Spotlight On: Winona Ryder

This week's spotlight is on an actress that I have loved since I was a kid. I grew up watching Beetlejuice, Mermaids, Dracula, and Edward Scissorhands a million or so times, and now that I am older I still love all of those movies, along with several others of hers. Here are my favorites in chronological order...

Beetlejuice

In Beetlejuice, Ryder plays goth girl Lydia Deetz, the only member of her family who can see the ghosts living in her attic. This was one of her very first movie roles, and is probably the one that helped start out her career. I have seen this movie a million or so times, so I could probably quote the whole thing. Here are some of my favorite parts...




Heathers

Ryder also starred in my all-time favorite teen movie. (You can find the whole list HERE) She plays Veronica, a girl who hangs out with a clique of bitchy girls called the Heathers. Veronica and her boyfriend start a little killing spree, and make all of the deaths look like suicides. As you can see, this movie is very dark, but also absolutely hilarious and is one of my favorite movies.




Edward Scissorhands

This was her second film that she did with Tim Burton, and is another one of my favorite movies. She plays Kim, a suburban girl who ends up falling for a guy with scissors for hands. Here is one of the best (and sweetest and saddest) moments in the film...



Mermaids

This is another movie that I watched a million times growing up. She stars along with Cher and Christina Ricci (another actress that I loved growing up.) She plays Charlotte Flax, a girl who wants to be a nun (even though she's Jewish) and ends up crushing on an older guy.



Dracula

In Dracula Winona plays Mina, a girl who Dracula falls for because she looks an awful lot like his dead wife Elizabeta (also played by Ryder.) While she doesn't have the best British accent in the world, I still really love this movie, and I think that she looks great in her period costumes.




Little Women

Louisa May Alcott's Little Women is on my list of books that I want to read, and a big majority of that reason is because of how much I like this movie. I think that Ryder is great as Jo, and my favorite scenes were all of the ones with her and Christian Bale.



Girl, Interrupted

Although this film is usually remembered for Angelina Jolie's performance as Lisa Roe, it also features a great performance by Winona Ryder as Susanna Kayson, the film's protagonist. She plays a girl who is sent to a mental institution and is diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder. She becomes friends with the other inmates, forming a close bond with a sociopath named Lisa Roe who she finds out is even more messed up than she thought...



Mr. Deeds

While I think that overall this movie is pretty stupid, it is worth watching just for one clip of Winona Ryder. Its in the video at about 2:06. It always makes me laugh...



Black Swan

In my favorite film of 2010, Ryder plays an aging ballerina who becomes jealous of Natalie Portman's character and gets really depressed.

Upcoming: She will next be lending her voice to Tim Burton's Frankenweenie, and will also star in a film called The Stare.

2011: The Year of Natalie Portman?

This has been a good year for the beautiful and talented Natalie Portman. Not only did she win her first Oscar, but she also appeared in not one, but six new films that I saw this year, and it is only May. I have always enjoyed seeing movies with Portman, so it was really cool to see her in such a variety of roles in such a short timespan. Here I will rank her six films that I saw this year in order of how much I liked them.

1. Black Swan

Portman's portrayal of a mentally unbalanced ballerina is what won her the Oscar a few months ago. I really loved this film. I thought that it was brilliant and that she was brilliant in it. You can find my reviews of this film HERE and HERE.

2. Hesher

In this film they give Portman a bad perm and some old man glasses so that she can play a normal cashier with money problems. The first time you see her in this film she tries to tackle a boy who is picking on the main boy in the film. It is so funny because she is so tiny and has those rediculous glasses on. This movie was both funny and sad, and you can see my full review HERE.

3. Thor

In Thor, Natalie plays a scientist who falls in love with the title character. She first meets him when he gets hit by her van while her and her associates are out doing some science-related thing. I thought that this movie was really cool, and made me really excited for The Avengers. Full review HERE.

4. No Strings Attached

It was really interesting to see Portman in Black Swan, and then a romantic comedy a few weeks later. Here Natalie plays a busy doctor who decides to become friends with benefits with Ashton Kutcher so that she can get laid without attachments. So, of course they fall in love and things get complicated. This movie was surprisingly funny, and also pretty sweet. Full review HERE.

5. The Other Woman

This is the only film of the six that I didn't see in theatres. I actually just watched this last night because my sister got it from the Redbox. In this film, Natalie plays a woman who falls in love with a married man, and ends up stealing him from his wife and marrying him. She butts heads with both his son and his ex-wife and, sadly, also loses a baby. I liked this movie more than I thought I would, and it was really sad. Lisa Kudrow's character, who is the ex-wife, is such a BITCH in this movie!!! Portman gives another great performance, and the part near the end with Kudrow and Portman actually made me cry a little...

