A Cut Above the Rest

Edward Scissorhands

Director: Tim Burton

Cast: Johnny Depp, Dianne Weist, Winona Ryder, Alan Arkin, Michael Anthony Hall, Vincent Price

Released: December 14, 1990

Oscar nominations:

Best Makeup (lost to Dick Tracy)

I can just see Tim Burton's pitch for this movie: "I want to make a movie about this guy and he has SCISSORS for HANDS!" And the producers were probably like, "Hmm, that sounds interesting. Go for it, Mr. Burton!" If any other person had directed this, no doubt it would have been a horror movie. I mean, the guy has SCISSORS for HANDS! That is completely terrifying! And not just one pair of scissors for each hand, oh no, he has one huge pair of scissors for each hand, then a few other smaller ones. But being that it's a Tim Burton movie (and, if, for some reason you didn't know it was directed by Burton, you would totally be able to tell), it's very whimsical. There are elements of romance and comedy and some horror, but none of the horror is brought on by the guy with SCISSORS for HANDS! (Gee, how do you think they came up with his name?) I believe this is the first movie Burton and Depp made together and they would go on to make many more movies together, for better or worse!

I had seen this movie before, but it's been quite awhile. The only other person I remembered in this movie besides Johnny Depp as the titular character was Winona Ryder, who plays Kim, the love interest. She actually doesn't appear in the movie until about forty minutes in. Well, technically, she's at the very beginning as her character as an old woman so she's wearing lots of old age makeup. Her granddaughter wants to hear a bedtime story so she tells her the tale of Edward Scissorhands. I had completely forgotten about this scene and was thinking, That old lady sure sounds a lot like Winona Ryder with an old lady voice, then realized, oh, yeah, duh! That's because it IS Winona Ryder! 

One of the interesting things about this movie is that it isn't set in a specific time or place. It's sort of timeless like that. Obviously when we first meet Edward it's quite a few decades earlier as Kim was an old woman in the first scene and now she's telling the story of when she was a teenager. We first meet her mom, Pam (Dianne Weist) who is an Avon lady selling her products to the neighborhood, but not having any luck. All the houses in the neighborhood look exactly the same, only they are all different colors: either pink, blue, green, or yellow. They all live in a cul-de-cal and at the end of the cul-de-sac is this huge, looming gray castle on a cliff that is obviously CGI-ed in. Well, I don't know if CGI was a thing back in 1990, but they obviously did something to paint it in the picture. Pam gets the idea to sell her products to this place and that's where she meets Edward. She is quite taken aback by this strange young man who is very pale, dressed all in leather, has scratches all over his face, and, oh yeah, has SCISSORS for HANDS! Since Edward appears to be alone, she decides to bring him home because she feels bad for him. In the car, he gets very excited and points at something, nearly jabbing her in the face with his scissorhand. She uses her products to apply to his face to try to get conceal the scars. (Poor guy probably gets one every time he has to scratch his face!) 

There are quite a few funny scenes. Since Kim is away camping for a few days, Pam lets Edward sleep in her room. She has a waterbed and he pokes it with one of the blades from his scissorhand and water is sprouting everywhere. There's another moment where Pam has lent Edward some of her husband's clothes and is sewing something for him and needs a pair of scissors to cut a piece of thread and she's looking around, and, duh, she has Edward Scissorhands right there in front of her so she asks him to cut the thread and he does, looking quite proud of himself for being useful. Pam also has a younger son and there's a scene where Pam and Edward are sitting at the dinner table with him and Pam's husband (Alan Arkin). Since he has SCISSORS for HANDS, Edward is having a bit of a difficult time eating and it's pretty funny watching him try to scoop up one little pea and attempt to put it in his mouth. (You think he would just stab it with one of the blades!) I don't know why they didn't help him with his food. It makes you wonder how he ate before he even got there. Of course, being created by an eccentric inventor (Vincent Price), he probably doesn't really even need to eat. We see flashbacks of the inventor with Edward and Edward was suppose to get a pair of hands, but right before the inventor was about to touch them, he drops dead. I don't think they would have helped Edward much anymore as they were just plastic hands! I wasn't really sure how exactly Edward was created; I guess he's suppose to be a Frankenstein-like character. Instead of being scared of him (well, the extremely religious woman does call him the devil), all the neighbors are delighted by him, especially when he starts trimming all the hedges into delightful shapes such as people and animals. (He seemed to like cutting them into dinosaurs.) He also gives haircuts and trims dogs. There's a scene where he cuts the hair of a very shaggy dog and it's so obvious it's a completely different breed of dog because the dog was much shorter before it got all its hair cut! 

