2 years ago

High Quality
How to Make an American Quilt was available on Netflix Instant, so I couldn’t not watch it, right?  (I had not seen it since 1995? When it came out?  Why, yes!  I did see it then! Being that it starred Winona Ryder.  With Claire Danes and Jared Leto—at the peak of their MSCL-ness—in bit roles.)  It is still quite…something. I mean, the supporting roles alone:  Maya Angelou and Rip Torn! No one sips coffee pensively on camera quite like Winona Ryder.  Or can be dressed like a color blind peasant and still make it seem somewhat chic. But her character—Finn Dodd?  The twenty-six year old who is engaged to be married but having doubts, and working on the third iteration of her Master’s thesis?  It is like Winona was laying out a career template specifically tailored to Zooey Deschanel. And she makes mix tapes, but refuses to type her work on a computer, because she doesn’t trust them, so she plunks it out on an old typewriter.  Lo and behold, at the climax of the film—spoiler? I think not—the whole thing gets scattered throughout the town by a freak gust of wind with a melodramatic sense of timing.  So clearly the lesson is don’t be a luddite.  Or at least run that thing don’t to the copy shop and make a duplicate. Oh and whatever you know the rest, even if you’ve never seen it you know intuitively that all old wounds are healed, grudges are buried, and all correct paths are laid out by the end.  And yes there is nothing so annoying sometimes as voice-over narration.  And somehow the film lands just on the better side of a Hallmark teevee movie.  But I am nothing if not a sucker for films where middle-aged ladies root around in their pasts to dredge up and divulge heretofore unacknowledged secrets via flashback.

How to Make an American Quilt was available on Netflix Instant, so I couldn’t not watch it, right?  (I had not seen it since 1995? When it came out?  Why, yes!  I did see it then! Being that it starred Winona Ryder.  With Claire Danes and Jared Leto—at the peak of their MSCL-ness—in bit roles.)  It is still quite…something. I mean, the supporting roles alone:  Maya Angelou and Rip Torn!

No one sips coffee pensively on camera quite like Winona Ryder.  Or can be dressed like a color blind peasant and still make it seem somewhat chic. But her character—Finn Dodd?  The twenty-six year old who is engaged to be married but having doubts, and working on the third iteration of her Master’s thesis?  It is like Winona was laying out a career template specifically tailored to Zooey Deschanel. And she makes mix tapes, but refuses to type her work on a computer, because she doesn’t trust them, so she plunks it out on an old typewriter.  Lo and behold, at the climax of the film—spoiler? I think not—the whole thing gets scattered throughout the town by a freak gust of wind with a melodramatic sense of timing.  So clearly the lesson is don’t be a luddite.  Or at least run that thing don’t to the copy shop and make a duplicate.

Oh and whatever you know the rest, even if you’ve never seen it you know intuitively that all old wounds are healed, grudges are buried, and all correct paths are laid out by the end.  And yes there is nothing so annoying sometimes as voice-over narration.  And somehow the film lands just on the better side of a Hallmark teevee movie.  But I am nothing if not a sucker for films where middle-aged ladies root around in their pasts to dredge up and divulge heretofore unacknowledged secrets via flashback.