Sundance: 'Master' is a fine horror debut

by Matt St Clair

Mariama Diallo’s feature debut Master is a horror film about the anxieties of being a Black woman in a predominantly white space. Diallo stresses such perturbations by blending paranormal elements with real-world institutional prejudice and the all-too-petrifying feeling of being an outsider. Although certain story elements outweigh others, Master thrives on its slow-burn execution and sheer demonstration of danger lingering around every corner...

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Winona Ryder @50: the definitive "Reality Bites"

Team Experience is celebrating Winona Ryder this week for her 50th birthday

by Timothy Lyons

1994 was a watershed year for a young Winona Ryder. It started with her first Oscar nomination (and a Golden Globe win) for her performance in Martin Scorsese’s The Age of Innocence and would come to a close with the Christmas release of Gillian Armstrong’s superior adaptation of Little Women with Ryder’s performance as Jo leading to her second Oscar nomination in as many years (more on that tomorrow). Sandwiched between this diptych of heavily-costumed prestige pics was the release of Ben Stiller’s Reality Bites. Here was a film that would come to define a generation (Generation X) and featured the best, most natural, and luminescent performance of Ryder’s career.

I am a huge Winona Ryder fan - let me get that out of the way before we go further. She does however have a tendency towards the fidgety, the strangely mannered and vaguely uneasy in her performances. Sometimes this can lead to her work feeling slightly blank or disengaged, but more often than not (especially when called upon to play one of many outsiders) it is just right...

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Gay Best Friend: Sammy Gray in Reality Bites (1994)

In this series by Christopher James we investigate the 'Gay Best Friend' trope in movies.

We're introduced to Sammy along with the whole crew of main characters on the roof after their college graduation, two minutes into the movie.

At last, it has come to this point. This marks the first week where I’ve covered a “first watch” for the Gay Best Friend series. Thanks go out to Julian who suggested Steve Zahn’s clean cut Sammy in Reality Bites, a 1994 Gen-X classic. As a proud, card-carrying millennial, Reality Bites had been a movie I had always meant to watch, but never gotten around to. The Winona Ryder fan in me was excited to use this column as an excuse to rectify this blind spot. Overall, the film left me a bit wanting. The characters and situations were a great encapsulation of the confusion you experiences the first years after college. It’s easy to see the lineage from this film to movies and TV shows I love and relate to (namely Girls on HBO and Frances Ha). However, the plot always felt less developed than the characters and performances. The movie exists now as a museum piece encapsulating post-grad life in the 90s. That’s not meant to be a dig. Plenty of movies from the '00s and '10s will feel the same way in 10-20 years. In fact, it speaks to why this modest love triangle from 1994 has endured for twenty-six years in the cultural conversation...

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Meeting Streisand: A Miniature Comic Tragedy in 3 Acts

Thank you once more to Tom Mizer, one half of the songwriting team Mizer & Moore (The Marvelous Mrs Maisel), who has blessed us with funny, insightful guest blogs from the set, his childhood, and writing rooms all day! - Nathaniel

by Tom Mizer

I was raised on Barbra Streisand. My mother adored her. She owned The Way We Were and Yentl on VHS. She vacuumed to the “Guilty” album. Every birthday, she joyously opened Bab’s anual release like a Dickens’ orphan getting her yearly pair of shoes. And I was, step by step, initiated into the catechism of Our Lady of Funny Girl. (“Tom, THIS is 'Color Me Barbra'. Let us bow our heads in silence before we begin.”) 

So when I met her...Barbra, not my mother...it was brief but epic. And ridiculous. And wonderful. And bittersweet. Ladies and Gentlemen, may I present, “Meeting Streisand: A Miniature Comic Tragedy in 3 Acts.”

PROLOGUE: Tom is performing in a small Off-Broadway show. (His acting career will consist of playing 15 until he is 30 and appearing in musicals that end in “Live!”) In order to make more money, he is spending days off from the play as an extra in film and TV. The agency calls. They need students for a classroom scene in a film called The Mirror Has Two Faces. Directed by Barbara Streisand...

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25th Anniversary: "Reality Bites"

by Mark Brinkerhoff

Sandwiched between (and oft-overshadowed by) the so-called Baby Boomers and Millennials, Generation X, those born between 1965-1980, seems to get little attention from Hollywood — or from anyone, really. In fact, just last month CBS infamously omitted Gen X in an otherwise comprehensive chart, “Generation Guidelines Defined by Birth Year.” For Gen Xers (of which I am one), this was generally considered as simply par for the course. Of course, of course, of course! 

But 25 years ago this week, we got our cinematic Valentine in the form of Reality Bites, the seminal film of a “forgotten” generation...

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