Top 10 Worst Written Female Characters in Film History

This doesn't necessarily mean worst acted. Sofia Coppola was terrible in The Godfather Part III, for example, but had the original actress - Winona Ryder - not dropped out, that part wouldn't seem so bad. Some very good actresses made the list (in fact four of them are Oscar winners), but their characters deserve dubious distinction.

*Dishonorable mentions to half the female parts from the Twilight Saga and any movie that starred Elvis Presley or Freddie Prinze Jr.

*Also, Demi Moore's Hester from THE SCARLET LETTER. Completely changed the ending and therefore the point of the story.

10. Bronte (Andie MacDowell), GREEN CARD - An uptight woman really, really wants her greenhouse. And at the last second, for no reason, she says "I don't care about the greenhouse" because she's fallen for the cave troll played by Gerard Depardieu. Probably the least convincing "okay they really love each other" moment in rom-com history.

9. Rose DeWitt Bukater (Kate Winslet/Gloria Stuart), TITANIC - Kate's a great actress. She and Leo and most of the rest of the cast really had to work to make James Cameron's one-dimensional characters come to life. Rose is a spoiled rich girl engaged to a cartoon villain, but she falls for the lower-class dude on the ship. All of that's fine. But when the ship starts sinking, does she stay on her lifeboat? No! She gets back on the sinking ship. If she'd stayed in her lifeboat, Jack would've been alone on the driftwood and would have lived! Then eighty-five years later, old Rose reveals to the audience that she had this giant expensive jewel in her possession which could have made her kids' and grandkids' lives easier, but instead she just throws it in the ocean. Boooo!

8. Lucy (Emily Browning), SLEEPING BEAUTY - Nothing much to a character who makes her living by taking knockout drugs and letting creepy rich men do whatever they want to her body while she's out cold.

7. Mrs. Cooper (Mercedes Reuhl), LEADER OF THE BAND - This was a "star" vehicle for Barney Miller's Steve Landesberg, and all there was to Reuhl's character is that she had extreme lust for him the second she laid eyes on him.

6. Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth), SUPERMAN RETURNS - They destroyed Lois by making her a mopey single mom who acts like a corporate lawyer at work.

5. Jennifer (Camille Keaton), I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE - The ultimate exploitation film (which inexplicably got a remake) about a woman who gets raped by a group of young men, and then raped again, and then again, and then it tries to redeem itself by her getting bloody revenge at the end.

4. Abby (Katherine Heigl), THE UGLY TRUTH - Maybe Heigl thought she was going to get some Apatow karma in this "farce" on romance. In truth, no actress could have made this work, paired opposite a chauvanistic Gerard Butler making her go through a series of humiliating romantic "tests."

3. Amidala/Padme (Natalie Portman), STAR WARS I-III - So let me get this straight. She lives in a society where they elect 14-year-olds to be queen, and those queens have actual power. Ah, but when her term is up, she later gets elected to the more responsible role of senator, but she's too busy going on picnics to fulfill most of her duties, so she lets the single stupidest creature in the galaxy vote on her behalf. Then when she gives birth to her twins, instead of having mama-bear maternal instinct kick in, she dies "of a broken heart."

2. Kate (Eva Longoria), OVER HER DEAD BODY - A woman dies on her wedding day before she can actually exchange vows. She follows her mopey fiance Henry around until he consults a medium named Ashley. Ashley is a fraud, except she can actually see and hear Kate. Ah, but when Ashley starts to fall for Henry, Kate does whatever she can to sabotage it. Like making giant fart noises. She has no curiosity about anything else in the universe or eternity, and no actress on Earth could have saved it.

1. Miranda Hillard (Sally Field), MRS. DOUBTFIRE - This movie needed a situation where a loving father resorts to a drag disguise to be near his kids, but in order to set that up, that had to split up the parents. Robin Williams' Daniel Hillard is obviously a loving father; maybe he could make safer career choices, but his shrewish wife decides she wants a divorce after Daniel throws a party that's too big. She isn't exactly honest in court at the beginning, but then at the end, she lets the judge get everything wrong when he decides Daniel only gets supervised visitation. This movie had its laughs but it was a terrible message to kids. Divorce is really, really easy, and it's all Mom's fault.

