21 Perfect Galentine’s Day Movies

Screengrab via Columbia Pictures.

Zero Dark Thirty

Not only is this a quintessential modern lady-tale starring a fierce woman who’s playing an even fiercer woman, it’s also directed by the FIERCEST woman- sole female winner of the Best Director Oscar, Kathryn Bigelow. And with a tense mood, a real-life plot, and just enough levity and humanity to make this not another heavy duty war drama, Zero Dark Thirty is a top choice for a more intense movie night. Jessica Chastain stars as Maya, a young CIA operative who’s recruited to the team working to break down the Al Qaeda members involved in the 9/11 attacks. As her career progresses, she becomes involved in the search for Bin Laden. And though she is precise in her calculations and certain in her presentations to superiors of his secret location, she isn’t fully taken seriously. She’s brushed aside, she’s laughed at. She’s literally referred to as “the girl.” And because females are strong as hell and the future is female and bitches get stuff done, GUESS WHAT??? Turns out she was right all along!!!!!

Maya’s intel turns into the national event that we now know as the SEAL team six mission, wherein Bin Laden was discovered in his home and shot dead. And, while the modern American history and the uncovered true story of a woman’s endurance and strength are incredible in and of themselves, the more compelling story lies within Maya. Her unwavering certainty in her professional life muddled with the doubt she’s forced to inflict upon herself by the men around her are, unfortunately, insanely universal, and in its quiet moments, this story becomes one of a young woman just trying to survive in the world.

Best lady moment: The very end of this movie, though I won’t spoil it, is silently haunting and unsettlingly heartbreaking, and I can tell who to befriend by gauging reactions when I tell people I cried during Zero Dark Thirty. “What?! Why!!” = Shut it down. “I KNOW! That ending!” = Free for brunch?