A typical movie that conforms with the Hollywood mainstream filmmaking is 'You've Got Mail' (1998).
A typical genre of a chick flick aka comedy romance starring famous star duo Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks, who already gained high recognition value with their onscreen chemistry that the audience could connect to in 'Sleepless in Seattle' in 1993. So, the money was already in the bank knowing the stars already appealed to the mass audiences specifically targeted at the female cinema goer which could include dates to the cinema with their partner although most guys would hate chick flicks.
Opening Weekend: $18,426,749 (USA) (20 December 1998) (2691 Screens)
Gross: $115,731,542 (USA) (25 April 1999) (IMDB Box Office Figures)
You could say there is some typical feminist theory here with Hanks character, Joe Fox being the stronger gender being the owner of a large bookstore chain, Fox Books who falls in love with Ryan online through email and instant messenger. Ryan's character, Kathleen Kelly is portrayed as the weaker gender who runs a small independent bookshop that her mother left to her when she died called 'The Little Bookshop Around the Corner' that Fox Books is trying to shut down. Kelly hates Joe Fox and is unaware, he is her online buddy but Fox finds out her identity. Of course, they fall in love with each other and have a happy ending when they finally meet up and Kelly is hoping it was Fox (Cook, 1985 p353).
Source : http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0128853/
http://rgucinemasociety.blogspot.com/search/label/Lecture (Counter Cinema)
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=0IJZAAAAMAAJ&dq=the%20cinema%20book%2C%20cook%20and%20bernink&source=gbs_book_other_versions
A film that subverts Hollywood's mainstream filmmaking is Thelma & Louise (1991) who fight back with the feminist theory of 'the cultural practice representing myths about women and femininity' and 'giving negative impact on the female spectator' who fought back to get better images of women in cinema (Cooks, 1985 p353).
Laura Mulvey's 1975 essay ' Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema', says Hollywood only cater for the 'male gaze' where the main character is always male and women are just a visual impact for erotic pleasure where the bad girl gets punished. Ridley Scott's Thelma & Louise show the role reversal. In the beginning they are portrayed as weak women and some of the men are portrayed as untrustworthy, violent or abusive monsters. 'But what stands out more than anything about Ridley Scott's epic of estrogen empowerment is how transparently one-sided it looks at male-female relations which remains 12 years later' (Schager 2003) .
Thelma & Louise stars Susan Sarandon, Geena Davis, Brad Pitt and Harvey Keitel. Thelma and Louise decide to escape their lives and go on a road trip but when Louise kills a man in a car park attempting to rape Thelma, they go on the run and head for Mexico causing a full scale car chase across America by the police 'which made them feminist icons for a generation of women' and 'made the cover of the national news magazines for tweaking the gender politics like no movie had done before' (Schager 2003). Of course, it ends with them driving off a cliff at the Grand Canyon but before they do this, they kiss each other on the lips causing the gay and lesbian critics suggesting the female friendship or female buddy as the unspoken lesbianism show a source of strength and inspiration (Cook, 1985 p360).http://rgucinemasociety.blogspot.com/search/label/Lecture (Counter Cinema)
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Thelma-Louise-DVD-Susan-Sarandon/dp/B00004CX4X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1331257641&sr=8-2
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=0IJZAAAAMAAJ&dq=the%20cinema%20book%2C%20cook%20and%20bernink&source=gbs_book_other_versions
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