The Simpsons - "Lisa's Rival" episode from season six

Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s when The Simpsons was first aired on the then rather new Fox Network, we were quite the fans. We had been fans of Matt Groening since his strip appeared in the mildly alternative Baltimore City Paper, and enjoyed his edgy show on the new network, before it spawned is faux "news" shows. We have not seen the show for well over a decade now, however, since we stopped getting television reception other than what we can see on our DVD, VHS, or Netflix.

As we thought about role as Noni completists, however, Pam remembered  that back in those heady, early days Our Winona once was a guest voice on this irreverent show. In "Lisa's Rival", originally aired on September 11, 1994, Our Winona plays Allison Taylor, a precocious seven-year old, who skips a grade and ends up in Lisa's class. Although she is initially glad to have someone else to talk to, Lisa is also threatened when she realizes that she is no longer the smartest kid in her class. After she is belittled by Allison's father, Professor Taylor, Lisa plots her revenge.

James says he would have never picked Our Winona out from her voice on this episode, but Pam remembers identifying her immediately when it first aired.

Final Verdict:
Three Croquet Balls

Welcome Home Roxy Carmichael

In one of her quintessential brooding roles, Our Winona plays Dinky Bozzetti, an outcast who shuffles through life with her all-black wardrobe. Her best friends include several dogs, a pig, a turtle, and a goat. Adopted as an infant, Dinky is convinced that Clyde, Ohio's favorite daughter -- the famous Roxy Carmichael -- is her biological mother. As the whole town prepares for the arrival of Carmichael for the first time in fifteen years, Dinky becomes more and more convinced of her roots.

Verdict: Four croquet balls; Noni plays to her strengths, which play well with the Melissa Etheridge soundtrack.

Beetlejuice - A film for the (October) holiday

In honor of Our Winona's almost-Halloween birthday (October 29) we watched this almost-spooky movie which also stars Geena Davis, Alec Baldwin, and Michael Keaton (as the title character).

NOTE: We watched the film over the weekend, but delayed posting until today, as Noni begins a very special year. On October 28, she attained the age of 42, which we know is the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything. And now she begins her year of 43, the delicious vanilla liqueur from Spain.

In this classic film from director Tim Burton, young couple Adam and Barbara Maitland (Baldwin and Davis) are tragically killed in a freak car accident in the midst of renovating their lovely old New England home. They return to their house as ghosts and attempt to scare out the Deetz family, who has moved in and made some truly horrifying changes to the charming abode. After a failed attempt to scare the Deetz's by wearing some designer sheets with holes cut out for their eyes, the Maitlands recruit renegade ghost and "bio-exterminator" Betelgeuse to help them haunt the house. They are aided and abetted by the Deetz's teenage-goth daughter Lydia, convincingly played by Ryder.

This is a fun-for-the-whole family movie - really not scary, with some good sight gags, and a bit of satire. Made during Ryder's heyday this is a truly classic 80s film, with a definite "Laura Ashley" vibe throughout and Our Noni in a quintessentially brooding role.

Final Verdict: Four Croquet Balls

Girl, Interrupted

Based on Susanna Kaysen's memoir of her time spent as a patient in a mental institution, this film stars Our Winona in the title role. She plays well with co-stars Angelina Jolie (as fellow patient Lisa Rowe); Whoopi Goldberg (as-to-good-to-be-true nurse Valerie Owens); and a very young Elizabeth Moss - of Mad Men Fame - as Polly "Torch" Clark.

After combining a bottle of aspirin with a bottle of vodka Kasen reluctantly commits herself to Claymoore Hospital. Questions about her medications go unanswered, and the patients begin their own black market for trading drugs they want for those they don't. Each of the patients on the women's ward battles her own demons, and they can sometimes be cruel to each other. However, their fierce protection of each other is also evident. In one sadly funny scene the patients all go in to town for ice cream as a good-bye send off to one of their own. There they encounter Barbara Gilcrest (Mary Kay Place) the wife of a professor Susanna slept with. When Gilcrest confronts Kasen her cohorts go all out in playing up their mental illnesses in order to scare Gilcrest off.