Edward sees a picture of Kim and becomes quite smitten with her. Everyone remembers the relationship between the two of them and this might be because Depp and Ryder did have a relationship for a little while. Because, honestly, their relationship in the movie makes no sense. When they first meet, it's quite amusing. Kim must not have told her parents she was coming home early, because she's dropped off at her house and goes to her bedroom where Edward is in her bed. She starts taking off her clothes (but not all of them) and looks in the mirror when she suddenly sees Edward in her bed in the reflection and starts freaking out. Her parents go into her room and there's a funny shot of Edward getting out of the bed and walking down the hall really fast. A lot of Depp's acting is just based on physical comedy as he doesn't speak very much and when he does talk, it's only one or two words at a time. When he does say a full sentence, it's quite jarring because you're not used to it and it doesn't seem natural. Kim has a boyfriend, Jim (Anthony Michael Hall), who's a real jerk and uses Edward to unlock his dad's office with one of the blades so he can steal something. Edward ends up getting caught and blamed for the whole thing. Kim breaks up with Jim and helps Edward after the entire neighborhood has turned on him. One of the neighbor women has accused him of assaulting her when she opened a salon for him to cut hair. The woman has already been set up to be a bit of the neighborhood skank, so she has plans to seduce Edward, but he ends up running away from her. At first, I thought maybe he had accidentally killed her by slitting her throat with his scissorhands when things started to get intense (I told you it's been awhile since I last saw this!) because he looks pretty scared when he runs out of the room, but a few seconds later you see the woman appear, looking quite angry. This is when she tells everyone that Edward tried to rape her. Jim is also pretty angry at Edward for taking his girlfriend away from him and he and Edward get into a fight at the mansion and Kim stabs Jim with one of Edward's blades and he falls through the window, crashing to his death. Kim kisses Edward and says goodbye to him and tells the others he has died so they have no reason to go in the house and look for him.

Like I said, the Edward and Kim relationship comes out of nowhere and doesn't make any sense. And really, do you really think that would work? How would it when the guy has SCISSORS for HANDS. How would you even....I mean, what if they.... Why would that skanky woman want him to.... Let's face it, the whole intimacy thing is a little freaky. I think they did the right thing by not taking it any further than a sweet little kiss. Instead, after Edward is back living alone in the huge mansion, he carves magnificent ice sculptures, often in the form of Kim.

I much prefer the mother/son relationship between Edward and Pam. It's much more fleshed out (even though she does disappear during the last third of the movie when the Edward/Kim relationship is trying to become a thing. Dianne Weist is great at playing the mom role (see Parenthood and The Lost Boys) and it made me laugh when she first enter Edward's house and says, "Hellloooo! Is anyone here?"

This is a very quirky, whimsical movie and it's quite moving and funny at the same time and if you have never seen this for some reason, I would definitely tell you to check it out. 

This also starts the first of my Christmas movies! From now until Christmas, I will be reviewing holiday movies. Technically, I wouldn't call this a true Christmas movie as there is only one scene set during Christmas and the rest of it takes place during the rest of the year.

Stranger Things

Instead of reviewing a movie, I thought I would do something different and talk about the 8-part big hit series that came from Netflix this summer called Stranger Things. If you have Netflix Instant, this probably popped up on your screen whenever you logged onto the site to get your Netflix Fix. (I feel like the F in "fix" should be capitalized for that!) I didn't check it out until I kept hearing about it through people I knew and podcasts that were talking about it. Since there are only eight episodes; each about 45 minutes (give or take), it took me less than a week to devour them all.

