Monster March II: Frankenweenie (2012)

Frankenweenie is not quite the movie I was expecting. Certainly I got more than my fair share of Tim Burton hijinks, all angular bodies and the subtle terrors of the suburbs. What I wasn’t expecting was how much of a faithful and loving adaptation Frankenweenie would prove to be of the original James Whale Frankenstein – and what a fitting inclusion for Monster March II. (Remakes and mash-ups and sequels, oh my.)

Young Victor Frankenstein (Charlie Tahan) loses his beloved dog Sparky (Frank Welker) in an unfortunate accident, but the words of his eccentric science teacher (Martin Landau) inspire Victor to undertake his own experiment. Sparky lives! Yet as Victor struggles to keep his science project secret, his classmates begin to realize that his experiment has the potential to change their town.

 

From the beginning of Frankenweenie, it seems that Tim Burton has set out to make a film about his own childhood. The story begins with Victor screening his latest short film for his parents. Like Burton, Victor clearly has an appreciation for low-budget horror with all its gimmicks and movie magic, even equipping his parents with 3-D glasses for the living room premiere. It’s the sort of peculiar precise detail that suggests Burton actually lived this moment. Already the film was defying my expectations, and I do wish Burton had spent more time on this hobby of Victor’s; I’m not sure how it would fit into the Frankenstein allegory he’s telling, but it’s certainly unique and clearly a passion for Burton.

 

As Victor attempts to discover a world beyond his love for his dog, the film veers into a riff on Edward Scissorhands, which was itself a kind of Franken-fable (with Johnny Depp as a kinder, gentler creature who nonetheless became feared for his unnatural appearance). Here Burton’s obsession with the simulacrum of the suburbs is on full display; though the streets and houses all look normal, the people that occupy them are anything but – especially the children, who are cartoonish and borderline monstrous, even before their fierce competitive spirit drives them to burglarize his attic laboratory. Kids can be real creeps, Burton says here, and having had a childhood myself I would have to agree.

 

Yet if the film starts out in the vein of Edward Scissorhands, it well and truly reminds us by the end of the story that it’s from the same odd mind that brought us The Nightmare Before Christmas. Victor’s relationship with the reanimated Sparky is both bizarre and sweet, a comfortable niche for Burton, but the creature horror of the film’s third act puts one in mind of the vampire bat toy that Jack Skellington’s minions set loose on Christmas Eve. As the children of New Holland reanimate their pets, only some of whom have joined the choir invisible, one can almost hear Burton gleefully rubbing his hands together from behind the camera as he intones, “I will show you fear in a handful of sea monkeys!” 

 

Frankenweenie is plenty enjoyable, even when it feels a bit like a Tim Burton cover band, but it’s of particular interest this month for being a spot-on adaptation of the Frankenstein legend, especially as remediated through the lens of horror films like the Karloff classic. (Indeed, one neighborhood boy, voiced by Martin Short, may as well be Karloff.) Colin Clive’s ecstatic “It’s alive!” is replaced by Victor’s more jubilant “I did it!” And of course, no modern Frankenstein would be complete without Elsa Lanchester’s iconic hairdo from Bride of Frankenstein, though it would be criminal to spoil who gets to wear it. (Perhaps surprisingly, it’s not the neighbor girl Elsa Van Helsing, voiced by Winona Ryder.) This is a madcap Frankenstein, a mishmosh of all the iconography Burton loved as a child, run through his instantly recognizable stop-motion filter. It is perhaps exactly the movie you’d anticipate coming from Burton, but by the same token it’s never quite the movie you expect. After two hundred years, this old story still has a little spark to it.

Frankenweenie is rated PG for “thematic elements, scary images, and action.” Directed by Tim Burton. Written by John August and Tim Burton. Starring Charlie Tahan, Martin Short, Catherine O’Hara, Martin Landau, Winona Ryder, and Frank Welker.

Bat-May: Batman Returns (1992)

I was four years old at the time, but I remember Batman Returns feeling like the most important movie ever made. I had an oversized “making of” book that I read practically to shreds. I studied the biography of Tim Burton, pored over the photographs and teasers for the plot. I could even name for you the producer of the film (Denise Di Novi, a wonderfully Gotham-esque name). I had the toys, the fast food cups. And yet, I have no memory of when I first saw the movie itself. In a way, that’s the best metaphor for a review of Batman Returns – chock-full of unforgettable bits and bobs and yet so unwaveringly strange that the whole gets lost amid the mad sum of its ludic parts.

