There’s a purity to the English actress Rachel Weisz, as she glides from playing a doctor in the popcorn thriller “The Bourne Legacy” to a love-besotted wife in the intellectual romance “The Deep Blue Sea.” In the latter film, she plays Hester Collyer, a postwar English aristocrat who risks everything for an affair with the charming but vapid pilot Freddie Page (“Thor’s” Tom Hiddleston). Weisz delivers an Oscar-worthy performance that merits a second look. Adapted from the Terence Rattigan play and directed by Terence Davies, “The Deep Blue Sea” is one of the best films of 2012 that you probably haven’t seen: It grossed $1.1 million domestically, while “The Bourne Legacy” hauled in $275 million worldwide.

One difference between the two movies: In the big-budget “Bourne” Weisz is the chief damsel in distress; in “TDBS” she’s the lead, and her character’s story drives the plot. The posh Hester has married an older man for love and social position and then gets blown sideways when she meets a man in uniform who unleashes her libido. There’s a thematic parallel to “Anna Karenina,” another historical fiction about a women who exits a stifling marriage through infidelity and suffers the consequences.

Weisz, who married Daniel Craig last year, was sitting over breakfast in a boho East Village cafe with me as she reflected on Hester’s parallels with Keira Knightley’s Karenina. In both movies, the husband isn’t demonized to justify the wife’s action. In “TDBS,” Sir William Collyer (Simon Russell Beale) clearly wants the best for Hester despite her infidelity. “Yes,” agreed Weisz, “he’s a nice guy. He’s a sweetheart. When I read it, I’d imagined a really evil, horrible, nasty husband.” Continue Reading

Earlier this month, Meryl Streep talked numbers at the Women in Film Lucy & Crystal Awards. To paraphrase her point, there were five movies over five years — “The Help” (2011) “Bridesmaids” (2011), “The Iron Lady” (2011), “Mamma Mia!” (2008), and “The Devil Wears Prada” (2008) — that earned a collective $1.6 billion for Hollywood. True, she starred in three of them, but if they had been cop movies, zombie thrillers, or Westerns, there would be a stream of films trying to cash in on the women’s market. So Streep’s question — “Why don’t studios want the money?” – hangs heavy in the air.

TV Writer Nell Scovell (“Warehouse 13,” “Monk”) had the most straightforward answer: “They want the money but don’t want to give women the power. It’s a conundrum.”

Animator Signe Baumane responded: “I think Hollywood is stuck in the notion that only 21-year-old men go to movies. The New Yorker article on Ben Stiller says that much too. Big studios are like big animals, they can’t adapt to small changes quickly, but small changes accumulate into BIG ones before soon.”

We hope so. In the meantime, where do we stand?

[Related: Adams on Reel Women: Director Lynn Shelton talks Emily Blunt and 'Mad Men']

Those five movies are just the tip of the iceberg

If you add in the year’s top grosser, “The Hunger Games,” and the movies from “The Twilight Saga,” that earnings number grows exponentially. Then there’s a surprise hit like “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel,” which grossed approximately $38 million domestically and $121 million internationally on the backs of Judi Dench and Maggie Smith (anybody who’s watched TV’s “Downton Abbey,” starring Smith as the dowager matriarch who speaks her very sharp mind, wouldn’t be surprised). Add in the gushy Nicholas Sparks drama “The Vow” with Rachel McAdams and Channing Tatum, and there’s another 2012 film that hosed up $194 million globally, following on other films in the successful Sparks franchise (“The Notebook,” “Dear John”), which have frugal production budgets and easily earn out theatrically. Toss in the female-dominated action franchises like Kate Beckinsale’s “Underworld” ($459 million worldwide) and Milla Jovovich’s “Resident Evil” ($675 million worldwide) and the money grows. You, readers, can probably add more to this list.

One answer: The demographics within Hollywood

When it comes to green-lighting films in Hollywood, women don’t have their hands on the switch — and those who do tend to be part of a male scrum. They made it to the top by assimilating into the male studio culture, not by rebelling against it. On the production side, a San Diego State University study last year found that among writers, directors, editors, cinematographers, producers, and executive producers, the division of labor was 82 percent men and 18 percent women. The disconnect is that the audiences do not reflect that same split. The gap between 18 percent and 51 percent is a red flag. Serving that market has a huge profit potential. Healthy industries should be constantly seeking growth, and this is an underserved market.

Another answer: The power of critics as gatekeepers

The critics function as gatekeepers — telling readers what to see and what to skip. Guess what? Men dominate that arena, too. That’s why we’ve seen Michael Cera lose his virginity so many times in coming-of-age comedies and there were so many inexplicably positive reviews for “The Three Stooges.” A San Diego State study based on 100 newspapers, in 2007, concluded that men dominate movie criticism in a way that echoes male dominance behind the screen. In a study conducted by Martha M. Lauzen at the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film, 77 percent of film critics are male. As a female member of the New York Film Critics Circle, which includes newspaper, magazine, and online critics, I’ve always been a fortunate minority. According to our website (www.nyfcc.com), there are 31 members, including the late Andrew Sarris. Of that number, seven (or 23 percent) are female — and that’s considerable growth since I joined the organization in 1995.

One solution: Women, vote with your box-office dollars:

Go see “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” or Streep’s upcoming middle-age marriage comedy, “Hope Springs,” or the cluster of microbudgeted and intensely satisfying movies like Lynn Shelton’s “Your Sister’s Sister”; Sarah Polley’s “Take This Waltz” (opening Friday); or Nancy Savoca’s “Union Square” (opening July 13). If we build the audience, the product will come — and it will come from a variety of sources, small and large.