The tumult inside of Claymoore Hospital parallels what is going on historically during the late 1960s as Susanna's boyfriend, Toby, flees to Canada after getting his draft notice and news of Civil Rights  struggles continue. Sex, drugs, and rock and roll are all part of the backdrop.

Final Verdict: Four Croquet Balls

Night on Earth - Quirky Corky

Throughout the opening credits, viewers are treated to a slowly spinning classroom globe, as the camera pans north and south, reviewing the state of the 1991 world, and setting the stage for a film that could only take place between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the fall of the Twin Towers. The East was beginning to reunite with the West, but air travel was still convenient, and cell phones were still a symbol of the extremely well-connected.

The journey will reveal the joys, sorrows, anger and joy of the (nocturnal) quotidian of five very different drivers in five northern-hemisphere cities, all in a single night.

The globe first settles on Los Angeles, where in the first vignette, Our Winona plays Corky, a chain-smoking, street-smart young woman who is dropping off some musicians at LAX. Her first fare is a casting agent (Victoria Snelling, played by Gena Rowlands), who is barely thinking about catching a cab as she walks from baggage claim, her status as a Very Important Person reinforced by her devotion to her phone. As she steps outside, she barely notices the cab, or Corky, who is using a vintage payphone to argue with her manager, and barely notices her customer.

At first, the class divide between the two is vast, neither one really understanding much of what the other says. But during the long ide to Beverly Hills, we know when a small connection is made. Each woman finds a cigarette -- in an envelope and in an elegant case, respectively -- and as the casting agent looks for her lighter, Corky reaches out to her fellow smoker, presaging the importance of cigarettes in most of the remaining stories.

SPOILER ALERT BELOW

Continuing to be absorbed in her phone, Victoria complains that all of the actresses she has been screening are too affected, not authentic enough. Then she realizes that Corky is exactly what she wants, and since she usually gets what she wants, she thinks her problem is solved. For Corky, the aspiration to be a mechanic someday is a dream that she will not let slip away, even when tempted with movie-stardom. Even though we have spoiled the ending of this first act, it is worth watching, to see Noni in a quintessential role that exemplifies her anti-starlet persona.

The film is a bit of a time-zone lesson, as this vignette ends, and a clock on a wall rolls back to its starting time, but forward to the time that would be in New York, then Paris and Rome (same time zone), ending at the same time -- but near dawn -- in Helsinki. Each of these cities is a different character, as is each driver and fare. Complex stories play out in the confines of each cab as it cruises each darkened, nearly empty city.

Writer and director Jim Jarmusch (known to us mainly for his vignette-a-thon Coffee and Cigarettes) tells each story so differently that this really looks like one of those projects in which several writers were each given a  prompt and set on their own course. The stories are all facets of the same mind, though, and well worth watching.

Final Verdict: Four Croquet Balls

Edward Scissorhands - Surrealism at its best

Edward Scissorhands is the 1990 vehicle that introduced Johnny Depp (as Edward), Our Winona, and the enigmatic director Tim Burton to many mainstream audiences, while putting Vincent Price and several other established actors in quirky roles that they appeared to relish.

Edward is Price's Frankenstein-like creation, almost complete except for the hands, which are improvised from a series of rather imposing sets of scissors. As with Mary Shelley's original, he looks menacing, but is gentle, as revealed by his demeanor, his Marcel-Marceau facial expressions, and a Wizard-of-Oz, Tin-Man-with-a-heart allusion). As with Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein, this is a monster with considerable sexual appeal.

Our Winona plays his love-interest, Kim. Edward lives in a big black mansion atop a mountain that rises inexplicably from the cul-de-sac neighborhood lost in both space and time. Those who dwell at the bottom of the hill live in monochromatic, prim little pastel houses with perfect lawns and shrubberies. Devises such as CD players, big screen television sets, and rotary dial phones proliferate, making it difficult to discern which decade the residents occupy. The timelessness and faux perfection presage the Wisteria Lane sets of Desperate Housewives, and blogger charismagick argues that the film is Tim Burton's answer to The Stepford Wives.

