Winona Ryder says movie about West Virginia coal miners is ‘brilliant,’ one of her favorites

CHARLESTON, WV (WOWK) — While promoting her newest film, “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” Winona Ryder said “Matewan,” a movie about the West Virginia coal miners filmed in the Mountain State, is one of her favorites.

The John Sayles-directed film is set in 1920s Mingo County and dramatizes the Matewan Massacre , a bloody battle between coal miners and Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency men.

While Chris Cooper’s character—Joe Kenehan—is not real, the film follows real-life coal miners who are looking the form a union. Kenehan comes to Matewan to bring the members of the community together in the face of company forces and the detective agency.

When asked about her favorite movies by Letterboxd , a social media platform where users can rate and catalog what they watch, “Matewan” was the first on her list. She called it “brilliant” and said it had “a profound impact” on her.

The other choices she gave included “Au Revoir Les Enfants,” “Lost in America,” “Modern Romance” and “After Life.”

The “Stranger Things” and “Heathers” actress also went to The Criterion Closet, where stars both on and off the screen pick out their favorites from the boutique Blu-ray distributor’s catalog, which includes John Sayles’ “Matewan.”

“I really put ‘Matewan’ on the top of my list,” Ryder said while speaking to The Criterion Collection .

Some of her other choices included the previously mentioned movies—excluding “Modern Romance”—as well as a box set of John Cassavetes movies, “Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai,” “The Learning Tree” and “Down by Law.”

At the end of 2023, “Matewan” was added to the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry . It is now among hundreds of other “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant” films including ones with connections to the Mountain State, like “The Deer Hunter” and “ The Night of the Hunter .”

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