Batman Returns is the story of three freaks – The Bat (Michael Keaton), The Cat (Michelle Pfeiffer), and The Penguin (Danny DeVito). After the events of the first film, Batman spends his nights waiting for action, silently anticipating the call to fight crime. Amid an invasion of circus clowns, The Penguin arrives from the sewers, pleading with Gotham for an opportunity to learn the truth about why his parents abandoned him. Meanwhile, exhausted secretary Selina Kyle is defenestrated and murdered by her boss (Christopher Walken), only to be reincarnated with nine lives, a feline fixation, and a Shakespearean desire for revenge.

 

Just like I can’t say when I first saw Batman Returns, I can’t remember how many times I’ve seen it, but on this latest viewing I was largely unprepared for just how weird this movie gets. I have always maintained that the difference between Burton’s two Batman movies is that Batman is a Batman movie directed by Tim Burton, while Batman Returns is a Tim Burton movie (co‑)starring Batman. The difference is so apparent in this one; the Gotham sets are freakishly Burton, all odd angles and grim shadows, and Returns doubles-down on its predecessor’s premise that freaks beget freaks, with a brooding meditation on how these freaks find their place in a hostile society (they retreat, or they rebel).

 

In short, Batman Returns is so idiosyncratically Burton that it is impossible to imagine a major franchise film – a sequel, no less – surrendering so entirely to its auteur’s vision that the titular hero ends up being subsumed by the villains. (Today, the claim is usually the reverse, that the villains are largely indistinguishable when the movies are governed by the large personalities of franchise heroes. Can you name, for example, the three villains of the Iron Man franchise?) Indeed, Burton is much more fascinated by the monstrous Penguin and the sideways-feminist Catwoman (“I am Catwoman – hear me roar”), with Batman relegated to a largely supporting role in a film that is nominally his. Keaton’s Bruce Wayne is heroic mainly in that he has sublimated his freakish impulses and wears a mask of normalcy, which Penguin is unable to do while Catwoman is entirely unwilling. In a standout sequence, Bruce and Selina attend a masked ball sans disguise, underscoring that their civilian identities are the costumes. (It’s an image that has been appropriated forever since, with a notable reprise in The Dark Knight Rises.) Penguin, meanwhile, crashes the party, as DeVito crashes the film itself, all shouts and gurgles, bile and bodysuits. 

 

It's clear, however, that Burton’s sympathies lie with the villains. The film begins with the birth of Oswald Cobblepot, ultimately cast into a river for his monstrous appearance; despite the fact that the infant Oswald is clearly dangerous, murdering and devouring the family cat, Burton manages to find pathos in this act of attempted filicide. Likewise, at film’s end, Burton stages Penguin’s final scene as high tragedy, with oversized penguins waddling in what appears to be an impromptu funeral procession. In much the same vein that Batman (1989) belonged to Jack Nicholson’s Joker, Batman Returns is paced as if it’s Selina Kyle’s film. Selina gets a full origin story and ends up in a sort of inverted will-they-won’t-they, akin to Bruce’s arc with Vicki Vale (Kim Basinger) from Batman. Again, Burton feels more sympathy for Selina than he does for the curiously submissive Batman, evidenced by an elegiac sequence where Selina relives the trauma of her murder and proceeds to dismantle her entire apartment in a fugue of rage.

 

Putting it into plain English makes the film sound entirely normal, but I can’t undersell how bonkers this movie gets by adding a number of elements together. And these are all things that happen in the same movie: There’s an extended subplot about Penguin’s borderline-Trumpean bid for mayor, buoyed by Christopher Walken’s industrialist Max Shreck, who wants mayoral regime change to greenlight his construction of a power plant that will instead drain power from Gotham. (Shreck’s son, meanwhile, is played by Andrew Bryniarski, doing a transparently meatheaded Walken impression.) Circus clowns invade the edges of the frame, with Danny Elfman’s score veering carnivalesque at each turn. The whole thing is set at Christmas, casting a Burtonesque pall of sarcastic cheer over the affair. There are actual marching penguins, wearing rocket launchers, plotting to murder the children of Gotham. As delightfully strange as the movie is, one has the acutely nagging question during the whole film, “Warner Brothers was okay with this?!” (Spoilers for next week – they weren’t.)

