The Larry Sanders Show - Winona Plays Herself

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We had disc three of  Not Just the Best of the Larry Sanders Show on our Netflix list because we discovered that Our Winona appeared in an episode called "Another List" in 1998. Ryder plays herself as a guest on Larry Sanders' (Garry Shandling's) talk show. She doesn't have much screen time, but manages to make reference to her (perfectly awful) film Alien: Resurrection (which we watched some time ago, but have not yet re-watched in order to include in the blog), and to kiss Sanders' rival, Jon Stewart.

Dalliances (real and hoped-for) with the host and other male members of the production team (yes, we wrote that) comprise an important subplot for Winona and other meta-guests on the show. In trying to put a little cold water on Sanders' prurient ambitions, in fact, a female staff member warns him that reviewing Our Noni's oeuvre will be pointless for him: she famously does not do nude scenes.

We don't do a lot of shifting of titles on the DVD queue of our Netflix list. Everything will eventually make its way to the top, and then we will see it. However, we did move this one to the top when we learned of Shandling's death last week. We did not realize that it was not the Garry Shandling series we were familiar with It's Garry Shandling's Show - the groundbreaking Brechtian sitcom that we enjoyed watching in the late 1980s. Alas, we won't be blogging about that one here, as our Winona never appeared in it. As it turns out we had never seen an episode of The Larry Sander's Show before.We enjoyed it enough that we ended up watching all seven episodes that were on the disc, but are unlikely to see any others.

RIP Garry Shandling.

Final Verdict: Three Croquet Balls

The Experimenter

Our Winona is back on her game in this film about the infamous obedience studies conducted by Dr. Stanley Milgram in the early 1960s. I first learned about these studies the same way so many have - in my introductory psychology class in college. Milgram found that the majority of his subjects (65%) would continue to inflict pain on another person if a person in authority told them to do so, even as the "victim" (a confederate in the experiment) screamed in pain.

My Psychology 101 class is also where I also first learned about Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) and was told that it would be unlikely that any IRB today would approve such a study. I was, therefore, surprised to discover that a study conducted as recently as 2009 Jerry Burger's "Obedience Lite" showed similar results to Milgram's. I sit on the IRB at the university where I work and wonder how Burger's study was written that he able to get approval. Our Board is pretty aggressive about our role in protecting human subjects. A few of our colleagues have expressed their disapproval with us when faced with our denial of their applications, but for most of us our concern is foremost on the human subjects, and not on what the experimenter wants. It is a tricky space. There are often risks associated with studies. Any risk must be outweighed by the importance of what might be discovered.

Our Winona plays Milgram's wife Sasha. She is fascinated by the studies and watches both transfixed and horrified as she sees participants struggle with their consciences, believing they are inflicting severe shocks to an innocent person. These scenes are uncomfortable to watch, even though the audience, like Sasha, knows that it was all a deception. Milgram and his cronies appeared to show no signs that they were bothered by this. All seemed academic to them, and in fact, they laughed at many of their subjects and how easily they were fooled. Were the experimenters torturing their subjects by insisting they continue with the study? Milgram and his co-researchers apparently never saw themselves that way. How far should we go in the name of science? Where do we draw the line? What role should deception play in the pursuit to scholarship? This is an excellent and thought-provoking film.

Final Verdict: Four Croquet Balls

The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things

We watch a lot of films, mostly not blockbusters. They tend to go onto our Netflix queue and often stay there until we have forgotten which of us added them or why. About 24 minutes into the 2004 film The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things, we each asked the other where this had come from.

Our phone rang at about this time, and we had a nice chat with Pam's mother. We mentioned we were watching a strange film (which is not really unusual for us) and that we were not sure we were going to finish it.

But after the call, we decided to give it a bit more of a chance -- a dark and tedious film does sometimes take a turn, after all -- and we resumed watching this tale of a young boy whose birth mother wins custody from the foster-care system, only to bring him into a life of neglect and abuse.

Almost immediately upon resuming our viewing, Our Noni was on the screen, though it took both of us a little while to recognize her. She was speaking with an unconvincing Southern accent, playing some sort of social worker "interviewing" the abused child who is at the center of this story. So there was our answer -- as Noni completists, we needed to watch the rest of this film.

Winona's character never returned, and although the interview could have been an important part of the story, no further reference was made to it. It seems that she was just one more in  a long line of characters who let down this child.

Probing the IMDb entry for what we might be missing about this film, we see this claim:

Behind the greatest hoax of our time is the heartbreaking story that started it all.

The poster captured above cites a "true story," but it is only true that this film illustrates the hoax; the story of the hoax is told in the 2016 film Author: The JT Leroy Story. The release of a film about the hoax perpetrated by the author behind The Heart is Deceitful may explain why the 2004 film finally reached video -- it had been on our Netflix "saved" list for years. Dennis Harvey's review in Variety calls the new film a "first-rate documentary about a remarkable literary hoax," but I doubt we will be watching it any time soon.

From the IMDb listing for The Heart is Deceitful, we also learned that Asia Argento has quite a loyal following. She wrote, directed, and starred in this film, and her defenders insist that it is an important and realistic portrayal of the uncomfortable subject of child abuse. The depravity is vivid and convincing, but the story is not well told. We gain little insight into mother or son or even into what connects them, beyond a few poignant indicators of their dependency on each other. There is no interior life, and there is no self-awareness.

