Revisiting the Upside Down

  

See our National Lego Day, Belated post for the
the story of this Winona action figure.

When we started watching Season 4 of Stranger Things at the end of May, we did not think we needed to restart the series. However, we spent much of June scratching our heads as we watched the plot twist and turn, with Winona's scenes appearing increasingly disconnected from the rest of the action.

When we got to the "end" and realized that we weren't really at the end, we decided to reboot. In other words, we took a running start so that we could get caught up to whatever Netflix would dropping later this summer, with some of our Upside Down wits about us.

Our Noni had a front-row seat to all the action. Since friends had gifted us two sets of the Winona-as-Joyce-Byers Lego kit we were able to set her up in front of the television at both of our houses without having to worry about transporting.

Now that we have seen all of season 4 (nine episodes) we are finally able to post about this season of many facets. A recap:

Joyce and Murray are in Russia trying to rescue Hopper. Nobody else knows where they are.
Nancy, Robin, Steve, Dustin, Max, and Lucas are tracking down a demon in Hawkins. Nobody else knows where they are.

Eleven returns to Dr. Owens and "Papa". Nobody else knows where she is.

Natalia Dyer

Mike, Will, Jonathan, and Argyle search for Eleven in the desert. Nobody else knows where they are.

Really, in most of these cases not only do the other characters not know where anyone is, they don't actually know the others are missing.

Our Noni as Joyce Byers demonstrates a range of emotions with aplomb.

And, finally, honorable mention to Natalia Dyer and the makeup crew. Her headshot on IMDb gives no hint that in her role as Nancy Wheeler, she wins the prize for "most like Our Noni as a teenager," hands down.

Natalia Dyer as Nancy Wheeler

Stranger Things - Season 3

She's baaack!

Along with all the analogies to '80s movies (including Alien - which is a bit meta since our Winona had a part in Alien 4-Resurrection). And remember when everything was about how much we hated the Russians? That's there too.

This season was a lot more of the same. Lots of danger, lots of monsters, lots of wondering why these people still live in Hawkins.

Maya Hawke as
code-cracker Robin

The best part of this season was the not-so-subtle message on the importance of learning another language. This is a slight digression since Our Noni was not involved in the Russian-language storyline, but it is a very important facet of the story for us. In public life and even on university campuses -- including our very own -- it has become common to treat the learning of a second or third language with disdain. The difficulty the characters have in finding a speaker of Russian is one part of the lesson; the heroism of a character willing to apply rudimentary language skills is equally important.

This season can be summed up best by our (Indiana) friend Ben who posted this transcript of a conversation he had with his teenage daughter on Facebook:

Daughter: Doesn't Mrs. Wheeler ever wonder where her other kids are?
Ben: It's the 80s. They're fine.

We were fine. And our parents knew that we were always at the mall. It's where we worked, played, and dated.

Final Verdict: Four Croquet Balls

Stranger Things 2

The first season of Stranger Things was tidily wrapped up, so there really was no reason to have a second season. It was, therefore, a stunning feat that the second season was better than the first. All our favorite characters returned (except, alas, poor Barb) and some new ones rounded out the cast.

Our Winona played the role of the ever-anxious single parent Joyce Byers with the necessary intensity, even as we see her character let her guard down a few times with Sheriff Jim Hopper (David Harbour). The Stranger Things project may be the first one in which Ryder has settled in as a thoroughly post-adolescent actor. A younger Noni so thoroughly embodied a series of roles as a brooding, sardonic teen that she and her audiences have had trouble letting go of that persona. (Example: we still sometimes call her Noni.) As the anxious mother of teens, Joyce Byers has made a clean break with Veronica.

Good spooky stuff.

Final Verdict: Four croquet balls

Alien: Resurrection

We saw this film some years ago and felt almost the same way about it as we did about Black Swan. We really didn't want to watch this crappy film again, but it had been so long since we'd seen it that we couldn't write about it without watching it again and we did recall that at least it didn't make us squirm uncomfortably for its entire duration, something we can't say about Black Swan. 

Sigourney Weaver reprises her role as Ripley (really her clone), and as the title indicates the nasty alien is also resurrected.

I was surprised to see that Joss Whedon was one of the writers. This was clearly before he found his groove with Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It appeared there was some attempt at levity, which actually might have worked if it hadn't been so subtle but it didn't come off well at all. The story was hard to follow, as was keeping the good guys and bad guys straight. Our Winona does have a special surprise twist to her character (no spoilers here, though).

It gets two croquet balls instead of one simply because it passes the Bechdel Test. Sigourney Weaver and Our Winona actually have several conversations, including the last words of the film.

Final Verdict: Two croquet balls

Star Trek (2009)

A badly acted film, that appears to have not only to have been written for middle school boys, but by them as well. Clearly the white men in this film are VERY IMPORTANT because they speak authoritatively in VERY IMPORTANT voices. The female characters are there mostly as decoration. The script was simply a string of science-fiction-y sounding words, which I doubt even made sense to the writers. The costumes and make-up appear to have been done by some kids getting ready for a Star Trek convention. Our Winona plays Spock's mother. Her screen time can't be more than two minutes, stretched over three scenes. She only speaks in one of these scenes.

A perfectly awful film with nothing to recommend it. Truly a burden for the Noni Complete-ist.
Final Verdict: one croquet ball