6. Your Highness

This was actually the only film Portman was in this year that I didn't really care for. It had its funny parts, but mostly I thought that it was kinda stupid. Portman plays a warrior woman set on getting revenge against the man who murdered her entire family. Full review HERE.

According to IMDB, she doesn't have any upcoming projects just yet. That makes sense though, since her eggo is prego at the moment, but we should see plenty more great performances from Ms. Portman in the future.

My Review: Black Swan (2)

What a beautiful, wonderful, amazing film. Today was my second time seeing Black Swan in theaters and it was even better this time. I thought that it wouldn't be as good now that there's not as much mystery around it, but this is a movie that gets better with multiple viewings. This movie, in my opinion, is perfect and I love every minute of it. What I love most is its theme of duality. Nina has to portray both the white swan and the black swan, and thus becomes both in real life. She starts the movie already embodying the traits of the white swan. She is fragile and beautiful, and is absolutely perfect for that role.

What her ballet director is concerned about, however, is if she can pull off the black swan. So while her body is preparing for the technical aspects of the ballet, her mind starts preparing her in other ways. She starts having hallucinations and seeing darker versions of herself on other people, including a rival ballet dancer named Lily played by Mila Kunis.

Throughout the movie, the black swan starts emerging in physical ways as well. She develops a rash on her back that gets larger and larger scratches on it.

It gets worse and worse throughout the movie as she becomes more and more like the black swan, until it eventually sprouts little hairs, and there is a disturbing sequence of her pulling out one of the hairs. The best part of the movie has to be the premiere of the ballet.

It starts off with her dancing the white swan. She starts off doing a beautiful job, but the male dancer drops her, ruining her performance. We see her cry as she dances off stage with her back to the audience, and goes back to her dressing room only to find Lily waiting for her. Throughout the whole movie, she has suspected that Lily was trying to replace her, and when Lily suggests that she should dance the black swan for her, she loses it and stabs Lily in the stomach with a shard of glass and hides her in the bathroom.

It is this act that truly transforms her into the evil, seductive black swan. Now that she is fully transformed, she has become perfect for the part and thus dances it perfectly.

She becomes the black swan both psychologically and literally and as she dances she sprouts large black feathers during her second dance. She has stood up to her overbearing mother, allowed herself to be seduced by her ballet director, and has destroyed her rival. She is fully transformed from the frail, innocent white swan that she has always been to the seductive and powerful black swan that she had been slowly becoming.  

There is an absolutely gorgeous shot at the very end of her dance when her arms are up in the air. She is physically back to normal, but her shadow still has wings. That is probably my favorite shot in the whole movie. After she is finished dancing the black swan and has to become the white swan again, she retuns to her dressing room to find that Lily is not dead. Instead, she sees that she is the one with the wound in her stomach. Lily was really just a projection of herself and how she saw the black swan. This is evident earlier in the film as well in the morning after their sex scene. She arrives at rehearsal to find that Lily did not stay the night. She needed Lily as a rival, lover, and victim in order to transform herself into her own evil twin. So the films ends with dancing her final dance as the white swan. She is transformed back to her fragile self upon realization that she did not kill Lily and finishes the ballet beautifully.

 There is another gorgeous shot at the very end of Nina slowly falling on the mattress after her character kills herself and she has to jump.

The ending here shows how she has become one with her character. As the white swan dies, so does Nina, and she bleeds out from her pretty white costume, her last word being, "Perfect..." She became her characters, and so she was perfect. But she reached perfection at the tragic loss of herself.

This movie has sensational performances by Natalie Portman, Vincent Cassel, Barbara Hershey, and Mila Kunis. I was really disappointed that Cassel and Hershey weren't nominated for Oscars, for they truly deserved to be. Ms. Portman however did receive her second Oscar nomination for her role as Nina Sayers, and I believe that on February 27th she will get her first win. This is a movie that I genuinly love, and look forward to seeing again. My Review: still 10/10.

Oscar Nominations

This morning the nominations were announced for the 2011 Academy Awards. Here is who I think should win....

Best Picture

Last year I thought that having 10 Best Picture nominees was rediculous, but it really fits this year because there were so many good movies that came out. It would have been extremely hard to pick just five. I have only seen 8 of them, not having seen 127 Hours or Winter's Bone, so for all I know those two could be complete genius, or absolutely awful. Of the ones I have seen, I think that they are all really good choices. Personally, I think that The Kids Are All Right was a bit overrated because I wasn't really all that impressed with it. I thought that the performances were great, but the overall movie was just ok. I liked Inception, but I really don't think that it deserves to win Best Picture. Of the other six, though, its a pretty difficult choice. I loved all of those movies: The Fighter, Toy Story 3, True Grit, The King's Speech, and The Social Network, but the movie that I really want to win is my favorite movie that came out in 2010, and one of my favorite movies of the past decade....Black Swan.

