Films
This section is intended as an introduction to Winona Ryder's films. If you haven't witnessed her remarkable talent as an actress, please peruse the reviews, select some candidates, and check them out at your local video store.
The “What-Do-You-Like” Guide to Winona’s Films
by Don
A favorite of many of Winona’s fans is “Girl, Interrupted.” It is a serious drama about a girl’s difficulty adjusting to adolescence while spending time in a residential psychiatric facility in the 1960’s. Angelina Jolie co-starred and won best supporting actress for her performance.
Her sexiest performances are probably “Dracula” and “Boys.” “Dracula” is a favorite and seeing Winona “under the spell” is something to behold! “Boys” has a dreadful script, but it also has Winona in a black bra playing out every young boy’s fantasy.
If you like comedies, then you absolutely must see “Heathers” and “Beetlejuice.” These are both cult classics and a lot of fun to watch. Also, don't miss “Reality Bites” and “Mermaids,” both of which are comedies with a serious side to them, and are among her best movies.
If you like period dramas, try “Little Women” and “Age of Innocence,” for which Winona received Oscar nominations. “The Crucible” ostensibly falls into this genre, although it also has powerful allegorical significance as well.
If you like science-fiction then you’ll want to try “Alien Resurrection.” The movie is not based on the best script, but it is still a favorite among some of Winona’s fans. As part of the “Alien” series, it generally holds up well as an action flick.
If you like esoteric indie films, then you might want to try “Celebrity,” “Simone,” and "Looking for Richard." Winona has small parts in these films, but as usual she gives excellent performances.
The Films
Mr. Deeds (2002)
by Jason Anderson
(“Mr. Deeds” is a) carefree adaptation of Frank Capra's Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. All of Sandler's usual gang of collaborators are present: director Steven Brill, writer Tim Herlihy and co-stars Allen Covert and Peter Dante (plus Steve Buscemi and Rob Schneider in small roles). . . . this amiable comedy is standard-issue Sandler. It's neither as sappy as Big Daddy nor as anarchic as Happy Gilmore or The Waterboy, but it has its moments.
by Susan Stark
Anyone who has responded to the sweet side of Adam Sandler's growing comic screen persona is sure to be delighted by "Mr. Deeds." Sandler plays a small-town, New Hampshire pizza-shop owner with a true rapport among his fellow citizens based on trust and kindness. Then -- whomp! -- the pleasant clip-clop takes a turn for fast. He discovers that he is the closest living heir to a freshly deceased New York City media tycoon and that he is to inherit $40 billion at once.
. . . "Mr. Deeds" sinks or swims with Sandler. This is his most
consistently, monochromatically adorable turn yet. The movie itself
has neither the charm nor conviction of the source material. Even so,
Sandler's uncounted fans who have been rooting for sweet (as opposed to
gross) must come away feeling not only vindicated but also well
entertained.
Autumn In New York (2000)
by Jack Garner
Autumn in New York . . . .(is) certainly no classic, but I've seen dozens of far-worse films in other preview screenings. As old-fashioned, sentimental romances go, this well-played Kleenex saga is slightly above average. Think Love Story, but with a May-September twist and a new tag line: ''Love means never having to say . . . you're too old for me.''
Gere is convincing as the film's silver fox. But, thankfully, he allows the script to skewer the age issue repeatedly. He starts as a familiar character we've seen in several of his films over the last decade, but he eventually moves convincingly into uncharted emotional territory. As Charlotte, Ryder moves plausibly from her early star-struck attraction for Will to a more mature approach to a difficult relationship.
Autumn in New York marks actress-turned-director Joan Chen's first foray into Hollywood filmmaking. She made her directorial debut last year with the far-different Xiu Xiu: The Sent-Down Girl, made in China. Her choice here is to film Autumn with modest, realistic style, favoring the slightly grainy cinematography of Changwei Gu over the ultra-polished approach some other filmmakers might have employed. Good idea. More sheen might have turned the film's sentiment into sap.
Lost Souls (2000)
by Jay Carr
"Kaminski brings all the visual oomph one could ask for, but not enough narrative spine, momentum, or substance."
by Roger Ebert
"For a thriller about demonic possession and the birth of the antichrist, it's curiously flat."
Girl, Interrupted (2000)
Most movies about mental hospitals either condemn how we care for the mentally ill or highlight a sharp contrast between the sane and the insane -- often suggesting that society has the definitions reversed.
Refreshingly, Girl, Interrupted does neither.
The Winona Ryder production depicts the familial relationships that develop among mental patients and suggests that caring for the mentally ill is no exact science. More to the point, the film clearly demonstrates there's not that much difference between those on the outside and those on the inside.
Girl, Interrupted is adapted from Susanna Kaysen's memoir of her stay in a mental hospital in the late '60s and features Ryder in a solid central performance as Kaysen. (As an executive producer, Ryder also was a prime mover in getting the film made.)
As the film opens, Kaysen is a troubled 17-year-old who has recently swallowed an entire bottle of aspirin, trying to ease a headache. Her worried parents get her an appointment with a psychiatrist friend, who diagnoses borderline personality disorder and suggests institutionalization.
