By the 1990s, women were directing films in every conceivable genre, a far cry from the 1950s when Ida Lupino was the only woman working in Hollywood. Amy Heckerling’s first movie, Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982), a parody of high school comedy films, was a hit and introduced Sean Penn, Judge Reinhold, and Jennifer Jason Leigh to general audiences. Heckerling also directed the gangster comedy Johnny Dangerously (1984), a clever homage to 1930s gangster films, and European Vacation (a k a National Lampoon’s European Vacation, 1985), but neither was successful at the box office.

On her next movie, however, Heckerling was able to work with her own script, and Look Who’s Talking (1989) became one of the biggest draws of the year, starring John Travolta, Kirstie Alley, and the voice of Bruce Willis. The movie quickly spawned a sequel, Look Who’s Talking Too (1990), which she again wrote and directed. Clueless (1995), a modern-day version of Jane Austen’s novel Emma, continued Heckerling’s triumphs, but Loser (2000), like Clueless a comedy of young adult angst, was overlooked at the multiplex. Underneath the laughs, Heckerling’s films have shown her ability to use comedy to expose sexism, hypocrisy, and the absurdities of the American consumer-oriented lifestyle.

Kathryn Bigelow has developed a reputation as a director of action movies. Her claustrophobic psychological thriller The Loveless, co-directed with Monty Montgomery, is a cerebral, punk biker film starring a young Willem Dafoe. The movie was inspired by dark and gritty "B” pictures such as Joseph H. Lewis’s Gun Crazy (a k a Deadly Is the Female, 1950) and Edgar G. Ulmer’s Detour (1945). Bigelow’s Near Dark (1987), a brilliant thriller that exposes a horror latent in rural America, is about a mysterious young woman who is actually a vampire, part of a gang of vampires who drive through the Midwest in search of victims. Point Break (1991), a visually stunning portrayal of power and relationships between men and women, stars Patrick Swayze as a macho surfer and part-time bank robber who buddies up to an undercover FBI agent (Keanu Reeves). The movie’s success led to Bigelow’s next assignment, Strange Days (1995), a futuristic mind-control film with a distinctly sadistic edge. The Weight of Water (2000) is a much more subdued film about two women living in different centuries, both trapped in destructive relationships. One is a news photographer, while the other is part of a story the photographer is researching for a book, about a nineteenth-century Norwegian immigrant who may be a murderer. Bigelow’s next movie was K-19: The Widowmaker (2002), a submarine action drama that was a substantial box office hit.

Allison Anders directed Gas Food Lodging (1991), a low-budget film that was an immediate hit with both critics and audiences. Based on a novel by Richard Peck, the movie is a representative example of the new American cinema that revels in realism as much as romantic narrative. Anders created a film that effectively depicts not only the difficulties of single motherhood but also the pain of female adolescence in contemporary American society. Anders followed with the teen gang film Mi vida loca (My Crazy Life, 1994), which further consolidated her reputation as an uncompromisingly honest director. In 1995, she was the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant.”