Alex Casey: Girls shine on film

Trainwreck starring Amy Schumer and Bill Hader. Photo / Supplied

Blockbuster revivals featured women being empowered, at last

If TS Eliot measured his life in coffee spoons, I have measured this year in buckets of popcorn and choc tops dipped in nuts. And what a year it has been, one that will be remembered mostly for the much-anticipated revival of blockbuster juggernauts Jurassic World and Star Wars, brought down a notch by the quieter, deeply affecting festival films that have painted a different world for a tuppence of the budget. Here are a few of my standout experiences for the year that might make for good curtains-shut guilty pleasure binge-watching.

Let's start with the blockbusters. I'll admit I had to drag myself into Mad Max, imagining nothing more than Mel Gibson posing embarrassingly in a dusty leather jacket. I couldn't have been more wrong. Where aggressive masculinity once thrived, Charlize Theron's Furiosa ushered in a new kind of matriarchy, helped by her sidekicks of young women and old aunties exiled to foster a bold new world.

Charlize Theron stars in Mad Max. Photo / Supplied

This film did something to me. I came out of feeling empowered and had to bite my tongue to stop howling at the moon. Luckily, this feeling didn't go away as Star Wars and Jurassic World delivered strong leading women and sensational blockbuster fare. It finally feels we can count on seeing strong leading female characters outside of dingy festival films that play at 4.30pm indie cinemas and go straight to DVD. Now we can all be Bryce Dallas Howard, somehow running away from a mutant T-Rex in high heels, Rey slicing dudes and taking names, or Furiosa screaming into the abyss.

And then there are laughs. From Melissa McCarthy's bumbling character in Spy to Amy Schumer's hot mess in Trainwreck, it has been a hell of a year for funny women.

I suppose we should mention Fifty Shades and Magic Mike XXL here as well, not for their comedic elements but for their acknowledgement of a female audience that can enjoy absurdly sexy stuff just as much as men.

Film festival time also had some standout entries. Alex Garland's highly anticipated Ex Machina delivered a dazzlingly understated sci-fi exploration of power, gender and humanity. The film evaluated the consciousness of an artificially intelligent robot and called into question our relationship with an ever-evolving technology and how this relationship could seek to replicate (or destroy) power structures of the past.

Pair Ex Machina with the sensational documentary Alice Cares, observing "care robots" as they move in with the elderly, and that was more than enough to make me think that the future is definitely here.

Other festival standouts include Amy, possibly the essential examination of celebrity culture and mental health in 2015. I went alone, crammed into the very back row of the Civic. Luckily, all the way up there, nobody can see you sobbing. The deeply affecting story was made all the more powerful through hours of first-person footage Winehouse had captured of herself at her most vulnerable. The technique ushered a new, exciting and terrifying possibility for the Youtube and social media age: we could be all be making our own documentaries - we just don't know it yet.

The year also saw bold, brazen explorations of marginalised issues. The Diary of a Teenage Girl used a twee 1970s setting to tackle modern issues around teenage sexuality head on, and French film Girlhood explored girl gangs and teen bravado with the best use of Rihanna I have seen yet on the big screen. Cult smash horror It Follows took coming-of-age sexuality to the extreme, full of cautionary STI messages, big scares and an undeniably cool 1980s synth score.

Kitana Kiki Rodriguez in Tangerine. Photo / Supplied

As a strong addition to the ever-strengthening dialogue around trans issues in popular culture, the low-budget film Tangerine was a rare treat. The Los Angeles-based story placed two trans sex workers at the centre. It was also shot entirely on an iPhone which, to be honest, is probably the most 2015 thing I can imagine.

Bring on 2016.