At Claymoore Hospital, Kaysen gets to know Daisy (Brittany Murphy), who suffers from an eating disorder, the sweetly sensitive Polly (Elisabeth Moss), whose interior beauty contrasts with a face badly scarred by fire, and other patients.
Her most volatile friendship is with Lisa, a bright, charmingly cynical sociopath whose dangerous attitudes can only spell trouble for Kaysen. Lisa is played with electrifying energy by Angelina Jolie in a performance guaranteed to secure an Oscar nomination.
Directed and co-written by James Mangold, Girl, Interrupted is artfully crafted and well acted. . .
Celebrity (1998)
by Roger Ebert
"Celebrity" plays oddly like the loose ends and unused inspirations of other Woody Allen movies; it's sort of a revue format in which a lot of famous people appear onscreen, perform in the sketch Woody devises for them and disappear. Some of the moments are very funny. More are only smile material, and a few don't work at all. Like all of Allen's films, it's smart and quirky enough that we're not bored, but we're not much delighted, either. All of his films can't be as good as "Everyone Says I Love You," and this one proves it.
The film stars Kenneth Branagh as--there is only one way to put this--Woody Allen. The character is named Lee Simon, but Branagh has all the Allen vocal mannerisms and the body language of comic uncertainty. He does Allen so carefully, indeed, that you wonder why Allen didn't just play the character himself. . . . Allen pauses on most scenes only long enough to extract the joke, and the film begins to seem as desperately promiscuous as its hero. The words "The End" no longer appear at the ends of most films, but "Celebrity" ends (and begins) on a note that seems about right: an airplane skywriting the word "HELP!"
Alien: Resurrection (1997)
by Stephen Hunter
The
movie never scales the
heights of pure skull-in-the-vise horror
that Ridley Scott's original managed. And it never develops the cool marines-vs.-bugs carnage of James Cameron's second installment. But it brings a mordant, crackerjack wit to the world of chest-busting, head-ripping creepazoids from beyond.
. . . structurally, the film bears far more resemblance to another disaster flick than any of the previous "Alien" films. The alien, of course, spawns, and its wretched children bust out to send the ship careening out of control, while scuttling about to devour all the humans. Thus it falls to Ripley and a crew of space privateers, including the incongruous Winona Ryder, to navigate their way across the foundering ship to a smaller lifeboat-style craft: It's "The Poseidon Adventure" with insects.
The director, incidentally, is Jean-Pierre Jeunet, the Frenchman famous in art film circles for two highly stylized movies, "Delicatessen" and the "City of Lost Children."
This one looks a lot like those two and that pretty much sums up "Alien Resurrection." It's an art film with bugs that explode out of people's chests. And it's funny. The French, they have a knack, no?
this fourth film in the Alien series, Ripley is cloned two hundred years after the third movie finishes and the Queen which was inside her extracted. Winona plays Annalee Call a member of a band of pirates providing human cargo to the military vessel that Ripley is on. Of course, the scientists new toy breaks loose and runs amok. The movie's main strength comes from director Jean-Pierra Jeunet's clever use of lighting and camera angles to create a weird and surreal world. This was a major change of type of movie for Winona being her first action/science fiction movie.
The Crucible (1996)
by James Berardinelli
(Although “The Crucible”) . . . is an historical allegory for the McCarthy period, its true power lies in its ability to be re-interpreted to fit any time period. Indeed, its fertile themes -- the lure of power, the gullibility of those who believe they have a moral imperative, the need to accept responsibility for the consequences of all actions, and the nature of truth -- are universal in scope. Events such as those depicted in "The Crucible" have recurred with alarming predictability throughout human history.
Scholars can argue about which of Miller's two best plays ("The Crucible" and "Death of a Salesman") is the stronger work, but there's little doubt that "The Crucible" is the most accessible. Oddly, this is the first English-language motion picture version. With Miller handling the screenwriting, it comes as little surprise that The Crucible is faithful to its source material. Director Nicholas Hytner opens up the play, using location shooting and an impressively-detailed period setting to add a dimension not available on the stage. Those unaware of the film's background may be surprised to learn that such a dynamic production began life in the theater.
One of the most contemporarily relevant aspects of The Crucible, the ease with which justice can be manipulated and perverted, is what Hytner and Miller have chosen to highlight in this adaptation. A parallel-yet-integral theme relates to the thrill of power inherent in being the manipulator. Abigail (Winona Ryder) enjoys playing God until the circumstances she sets in motion gain enough momentum to escape her control. Late in the film, her eyes express the horror that she feels as the crushing ramifications of her masquerade emerge.
As thematically rich as The Crucible is, it would be a dry and uninteresting piece if the characters and their situations were less compelling. Indeed, the human interest and drama of the story are what distinguish it. In The Crucible, there are heroes and villains, but nothing is black and white. Shades of gray permeate every action. Abigail is the spark that ignites the inferno of mistrust; however, she is guided not by malice, but by a misplaced, obsessive love.