There will be slight spoilers in this review, but nothing that will give anything major away. But even if you are wary of spoilers, you may want to read this until after you've seen the show. And I highly recommend it.

As I was watching it, I couldn't help but get a Super 8 vibe from it. That movie was set in 1979 and had a cast of eleven/twelve/thirteen year olds. Mostly boys, but there was one girl. They are trying to figure out a mystery involving a monster. This show was set in 1983 (1979, 1983, same thing! At least to me!) It also has a group of eleven/twelve/thirteen year olds. Again, mostly boys, but there was also one girl in this. They are also trying out to figure out a mystery involving a monster, but most of all, their mystery involves trying to figure out what happened to their missing friend. Which involves the monster...obviously!

I was listening to a podcast about this show and someone described it as something that would be created if Steven Spielberg and Stephen King collaborated together. I've heard a lot of comparisons of this show to those two and I can see it. There are definitely elements of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T., The Goonies, Stand By Me (or "The Body" if you want to go with the original short story title), and It. Although I have never read or seen It because I don't need to be any more scared of clowns than I already am, thank you very much, but I trust those people who say this reminded them of that. But there are no clowns in this show. Thank God! However, there are plenty of jump scares and I probably shouldn't have watched this at night...there were some creepy moments!

The show starts with a very short prologue of a scientist running away from something we don't see. He runs to the elevator and hits the button several times frantically. Of course then when it finally opens, he has to hit the button again several times to close it. It finally does close and it looks like he's escaped from the monster, except the monster is a lot smarter than he thought because...oops...he's on top of the elevator and snatches the man.

In the next scene, we first meet our young characters. They are four middle-school aged boys who are playing Dungeons and Dragons in Mike's basement. Out of the kids, Mike is the main character. At first, I couldn't decide if he was an odd-looking kid or super cute, but in the end, he won me over and I have opted for the latter choice. The actor who plays him, Finn Wolfhard, has a very distinct bone structure to his face and pair that with his very early '80s haircut (and the very early '80s wardrobe!) it makes him look a bit odd, but it is perfect as he is suppose to be a huge dork and isn't suppose to be with the in crowd at school. This kid is absolutely adorable and if I were a twelve year old girl right now, I would have a crush on him. He's soooo cute! Mike's closest friend and next door neighbor is Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin), the only black kid in town. (Well, they do live in a small town in Indiana called Hawkins.) He and Mike have known each other the longest out of the four friends and often communicate with each other through Walkie Talkies which reminded me of the two young friends and next door neighbors in Big. Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) is the brains of the group, which is saying something since they're all dorky kids! But he's the one who always comes up with the ideas. He's also the fat kid of the group, although I would describe him more as husky than fat...cuz that kid ain't fat! The smallest kid of the group and the one with the least amount of screen time is Will Byers (Noah Schnapp). He's the kid who goes missing hence the limited screen time. This kid has so little screen time he's not even credited in the opening titles! Poor kid! He does show up in flashback scenes in later episodes, but compared to the other kids (and not to mention the other people in the cast), he's not in the series that much.

Will is riding his bike home at night after playing Dungeons and Dragons with his friends when he rides past the laboratory we saw earlier where the scientist was. Something pops up in front of him and startles him and he skids off the road. He ditches his bike and runs home the rest of the way. (They do live in a small town, so it must not have been very far). He enters his house where his dog is barking and calls for his mom and brother, but doesn't get an answer from them...we later find out his brother got home late that night because he was working, but I'm not sure if his mom was there or not. She must not have been. He looks out the window and sees a slow-moving figure from a distance slowly advancing towards the house and it is definitely not human. Very creepy. He gets on the phone to call 911, but he just gets static and a weird sound. When the chain to the door becomes undone, Will runs out the back and into the shed where he gets a shotgun and aims it towards the door. We see Will see the monster, which has snuck up behind him, but we don't see the monster close up. In the next shot, Will has vanished. Where has he gone? Seriously, where is he?