It was everything I love in a movie. It was creepy, suspenseful, interesting, and different from all other movies I have seen. I left the movie theatre completely awestruck after seeing this movie, and that rarely happens.

Best Director

This one is tough, because it three directors are nominated that I really love: Darren Aronofsky, David Fincher, and The Coen Brothers. I'm gonna have to go with Darren Aronofsky, though, because Black Swan was just sensational, and I think he did a really great job with it.

 Best Actor

This is another one that is extremely tough. I haven't seen 127 Hours or Biutiful, but I'm sure that James Franco and Javier Bardem are great in those movies because they are two of my favorite actors. Of the three that I have seen, though. I can't choose between Colin Firth or Jeff Bridges. I thought that Jesse Eisenberg was great in The Social Network, but I'm more in favor of the other two actors. Firth and Bridges were both fantastic in The King's Speech and True Grit, so I would be happy either way.

Best Actress

Of the five actresses nominated for Best Actress, I have only seen two of the films, The Kids Are All Right and Black Swan. I haven't seen Winter's Bone, Blue Valentine, or Rabbit Hole. That doesn't really matter, though, because while I thought Annette Bening was great in The Kid's Are All Right, I am rooting for Natalie Portman.

Best Supporting Actor

I have not seen The Town or Winter's Bone, so I can't really judge how good Jeremy Renner of John Hawkes's performances were. Of the other three actors, it is a really hard choice. Christian Bale, Geoffrey Rush and Mark Ruffalo all gave excellent performances this year in The Fighter, The King's Speech, and The Kids Are All Right. I'm going to have to go with Christian Bale, though. He was great as the crack addicted former boxer Dicky Eklund, and I think his win should make up for Mark Wahlberg not even being nominated. (Which he should have been!)

Best Supporting Actress

If it were up to me, I would give the Best Supporting Actress Oscar to Barbara Hershey. She was perfect as Natalie Portman's controlling mom in Black Swan, and I can't believe she was snubbed! I know the Academy loves nominating kids, but they could easily give her Hailee Steinfeld's spot. I thought Steinfeld was good in True Grit, but I didn't think her performance was Oscar-worthy. I love Helena Bonham Carter, and I thought that she was fantastic in The King's Speech, but I think this year the Oscar is going to go to The Fighter's Melissa Leo. Although I do agree that she was a bit too young to play the mother of 9 kids in their 30s and 40s, her age wasn't something that was distracting because she was so great in her role as Christian Bale and Mark Wahlberg's mom.

Best Visual Effects

I'm not even going to talk about the others because this one should go to Inception! From half of the city curving up to the zero gravity fight scenes, this movie just looked really cool! Nothing else really compared to it visually this year. Having said that, I'm pretty bummed that Tron: Legacy wasn't nominated in this category...

Best Costume Design

This year I was crazy about the costumes in Alice in Wonderland. I loved everything that Mia Wasikowska wore in that movie. Even the armor she wears at the end is fantastic! If this movie doesn't win for Best Costume Design, I will be very disappointed!

Best Makeup

I haven't seen Barney's Version or The Way Back, but I don't really care because I am rooting for Rick Baker all the way!!! Baker and David Elsey are nominated for The Wolfman, and should definitely win. I am a huge fan of monster makeup, and they did a great job transforming a handsome dude like Benicio Del Toro into the Wolfman.

My Favorite Movies of 2010

Happy New Year! It is now 2011, and I have already made a list of movies that I am looking forward to see this year, so I will now look back and list my top ten movies of 2010. Some of the movies that I was really looking forward to see (Alice in Wonderland, The Wolfman, and the remake of The Nightmare on Elm Street) weren't as good as I hoped they would be, but there were also movies that I saw on a whim that I actually really liked (like the romcom Going the Distance). So...heres my top ten....

10. Going the Distance

I'm not really much of a romantic comedy fan (if you've seen one Katherine Heigl movie, you've seen them all), but I ended up really liking this movie that starred Drew Barrymore and Justin Long as two people trying to make a long distance relationship work. It was really cute, suprisingly funny, and I loved Charlie Day and Jason Sudeikis as Justin Long's two best friends. I love Drew Barrymore, and this is definitely one of my favorite movies of hers...

9. Inception

There is a lot going on in this movie, so it is definitely a movie that you'd really have to pay attention to. While I think that the overall story is a little rediculous (they have to go in a dream within a dream within a dream just to convince a guy to break-up his father's company), it was definitely one of the most visually striking films of the year. I mean the whole fight scene in the hallway with Joseph Gordon-Levitt was really cool looking. I also liked Tom Hardy, who I had never seen in a movie before this, and is apparently cast in The Dark Knight Rises, but Mr. Nolan didn't say as who yet...

