What Makes a Movie Sexist? Or Feminist, for that matter?
Cookiemaven, inspired by Lisa Kansas's blog post What Makes a Movie Sexist? http://www.alternet.org/movies/86241/)

In American society, there is a value placed on the appearance of equality, and therefore political correctness on the outside. One of the industries that betrays some of America's inherent sexism is film. (I say some because films are also marketed to 18-25 year old males, who happen to have more disposable income, and films therefore reflect the fantasies and outlook of this segment of the population, not the entire society.) Film is such a powerful medium, combining images and sounds to create a story. But these images can betray a sexist undertone to the director or story. As American society accepts film as a high art, it examines film, and therefore discovers these undertones. It's still tough to determine where the sexism hides, if it indeed is there.
Ms Kansas provides for us a nice framework for identifying sexist films. I find it extremely helpful. It boils down to this: Some stereotypical/sexist females are acceptable, but a majority of inept stereotypical females is not acceptable. Sexist films have mostly twit women. Egalitarian films have at least fifty percent competent women. Ms Kansas didn't go this far, but I say that a film with mostly competent women is feminist. But number aren't enough. Genre of film must be taken into account, as well as relative importance of the women. A film noir is more egalitarian with two decent women (And feminist if one fires a gun without flinching!), while a romantic comedy geared toward women must have mostly competent female cast. And if the heroine is an amazingly competent, useful, swanky woman, then the rest of the gals can be sops as far as I care. If the most important woman is a silly lass, many cool women who come on-screen for one minute are not going to save the film.
Let's use our metric against some films. Iron Man: Egalitarian by cookiemaven, sexist by Kansas. Kansas explains her reasoning in her article. I say Pepper Potts in all her awesomeness redeems the film. Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian: Sexist by cookiemaven's standards- there are a total of three women, one who is marginal (Caspian's mother), and the other two who have yet to do anything beside look at the camera and either believe in Aslan or fight in melee combat with a bow.