John Proctor (Daniel Day Lewis), the most upright man in the film, is an adulterer whose own actions indirectly lead to the tragedy. He is noble only to a point, and his character faults make him easy to identify with as a human being.
(Winona Ryder). . . does an excellent job fleshing out Abigail as more than a cardboard instrument of vengeance and evil. . .
Whether on stage or on film, "The Crucible" is a powerful, thought-provoking production. This version illuminates the story's numerous strengths, resulting in a motion picture of surprising emotional and intellectual impact. By re-interpreting this classic so effectively, Hytner has assured that at least one version of "The Crucible" will become a part of film history.
Looking for Richard (1996)
by Keene
This film follows Al Pacino's effort to create a movie of Shakespeare's Richard III. It's more of a long documentary then a feature film. Winona Ryder has a very small part in this film playing Lady Anne. The films best parts come when the cast are not actually acting, but these are frequently distracted by the uninspiring production of Shakespeare's play. Looking for Richard features a cast including Kevin Spacey and Alec Baldwin.
Boys (1996)
by Roger Ebert
``Boys'' is a low-rent, dumbed-down version of ``Before Sunrise,'' with a rent-a-plot substituting for clever dialogue. It goes to excruciating lengths to explain why a teenage boy and a slightly older girl would meet and spend most of the night together, and then it gives them nothing of any interest to say.
This is a waste of the talents of Winona Ryder, who can and has played the most intelligent of movie characters (see ``The Age of Innocence'' and ``Little Women''), and of Lukas Haas, who has never played a character quite this shallow, even in his juvenile roles (see his work as the curious young man in ``Rambling Rose'').
``Boys'' gives us another setup, drenched in melodrama, coincidence, flashbacks and drama, and thinks we should care about it. We don't. We do care about the two young characters, until it becomes clear that the movie doesn't. This movie goes to a great deal of trouble in order to explain why two teenagers are able to meet and exchange a series of time-worn cliches about life and love. (``I feel like I wake up with my mind on the wrong channel or something.'' ``I feel like that every day.'')
``Boys'' must think audiences are not very bright. Any movie like this faces two choices, early in the development process: (1) Make the characters original and interesting, and write them some dialogue worth hearing, or (2) Trick up the plot with tired cliches, lurid flashbacks and phony suspense, throw in a little sex, and have a perfunctory happy ending. ``Boys'' takes the dumb way out.
How to Make an American Quilt (1995)
by Betinna
This movie was one of the reasons that convinced me to go out
to New York City to pursue an acting career.
The last statement made by Finn in the movie is one of the most beautiful and most profound ones I have ever heard, I encourage everyone out there to watch that movie for it leaves you feeling good about life and the fact that it is not always perfect either.
It is the story of Finn (Ryder) who visits her eccentric aunts to make a decision about her boy-friend (Mulroney) who had asked her to marry her. She starts to question marriage, if one person can be meant for the other for the rest of their lives. She also learns how important and consequential the choices you make in life can be and how sometimes someone does not find the love of their life in a man or woman but someplace else such as their children.
Finn starts a fling with a local called Leon (Jonathan Schaech), but realizes that he is only a temptation, not the real thing. It is a movie about a young woman on the brink of marriage losing herself and finding herself due to the help and wisdom of all the older ladies who have met at her aunt's house to make a quilt for her. They tell her their life story, some are happy, some sad and she takes all of these wonderful experiences in and learns what is important in life.
Little Women (1994)
by Edward Guthmann
Meticulously crafted, and warmly acted by a cast that includes Winona Ryder as Jo and Susan Sarandon as her mother, the devoted Marmee, ``Little Women'' is one of the rare Hollywood studio films that invites your attention, slowly and elegantly, rather than propelling your interest with effects and easy manipulation.
by Chris Hicks
It's . . . impossible to deny the gentle power and overwhelming emotion
attached to this latest version (of “Little Women”), brilliantly
conceived by Australian filmmaker Gillian Armstrong ("My Brilliant
Career," "Mrs. Soffel") - and perhaps it is high time a woman brought
this story to the screen (with another woman, screenwriter Robin Swicord).
What's more, Winona Ryder makes the character of Jo her own with a solid
performance that takes her from girlhood to womanhood.
"Little Women" is ensemble in nature, but Jo is unquestionably the
central character. Spirited, talented and at odds with an unfair world
in which men are encouraged to be passionate and creative and women are
placed in domestic pigeon holes, Jo receives the quiet nudging from her
mother that she needs to help her find the courage to follow her heart.
(While) Jo is the film's center . . . there are wonderful moments for
all the sisters, and for Sarandon, who shines in her part, playing
Marmee more strongly as an early feminist than has been emphasized in
other film versions. Also good are Christian Bale as next-door neighbor
Laurie, Eric Stoltz as the pompous John Brooke and Mary Wickes, funny
and surprisingly warm as grumpy old Aunt March.
"Little Women," with its themes of deep family (sisterly) love and faith
intact, should easily please fans of the book - but any audience will be
more than satisfied with this cinematic gem.