8. The Runaways

This is a movie that didn't get very good reviews or do that well at the box office, but I really liked it. I could be biased because I love Joan Jett, but I thought that this movie was really cool, and that Dakota Fanning was great as Cherie Currie. And even though I was pissed when I read that she was cast to play Joan Jett, I actually think that Kristen Stewart did a half-way decent job. Normally I can't stand her because she doesn't seem to have any personality, but she definitely could have done a lot worse, and her portrayel of Joan Jett was definitely a lot different than the monotone type performances she usually does. The scene when they perform Cherry Bomb in Japan is probably my favorite. Not just because I love that song, but because the whole scene was just Rock N Roll! There is so much energy in that scene, it's just really fun to watch.

7. Kick-Ass

I thought that this movie was really interesting because it combined comedy with ultra-violence. There's tons of blood shed in this movie, most of which is shed by a 9 or 10 year old called Hit Girl, played by Chloe Moretz, who was in two movies I really liked this year. I thought that this movie was really entertaining, and I loved the scene at the end when Hit Girl goes to the bad guy's office and starts killing everybody. Plus, I have to give props to Nicolas Cage for not being absolutely terrible. This is one movie that I can't make fun of him for...

6. The Social Network

Whouda thunk that a movie about Facebook would be so good? Jesse Eisenberg (who BTW is not Michael Cera) is great as Mark Zuckerberg, the creater of Facebook. He's great because you can't really decide if he is a good guy or a bad guy. He does a bunch of completely asshole movies, but you can see how they are justifiable. I also thought that Andrew Garfield (future Spiderman!) was great as Eduardo, the co-founder who Mark ends up screwing over. This movie is getting a lot of Oscar buzz, and I totally understand why...

5. Toy Story 3

The original Toy Story came out when I was 5 years old, and was one of my favorite movies, so I was of course really excited when they made a sequel, and was equally excited when I read that a 3rd movie was coming out, even though I am now 20 years old. I admit it...I love Disney movies! I have two 9 year old sisters, so I still get to watch them all of the time. Toy Story 3 isn't just a great kids movie, its a great movie in general. It was really funny and cute, and was enjoyed by my parents, my little sisters and myself. Towards the end of the movie there was a part that almost made me cry, and I know that if the living room wasn't filled with other people, I totally would have bawled my eyes out....

4. True Grit

 I just saw this movie yesterday, and I thought that it was a great remake that did the original John Wayne movie justice. It has perfect casting with Jeff Bridges as the drunkin Marshall Rooster Cogburn. If they cast anyone else, this movie probably wouldn't have been nearly as good, even with the already great cast of Matt Damon and Josh Brolin. From the very first time you see him in the courthouse you know that the whole movie is going to be great, and it sure was...

3. Let Me In

I was pissed off when I found out that they were making an American remake of Let The Right One In. I thought that it was stupid and pointless, and that there was no way they could make it better than the original, which was one of my favorite movies to come out in 2009. While I was right about it not being better than the original, it was still a good movie all by itself. Chloe Moretz and Kodi Smit-McPhee were great as the main characters of Abby and Owen, and I liked that they didn't change too much of the story. The one big difference is that they added more horror elements. In the original, when the vampire girl attacked someone, you saw it from far away and only really heard her sucking blood. In the remake though, she tears them apart!

2. Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World

Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World was a rare case where a movie that I hyped up a lot in my mind and was really excited about did not disappoint me. There is just one word I have to describe this movie: AWESOME!!! It has elements of video games, comic books, and is also sort of a musical. I mean, when he defeats the first evil ex and theres the big KO, I was just like, "TIIIIGHT!!!" I know a lot of people who thought that this movie was really weird, but I really loved it. I have never read a single Scott Pilgrim graphic novel (I'd see them all the time but, to be honest, because of the drawing style I thought that they were for kids), but because of this movie I really want to read them now.

1. Black Swan

My favorite movie of the year 2010 was the psychological thriller Black Swan. I loved it because it was creepy and suspenseful, but there was also something quite beautiful about it. This is a movie that I would actually pay to go see again, because I don't want to wait for the DVD to be able to see it again. Natalie Portman was perfect as ballerina Nina Sayres, and if she doesn't win an Oscar for this movie I will be very disappointed. It is just fantastic because its a mix of drama, psychological thriller, is a bit campy, but also has some horror in it too. This is a movie that I recommend that everyone should see, and is not only my favorite movie of 2010, but is one of my favorite movies in general....