During the course of the show, we follow three groups of characters who take different paths to find Will. In one path, we have Will's mother, Joyce. She is played by Winona Ryder. Yes, a name you finally recognize! She was really good in this and it was nice seeing in her something. I can't even remember the last recent thing she had done. She is a single mother of two who works long hours (so therefore she probably wasn't home that night Will vanished). She tells the local sheriff, Jim Hopper aka Hop (David Harbour) who tells her that Lonnie, her ex-husband, probably has something to do with this because "99 times out of 100 the missing kid is with a parent or a relative." Joyce asks him what about the other time, what happens then, and he tells her that the worst thing that has ever happened in their small town was when an owl attacked someone's head because it thought the hair was a nest. (Ouch!)

Weird things start happening at their home. Joyce gets a phone call with just static on the other line, but she very faintly hears Will's voice, but the wires in the phone burn. Will's favorite song, "Should I Stay or Should I Go" by the Clash plays off and on to get Joyce's attention. The lights flicker on and off as if somebody is trying to communicate with her and in a funny scene at the store she works at, Joyce buys all the Christmas lights. At least this was set in November, so she could just say she was getting ready for Christmas! She finds she is able to communicate with Will by having him answer yes and no questions with flicking the lights once or twice. I kept waiting for her to set up an alphabet system and sure enough she paints the alphabet on her wall so Will can spell things out for her. Of course, everyone thinks she's crazy, including Hopper and Mike's mom who comes over to offer her support and comfort for the grieving mother. But mostly, Lonnie, her douche bag ex-husband who left her for a younger woman and never spends time with his sons.

Then there's Jonathan (Charlie Heaton), Will's older brother, who does help his mom and sheriff search for Will. But he soon takes a different path with Mike's older sister, Nancy (Natalia Dyer). She is a straight-A student, the goody two shoes daughter. She used to be deemed "cool" by Mike's friends until she started dating the super cool dreamboat Steve Harrington (Joe Keery) who has the most perfect and amazing hair ever known to mankind. Can you the blame the girl for falling for him? I can't! If I were a high school girl in the '80s, I would have a crush on him, although he is a bit of a douche bag, but then he ends up not being one. Nancy becomes involved with the monster mystery when her friend, Barb, also goes missing under mysterious circumstances. They were at Steve's pool party and Barb was by herself while Nancy was giving it up to Steve in his bedroom. Jonathan, a photographer, decides to be a creep when he's lurking in the woods near Steve's house at the time of the party and takes photos of Nancy without her shirt on through the window. He also takes photos of Barb sitting on the diving board, nursing a cut she got on her hand from slicing a beer can sideways with a knife, but it cut her. I'm not sure exactly what they were doing either because this is a party thing and I'm not cool enough to have attended any parties in my day (well, plus, I hate parties!) or if this is an early '80s things and I was a toddler during this time, so therefore I wasn't drinking beer! The photos prove to be helpful as there is an odd figure behind Barb and they believe it to be the monster.

Then there are Will's three friends who meet a strange girl named Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown...maybe her parents were fans of My Prerogative?) They find her, hair shorn and wearing a hospital gown in the same spot where Will went missing. They ask her who she is, but she doesn't seem to talk except for one word syllables like "yes and "no", though over the course of the show she does talk more, but still very limited. She has 011 tattooed on her forearm, thus her name. Mike says they can call her "El" for shore. Me thinks it's a shout out to Elle Fanning who was in Super 8. Maybe that's a stretch! The boys take her back to Mike's basement where he gives her some dry clothes and she starts to take off her shirt and the boys, especially Dustin, start freaking out and tell her to change in the bathroom. I was cracking up over that.