Reality Bites (1994)
by Rita Kempley
First-time director Ben Stiller, son of the comedy team Stiller and Meara, explores post-collegiate malaise in "Reality Bites," a tender, irreverent romance for a generation reared by "The Brady Bunch" and weaned on Big Gulps. Herein a quartet of precocious new alumni learn, as did boomers before them, that they have to go to work, pick a mate and perhaps turn into their parents.
Though he marries the techie confessionalism of "sex, lies, and videotape" with the restless alienation of "Slacker," Stiller is basically reprising the themes of "The Graduate." Only the watchword for the Class of '94 isn't plastics, it's retail. The best they can hope for is "a toehold in the burger industry" or a managerial position at the Gap.
"Reality Bites" principally turns on the romantic tension between Ryder, wonderfully radiant and not all that literate for the class valedictorian her character is purported to be, and Hawke, who does the alienated-poet thing better than anybody since Matt Dillon's greaser in "The Outsiders." Not that there's much difference between grunge and grease, hip and beat. We've all been there -- or will be -- and that's the real thing, baby.
The House of the Spirits (1993)
by James Berardinelli
Sometimes, it's impossible not to contemplate what a motion picture could have been had a few things about it been different. Often, especially for very good or very bad movies, the changes will make little difference. However, in the case of The House of the Spirits, which is a worthy effort as it stands, certain alterations (not all of which would have been simple to execute) might have transformed this into a devastating film. Alas, deficiencies rob the picture of a share of its impact, limiting the ultimate emotional appeal and power of Bille August's adaptation of Isable Allende's novel.
Winona Ryder, given perhaps her most difficult role to date, carries it off with aplomb. As Blanca, the daughter of Esteban and Clara, she plays an integral part in all the develops during the movie's second half, including the events that finally open her father's eyes to those basic truths from which he has been hiding. In addition to that of Ryder, the best performances are given by Close, Streep, and Irons (although it becomes something of an annoyance trying to pin down what Esteban's accent is supposed to be). Each member of this well-respected trio does the kind of job expected of them.
Perhaps director August was constrained by running time, but his latest project shows little of the careful examination of character that his two most celebrated films -- Pelle the Conqueror and The Best Intentions -- exhibit. In fact, The House of the Spirits is in many ways the antithesis of The Best Intentions. While the latter was a slow-moving piece that allowed its participants time to grow and breathe, this new film seems at times constrained and cramped. At its best, The House of the Spirits interweaves the very personal story of its main characters with the turbulent political backdrop which frames their actions. Bille August has done a fine job with Isable Allende's tale, crafting a captivating motion picture, but it's hard not to recognize the flaws, and wonder about the lost potential.
The Age Of Innocence (1993)
by Roger Ebert
We live in an age of brutal manners, when people crudely say exactly what they mean, comedy is based on insult, tributes are roasts, and loud public obscenity passes without notice. Martin Scorsese's film "The Age of Innocence," which takes place in 1870, seems so alien it could be pure fantasy. A rigid social code governs how people talk, walk, meet, part, dine, earn their livings, fall in love, and marry. Not a word of the code is written down anywhere. But these people have been studying it since they were born.
The film is based on a novel by Edith Wharton, who died in the 1930s. The age of innocence, as she called it with fierce irony, was over long before she even wrote her book. Yet she understood that the people of her story had the same lusts as we barbaric moderns, and not acting on them made them all the stronger.
The novel and the movie take place in the elegant milieu of the oldest and richest families in New York City. Marriages are like treaties between nations, their purpose not merely to cement romance or produce children, but to provide for the orderly transmission of wealth between the generations. Anything that threatens this sedate process is hated. It is not thought proper for men and women to place their own selfish desires above the needs of their class. People do indeed "marry for love," but the practice is frowned upon as vulgar and dangerous.
The story told here is brutal and bloody, the story of a man's passion crushed, his heart defeated. Yet it is also much more, and the last scene of the film, which pulls everything together, is almost unbearably poignant because it reveals that the man was not the only one with feelings - that others sacrificed for him, that his deepest tragedy was not what he lost, but what he never realized he had.
This kind of story has been filmed, very well, by the Merchant-Ivory team. Their "Howard's End," " A Room with a View" and "The Bostonians" know this world. It would seem to be material of no interest to Martin Scorsese, a director of great guilts and energies, whose very titles are a rebuke to the age of innocence: "Mean Streets," "Taxi Driver," "Raging Bull," "Goodfellas." Yet when his friend and co-writer Jay Cocks handed Scorsese the Wharton novel, he could not put it down, and now he has filmed it, and through some miracle it is all Wharton, and all Scorsese.
"The Age of Innocence" is filmed with elegance. These rich aristocrats move in their gilded circles from opera to dinner to drawing room, with a costume for every role and every time of day. Scorsese observes the smallest of social moments, the incline of a head, the angle of a glance, the subtle inflection of a word or phrase. And gradually we understand what is happening: Archer is considering breaking his engagement to May, in order to run away with the Countess, and everyone is concerned to prevent him - while at no time does anyone reveal by the slightest sign that they know what they are doing.