 

I mentioned Danny Elfman, and he’s one of the main reasons this film succeeds. A good score can buoy any film, and while his Batman Returns score isn’t as bombastic or iconic as his work on Batman, it works really well by being dialed into exactly the movie Tim Burton wants to make. It’s traditionally superheroic when it needs to be (in those rare moments that Batman is doing hero work), but more often than not it’s playing in a strange realm of uncomfortable tragedy. His descending Penguin theme grows more and more militaristic, balanced as it is by the aforementioned carnival music. His Catwoman theme, on the other hand, plays like a tragic music box, swirling like his Edward Scissorhands work while highlighting the tragedy of Selina’s fall from innocence and her attempts to claw her way back toward peace.

 

Batman Returns is a film of beauty and of pain, in distinctly Burton ratios, but it is also a film almost as broadly painted as Batman ’66. Walken plays Max Shreck like a boogeyman, right down to the electrified hairdo, while DeVito’s Penguin is a thing of perverse revolting fascination, gruesome and grotesque in equal measure. Burbling black-green bile and groping every woman he finds, it is nearly impossible to find the tragic sympathy Burton feels for this grunting, snarling antagonist, who is handily the most revolting Batman foe ever committed to film. And yet, there is something expertly calibrated about Burton’s Gotham; as exquisitely eccentric as Burton’s vision may be, his Gotham seems very much of a piece with the comic book depiction. Gotham is a city of unending crime and corruption, of perpetual peril. Despite the mayor’s objections, a marauding gang of killer clowns seems to go hand-in-hand with Gotham City as a whole, particularly given the intimation that the clowns constitute a kind of haunting courtesy of Nicholson’s Joker. It’s almost a chicken-and-egg situation, where it’s unclear whether the comics birthed Burton or if Burton’s shadow warped the comics in his wake. (I’ll go out on a limb and venture the latter, though it’s equally Frank Miller’s fault.)

 

When I drew up the Personal Canon in 2016, there was no question that Batman belonged on it. That movie was nigh elemental in my love of superhero narratives. But Batman Returns was always the weird younger brother, the one who went away to art school and came back a changed man. I was never all the way comfortable with it, but neither could I relinquish it entirely. It’s always had a weird pull, especially as distinct from the twin day-glo Schumacher films; it was, before Christopher Nolan, what Batman movies ought to be.

 

Batman Returns is rated PG-13 for “brooding, dark violence.” Directed by Tim Burton. Written by Daniel Waters and Sam Hamm. Based on the DC Comics. Starring Michael Keaton, Danny DeVito, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Christopher Walken.

For more Bat-May action, the good folks at Collected Editions posted my review of Batman: The Movies, the comic book adaptation of the Batman Quadrilogy. Give them a click - no one reviews comics like Collected Editions!

Bat-May: Batman (1989)

I have so many fond memories of this movie that I scarcely know where to begin an objective review of Tim Burton’s Batman (affectionately dubbed Batman ’89 by a generation hoping – nay, longing – to distance it from an earlier era’s Batman ’66). I can’t recall with precision the first time I saw the film, but I can say with confidence that it was the very first DVD I owned, a gift from my father when the home video format was in its nascence. But when I first built my Personal Canon in 2016, it was a natural inclusion; I’ve loved this film for years, and it occurs to me that its peculiar bizarre nuttiness has really permeated my identity as a moviegoer.

Batman redefines the Dark Knight more than two decades after the go-go groovy incarnation embodied by Adam West and his Swinging Sixties interpretation. Here, Bruce Wayne (Michael Keaton) is a brooding specter of unrelenting justice, a mystery to his city and to Vicki Vale (Kim Basinger), who’s come to town to photograph Bruce’s vigilante alter ego, The Batman. While busting up criminal activity at Axis Chemicals, Batman inadvertently creates his greatest nemesis when Jack Napier emerges from a vat of acid as The Joker (Jack Nicholson), a self-described homicidal artist with murderous plans for Gotham City.

 

Batman is a film that is so iconic because of how quickly it dominated the cultural landscape. Much has been said and written about the cultural saturation of the film, how it changed the superhero genre and action films more broadly, how it reimagined how a blockbuster could perform at the box office. Nicholson’s Joker is both inextricable from the actor’s persona and yet wholly of a piece with the villain’s own flexible characterization; meanwhile, Keaton is to this day still proudly declaring, “I’m Batman.” While the comics had been taking Batman grim ’n’ gritty since the early 1970s (peaking in 1986 with Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns), Batman has the titanic reputation of being the movie that set the superhero genre down the straight and dour path.