Mike has an idea to have Eleven go to the front door and tell his mom she's lost so she can call someone, but Eleven, clearly scared, tells him no, so he lets him stay in his basement where he has a little fort she sleeps in and sneaks her down food. She really takes a liking to Eggos. The boys soon find out Eleven is very special as she has telekinetic powers (like Carrie, another Stephen King shoutout!) I was just waiting for when she was going to use her powers on the two bullies, Troy and some other kid whose name I don't remember. They relentlessly pick on Mike, Lucas, and Dustin. They call Dustin Toothless because he is missing his two front teeth and has a lisp. Eleven uses her powers to humiliate them and humiliate she does. So much in fact that the bullies come back for retaliation. Troy is clearly a sociopath as he tells Mike to jump off a cliff into the lake that is high enough that it will kill anyone who will jump off from there. In fact, we had a scene in an earlier episode where Hopper tells someone that if someone jumped from this cliff, their bones would shatter when they hit the water. Troy tells Mike that if he doesn't jump, then he will cut out Dustin's remaining teeth with the pocket knife he has. Even the other bully tells Troy that this is wrong, but Troy doesn't seem to care and decides he wants to be a murderer at age 12. Good going there, kid. They encountered the bullies when they were looking for Eleven, who had run away. Mike had to know she was close by or else he wouldn't have jumped, right? Surely he knew that jump would kill him! Because he does jump, but she manages to save him with her powers, and also breaks Troy's arms which was awesome. Because he totally deserved it.

As you may have guessed, the three different paths cross and everyone is working together to figure out the mystery. I don't want to give anything away, but I will say the end is left open for a second season. If you love anything about the '80s, the fashion, the music, synthesizers (which play a big part in the score), and movies from that era, you will enjoy this immensely.

I read that the show was pitched to about 15 different networks before finally it was taken to Netflix because nobody would take it. I bet all those networks are kicking themselves now. But I prefer it being on Netflix. Much easier to access and you have all the episodes at your disposal and you can watch whenever you want to; you're not bounded by a schedule. It's no wonder I've been with Netflix for over ten years now, wow!

The young cast was on Jimmy Fallon and they did a hilarious skit where Jimmy played cool guy Steve and then "Barb" showed up. OMG, I was laughing so hard. If you missed it, you should defintely check it out on YouTube...I'm sure you can find it there. There are major spoilers, though!

You Can Forget All Your Troubles; Forget All Your Cares

Girl, Interrupted

Director: James Mangold

Cast: Winona Ryder, Angelina Jolie, Whoopi Goldberg, Brittany Murphy, Elisabeth Moss, Clea DuVall, Vanessa Redgrave, Jared Leto, Jeffery Tambor

Released: December 21, 1999

Viewed in theaters: January 22, 2000

Oscar nominations:

Best Supporting Actress - Angelina Jolie (won)

  

This movie is based on the memoir of the same name written by Susanna Kaysen (portrayed by Winona Ryder) who wrote about her time (a year and a half) at a psychiatrist ward called Claymoore in the late '60s. This is a book I've always meant to read because I like the movie, but I can never find it.  

Right after high school, Susanna is sent to Claymoore. Her parents are worried about her because she is depressed and has no desire to go to college. When her counselor asks her what she's going to do, she tells her that she wants to write. She sleeps with a professor who is married and a guy she met at a party (Jared Leto) so she is deemed "promiscuous". After trying to kill herself by taking an entire bottle of aspirin and chasing it down with a bottle of vokda (she says she had a headache), she is sent to the ward that helps young women with mental problems. 

There's Polly, a schizophrenic who has half of her face badly burned. She is played by Elisabeth Moss who of course went on to be in Mad Men, but I've never seen that show, so to me, she will always be Zoe Bartlett from The West Wing. She is nicknamed "Torch" by AJ's character. It's been about ten years since I last saw this movie and I remembered she had a nickname, but I could have sworn it was "Flame". Close enough! Also, I'm not sure if she calls her this because Polly has red hair or because her face has been badly burned. Hopefully not because of the latter because that would be messed up, but with Lisa you never know! 

Susanna's roommate is Georgina (played by Clea DuVall...okay, I always thought her name was pronounced "Clee-ah", but apparently it's "Clay-ah"?) who is a pathological liar. She tells Susanna this after she has told her how Polly burned her face. Her account is that Polly had a dog she was allergic to and got a big rash on her face and put some ointment on her face, then lit a match. So how did Polly really burn her face? It's never brought up. 