Each performance is modulated to preserve the delicate balance of the romantic war. Daniel Day-Lewis stands at the center, deluded for a time that he has free will. Michelle Pfeiffer, as the countess, is a woman who sees through society without quite rejecting it, and takes an almost sensuous pleasure in seducing Archer with the power of her mind. At first it seems that little May is an unwitting bystander and victim, but Winona Ryder gradually reveals the depth of her character's intelligence, and in the last scene, as I said, all is revealed and much is finally understood.
Scorsese is known for his restless camera; he rarely allows a static shot. But here you will have the impression of grace and stateliness in his visual style, and only on a second viewing will you realize the subtlety with which his camera does, indeed, incessantly move, insinuating itself into conversations like a curious uninvited guest. At the beginning of "The Age of Innocence," as I suggested, it seems to represent a world completely alien to us. By the end, we realize these people have all the same emotions, passions, fears and desires that we do. It is simply that they value them more highly, and are less careless with them, and do not in the cause of self-indulgence choose a moment's pleasure over a lifetime's exquisite and romantic regret.
Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)
by Roger Ebert
The film is inspired by the original Bram Stoker novel, although the author's name is in the title for another reason (Another studio owns the rights to plain "Dracula"). It begins, as it should, with the tragic story of Vlad the Impaler, who went off to fight the Crusades and returned to find that his beloved wife, hearing he was dead, had killed herself. And not just killed herself, but hurled herself from a parapet to a stony doom far below, in one of the many spectacular shots which are the best part of this movie.
Vlad cannot see the justice in his fate. He has marched all the way to the Holy Land on God's business, only to have God play this sort of a trick on him. (Vlad is apparently not a student of the Book of Job.) He embraces Satan and vampirism, and the action moves forward to the late Victorian Age, when mankind is first beginning to embrace the gizmos (phonographs, cameras, the telegraph, motion pictures) that will dispel the silence of the nights through which he has waited fearfully for centuries.
Coppola's plot, from a screenplay by James V. Hart, exists precisely between London, where this modern age is just dawning, and Transylvania, which still sleeps unhealthily in the past. Coppola directs with all the stops out, and the actors perform as if afraid they will not be audible in the other theaters of the multiplex. The sets are grand opera run riot - Gothic extravaganza intercut with the Victorian London of gaslights and fogbound streets, rogues in top hats and bad girls in bustiers. Keanu Reeves, as a serious young man of the future, hardly knows what he's up against with Count Dracula, and neither do we, since Dracula cheerfully changes form - from an ancient wreck to a presentable young man to a cat and a bat and a wolf.
The one thing the movie lacks is headlong narrative energy and coherence. There is no story we can follow well enough to care about. There is a chronology of events, as the characters travel back and forth from London to Transylvania, and rendezvous in bedrooms and graveyards. But Coppola seems more concerned with spectacle and set-pieces than with storytelling; the movie is particularly operatic in the way it prefers climaxes to continuity.
Faced with narrative confusions and dead ends (why does Dracula want to buy those London properties in such specific locations?), I enjoyed the movie simply for the way it looked and felt. Production designers Dante Ferreti and Thomas Sanders have outdone themselves. The cinematographer, Michael Ballhaus, gets into the spirit so completely be always seems to light with shadows. Oldman and Ryder and Hopkins pant with eagerness. The movie is an exercise in feverish excess, and for that if for little else, I enjoyed it.
Night On Earth (1991)
By Roger Ebert
Jim Jarmusch's "Night on Earth" assembles five moments in time, in taxicabs, in the middle of the night, in five of the world's cities. At the end, we have learned no great lessons and arrived at no thrilling conclusions, but we have shared the community of the night, when people are unbuttoned and vulnerable - more ready to speak about what's really on their minds.
Jarmusch is not interested in making each segment into a short story with an obvious construction. There are no zingers at the end. He's more concerned with character; with the relationship that forms, for example, between a tattooed, gum-chewing, chain-smoking young cabdriver (Winona Ryder) and the elegant executive (Gena Rowlands) who wants to cast her for a movie. "I've got my life all mapped out," says the Ryder character, who hopes to work her way up to mechanic. "There must be lotsa girls who want to be in the movies. Not me." The movie doesn't insist that the cabbie is right or wrong; it simply reports her opinion.
Jarmusch essentially empties the
streets for his night riders. The cities are lonely and look cold; even
in L.A., "it gets dark early in the winter." His characters seem
divorced from the ordinary society of their cities; they're loners and
floaters. We sense they have more in common with one another than with
the daytime inhabitants of their cities. And their cabs, hurtling
through the deserted streets, are like couriers on a mission to nowhere.
Edward Scissorhands (1990)
by Desson Howe
From E.T. to the Elephant Man to the Ugly Duckling, the noble-hearted outsider getting persecuted by society may be the oldest -- and most touching -- story in the book.
