Stranger Things Reviews/Discussion Thread

[phil]

We don't see what Max wrote in letters left behind to The Loved Ones, but I'm satisfied that we see it in her actions the rest of the way.

[bigdaddy]

the last part of the current season has been viewed, and the biggest question the girls at work have is; “Has Winona had work’ I don’t think so...or if so, it’s the most skilled I’ve EVER seen. They’ve been pouring over photos from all stages in the career contrasting with STRANGER THINGS stills like forensic pathologists. Maybe people studying the Zaprudar film have been more concentrated and detailed. Maybe.
In the meantime, her performance was praised and the special effects everybody dug. 
The algorithms are dutifully sending anybody who so much as sneezes in their direction enough STRANGER THINGS news views  and updates to float a barge. And Winona has been doing the magazine rounds, maybe the best in the current issue of HARPERS BAZAAR and old, but fair ally. 
The photos are first rate. 

So, the show itself? It’s keeping your attention until the next (and last???) season hits town and you see where they go with The City Under Siege angle. Despite the Rambo/Missing in Action/The Commies are Coming! The Commies are Coming! plot line this year, Ryder got the short end of the stick and really didn’t have a lot to DO. I mean, she did great with what she HAD but..the momentum has shifted to the kids and it’ll probably stay there. 

One of the gals speculated Winona’s son will come out as gay and be sacrificed so that ‘all my live in peace’. It wouldn’t be a bad final act. 
Ryder is 50 now, and that’s a tough age for Hollywood to handle. Icons like Jane Fonda and Donna Reed had speed bumps in their careers about this time, Elizabeth Taylor turned the whole situation on its head and did a guest stint on GENERAL HOSPITAL more or less as a lark. 
Only Winona's old pal and stablemate Sigourney Weaver resisted the trend. ironically making the ALIEN movie that also featured Winona in it at around that time. 
Planned or not, STRANGER THINGS has been a canny move. Sci-fi is often kicked around as being sexist but it also has given a lot of female actors places to work when doors are shut everywhere else. Nichelle Nichols went smoothly through the various STAR TREK movies during her 50’s, for instance. 
IMDB still has LITTLE WOMEN as her movie of reference beside her name. As of now (now being 11:57 August 6th) STRANGER THINGS is the most current thing listed in the filmography. 

Now we wait for the next move. 

[imayne]

Speaking of work done: whenever Robin/Maya Hawke shows up on screen I often imagine what that lost Winona/Uma pairing flick would be. When she and Jake Busey appeared on the show it was like the Duffer Brothers invented a time machine and regularly swapped cast members with their parents without anyone noticing.

STRANGER THINGS is a canny move because it has exemplified everything people missed about the 80s/pre-capeshit cinema, it's a very regularly referenced decade now, I think, because how much of blockbuster filmmaking then seems to be at odds with now.

80s genre films offered for me, visions of heroism that weren't tied to the possession of power. More often than not the hero would be an ordinary person, but thrust into something extraordinary, and even if they get power, it's not necessarily framed as a catalyst for them to do great things, but in fact, can be a terrible thing, and the hero's quest is partly to rid themselves of that power rather than use it well (see: Robocop).

80s genre films weren't big on superheroes in general not until Batman at the end of the decade and kickstarted the trend that grew into the monstrosity it is today. It's not just great power that begets great responsibility (to reuse that hoary old cliche), sometimes great responsibility exists even for the powerless. Think of doing small things with great courage rather than great things, and sometimes great things will follow. It's a point that is less and less made in contemporary genre cinema as capeshit takes over.

The greatest irony? Winona made her career in the 80s precisely NOT doing any of the genres evoked in STRANGER THINGS (or rather, if she did them they were such off-the-wall deconstructions they were beyond what her contemporaries did, see BEETLEJUICE and HEATHERS).

[imayne]

[phil]

Fantastic! Love Linda since Beauty & TB