Sociopath Lisa is played by Angelina Jolie for which she won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar. You may remember that being the ceremony where she wore a vial of Billy Bob Thorton's blood (remember when they were married? How long ago that seems!) and made out with her brother. Sometimes I miss the crazy AJ. Did you know that when you look at Angelina's IMDb page, this movie isn't even featured as one of her "known for" titles? I'm sorry, but what kind of bull**** is that? When I think of Angelina Jolie in terms of film roles, Girl, Interrupted is ALWAYS the first movie I think of! It's probably a combination of several things: it was the first movie I saw AJ in, she has a very memorable role, and for a long time it was the only thing I liked her in. Oh, and she did win the Oscar so you think that would have edged out, say, Salt to make the cut! Anyway! I digress! Let's get back to the review of the movie. Lisa has been at Claymoore for eight years and is the ringleader of the five or so girls who have their own little clique. (This includes Polly and Susanna as well as a anorexic girl named Janet and a mentally disturbed lesbian named Cynthia). She has a captivating, charming personality and draws Susanna into her circle of madness. She is also a bully and manipulative and gets a thrill out of taunting those she does not like. I loved Jolie's performance, but I really hated Lisa. She is an awful person. But I could see how the other girls were drawn to her.

The most interesting, disturbing, and tragic character is Daisy. She is played by Brittany Murphy and I'm gong to say it: I think this was her best role. Now I didn't say most iconic or popular, because that would be Clueless, but I do think this is her best acting. If anyone needs a psych ward, it's her. (I mean, they all need one...but she really needs one). And yet, for some reason, she is released early. She has this weird eating disorder where the only thing she will eat is rotisserie chickens from her father's deli and she keeps the eaten carcasses under her bed. She has a private room because she prefers to keep to herself, oh, and did I mention the most disturbing thing of all: her father has sex with her. :::shudder::: So why she is released, I wasn't really sure. But we'll get back to her later.

Lisa invites Susanna into her little circle. She encourages her to fake take her medication, talk back to the staff (which includes Whoopi Goldberg as Nurse Valerie and Vanessa Redgrave and Jeffrey Tambor as psychiatrists), and sneak out with her and the other girls where they go under the building where there is an old bowling lane. This place has the worst security I have ever seen. They do checks every night, but they always do it at the same time, so of course the girls have beat the system because they just stay in the rooms until the nurses have made sure they're in there, THEN they sneak out. Well, duh, if they had their checks sporadically every night, then they wouldn't know when to sneak out. 

After Susanna and Lisa get in trouble for stealing a guitar from the music room and singing "Downtown" to an upset Polly (this must have been my fourth or fifth time seeing the movie and this was the first time I caught that "Downtown" is played in the car radio on Susanna's drive to Claymoore! I had oddly never noticed that before). I had actually never heard of that song until I saw this movie and I just love it. Music is the one thing that makes her happy and it works, except when the male orderly comes over to shut them up so they don't wake anybody up, Susanna and the orderly  end up kissing (she's taking her "promiscuous" diagnosis to heart!) and are found sleeping with their arms around each other and Nurse Valerie catches them in the morning and writes her up.

This prompts Susanna and Lisa to decide to run away to Disney World which is opening soon where Lisa will be their new Cinderella and Susanna will be Snow White (well, she does have the right haircut for it!) They are able to walk right out the doors after their checks (because they know they are at the same time every night!) I'm sure the doors are locked from the outside, but what kind of place that is home to many mentally unstable people don't lock their docks from the inside? There aren't even any night nurses monitoring the halls! As you can imagine, this makes it quite easy for the girls to escape. Lisa has acquired the address to Daisy's new apartment her father bought for her where she now resides with her gray cat, Ruby. 

There has never been any love lost between Lisa and Daisy and Daisy only lets them in because she thinks it's only Susanna who tells her she has Valium. It is clear Daisy hasn't gotten better because the only thing she has in her fridge is mayonnaise and rotisserie chickens and she is cutting herself. Lisa cruelly taunts her about her dad molesting her and the fact that Daisy likes it. Susanna pleads Lisa to stop, but being cruel to Daisy makes Lisa feel superior. 

