Documentaries about social justice history often get to benefit from a kind of positive culture shock, in that the viewer can take some comfort in how much better things are now. And while there's been some measure of improvement since the time covered in She's Beautiful When She's Angry, Mary Dore's fascinating documentary about the feminist movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s, Dore starts off by acknowledging that even in the futuristic wonderland of the 2010s, a majority of states still restrict women's access to reproductive health care. Through interviews and archival footage, Dore explores the struggles of the women who faced great opposition from men (and other women) for suggesting that not only should they be allowed to work, but that they should get equal pay for it — a notion that's still controversial, as is the concept that the female orgasm exists, or that rape victims weren't just askin' for it. The feminist movement was born out of the protest and turmoil of the late 1960s, and the picture also reveals one of the dirtier secrets of the anti-war movement and the counterculture in general: It was horribly sexist. She's Beautiful When She's Angry demonstrates that things are better than they were, but they still need to be better than they are.
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