If you’ve never seen the forgotten 90s movie Playing by Heart, you should really give it a watch.

It’s not perfect by any means, but Angelina Jolie as Joan is brilliant, brilliant, brilliant.

Seriously. Just a funny and rooted portrayal of a great character. It’s a rare thing when an actress can take a character who is actively annoying and frustrating in a whole variety of ways and not only make you like her but love her in so little screen time. That is true skill.

And before all the usual bullshit complaints come up (well, they probably won’t about a forgotten movie on a mostly-unread blog, but still) about her being a Manic Pixie Dream Girl whatever, the entire tale is told from her viewpoint and examined from her perspective about what she wants.

Just because a character is a weirdo and female doesn’t make her a MPDG. There are a lot of weirdos in the real, actual world. And many of them are in fact female.

Or haven’t you noticed?