Wes Anderson and Richard Linklater –prominent writer/directors, Texas natives (both have roots in Houston) and coincidentally my two favorite humans. Their latest films were nominated for Best Motion Picture this year and, delving further, their careers have evolved at very similar rates, humbly paving the quaint dirt road that was the indie film scene in the ‘90s with Slacker and Bottle Rocket. Onward, they transitioned to tastemakers, acquiring cult followings with Dazed and Confused and The Royal Tenenbaums. With each film Anderson and Linklater make, their toolbox gets a little bigger without compromising their eclectic and pridefully offbeat styles, one vastly different from the other, yet hauntingly similar. Which leads to the question, who does it better?

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I don’t remember the first time I saw Girl, Interrupted, the 1999 psychological drama based on Susanna Kaysen’s memoir of the same name, but I do remember that it came, for me, in a time of great Winona Ryder obsession. This was around seventh grade, and while part of me definitely hankered for bedazzled Abercrombie jeans and a T-Mobile Sidekick like all the popular girls, there existed a small yet ardent flame inside me that ignited whenever I watched Winona onscreen. Her dark, emotive eyes, the secondhand clothes, the insistence on shunning both what was trendy and what would give you a tan–this was an actress who spoke to the weird girls, the shy ones, the artists. Like a vegetarian dog offered raw meat for a change, my soul immediately perked up for Winona and proceeded to go crazy. I was a goner from my first Winona film, Beetlejuice, a grand slam for fans of Tim Burton, but which was a little too oddball-horror for my emo-teen aesthetic.

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