Winona Ryder @ 50: "Girl Interrupted"

We've been celebrating Winona Ryder all week for her 50th birthday

by Matt St Clair

During this pandemic, I’ve thought a lot about the climactic scene in Girl, Interrupted (1999) where Susanna Kaysen (Winona Ryder) is in the tunnels of Claymoore, confronting Lisa (Angelina Jolie) for pressing her buttons and trying to force her to feel the same amount of misery she does. As Susanna contemplates how the overall world is a cruel, inhuman place, she still proclaims, “I’d rather be in it!” 

At first glance, that proclamation is confusing. For Susanna, Claymoore and its thick walls are initially an escape from the cruel outside world. But between the specialists surrounding her generalizing what she’s feeling, and Lisa who acts as a confidante before proving that misery loves company, Susanna realizes that Claymoore isn’t entirely different from the world. Ultimately, she decides she’d rather be miserable yet out in the open than miserable and locked away...

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Winona Ryder @ 50: Little Women

We're celebrating Winona Ryder for her birthday this week

by Lynn Lee

Was Winona Ryder miscast in Little Women? Boy, was she ever. Or so I thought back in 1994 when I first heard she was playing Jo, second of the four March sisters, in the then-new film adaptation of the Louisa May Alcott classic.  As a teenager who’d read Little Women so many times it had become personal canon, I found the casting ludicrous on its face.  After all, in the book Jo is lanky, tomboyish, awkward, and plain.  Ryder, by contrast, was tiny, graceful, and so exquisitely pretty I had a bit of a crush on her, a fact that sharpened rather than softened my disapproval.  Still, in the end curiosity and my family’s tradition of going to see a movie on Christmas meant I got to judge for myself just how wrong she was for the role.

Readers, what can I say?  She completely won me over....

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Winona Ryder @50: the definitive "Reality Bites"

Team Experience is celebrating Winona Ryder this week for her 50th birthday

by Timothy Lyons

1994 was a watershed year for a young Winona Ryder. It started with her first Oscar nomination (and a Golden Globe win) for her performance in Martin Scorsese’s The Age of Innocence and would come to a close with the Christmas release of Gillian Armstrong’s superior adaptation of Little Women with Ryder’s performance as Jo leading to her second Oscar nomination in as many years (more on that tomorrow). Sandwiched between this diptych of heavily-costumed prestige pics was the release of Ben Stiller’s Reality Bites. Here was a film that would come to define a generation (Generation X) and featured the best, most natural, and luminescent performance of Ryder’s career.

I am a huge Winona Ryder fan - let me get that out of the way before we go further. She does however have a tendency towards the fidgety, the strangely mannered and vaguely uneasy in her performances. Sometimes this can lead to her work feeling slightly blank or disengaged, but more often than not (especially when called upon to play one of many outsiders) it is just right...

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Winona Ryder @ 50: "The Age of Innocence"

by Cláudio Alves

It didn't take long for Winona Ryder to capture the Academy's attention. In 1990, Mermaids marked the young actress' first brush with awards buzz, and, three years later, The Age of Innocence cashed in on that promise. For playing May Welland, the fiancée, then wife, of Daniel Day-Lewis' Newland Archer, Winona Ryder was nominated for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar and probably came quite close to winning. She won the Golden Globe and Anna Paquin's win at the Oscars for The Piano was considered a surprise at the time. And yet, reading reviews from the time and even modern considerations, it's clear that Ryder's performance isn't as universally beloved as her victories might imply. Indeed, it's divisive work…

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Almost There: Nicole Kidman in "To Die For"

by Cláudio Alves

This October, the Criterion Channel is celebrating all things death and murder, be it fantastical or otherwise. Indeed, amid its new collections, one can find a curated program of movies that reflect the idea of True Crime in some way or another. Gus Van Sant's pitch-black comedy To Die For is one of those films. The story of an ambitious weather girl with aspirations of TV fame who manipulates teenagers into killing her husband was a breakthrough for Nicole Kidman back in the mid-90s. After years of being systematically undervalued by audiences and critics alike, the actress got immense critical acclaim and came close to an Oscar nomination…

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