The Day My God Died (Winona Ryder - Producer)

 

 I discovered this one when I was searching my library's catalog to see if we had any of Ryder's films. Seven results came up, but this was the only one we hadn't blogged about yet, and the only one in which Ryder didn't actually have a role (she is credited as a producer). The title refers to what children who have been sold into the sex trade call the day they were kidnapped. The one-hour documentary interviews several young people in India who were forced into servitude, and then rescued. 

A powerful movie, and a difficult one to watch, and one for which assigning croquet balls seems inappropriate. The trailer is embedded above.

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

Stunt Blog

Some of these are obvious on first viewing, some are known to die-hard fans, and others are obscure details available only too people with very high resolution and ample free time. Herewith, however, are 23 fairly obscure details about The Greatest Story Ever Told.

Honorable Mention

It was early in our watching of Heathers that we said Christian Slater had "gone to Jack Nicholson school." By this we meant that in playing Our Noni's love interest as a bad boy, he had decided to study the best bad-boy actor he could think of, and ended up channeling the elder actor just a bit too directly.

We've used the phrase from time to time to describe perceived imitations among other actors. When watching the Indie film Somebody Up There Likes Me recently, we both made the same observation about one of the actors. But for the first time, the actor had been to Winona school. That is, Jess Weixler looked, sounded, and even acted in many ways as we remember Our Noni in a variety of roles.

We are apparently not the first to notice some similarities. Blogger Karen Kemmerle includes both in her article about 5 Indie Heroines... Whatever their unfortunate common experiences in real life, we look forward to watching more of Weixler's work.

We loved Somebody Up There, by the way. The plot is truly non-linear, starting in the middle and tracing a complicated set of relationships across time and distance. It also stars the inimitable Nick Offerman, who may very well be the funniest human.

A Scanner Darkly

Well, this one was just weird. We'd seen it once before and the only thing we really remembered about it was that it had some funky animation. A Scanner Darkly was filmed as live action, and then the animators drew around everything. It was an interesting effect, but the novelty wore off after about the first 15 minutes. The visual technique resulted in images that were just enough removed from photographic clarity that Our Noni felt comfortable making this her topless cinematic debut.

Our Winona plays Donna Hawthorne, the love interest of Bob Arctor (Keanu Reeves). Arctor is an undercover police officer who succumbs to the effects of a new drug called Substance D. He is in some sort of weird meta-investigation wherein he is investigating himself, while his superiors pretend that they don't know that that's what's happening. Our Winona's part is not a big one, so she is not given opportunity to shine here, but no one else really does a great job either. The movie is worth watching just because its not the same old same old, and does have a few unexpected twists.

We first heard about this film from an extensive Terry Gross interview with director Richard Linklater around the time of its release.

Final Verdict: Three Croquet Balls

Sex and Death 101

As the title and the poster art imply, this is Noni in a smoldering role -- a most fatale of femmes -- but she is not given quite enough room to make this film her own.

Roderick Blank (Simon Baker) is, for reasons never made clear, fated to bed 101 women over the course of his life, while an unknown number of men around the world are fated to die at the conclusion of trysts with a mysterious woman. The fates are personified by three men in grey suits, whom Blank pesters endlessly for details about what will happen next and what it all means.

Eventually we realize that the paths of Gillian De Raisx (a.k.a. Death Nell, a.k.a. Our Noni) are destined to cross, but not before Baker's character exhausts every clichéd male fantasy in the book with impunity and abandon.

A few moments of introspection and many moments of cleverness make this film a bit better than its premise deserves, but not a lot better. For our final verdict, we had to review our standards carefully. This is good enough for non-fans, but does not quite reach the second tier of Noni's work.

Final verdict: three croquet balls.

Looking for Richard

Richard III, that is.

The tidying of our DVD/VHS cabinet that began with the excavation of Strangers with Candy (q.v.) ended with Looking for Richard. James had not only forgotten that this was a Noni vehicle, but had also forgotten seeing the film at all.

This is a most unusual film that is neither a play nor a "making of" film about a play, though it resembles the latter. It is, instead, Al Pacino's paean to Shakespeare, in which he brings together actors of considerable note who talk about why Shakespeare matters, why most people don't understand this, and how much better the world would be if they did.

As part of this exercise, Pacino talks briefly about the importance of finding the perfect actress to play Lady Anne, and then we see Our Noni playing a few scene fragments in that role. Gradually we understand that the entire play is not actually being produced, nor is there an audience for it. Rather, some segments are staged (the stage itself gets a lot of attention) to make particular points about the work.

Ryder is credited only as Lady Anne, while most of the rest of the cast is credited both as a character and as themselves. This is consistent with her peripheral role in the meandering conversation that dominates this film.

Final verdict: 3 croquet balls.