Film Femmes Get the Picture

It is unlikely that film critic Janet Maslin will ever offer “hair plug patrol.” But that’s precisely the type of observation that the Web site “Girls on Film” dishes out, compliments of four women who, since 1995, have opined about celluloid. And their mostly female Webhead fans dish back.

Now the quartet of Vassar alums has parlayed its popularity into a book, “Girls on Film” (HarperCollins). The paperback features reflections on cinema for the film-renting audience and will hit stores June 1, says Clare Bundy of Los Angeles, one of its four authors.

Under the heading, “This is soooooo not a review,” the book is also plugged on https://www.girlsonfilm.com, which now includes gabfests about books and music.

“Janet Maslin is about the only woman I can think of out there who I consider a high-profile [female] reviewer,” Bundy said. “Men do the reviews, men are making the films. I mean, we didn’t start it out that way, but, yeah, we were writing as women.”

Since Maslin was handling the arty stuff, Bundy said the girlfriends opted for a cheekier guide--of good sex scenes and bad coifs, of men who bald gracefully and those--that would be “the hair plug patrol”--who don’t.

The same philosophy winds through the book’s eight chapters, within which there are special categories, i.e., “A Movie That Drove Me to Drink--During the Movie.”

For Lise Cariga, that was “Working Girl”: “I have some not-so-great feelings for most of the Melanie Griffith oeuvre,” she writes.

Sibyl Goldman: “ ‘M,’ that German classic with creepy Peter Lorre whistling and killing children. Cheap no-name vodka from the bottle.”

Andrea Pyrus: “ ‘Bad Lieutenant.’ I drank, I napped, I cleaned my apartment. Yet this Harvey Keitel vehicle still wouldn’t end.”

Bundy: “I’ve gotten loaded during so many action movies that I can’t even count the times. But Lise and I swilling beer during ‘Forrest Gump’ will always stick in my mind as a low point.”