 

This is not to say, however, that Batman isn’t a whole lot of fun. In my reviews of Batman: The Animated Series (and even The Killing Joke), I’ve consistently noticed how Mark Hamill’s Joker sets me giggling on a dime, but I’d forgotten that Nicholson’s Joker has the exact same effect. Nicholson’s strength comes from imbuing casual lines like “You’ll never believe what happened to me today” with deadpan sarcasm and repressed theatrical fire, to say nothing of how well that unique Joker look has aged, even on Blu-Ray. His wheezing laugh, too, so quintessential to any successful Joker, is a hoot, especially when it transforms into a fearless manic cackle, often looped over the following scenes, giving the sense that this movie is well and truly The Joker’s. Keaton’s great, too, a perhaps unexpected choice; in fact, he’s so good that we’ve all forgotten that there’s an extended sequence of Bruce Wayne in blue jeans, which feels more out-of-character than having Joker (spoilers) revealed to be the murderer of Thomas and Martha Wayne. But Nicholson doesn’t lean on his reputation; he earns top billing on the poster with a riveting performance that’s so markedly different from Heath Ledger’s Oscar-winning turn two decades later.

 

The older I get, and even as the world begins to retreat from the notion that superhero comics are (or at least ought to be) strictly for kids, I give a lot of thought to why these characters have become a kind of religion for me. Why do I cling to these four-color figures? In the case of this film, I think part of the appeal was that Batman was, for me, one of the first grown-up movies I’d ever seen – or at least it was one of the first that felt grown-up. It was a movie that didn’t talk down to me, didn’t try to pretty up the world. It painted a picture of life as a horrific carnival, Gotham City as a funhouse reflection of what civilization ought to be. It felt larger than life, but simultaneously it seemed entirely within reach, more gothic than the bright colors of a comic book page and yet divorced enough from reality that I could access it without fear. And it was a movie that didn’t really look like anything else I’d seen; it was almost certainly my first Tim Burton film, and the way it manages to make the dated feel timeless gave the film a very specific stylized identity I couldn’t find elsewhere on the video shelf. (His next film, Edward Scissorhands, feels very much a period piece, an homage to 1950s Anytown, USA.)

 

Of course, any discussion of Batman has to acknowledge the exquisitely baroque score by Danny Elfman, which has become the gold-standard anthem for multiple generations of Bat-fans. (No matter what you thought of the theatrical cut of Justice League, you had to love hearing that theme once more. It just felt right, scoring Ben Affleck astride the Bat-Signal.) The Animated Series owes so much to Elfman, as does this film overall. I’ll even venture to say that Elfman’s score is a character in itself, serving the same inextricable role here that John Williams’s work does for Star Wars; put another way, this film doesn’t work without Elfman’s ostentatious gusto over the scenes. That Bat-theme, the playful Joker melodies – heck, even the zany zeitgeist of including Prince in a few key scenes – there’s a reason these tracks are seared into our brains (and it’s not just the Lego Batman games, which aired them on an obsessive loop). Elfman is doing career – and genre – defining work with Batman.

 

If you haven’t seen Batman in a while, it’s high time for another look. On this latest rewatch, I was quite surprised by Alfred’s subplot. If at all, Alfred’s role lives on in cultural memory for the moment when he escorts Vicki Vale into the Batcave, blowing Bruce Wayne’s secret identity. But it’s a moment that the film earns by continually seeding Alfred’s desire for Bruce to move on and find safety in an end to his nightly crusade – all of which, if it seems faintly familiar, seems to anticipate Michael Caine’s “I won’t bury you” plot from The Dark Knight Rises. Michael Gough is quiet and unflappably avuncular as Alfred, a pitch-perfect counterpart to the high mania of the film’s dueling leads, but his deep compassion is so key to the character often brushed off as Batman’s butler. 

 

I was also struck by the mystery atmosphere that pervades the film, which feels quite fresh nearly thirty years later. We’re so used to superhero films that walk us through the origin story as a matter of course. But here, Batman’s backstory is presented as something of a mystery; it’s The Joker who gets the straightforward origin, lending further credence to the notion that the film is as much (if not more) his as Batman’s. Of course, it’s hard to imagine any filmgoer who doesn’t know who Batman is and how he came to be (I’ve only met one such person in my life), but the film introduces the familiar story beats in an innovative story structure that doles it out slowly, with gravity. When we finally get to the shooting of the Waynes, it’s nightmarish and ethereal, a hazy encounter with trauma, and it’s presented as the final cue to understanding Bruce Wayne’s psyche.