Earlier in the evening, we had read an article in Fortune about a recent study of diversity -- or lack thereof -- in Hollywood. Among other things, it found -- not surprisingly -- that lack of diversity behind the camera contributes to lack of diversity in front of the screen. In particular, the inclusion of female writers and directors leads to better inclusion of women in films, as indicated by the Bechdel test. The Heart is Deceitful is a counter-example. Writer/director/star Asia Argento does not offer any dialog between female characters that might give the story more nuance.

Final Verdict: One croquet ball. This film employs Ryder only briefly, and does not employ her well.

The Jubilee Mark

Last night we reached a milestone on this blog -- our 50th review. According to IMDb, we have at least six to go, but most of these are obscure titles that even the librarian-sleuth in this duo has not yet been able to find. So we will pause at this moment to summarize the results so far. 

(And yes, I did make a spreadsheet to keep track of all this. By our  count, we have viewed 51 of 56 listed works.)

We introduced our unique rating system when we introduced this blog just over three years ago. Both the icons and the top rating are based on Noni's most important work, the very dark comedy Heathers. Strictly speaking, it might not be the best movie ever made (that is probably Wizard of Oz, with Miss Judy Garland), but it remains the best showcase for Miss Winona Ryder and her unique talents.

In watching or re-watching fifty of her works (films, shorts, and television episodes), we have found only one other in which Our Noni's star shines equally brightly, and it is a very different kind of film: Little Women. 

- 3

Was this directed by her parole officer?

- 6

Must be one of her comebacks.

- 20

Good enough for non-fans.

- 19

That's our Noni!

- 2

Heathers

Of course, even Winona's biggest fans have to acknowledge that her off-screen life has been problematic. We have not spent a lot of time on the question of how such a wealth individual (2015 net worth is about $14,000,000) would be shoplifting. In doing this project, however, we did gradually come to the conclusion that something changed around the time of her 2001 conviction. Two very strong (4-croquet-ball) works were released that year: her Friends episode and Zoolander. 

Of course, those would both have been in production before the conviction. I put a grey bar across those entries in the spreadsheet, and we can see a clear difference pre- and post-shoplifting. I've not run complete stats yet (I'm not that much of a nerd), but the mean ratings before and after are quite distinct: 3.7 and 2.5, respectively. More importantly, although there have been a few very good performances since 2001, we did not find any turkeys (1- and 2-croquet-ball ratings) until 2008, and they have dominated her work since then.

We close this update with a link back to some fun at Our Noni's expense -- parodies we included in A Very Winona Christmas in 2014.

The Ten

In preparing to watch The Ten, I was bracing myself for something that might be daringly irreverent, like Dogma. creating tension within my previously-devout self and imagined tension with my currently-devout friends. The fact that I had actually seen the film before was of no help, as I remembered barely one-tenth of it.

The film comprises ten vignettes, each "inspired" by one of the biblical commandments. Each vignette is introduced by a narrator addressing the camera directly, while his own marriage unravels by degrees, in 60-second snippets.

Having more than a passing interest in religion, I looked forward to seeing how these connections might be made. In at least half of the stories, I could not see the connection at all, and in no case was the commandment integral to the story.

The stories are not sophisticated, and much of the humor is intensely sophomoric, often offensive even to our permissive sensibilities. But in parts it is quite clever, and some of the later stories intersect with earlier stories in surprising ways.

To the all-important question of whether the story makes good use of Our Noni's special talents, the answer is, not much. Most of her scenes could have been carried equally well by another (that is, lesser) actress. Her character was caught in several unusual situations, to be sure, but only one brought out the Noni we have come to expect: her infatuation with a ventriloquist's dummy was played right up to the edge.

Final verdict:

Three croquet balls.

Lagniappe

James wrote the review above, but Pamela has already written about this film for her "Library" Books blog, which predates our joint Compleat Noni project. Read that review to find the library connection.

The Dilemma

If you find out your best friend's wife is cheating on him do you tell him? What if you were working together on a big testosterone-laden car development project for Chrysler and the whole thing would collapse if he found out? What if you weren't exactly sure what the "bro-code" said on the subject? Kevin James (Nick, the cuckold) and Vince Vaughn (Ronny, the friend) star in this awful bro-fest with Our Winona playing Geneva the cheating wife. This one was so bad not even Queen Latifa (in a supporting role) or Ron Howard (as director) could save it.

The movie follows Ronny as he tries to get evidence of Geneva's affair to give to Nick, and how this obsession effects his personal life, and his own romantic relationship. There is only the slightest exploration of what might cause a woman in a 20-year marriage to have an affair. This comedy is decidedly not funny, and in the end we all the the valuable lesson that no matter what concerns there might be about a relationship it can all be fixed with a big shiny engagement ring.

To find out what the experts say on the subject of "Should I tell" read this column from The New York Times' Ethicist

James adds: Pam describes our annoyance with the movie well, but we both agree that it "merits" two croquet balls. So what makes it not quite a complete failure? Some of the banter between Kevin James and Vince Vaughn in the first half is actually funny, or at least amusing. But as the movie begins to revolve around the "bro-code" halfway through, it became quite tiresome and somewhat offensive..

Final Verdict: Two Croquet Balls ("Must be one of her comebacks." Note that this is a step below "Good enough for non-fans.")

When Love is Not Enough: The Lois Wilson Story

This made-for-television movie from the Hallmark Hall of Fame was better than we expected. Our Winona played the title character, founder of Al-Anon and wife of Bill Wilson - the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). We were surprised to learn by watching this that Al-Anon started concurrently with AA when Lois Wilson discovered that the wives of all the men who were meeting in her living room were all waiting in cars outside her house, and she invited them in for tea. Ryder does an admirable job in this particularly emotional role.

Final Verdict: Three Croquet Balls