Winona Ryder’s 10 Best Movies, According To Rotten Tomatoes

Winona Ryder was one of the biggest movie stars in the ‘80s and ‘90s, mostly thanks to her cult classic collaborations with director Tim Burton. Then she slipped off of Hollywood’s radar following her shoplifting scandal. But after taking a starring role in Netflix’s nostalgic sci-fi horror series Stranger Things, she’s back on the rise. No one expected the ‘80s-set drama to be a hit, but now, it’s one of the most popular shows on the air. Over a career as long as Ryder’s, there are bound to be a few disappointments, but she’s also starred in plenty of great movies. So, here are Winona Ryder’s 10 Best Movies, According To Rotten Tomatoes.

10 Looking for Richard (81%)

Al Pacino’s directorial debut, Looking for Richard, is an ambitious blend of documentary and drama. It’s both a performance of William Shakespeare’s Richard III and a study of the Bard’s continuing social relevance in the modern day. Pacino stars as both himself and the title character of Shakespeare’s classic play, while Winona Ryder plays Lady Anne alongside a handful of other prominent actors taking roles from the play, such as Kevin Spacey as Buckingham (over 20 years before the shocking truth about him would be revealed) and Alec Baldwin as Clarence. Looking for Richard is a curious movie, but also, ultimately, a strong one.

9 The Age of Innocence (83%)

There are very few Martin Scorsese films that don’t become well-known classics — though Bringing Out the Dead, Silence and After Hours come to mind — and The Age of Innocence unfortunately falls into that category. It’s a shame, too, because it’s really an astounding film. Scorsese managed to breathe cinematic life into Edith Wharton’s literary classic.

The glitzy, ethereal, magical imagery that swirls in the imagination when you’re reading the book is what Scorsese put up on the big screen. Winona Ryder stars in a cast filled with A-list talent like Michelle Pfeiffer and Daniel Day-Lewis. This is one of the rare cases where Scorsese worked on the script as well as the direction.

8 TIE: Beetlejuice (84%)

One of many collaborations between Winona Ryder and acclaimed filmmaker Tim Burton, Beetlejuice is a unique and fascinating blend of dark fantasy, gothic horror, and zany comedy. If those genres seem like they’d be difficult to balance tonally, that’s because they undoubtedly would — in the hands of anyone other than the German expressionist-influenced Burton and comedian-turned-Batman Michael Keaton. Most of the film is set in the realm between life and death, as a couple is killed in a car accident and make a deal with a freelance ghoul to keep new buyers out of their house. We’ve been waiting for a sequel for decades now.

7 TIE: Experimenter (84%)

Experimenter is an underrated biopic of the controversial sociologist Stanley Milgram. In 1961, Milgram conducted a series of radical behavior experiments at Yale University. The first half of the movie follows these experiments into general social interactions, including how Milgram came up with them and how they turned out. The second half follows Milgram as he deals with the very public controversy that came as a result of his experimentation. Peter Sarsgaard plays Milgram in the movie, which was written and directed by Michael Almereyda. Winona Ryder played Sasha, the woman who eventually married him and had his two kids.

6 Black Swan (85%)

After making a movie about wrestling, which he considered to be the pinnacle of low art, Darren Aronofsky decided to make a movie about ballet, which he considers to be the pinnacle of high art. The stars of Black Swan are Natalie Portman, who begins to see her doppelganger around town as she devolves into insanity, and Mila Kunis, who represents Portman’s darkly mirrored self. Winona Ryder played Beth MacIntyre, whose corresponding character from the titular ballet is named as “the Dying Swan” in the film’s closing credits. Black Swan’s script was heavily inspired by Dostoyevsky’s classic novella The Double.

5 Frankenweenie (87%)

Back in 2012, Tim Burton remade one of his earliest animated shorts as a feature-length movie. Frankenweenie is a horror comedy that homages the Mary Shelley  literary classic by telling the sweet story of a boy who loses his beloved pet dog and conducts scientific experiments to bring him back to life. Before long, everyone in town is asking him to zombify their pets. Burton maintained the spirit of his initial short film, while suitably fleshing out the story to the length of a feature film without it feeling forced. Winona Ryder voices the neighbor, Elsa Van Helsing.

4 Edward Scissorhands (90%)

Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands was inspired by a picture that Burton drew when he was a kid. He sketched a Gothic figure with blades for fingers, and years later, he would place that character in a bright, colorful, suburban Californian setting and humanize him.

Rather than make this character a monster or a villain, Burton imagined what it would be like if this guy tried to eat dinner or fell in love with someone or lived in a community that feared him. Johnny Depp played the title character as a tragic hero, while Winona Ryder played the object of his affections.

3 Little Women (91%)

Louisa May Alcott’s classic novel Little Women is about to get another big-screen outing, courtesy of Lady Bird director Greta Gerwig, but the last major adaptation came out in 1994. Winona Ryder starred in the lead role as Jo March, a role that will be tackled by Saoirse Ronan in Gerwig’s upcoming re-adaptation, which will hit theaters on Christmas this year. Jo is the anchor of Little Women. She’s a smart, ambitious young woman who dreams of becoming an author. Such greats as Susan Sarandon, Kirsten Dunst, Christian Bale, and Claire Danes joined Ryder in this talent-laden cast of A-listers.

2 Heathers (93%)

It’s not often that a pitch-black comedy gets made at a major Hollywood studio starring A-list players, which is why Heathers came as a breath of fresh air back in 1988. Winona Ryder stars as a good girl whose straight-A reputation is disrupted when she becomes a member of a clique of popular girls (three out of four of whom are called Heather), so she teams up with an outcast, played hysterically by Christian Slater, to murder them. It’s basically Mean Girls meets Strangers on a Train and it’s just as fun and wacky and crazy as that description would suggest.

1 Star Trek (94%)

J.J. Abrams’ reboot of the Star Trek film series saved the whole franchise. Abrams updated Star Trek’s outdated mythology and set designs for the modern day, while remaining true to its essence and who its characters are at their core. By setting the story in a parallel universe, Abrams avoided fans’ uproar over canonical tweaks. Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto made for a fantastic pairing as Kirk and Spock, respectively, both in nailing their characters individually and having palpable on-screen chemistry. Winona Ryder played a small but pivotal supporting role as Amanda Grayson, Spock’s mother from whom he gets his human side.

About The Author

Ben Sherlock
(3465 Articles Published)

Ben Sherlock is a writer, comedian, independent filmmaker, and Burt Reynolds enthusiast. He writes lists for Screen Rant and features and reviews for Game Rant. He’s currently in pre-production on his first feature (and has been for a while, because filmmaking is expensive). You can catch him performing standup at odd pubs around the UK that will give him stage time. Previously, he wrote for Taste of Cinema, Comic Book Resources, and BabbleTop.

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