 

On that count, I’m not sure that the film succeeds – nor, I think, does it want or need to do so. Burton is content to leave Bruce Wayne as a somewhat enigmatic freak, locked in a chicken-and-egg struggle with Jack Napier. Who created whom? Were it not for the film’s ironclad concrete conclusion, one might almost imagine Burton’s universe operating under the conditions suggested by Heath Ledger’s Joker in his final sequence: “I think you and I are destined to do this forever.” With the news that Michael Keaton will be reprising his role in the Ezra Miller Flash film, at least half of that statement ended up applying. As for me, it’s one of my favorite movies of all time, so I’ll be returning to it forever.

 

Batman is rated PG-13. Directed by Tim Burton. Written by Sam Hamm and Warren Skaaren. Based on the DC Comics. Starring Jack Nicholson, Michael Keaton, Kim Basinger, Robert Wuhl, Pat Hingle, Billy Dee Williams, Michael Gough, and Jack Palance.

For more Bat-May action, the good folks at Collected Editions posted my review of Batman: The Movies, the comic book adaptation of the Batman Quadrilogy. Give them a click - no one reviews comics like Collected Editions!

Top 10 Christmas Season Movies - #4-3

This week, in anticipation of the Christmas season, we at The Cinema King would like to bring you more than just your usual share of recommendations.  So we present to you:  this week’s Top 10 list.  More specifically “The Top 10 Christmas Season Movies.”  Rather than fill the list with “obvious” choices of Christmas-y movies, there are a few “alternative” choices on the list – the overarching determining criterion is whether or not this is a movie that I will watch beginning to end, especially during (but not limited to) the Christmas season.

#4 – The Godfather (1972)
Honestly, The Godfather belongs on any Top 10 list this side of Hollywood, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that it landed here.  When I reviewed it back in April, I couldn’t say enough nice things about it, and my most recent rewatch reminded me just how perfect this film is.  So it meets the year-round requirement, because there’s honestly never a day that I wouldn’t watch this movie if I had the three hours to spare.  But what makes this movie seasonally appealing is that the end of the first act is set during the holiday seasons, a detail most might not remember.  To be fair, there’s so much about this film that’s unforgettable, and Christmas is perhaps a small detail on which to fixate.  But when the Don is shot by Sollozzo’s goons, Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall) is out Christmas shopping, Michael (Al Pacino) is at a holiday matinee with his girl Kay (Diane Keaton), and snow falls amid the Christmas lights adorning the hospital where the Don lays in state.  Although Sollozzo is insincere when he bids Tom “Merry Christmas!” the cheer the film brings is a fine fit for the festive season.

#3 – The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
Tim Burton for the hat-trick!  Though he didn’t direct The Nightmare Before Christmas (Henry Selick did), his influence as producer and story-writer is acutely felt in this holiday double-dipper, suitable for Halloween and for Christmas.  Be honest, you already know all the lines by heart, and there’s a little part of you that can’t help but sing “What’s This?” every time you see the first snowfall of the season (which, up in my neck of the woods, still has yet to be).  As the spooky setting of Halloween Town gives way to the cheery bliss of Christmas Town, share in the sense of magic and wonder as Jack Skellington (voiced by Chris Sarandon and Danny Elfman) rediscovers all that is charming about the December holiday.  Even though the residents of Halloween Town (spoilers?) get it wrong in the end, the spirit of Christmas – embodied by Santa Claus – reminds them that their hearts were in the right place, and the sweetness of the film is matched only by its infectious enthusiasm for its own unique concept.

Come back tomorrow for the epic conclusion:  Movies #2-1!  Place your bets now, ladies and gentlemen...

Top 10 Christmas Season Movies - #6-5

This week, in anticipation of the Christmas season, we at The Cinema King would like to bring you more than just your usual share of recommendations.  So we present to you:  this week’s Top 10 list.  More specifically “The Top 10 Christmas Season Movies.”  Rather than fill the list with “obvious” choices of Christmas-y movies, there are a few “alternative” choices on the list – the overarching determining criterion is whether or not this is a movie that I will watch beginning to end, especially during (but not limited to) the Christmas season.