In "Edward Scissorhands," director Tim Burton gives that perennial tale a gothic-goofy twist, with amusing nods to Mary Shelley, MTV, the Brothers Grimm and Ozzie and Harriet. This extended parable about a shy punk-being (Johnny Depp) with blades for fingers, the high school girl (Winona Ryder) he's sweet on, and the gonzo-suburban world that fences them in may be on the palatably PG-13 side, but it's nonetheless amusing and inventive. Depp is perfectly cast, Burton builds a surrealistically funny cul-de-sac world, and there are some very funny performances from grownups Dianne Wiest, Kathy Baker and Alan Arkin.
Depp is tender, affecting and, quite frankly, bloody pretty. Baker is serenely tacky as the sexually frustrated housewife who makes an intestinal-pink "ambrosia salad" and can't wait to jump on Depp's blades. Squinty-eyed Wiest is perfect as the dippy mother who sells cosmetics. "Hello, Avon calling," she pipes upon entering the dark, foreboding, cobwebbed interior of Depp's castle.
Burton, a kitsching cousin to the satirical skewpoints of Gary Larson, David Lynch, Erroll Morris and others, fills the movie with many of these, well, Burtonisms. Depp's castle, for instance, just happens to be located at the end of the road everyone lives on, a huge gothic structure towering above the homogenous houses. When Depp moves into the neighborhood, it isn't long before the street is a veritable gallery of crazy, front-lawn hedge creations, from dolphins to dinosaurs. He can also dice up a mean cole slaw and make brochettes with his hands. And when Ryder sees the cowering Depp for the first time and screams, you should see what he does to the water bed.
Mermaids (1990)
by Roger Ebert
I had the feeling, watching "Mermaids," that it was originally headed in another direction. The material is "funny" instead of funny, and we don't laugh so much as we squirm with recognition and sympathy. It's a story told by a teenage girl whose mother avoids becoming known as the town tramp only because she changes towns so often. In the movies, eccentric parents can be palmed off as colorful originals. In life, especially to an adolescent, they can be excruciating embarrassments.
The mom in "Mermaids" goes by the name of Mrs. Flax, and is played by Cher. Not only played by Cher, but in an eerie sense played as Cher, with perfect makeup and a flawless body that seems a bit much to hope for, given the character's lifestyle and diet. She has two daughters; a teenager, Charlotte (Winona Ryder), and a grade-schooler, Kate (Christina Ricci). The older daughter, Charlotte, has been driven nearly mad by her mother's incessant moves (18 by last count). She's never gone long to the same school, or made many friends, or experienced much normal life outside the hothouse of Mrs. Flax's fevered existence.
After yet another romantic disaster, the family moves again, to Massachusetts, where Charlotte makes friends with a young man named Joe (Michael Schoeffling) who has some kind of handyman job at a Roman Catholic convent which is just over the way. Charlotte is rather attracted to the nuns, to their quiet ways and cheerful encouragement, but she is more attracted to Joe, who perhaps possesses the secret of exactly what it is adults do when they're alone - what her mother does with all those men, for example.
Her life begins to change, however, in Massachusetts, after she is discovered by Lou (Bob Hoskins), a husky, salt-of-the--earth type who sizes up the situation and decides that what Mrs. Flax and her daughters need is a transfusion of normality. He tries to contribute some balance to the family routine and has luck on the days when Mrs. Flax is not warring with him, while meanwhile a crisis develops in Charlotte's life: She is kissed by Joe, and becomes convinced she is pregnant.
And yet, perversely perhaps, I found this an interesting movie. I didn't give a bean how it turned out, and I found a lot of it preposterous, but I enjoyed that quality. Why do we look at movies? To learn lessons and see life reflected back at us? Sometimes. But sometimes we simply sit there in the dark, stupefied by the spectacle. Winona Ryder, in another of her alienated outsider roles, generates real charisma. And what the movie is saying about Cher is as elusive as it is intriguing.
Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael (1990)
by
C.B. Salter
"Welcome Home Roxy Carmichael" is Karen Leigh Hopkins quirky script. It tells the story of a 15 year old human stray - Dinky Bossetti (Winona Ryder). The film failed at the box office, but not for lack of effort from the cast or writer. If you haven't yet seen WHRC, then you've yet to see one of Winona Ryder's best performances.
Dinky's friends are the reject animals she cares for at an abandoned boat. She dresses in black, doesn't brush her hair and writes confrontational poetry. Other kids throw food at her, her adoptive 'Mom' wants to send her to a special school, and her adoptive Dad is sympathetic but entirely ineffective. Without adult guidance or the support of her peers, Dinky drifts from one humiliation to the next, isolated behind her sarcasm, shrouded in her black scruffiness... until three events trigger change:
1. The anticipated return visit of town celebrity, Roxy Carmichael, and Dinky's discovery that Roxy gave up a baby fifteen years earlier. Dinky begins to explore her own identity, albeit under the delusion that she is Roxy's child and that Roxy will take her home.
2. School councilor, Elizabeth Zaks (Laila Robins), succeeds in reaching the deeply suspicious Dinky. She discovers that, beneath Dinky's sarcasm, is an intelligent if fragile person. Some great moments come from this relationship.