Another solution: Women, make movies

Meryl Streep joined with director Phyllida Lloyd to make “Mamma Mia!” and “The Iron Lady.” She voted with her box-office clout. This is what Mira Sorvino is doing with “Union Square,” Emily Blunt with “Your Sister’s Sister,” and Drew Barrymore with her underrated movie “Whip It!”

And another solution: Opening-weekend grosses are not king, er, queen

Let’s ignore Hollywood’s obsession with opening-weekend numbers and echo models like that of “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” building the female audiences one movie and one weekend at a time. Carla Stockton, editor in chief of Dapt’d, explained: “Women, especially women in the next-up age brackets, are more likely to weigh critics’ reviews, friends’ word of mouth, etc., and they will wait to see the film till it’s been out awhile. Too much focus, it seems, gets placed on opening weekend. So, while the industry is aware that we want films with strong women’s POV, it is intimidated by the pressure of first weekend from delving too deeply into that fountain. I also think we writers must persevere in creating more, better, stronger, more compelling women for stage and screen.”

[Related: 'To Rome With Love' star Greta Gerwig is wild about Woody Allen — just read her high school yearbook]

I’m definitely with Carla: We’re listening, and we’re going to be writing, producing, and directing the movies we want to see — and supporting them in print. And when one person speaks out, like Streep did, we’ll rally around her, until our voices are heard.

And there’s some reason for optimism. According to USA Today’s Susan Wloszczyna: “I think much like Snow White, they are slowly waking up to the fact that if you please them, women will show up in hordes, and even for more than one viewing. I was astonished and gratified that ‘Snow White and the Huntsman,’ which is essentially an action film with two female leads, did so well. How often does that happen? And even Pixar finally woke up and smelled the estrogen with “Brave.” There is movement afoot. The female screenwriting ranks have been growing, and now there just needs to be more female directors doing big studio films.”

See the trailer for ‘Brave’:

Beauty is a bitch. That’s always animated the Snow White story: Vanity and jealousy drive the evil stepmother queen to slip Snow White that poisoned apple. Now, along comes “Snow White and the Huntsman,” which is all about teasing out the backstory of these Grimm characters and asking, “Why?”

Why is it so important to know who’s the fairest of them all, a question the magic mirror never answers. For Queen Ravenna, played with Joan Crawford relish by Oscar winner Charlize Theron, the answer is an exposé of Hollywood’s obsession with feminine beauty and aging, and chasing after the next unwrinkled new young thing (whether that’s Kristen Stewart or Elizabeth Olsen or Rooney Mara).

Statuesque blonde Theron, 36, tears into the beauty theme, a variation on past roles. She won her Oscar for playing a repulsive serial killer in “Monster”; last year, she courted another as the morally ugly husband stalker in “Young Adult.” In “Snow White and the Huntsman,” we see Queen Ravenna in her full glory on her wedding day as she glances back over her shoulder and a cascade of golden waves at the young girl who will grow up to be her archrival. The queen has closed the deal with the king, Snow White’s widowed father, in 24 hours on looks alone. Beauty is her power. It’s also her obsession — and her weakness. The parallel is clear: As an A-list star, Theron’s superlative beauty is her commodity, but she’s always looking over her shoulder at the next girl, and the next.

[Related: A mom's eye view of 'Snow White and the Huntsman']

What extremes will Queen Ravenna go to in order to maintain her primacy? It’s a high-maintenance business. The scenes in which she ages rapidly are riveting, showing the wrinkles curdle her flesh as she morphs into that crone who in fairy-tale books offers up the poisoned apple to Snow White (played here by Kristen Stewart). When the queen begins to sag, and bags form under her eyes, she grabs a young beauty from the dungeon and sucks out her soul like a McDonald’s shake. Ravenna’s youthful glow returns.

The movie goes one step further by expressing the anger that Ravenna feels about this cruel joke: beauty and aging. On her wedding night, she flings her wrath at her royal groom [spoiler alert], blaming him for the evil she is about to do because men are so in thrall to surface beauty. (Why can’t they just love me for me?) Then she neatly skewers him with a dagger. Sexism made her do it.

Queen Ravenna has a soul sister in Queen Cersei (Lena Headey) on HBO’s “Game of Thrones.” Cersei is gorgeous on the outside and corrupt within (she’s had three kids with her own brother, Jaime Lannister). In this season’s penultimate episode, Cersei drunkenly counsels her son’s dewy fiancée, Sansa Stark, that being beautiful isn’t powerful in itself; a woman has to use her beauty like a weapon in the ongoing war for dominance. To paraphrase the wicked yet compelling queen: In times of war, women have to use what’s between their legs.

In “Game of Thrones,” as in “Snow White and the Huntsman,” female anger at male sexism is an undercurrent of the beauty discussion. Cersei vents that her father taught her brother Jaime how to fight with a sword, while all she learned was to smile and curtsy and dance. He learned how to kill; she learned how to seduce. When Dad dispatched Jaime to war and adventure, he married Cersei off to a stranger, traded like a horse for a family alliance. Cersei seethes — and, like Ravenna, she’s so compelling when she’s angry!

Both “Snow White and the Huntsman” and “Game of Thrones” examine the beauty myth and the extreme lengths that aging stunners will go to to maintain their gifts and their control of power by sexual conquest. In addition, as the queens attempt to squelch or absorb their younger rivals, they demonstrate the difficulty of sisterhood across generations. “You are lucky to never know what it is to grow old!” Queen Ravenna cries to Stewart’s Snow White — as she tries to see that the younger woman will never live to cash a Social Security check. And so don’t expect an alliance between Queen Ravenna and Snow White or Cersei Lannister and Sansa Stark — major-league feminine beauty is a cruel taskmaster and rarely a team sport.

This column originally appeared on Yahoo! Movies.