Desperately Seeking Susan

Out with the old, in with the new: suburban housewife puts on groovy jacket and learns that life isn’t all picket fences and ironing. In Susan Seidelman’s 1985 comedy, bored Roberta (Rosanna Arquette) lives vicariously through enigmatic drifter Susan (Madonna), whose messages she reads in the personal ads. Her obsession leads to an appropriation of Susan’s lacy, trashy aesthetic – and liberation.
Amazon Prime Video (£)

Easy A

When Emma Stone’s squeaky-clean Olive Penderghast tells a fib about losing her virginity in Will Gluck’s 2010 high-school comedy, her reputation takes a nosedive. Instead of coming clean or hiding out at home, Olive boldly takes on the slut-shamers by strutting through the campus in a killer corset and shades.
Netflix

Titanic

Young Leonardo DiCaprio in a tux? Don’t mind if we do. If there is one thing better than Jack Dawson as a grubby, below-deck ragamuffin, it’s the spruced-up version in black tie nervously waiting at the bottom of the grand staircase for raft-hogger extraordinaire Rose DeWitt Bukater (Kate Winslet) in James Cameron’s 1997 movie.
Now TV

Superman

The original Clark Kent, played by Christopher Reeve in Richard Donner’s 1978 superhero film, looked cute in his wonky specs and crumpled suit, but it took a pair of red underpants and a dinky kiss curl for Lois Lane to see the man that he truly was. Admittedly, his ability to fly probably helped.
Now TV

Gigi

A Parisian playboy forms a friendship with a 15-year-old girl, only to realise he loves her, in this Vincente Minnelli musical from 1958. Nowadays, Louis Jourdan’s Gaston would be looking at prison time but, as Gigi, Leslie Caron is delightful, illustrating her transition to adulthood with a luminous satin gown.
Available on DVD

Mrs Doubtfire

Chris Columbus’s 1993 comedy stars Robin Williams as a divorced, out-of-work actor who loses custody of his kids and dresses up as an elderly Scottish housekeeper in order to hang out with them. Cue an avalanche of slapstick as his prosthetic face gets run over by a lorry and his bosom goes up in flames in the kitchen.
Disney+

Overboard

Makeover films like to empower their female characters by putting them in a pretty frock. Not 1987’s Overboard, which transforms Goldie Hawn’s pampered heiress into a dirt-poor housewife. If you overlook the small matter of Kurt Russell having kidnapped Hawn and installed her as his domestic slave, it’s a lot of fun.
Digital platforms (£)

Pretty Woman

The “rich dude rescues downtrodden hooker” plot hasn’t aged well, and we all know Julia Roberts looked better in thigh-high leather boots than her later fusty lady-about-town outfits. Still, Roberts’s transformation in Garry Marshall’s classic 1990 romcom is a blast, never more so than when she visits sweet revenge on the snooty Rodeo Drive shop assistants who initially refuse to serve her.
Digital platforms (£)

Spider-Man

Portrait of a speccy adolescent baffled by his own body. In this case, it’s not just puberty wreaking havoc with Tobey Maguire’s Peter Parker but a bite from a genetically engineered spider, prompting him to go to bed as a teen dweeb and wake up fully ripped and with 20/20 vision, in Sam Raimi’s 2002 reboot.
Now TV

Grease

Olivia Newton-John had to be sewn into the high-waisted spandex trousers that signalled her passage from pastel-wearing prude to volcanic sex bomb. In doing so, she wins the heart of lead doofus, Danny Zuko (John Travolta), and provides the 1978 film musical with its biggest number, You’re the One That I Want.
Now TV