to-date analysis of the femme fatale , fille fatale , and homme fatal from the classic era through to recent postmillennial neo-noir .

Feminism at the Movies: Understanding Gender in Contemporary Popular Cinema examines the way that contemporary film reflects today’s changing gender roles. The book offers a comprehensive overview of the central issues in feminist film criticism with analyses of over twenty popular contemporary films across a range of genres, such as chick flicks, teen pics, hommecoms, horror, action adventure, indie flicks, and women lawyer films. Contributors explore issues of femininity as well as masculinity, reflecting on the interface of popular cinema with gendered realities and feminist ideas. Topics include the gendered political economy of cinema, the female director as auteur, postfeminist fatherhood, consumer culture, depictions of professional women, transgender, sexuality, gendered violence, and the intersections of gender, race, and ethnic identities. The volume contains essays by following contributors: Taunya Lovell Banks, Heather Brook, Mridula Nath Chakraborty, Michael DeAngelis, Barry Keith Grant, Kelly Kessler, Hannah Hamad, Christina Lane (with Nicole Richter), JaneMaree Maher, David Hansen-Miller (with Rosalind Gill), Gary Needham, Sarah Projansky, Hilary Radner, Rob Schaap, Yael D Sherman, Michele Shreiber, Janet Staiger, Peter Stapleton, Rebecca Stringer, Yvonne Tasker, and Ewa Ziarek.

In light of their tremendous gains in the political and professional sphere, and their ever expanding options, why is it that most contemporary American films aimed at women still focus almost exclusively on their pursuit of a heterosexual romantic relationship? American Postfeminist Cinema explores this question and is the first book to examine the symbiotic relationship between heterosexual romance and postfeminist culture. The book argues that since 1980, postfeminism's most salient tensions and anxieties have been reflected and negotiated in the American romance film. Case studies of a broad range of Hollywood and independent films reveal how the postfeminist romance cycle is intertwined with contemporary women's ambivalence and broader cultural anxieties about women's changing social and political status.

There were virtually no women film directors in germany until the 1970s. today there are proportionally more than in any other film-making country6, and their work has been extremely influential. Directors like Margarethe von Trotta, Helma Sanders-Brahms, Ulrike Ottinger and Helke Sander have made a huge contribution to feminist film culture, but until now critical consideration of New German Cinema in Britain and the United States has focused almost exclusively on male directors such as Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Wim Wenders. In Women and the New German Cinema Julia Knight examines how restrictive social, economic and institutional conditions have compounded the neglect of the new women directors. Rejecting the traditional auteur approach, she explores the principal characteristics of women’s film-making in the 1970s and 1980s, in particular the role of the women’s movement, the concern with the notion of a ‘feminine aesthetic’, women’s entry into the mainstream, and the emergence of a so-called post-feminist cinema. This timely and comprehensive study will be essential reading for everyone concerned with contemporary cinema and feminism.