Thursday Movie Picks: Workplace: The Female Experience

 

For the 32nd week of the Thursday Movie Picks series hosted by Wanderer of Wandering Through the Shelves. We go into the world of the workplace experience from a female experience as women deal with having to working in a place where men rule everything. Yet, there are films that show that experience and how women can find a voice no matter how much shit they have to eat. Here are my three picks:

1. 9 to 5

Colin Higgins’ 1980 film about three different women working for an egotistical and sexist boss who treats them terribly while taking their ideas for his own gain in the corporate world. Starring the trio of Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, and Dolly Parton as these three women with Dabney Coleman as their boss. The film is an entertaining romp with a fantasy sequence of all three women dealing with their boss with Tomlin’s fantasy featuring elements of hand-drawn animation in a twisted way. It is truly one of the finest films of the 1980s as it also includes a great title song by Ms. Parton that is catchy as fuck.

2. Working Girl

Mike Nichols’ 1988 film explores a young secretary from Staten Island who gets the chance to work for a new boss in a woman only to realize that her boss is taking her ideas while is on vacation. It is a film that stars Melanie Griffith as this young secretary who is trying to work her way up the corporate world despite all of the odds are against her yet her initiative and street smart allows her to make things happen with the help of Harrison Ford as an executive who is willing to listen to her ideas as it is an incredible film that features not just a career-defining performance for Griffith but also great work from its ensemble in Ford, Sigourney Weaver, Joan Cusack, and Alec Baldwin.

3. Clockwatchers

This 1997 film by Jill Sprecher is an underseen gem that plays into four different women who all work as temps as they deal with their environment as well as a series of thefts where the women find themselves at odds with each other. Starring Toni Collette, Parker Posey, Alanna Ubach, and Lisa Kudrow, the film is unique for the way it showcases women being friends but also dealing with an environment that is repressive as these four women deal with accusations of theft. Even as their personal lives would start to unravel as Collette’s character is the new temp of the four as she starts off as meek and uncertain about herself only to eventually stand up for herself and her friends in a film that people need to seek out.

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