#6 – Batman Returns (1992)
Come on, you’re reading The Cinema King – you had to expect Batman at some point on this list.  I’ve commented elsewhere that Batman stories and Christmas go together like gingerbread cookies and eggnog, and Tim Burton’s second outing as the Bat-director plays that card to the hilt.  Burton’s Gotham remains gothic under a blanket of snow and all the tinsel of a major metropolis decked-out for the holidays.  Michael Keaton is back as Bruce Wayne; Batman’s enemies here are The Penguin and Catwoman, with Danny DeVito and Michelle Pfeiffer turning in iconic performances.  It’s never a bad time to watch a Batman film, and Batman Returns is one of the better Bat-movies – even if it’s more a Tim Burton movie where Batman plays a supporting role to a literal traveling carnival of freaks.  But watching Batman defend the lighting of Gotham’s Christmas tree ought to give anyone a dose of holiday cheer.

#5 – Die Hard (1988)
In many ways, Die Hard is a de facto choice for any tongue-in-cheek list of Christmas movies.  It’s so far from most films classically considered to be Christmas movies; it’s clearly a late-80s action movie starring Bruce Willis as the yippee-ki-yaying cop John McClane.  But there’s an element overlooked by most, what those in the know remember about this movie once December rolls around:  that office party that Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman) and his gang raid?  It’s a Christmas Eve soiree, which accounts for how every cop in New York can surround the skyscraper when the heist goes down.  Add in John McClane’s classic “Ho Ho Ho” message he scrawls on the body of a thug wearing a Santa hat – you can bet that wasn’t on Gruber’s Christmas list.  At its core, though, Die Hard is just a great bit of fun, filled with classic action, clever dialogue, and enough Yuletide cheer to make even the grouchiest Grinch a little peppier.

Come back tomorrow for #4-3!

Top 10 Christmas Season Movies - #8-7

This week, in anticipation of the Christmas season, we at The Cinema King would like to bring you more than just your usual share of recommendations.  So we present to you:  this week’s Top 10 list.  More specifically “The Top 10 Christmas Season Movies.”  Rather than fill the list with “obvious” choices of Christmas-y movies, there are a few “alternative” choices on the list – the overarching determining criterion is whether or not this is a movie that I will watch beginning to end, especially during (but not limited to) the Christmas season.

#8 – Edward Scissorhands (1990) 
Tim Burton’s fourth film is a solid choice for Christmas and a bit of a gimme for this list, but it’s one that doesn’t insist upon itself as a holiday film because of the absence of snow.  Ever the imaginative one, Burton sets the film in snowless suburbia, letting the spirit of the story take center stage.  And what a sweet story it is, a contemporary fairy tale with that Burton edge; Johnny Depp is iconic as the titular silent protagonist, nonthreatening despite his bladed fingers.  His romance with Winona Ryder covers the sentimental requirement, and Burton’s trademark sly sarcasm toward the cookie-cutter neighborhood makes this a year-round treat.  But lest you forget why Edward Scissorhands makes this list, keep your eyes peeled for the ubiquitous Christmas lights and reindeer decorations, and the fabulist explication for why it snows during the frame story is as touching as they come.

#7 – Goodfellas (1990) 
I’ve already lavished praise on this film, one of Martin Scorsese’s gangster epics and quite possibly one of the greatest films of all time.  It’s sharp, it’s witty, it’s thrilling, and it’s downright entertaining, cementing Robert De Niro’s reputation and forging one for Ray Liotta and Joe Pesci.  But what’s it doing on a Christmas list?  It’s not exactly a festive film, what with the strong bloody violence and general criminality.  After the film’s major “Lufthansa heist” segment, in which the mobsters successfully pull off the score of their lifetime, they celebrate with – what else? – an office Christmas party, all set to The Ronettes’ “Frosty the Snowman.”  Though the décor is festive, the demeanor of Jimmy Conway (De Niro) is anything but; in fact, he’s downright Grinchy as he demands that his goons take back the mink coats and Cadillacs they’ve bought with their share of the loot.  You could even argue that this Christmas scene is the pivotal turning point of the film, for when the soundtrack shifts to Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love,” you know that scowl on Jimmy’s face bodes ill for his little elves.

Come back tomorrow for #6-5!

Dark Shadows (2012)

Most of us were probably squealing with delight when we heard that Tim Burton and Johnny Depp were channeling the old Dark Shadows soap opera in an attempt to take the vampire crown back from the tweener Twilight crowd.

What we got probably won’t dethrone Edward Cullen as pop culture’s current top vampire, but it’s exactly what diehard Burton/Depp fans will enjoy.