3. School popular boy, Gerald Howells (Thomas Wilson Brown), begins to notice that maybe weird is ok, while Dinky decides its ok to "take more an interest in yourself." (Although her motivation for transforming her appearance has more to do with the return of Roxy than with pleasing Gerald).
The film has a dark side and I bet Ms. Hopkins had much more to show us of Dinky's damage. Sadly, the film studio had other priorities. But what is shown is highly evocative: Dinky's black clothes, black bedroom (with elaborate door locks), her suppression of her own femininity and her other defensive behaviors, all suggest past abuse or other trauma.
In WHRC, Winona Ryder uses the emotional force of her eyes and fleeting expressions to convey honesty that was removed from the script by timid movie executives. Watch her real close (I know you will), she is completely ‘there’.
The great soundtrack fully supports the film. The photography is nice
and the use of candy box colors, especially in the final scenes,
sweetly illustrate the fantasy in which Dinky has been living.
What else can I say? See it! (Several times!) It’s now on
DVD (Region 2 at time of writing) and it sells cheap, as it is still
considered a failed ‘B’ movie. How little ‘they’ know...
Heathers (1989)
by Rita Kempley
"Heathers"
is not pretty in pink, all pompoms and puppy love, but bodacious in
black, chalkboard noir, the dark side of the wonder years. A cracked
satire of the teen genre, it's slangy, raunchy and gutsy as a prom date
with Carrie.
Caught somewhere between the numbing amorality of "River's Edge" and the heartfelt sap of John Hughes, "Heathers" chides the pursuit of popularity as it tackles the thornier topic of teen-age suicide. More than just one of the best movies so far this year, it is a revolution in young-adult entertainment.
These teens aren't boy-crazy, giggly or mall-fixated. They are political animals, and in the heroine's case especially, their characters are fresh and full-bodied. Winona Ryder, Hollywood's most impressive inge'nue, is the focus as Veronica, the fourth most popular girl at Westerberg High in Sherwood, Ohio. Though only a junior, she has made it to the top. Shaking off her grade-school-geek pals, she has become a member of the Heathers -- an exclusive clique named for its founders -- Heather Chandler (Kim Walker), Heather Duke (Shannen Doherty) and Heather McNamara (Lisanne Falk).
"Heathers" is the rare teen movie that looks at high school feudalism from an insider's lofty perspective. There's no easy-to-love underdog looking to get in, but rather this stunning quartet for whom dweebs are doormats. To maintain their power, the Heathers wipe their feet on the fat and the unfashionable.
Rebelliously (Veronica) takes up with a transfer student, a socially unacceptable, filthy rich juvenile delinquent. J.D. (Christian Slater), James Dean by way of Faust, mesmerizes Veronica -- one burning look in the cafeteria leads to a game of strip croquet, which leads to manslaughter. Imagining him a kindred spirit, she tells him her fantasies about Heather. A man of action, he takes it further, becoming a guerrilla in a personal war against the popular.
Deadpan reactions to grievous ills are the stuff of black comedy, but the notion that murder-suicide is funny is bound to cause a ruckus. But Daniel Waters, who based the screenplay on a high school newspaper column, means to send up suicide, to strip it of any glamor or nobility. He and debuting director Michael Lehmann haven't quite done that, though they have devised a strangely hilarious morality play.
The buoyancy of tone and raw young colors contrast with the heroine's deepening guilt and growing wisdom. And in the end, she must break with her lover and mete out justice like one of Charlie Bronson's angels. . . . . Ryder, on the other hand, makes us love her teen-age murderess, a bright, funny girl with a little Bonnie Parker in her. She is the most likable, best-drawn young adult protagonist since the sexual innocent of "Gregory's Girl."
"Heathers" is about the loss of a deeper innocence, an internal passage made without the aid of oblivious parents, idiotic faculty or babbling ministers. Veronica defines innocence and guilt in her own way, rejecting Valley Girl values for Rambo's. For all the talk of suicide, the moral of the story is one of America's best loved: All people are created equal -- even the nerds.
Great Balls of Fire! (1989)
by Roger Ebert
Jerry Lee Lewis has by all accounts led a dark and driven life, shadowed by drugs, booze, violence, scandal and the tragic ends of two of his several wives and one of his children. An accurate biopic about his life would belong on the same bill with "I'll Cry Tomorrow" or "The Rose." But that picture wouldn't be much fun - as indeed great long stretches of the life itself must not have been much fun - and so "Great Balls of Fire" gives us a Jerry Lee Lewis who has been sanitized, popularized and lobotomized. Even then, the story ends in 1959 - before most of the events for which "The Killer" became notorious.
This is a simpleminded rock 'n' roll history in which the pleasures are many and the troubles are few. Lewis, played by Dennis Quaid as a grinning simpleton with a crazy streak and a manic piano style, climbs the same career ladder as many of the stars of musical biographies, but he does it with lightning speed.