In the morning, when Susanna comes back with breakfast, Lisa tells her that Daisy hasn't come down yet and the same song has been playing over and over on a loop. The song is "The End of the World" by Skeeter Davis and because of the lyrics; the fact that Daisy hasn't come down yet; and Daisy's all-around well-being; Susanna, as well as the audience, I'm sure, is a little bit concerned. Not finding Daisy in her room, Susanna fears the worst when she creeps down the hall to the bathroom with the door closed. She opens it to find that Daisy has hung herself. After Susanna starts shrieking and crying, Lisa comes up and calls Daisy an idiot and checks to see if she has any money on her. Susanna says she's going to call an ambulance and Lisa says she should call a hearse. Very little concern that her comments from the night before prompted Daisy to kill herself! I am surprised that she didn't comment that Daisy had a tub after all because the night before she asked if there was a bathtub upstairs and Daisy said no. 

Susanna is so distraught by this that she doesn't want to go anywhere with Lisa anymore and goes back to  Claymoore. Lisa is also brought back a few days later, although against her will. Susanna has a heart to heart with Nurse Valerie who she was quite awful to before she ran away and starts to make progress with her treatments and is eventually released.

The soundtrack to this movie is great; lots of '60 favorites. I especially love the song, "The Weight."

Here's a Cinematic Sara first for you: you know how at the Oscars the big 8 includes Best Picture, Best Director, the four acting categories, and the two writing categories? Well, I reviewed all the movies that won those awards at the 2000 Oscars for the movies that came out in 1999. They include American Beauty (for Best Picture, Director, Actor, and Original Screenplay - that one knocked out half of them!); The Cider House Rules (for Best Supporting Actor and Adapted Screenplay); Boys Don't Cry (for Best Actress);  and now I can add Girl, Interrupted (for Best Supporting Actress) to that list! 

You say, "Stay"

Reality Bites
Director: Ben Stiller
Cast: Winona Ryder, Ethan Hawke, Ben Stiller, Janeane Garofalo
Released: February 18, 1994

I knew Ben Still was in this movie and that he had directed movies (like Tropic Thunder) before, but I didn't know he had directed this one. Of course, this was pre-There's Something About Mary, so nobody knew who he was back then.

The movie follows Lelaina (Ryder) and her friends, recent college grads trying to find their place in the "real world" (otherwise known as Houston). Boy, am I'm glad I wasn't in my early twenties in the nineties! What a bunch of self-centered emo whiners! Oh, wait, I think I just described every early twenty-something throughout the course of history.

Lelaina, who was the valedictorian at her college, has scored a job as a producer for a TV show hosted by Frasier and Nile's dad, but gets fired and has to lower herself to a more pedestrian job. She's living in an apartment with her best friend Vickie (Garafalo) who is a bit of a slut (well, it's true!) and is worried she might have AIDS (oh, remember how popular AIDS were in the nineties - they even had an entire episode of Beverly Hills, 90210 dedicated to it!). Lelaina's other friend, Troy, also lives with them and he gets jealous after Lelaina goes on a date with Michael (Stiller), a video executive because, you see, Troy has feelings for her, but won't admit that he does. Lelaina also has feelings for him, but won't admit that she does and keeps dating Michael to make Troy jealous and Troy dates other women to make Lelaina jealous. Oh, the complications of love triangles!

Lelaina wants to make a documentary about her and her friends' life and always has a camera with her capturing moments of their everyday life. Michael tells her that he's found somebody in New York who's interested in buying the documentary, but when she sees an advanced screening of her footage, they've changed everything around and made it into a bit of a joke. This is where the movie gets its title because the documentary was called "Reality Bites".

This movie is probably most famous for introducing "Stay" by Lisa Loeb to the world. Who doesn't love that song? I never hear it on the radio anymore, but everytime I hear it on my iPod, I always have to sing along. I kept waiting to hear it in the movie, but they don't play it until the end credits...and it's the second song they play during the credits!