After being cursed, vampirized, and resurrected, Barnabas Collins (Depp) awakens in 1972 to find his family’s name in danger of stasis.  Taken in by the family’s current matriarch Elizabeth (Michelle Pfeiffer) and assisted by the groundskeeper (Jackie Earle Haley), Barnabas works to rebuild his family’s fishing industry, which places him in direct competition with Angelique Bouchard (Eva Green) – the witch who cursed him 200 years ago.

Added to the mix are Elizabeth’s angsty teen daughter Carolyn (Chloe Moretz), scandal-prone uncle Roger (Jonny Lee Miller) and his ghost-plagued son David (Gulliver McGrath), Barnabas’s lover reincarnated as the family nanny (Bella Heathcote), and the alcoholic live-in psychiatrist Julia Hoffman (Burton mainstay Helena Bonham Carter).

I catalogued meticulously the ensemble cast behind Depp because this movie has no shortage of plotlines.  It seems that Burton and screenwriter Seth Grahame-Smith (late of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies fame) are trying to replicate the structure of a soap opera, in that characters and plots alternate center stage.  But it doesn’t quite work on film – as a result, great actors like Carter are underused, while clear talents like Moretz are forced to wait their turn, while others still, like Miller, never really see their moment arrive.

As a consequence of all this waiting, many of the actors seem irritated.  While all this scowling and frowning and grimacing does set a certain mood within the film, it’s a distancing mood for the audience.  When all the other characters seem impatient, I get restless too, waiting for the next scene with the actors who seem to be indulging in the spirit of what the movie ought to be.

The two talents who do shine, perhaps predictably, are Depp and Green.  Depp manages to distinguish this British character from Sweeney Todd and Captain Jack Sparrow, immersing himself in the role just as we’d expect of him; Depp is the master of the reaction shot, toeing the line between “creature of the night” and “fish out of water.”  As for Green, she makes her character’s evil infectious, giving us the sense that she’s having a tremendous amount of fun being nasty; in the hands of a less capable actress this would have been a one-note “pretty face” role, but Green creates with aplomb a memorable villain and a worthy adversary for Barnabas.

When I said that Sweeney Todd was “the movie Tim Burton’s been trying to make all his life,” I didn’t realize how sadly prophetic that statement would be.  While I contend that Sweeney Todd is Top Ten Tim, his subsequent work has been somewhat less than.  2009’s Alice in Wonderland was lackluster, and Dark Shadows isn’t quite the revelation I had hoped.  Again, it’s exactly what I expected.  What it doesn’t do is transcend those expectations.

Indeed, the film’s basic attitude can be summed up with the line, “I’m a werewolf.  Deal with it.”  Certainly we can deal with it, but I wanted a little more.  The film is exactly a werewolf, but it’s a bit declawed.  It has its strengths, and it’s another Tim Burton movie, but it didn’t blow me away.

See it, sure, but it’s no Avengers.

Dark Shadows is rated PG-13 for “comic horror violence, sexual content, some drug use, language and smoking.”  Vampires feast, but for comic effect; blood is omnipresent. Much of the film revolves around a seduction plot, again played for comic effect.  Since it’s the Seventies, there’s drinking, smoking, and pot throughout.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005)

If it's Day Two of Depp Week here on The Cinema King, that means it must be Tuesday. And if you're smelling cocoa beans, don't adjust your set, because that indicates only that we're coming under the chocolate waterfall to the next Depp/Burton collaboration under scrutiny (and a surefire chance for yet another food metaphor) - 2005's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Here Depp plays eccentric recluse and chocolate bar wunderkind Willy Wonka, who for the first time is opening his factory's doors to the five lucky winners of a candy bar contest. Those bearers of the golden tickets - gluttonous Augustus Gloop, uber-competitive Violet Beauregarde, covetous Veruca Salt, media addict Mike Teavee, and good-natured Charlie Bucket (Freddie Highmore) - are treated to an all-access tour of the factory and all its magical secrets. But as this is a Roald Dahl story, the children's own vices - and the sins of their parents - will prove to be their chocolatey downfall, and the most virtuous of them will be rewarded.

I'll say in honesty that this is not Johnny Depp's finest performance. It's a good turn by him. It's typical Depp - wholly engrossed in the part and just this side of normal. But it's not his best. Comparatively, it's about as good as his turn in Alice in Wonderland. Willy Wonka is good, and there's nothing wrong with him, but it's just that we know Depp is capable of so much more. Of course, there's no other performance in the film that comes close to what Depp's up to (save perhaps Deep Roy, who portrays all the Oompa-Loompas, even the female ones), but Willy Wonka is just good but not great. But then again, even when Johnny Depp "phones it in," it's only the difference between an express train and a bullet train.