Lincoln - Movie Review

Starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Sally Field, Tommy Lee Jones, David Strathairn, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, James Spader, John Hawkes, Tim Blake Nelson, Hal Holbrook, Gloria Reuben, Bruce McGill, Jackie Earle Haley, Michael Stuhlbarg, Walton Goggins and Lee Pace.  Directed by Steven Spielberg.

★★★★

Daniel Day-Lewis may be the best actor on the planet.

So, what else to say?  This movie captures nicely the galaxy of the man, the saint, the politician, the president.

This all takes place in the last four months of his life, when they're trying to get the 13th Amendment passed, banning slavery.  It's a behind-the-scenes look at the handshaking, promise-making, and compromising that go into getting anything done in DC.

Sally Field's really good as Mary Todd Lincoln, the grieving mother who does more harm than good in her role as First Lady; Tommy Lee Jones is great as Thaddeus Stevens, the Radical Republican who doesn't think the 13th Amendment goes far enough; and I also liked the three-man persuasion crew of James Spader, John Hawkes and Tim Blake Nelson, charged with finding some Democrats to help support the Amendment.

I appreciated the humanization of Lincoln here.  We see him mourn with his wife, dote upon his youngest son, glare at subordinates, spin homespun yarns as a passive-aggressive way of making his Cabinet listen to him.  I loved when Secretary of War Stanton interrupted him. "No! NO! You're about to tell a story!"

There's more I would have liked to have seen (Frederick Douglass, Stephen Douglas, Andrew Johnson, and Jefferson Davis are some of the players we never see) but this is the window that Spielberg wanted to focus on, and it's rich, rewarding, and never dull.  This could have felt like one of those period Oscar-bait "homework" movies, but I'd like to see it again down the road.

And I can't say enough about Daniel Day-Lewis. There's nothing he can't do.

The Amazing Spider-Man - Movie Review

Starring Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Rhys Ifans, Denis Leary, Sally Field, Martin Sheen, Campbell Scott and Embeth Davidtz.  Directed by Marc Webb.

★★★

This was a reboot I didn't think I wanted, but now I know I did.  Of course we don't "need" a Spider-Man reboot, but if Sam Raimi had done a Part 4, as he planned, with John Malkovich as Vulture, well, based on the drop-off of quality between the first two and Part 3, he was venturing dangerously close to Schumacher territory.

Now Webb has re-established the character and put a new twist on it, and it's refreshing, just like it was refreshing to have Mark Ruffalo as the Hulk in The Avengers instead of Edward Norton.

We go back to high school for the origin of Peter Parker, played with gawky energy by Andrew Garfield, and one element I appreciated that this film re-introduced was Peter's intelligence.  Gone are the organic webshooters out of his wrist.  We see Peter invent his webslingers, just like in the comic book.  We also get a real romance between Peter and Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone), and it's where I recognized Webb's touch most.  Webb directed 500 Days of Summer, so he knows how to make a boy and a girl talk to each other.

Norman Osbourne is spoken of but not seen.  Instead our villain is Dr. Chuck Conners, an Oscorp employee who becomes the Lizard. (I am sad Dylan Baker played the one-armed doc for three films but never got to become the green guy himself.)  I like that there's only one villain.  In a way it follows the Batman Begins or Superman origin stories, in that the title character really is the main character.

This is a superhero movie I walk out of with my mind racing about what they'll do for the sequel.  They could revisit Green Goblin or Venom if they wanted to, or bring to life some of the other big baddies we haven't seen in live-action yet, like Mysterio or Electro.  The groundwork's been laid.  I look forward to seeing Peter and Gwen's relationship progress, seeing more of Sally Field as Aunt Mae, hopefully meeting J. Jonah Jameson next time.