When the Avon lady (Dianne Wiest) comes calling to Edward's home he is introduced for the first time into suburban life. At first his novelty is a big hit with the housewives -- particularly Kathy Baker, who steps way outside the type she established in Picket Fences. His sex appeal eventually becomes too big of a burden for him, isolating him from all of his potential supporters.

All except for Our (lovely) Noni, of course. The final showdown in this film is reminiscent of Heathers with Our Winona in a fight-to-the-finish with her bully boyfriend, played but not overplayed by Anthony Michael Hall as an obligatory trope in the mainstream-girl-rescues-misunderstood-outcast film that this is.

The contrast with Her Greatest Work is in the nature of the heroine she plays -- the long auburn hair makes her a more classic high-school beauty than the brooding, close-cropped Veronica.

Director Tim Burton created a wonderfully believable make-believe world, with some scenes reminiscent of Latin American magic realism. He gave the make-up artists an additional challenge in the scenes that bookend the film, presenting Our Winona as an elderly grandmother for the opening and closing storytelling scenes.

April 10, 2026 update -- James could not help but notice this allusion in the daily post of the (unofficial) National Park Service LEGO Vignette page. 

Final Verdict: Four Croquet Balls



Lagniappe

Watching this movie we could not help but think about our own loveable, yet lacerating, monster.

Perry Scissorhands

House of the Spirits - Getting rich through hard work

“When a man tells you that he got rich through hard work, ask him: 'Whose?'”

Don Marquis

Esteban (Jeremy Irons) tells Rosa's parents that he plans to work hard every day in order to earn money, so he can be rich enough to marry their daughter. True to his word, he works hard in a diamond mine until he strikes a lode. Two years later he returns with the money he earned from his diamonds, to find his true love has died. He takes the money and buys a ranch (Tres Marias) where he tells the peasants who live there that he will take care of them if they work hard. "We have nowhere else to go" he is told by one of the workers, Pedro "Segundo". Through the exploitation of those who work his farm, he becomes an extremely rich and powerful man and eventually marries Rosa's silent, clairvoyant (and aptly named) sister, Clara (Meryl Streep). Their daughter (Blanca, played by Our Winona) falls in love with Pedro "Tercero" (Antonio Banderas), the son of "Segundo" one of Esteban's most loyal workers.

However loyal his father is, however, Pedro Tercero is quite undesirable to Esteban, not only for his status as a farm worker, but also because he is an instigator of union activity on the ranch - telling the other workers that they have a right to decent pay, shorter hours, and Sundays off. He becomes so much a target of Esteban's wrath that his life is endangered, especially after Blanca becomes pregnant.

Although ultimately a story of redemption, this film is hardly a "feel good" movie. Set in an unnamed South American country (Chile) during a military dictatorship Our Winona shows a true range of emotion, and portrays a character of strength and bravery throughout.

James adds: As a geographer, I find this film to be not only a compelling family story, but also an illustration of destructive dynamics that have been all too common in Latin America. As patron of the titular hacienda, Esteban really believes that he earns his wealth and status through his own effort. He further believes that his laborers benefit from their association with him. 

He is a local strongman who supports an increasingly conservative regime at the national regime, which in turn maintains the social order that concentrates land -- and power -- in the hands of a very few. The pattern known as minifundio / latifundio originated with colonial-era land grants, and continue to persist in many countries of the region. By restricting access to land, the system binds workers to a single local employer. Small favors from the patron may help to reinforce loyalty, but eventually resentment may lead to resistance. 

To protect their privileged status -- and in their own minds, for the good of society as a whole -- from resistance movements, latifundistas such as Esteban would form alliances with conservative regimes. Where these regimes have been threatened by broad social movements, military leaders have often -- as they did in Allende's Chile -- stepped in to "restore order." As Esteban learns in this story, totalitarian regimes are not reliable allies.

In Chile -- which Allende could not name in the original novel -- the displacement of the elected government by the military regime of Augusto Pinochet played out a bit differently than in her novel. The United States orchestrated the assassination of President Salvador Allende (the novelist's cousin) on September 11, 1973, because resistance movements in the region were seen as communist. Pinochet still ruled Chile when she wrote the novel from exile in Venezuela.

Final verdict: Four croquet balls