There must have been more to it than that, but not in this movie. In fact, that flash-forward between the kid and the Killer jumps over a lot of ground, including Lewis' first two marriages. We rejoin his life just as he has moved in with his cousin, J.W. Brown, who joins his band as the bass player. And it's in Brown's house that Lewis meets young Myra Gale Brown (Winona Ryder), who became his bride at the age of 13 (it is said she still believed in Santa Claus on her wedding night).
But the script shies away from the dark side of Lewis - from the long nights of a man who has been surrounded by violence and misery, and whose lifestyle has brought him near death more than once. It's a life that just doesn't fit into the cliches of a PG-13 rock-'n'-roll biopic for summer release. An accurate movie could perhaps have been made about the real Jerry Lee Lewis, but it should have been directed by the Martin Scorsese of "Raging Bull," and played by Robert De Niro in a foul mood with a killer hangover.
1969 (1988)
by Janet Maslin
''1969'' is awash in the problems that arise from these domestic
situations, building up to a painfully self-congratulatory ending in
which the whole town where the story takes place rises up in protest
against the Vietnam War. The film is lively only insofar as the actors
are able to make it so. Mr. Sutherland, not terribly convincing as a
reluctant innocent in the midst of the sexual revolution, is likable
anyhow, and so is Mr. Downey, even if the screenplay gives each of their
characters a cute side. Winona Ryder, the beautiful young actress who
plays Mr. Downey's sister, has such fascinatingly offbeat timing that
she becomes a lot more interesting than her role.
Beetlejuice(1988)
by
Desson Howe
Meet
Betelgeuse, his pasty face bisected by a leer of hideous teeth. He
chomps rats and flies, talks like the devil in "The Exorcist" and gropes
lasciviously at anything female. He's a scare consultant for the dead.
As played with saturnine relish by Michael Keaton, who has the most fun with a male role since Jack Nicholson's devil in "The Witches of Eastwick," he's one of many wonderfully disgusting inhabitants you'll meet in "Beetlejuice," Tim Burton's hilarious, sardonic comedy about the afterlife of two honeymooners.
Our lovers, Adam and Barbara Maitland (Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis), had a fatal car crash, see. Their spirits return home, only to find they're invisible and their New England home's been overrun by an unpleasant and pretentious family: husband Charles Deetz (Jeffrey Jones); his obnoxious artist-wife Delia (a delightfully snippy Catherine O'Hara); her nasal, mauve-mongering Soho decorator Otho (Glenn Shadix) and funereal daughter Lydia (Winona Ryder), who declares: "My whole life is a dark room. One. Big. Dark. Room."
The joy of "Beetlejuice" is its completely bizarre -- but perfectly realized -- view of the world, a` la Gary Larson's "The Far Side," or "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." Plaudits go to Burton -- a former Walt Disney animator who also directed the visually adventurous "Pee-wee Herman's Big Adventure" -- and scriptwriters Michael McDowell and Warren Skaaren; as well as an able list of professionals, including set designer Bo Welch, makeup and sculptured effects man Robert Short and visual effects coordinator Alan Munro.
Square Dance (1987)
by Don
I
saw this for the first time recently on DVD. It was an important
film for Winona because it was her first leading role and she gave a
good performance.
She has a Texan accent all the way through the film, which is quite
amusing for somebody with Cal-hippy roots. It's about a teen-age
girl growing up in Texas, who lives on a farm with her difficult
grandfather, and then moves to the city to live with an even more
difficult mother. Somehow the girl survives. I like this film
because it feels real; it doesn't have the usual Hollywood gloss. The
script is realistic about how it's characters will turn out.
My initial expectations were not that high, since Squaredance took
absolutely nothing at the box office. I was pleasantly surprised by this
film. It definitely deserved to do better than it did. It has several
good performances, including Rob Lowe as a retarded guy. However Winona
really carries the whole film. That's a lot of responsibility for
somebody in their first leading role. Her performance is an amazing
display of raw talent. She must have been really crushed when the film
didn't do well.
Lucas (1986)
by Roger Ebert
The first loves of early adolescence are so powerful because they are
not based on romance, but on ideals. When they are 13 or 14, boys and
girls do not fall in love with one another because of all the usual
reasons that are celebrated in love songs; they fall in love because the
other person is perfect. Not smart or popular or good-looking, but
perfect, the embodiment of all good.
But it would be tragic if this film would get lost in the shuffle of "teenage movies." This is a movie that is as pure and true to the adolescent experience as Truffaut's "The 400 Blows." . . . “Lucas" was written and directed by David Seltzer, who obviously has put his heart into the film. He also has used an enormous amount of sensitivity. In a world where Hollywood has cheapened the teenage years into predictable vulgarity, he has remembered how urgent, how innocent and how idealistic those years can be. He has put values into this movie.
It is about teenagers who are learning
how to be good to each other, to care, and not simply to be filled with
egotism, lust and selfishness, which is all most Hollywood movies think
teenagers can experience. "Lucas" is one of the year's best films, and
although its three stars are all teenagers, I doubt if anyone of any age
will give more sensitive and effective performances this year.