This is an excellent, thoughtful article. I completely agree with you that pigeon-holing a film as "feminist" (or having any one direct "message") is reductive. Once a film (or any story) is released into the world, the storyteller has to accept that the audience may find all manner of alternative interpretations and meanings not intended by the storyteller, but that are just as valid to them personally, because people will take art at whatever level they please. And obviously, how they do that depends on things like personality, temperament, upbringing, religious beliefs, and yes, sometimes gender (though not always, or not exclusively).

Therefore, I'd also argue that it is foolish for any storyteller to determinedly preach an intended message to viewers, because they are going to take away what they want from it regardless. I think a better approach (and I say this as a novelist and writer of short stories myself) is to simply aim to tell a good story with no conscious agenda. Then what is important to the writer (or director) is inherent in the narrative in any case, and it doesn't come off as preachy, or trying to force a worldview on an audience that may be hostile to it.

Finally, to the question of this article, I'd say that many films could be considered "feminist" with a certain spin, and there are obviously counterclaims too. When I was at university studying film (back in the mid 1990s) I remember one lecture from a woman academic (her name escapes me, alas, but she was a fairly big name akin to someone like Laura Mulver) who argued The Accused wasn't a feminist film, but that the far more disreputable I Spit On Your Grave was. Both deal with rape, but the former was a respectable prestige picture made by mainstream Hollywood, and the other was an unashamed exploitation revenge film with tons of gratuitous nudity, violence, etc. She also went on to argue (in eye-watering detail that I'll spare you) why she considered softcore pornography inherently misogynistic but not hardcore pornography (I wonder whether she'd still hold that view today in the internet age). Anyway, I'm not sure I agreed with all her points, but it was a fascinating perspective.