But I think the strongest comment I can make in praise of Charlie - and really, I did enjoy it, even after about one or two viewings a year until this most recent one - is that it's leaps and bounds better than its predecessor, 1971's ill-advised Newley/Bricusse musical version, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, led by Gene Wilder. A large part of this is due to the fact that this interpretation - as recognizable as it is as a product of director Burton's unique vision - adheres much closer to Roald Dahl's sensibilities than did the music-and-whimsy Wilder version. As much fun as Wilder was as Wonka (indeed, his version remains definitive in a way that Depp's isn't yet), the fact is that the original movie is a stinker; the acting is lame, the songs lamer, and a corporate espionage plotline shoehorned into the already meandering screenplay. Here the only songs are from Dahl's own book, sung gleefully by the Oompa-Loompas (all voiced by the unequivocal genius and frequent Burton partner Danny Elfman) after each child's inevitable and quasi-grisly exit from the factory; that the songs are all different (one a Brit-pop ballad, another an apparent homage to Queen) and closer to the source material belies a more earnest feel, something I never got from "Pure Imagination" or "I've Got a Golden Ticket" (which I detested so much that I can't be bothered to verify that was the actual title of the song Jack Albertson sang in the 1971 version).

So it sounds good, but the film looks even better, filled with Burton trademark flourishes and near-cameos by Burton regulars Helena Bonham Carter (as Charlie's mother) and Christopher Lee. It's Lee's turn as Wonka's father - dentist Dr. Wilbur Wonka - that's one of the more inspired additions to the film; while Wilbur appears nowhere in the original novels, his addition feels natural and lends a degree of plausibility to the otherwise indulgently kooky Wonka character. It humanizes the character in a way that it's almost impossible to remember that the candy mogul didn't originally have a chocophobic dentist for a father. But this is a movie that would work just as well on "Mute" as it would with the audio on; it's more colorful than a 96-count Crayola box, and it's fluid in a way that recalls the chocolate waterfall at the film's centerpiece.

But I do need to answer the criticism that I've often leveled while invoking this movie's name. I've said before that this film and others suffer from a creative mindset of "These are the story beats we need to hit, so let's keep moving because there's a lot we have to cover." Perhaps it's a casualty of the actual plot of the movie - a tour through certain rooms in which dramatic set pieces occur. But there's never a feel that anything in this movie is not preordained; certainly there are overt implications that Willy Wonka has planned each child's demi-demise, but there's a similar lack of creativity in the screenplay adaptation. Wilbur Wonka aside, it's almost too faithful, slavishly loyal to the source material; there's never a sense, for example, that there are other rooms in the factory beyond the few the kiddies get to see (although we do get shots of other rooms much later in the film). Consequently, it feels almost too generic, as though there are no other alternatives for how this whole thing will shake itself out.

In short, it's better than that other one. It feels pretty close, but it looks vastly different. That's the most critical deviation - the Burton look. And tossing Johnny Depp into the mix never hurt, either.

Hey, look at that. Nary a culinary metaphor in sight. Well done, indeed.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is rated a mere PG "for quirky situations, action and mild language." I'm not even going to pretend I know what that means. It's cartoonish, so the kids can probably handle it.

Depp Week continues into Wednesday with Once Upon a Time in Mexico, but keep your eyes peeled for a special bonus post between now and then, featuring a certain doe-eyed Disney star who's no stranger to this site. Stay tuned!

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007)

Happy Monday, folks, and welcome to Depp Week at The Cinema King. In celebration of the work of one of the most talented actors of our generation, we'll begin our look at some of Johnny Depp's recent work and evaluate how he's done over the last ten years. We'll begin with the performance that netted Depp his third Oscar nod and his first (and, to this date, only) Golden Globe win: that of the singing, slicing barber Sweeney Todd.

One of my earliest musical reviews (of Hairspray, also from 2007) conducted itself in a song-by-song analysis, which was a format I found a) conducive to musical reviews and b) a stylistic shake-up amid the tedium of formula. I'll begin by way of a few prefatory notes. First, I am enamored with this movie; I've said before that it is the movie Tim Burton's been trying to make all his life. Second, I concede that it is not for everyone: Johnny Depp's performance is among his best, but it may not be for everyone; the brutal violence is stunning in a way that may repulse; and a few alterations to the source material may cause Sondheim diehards to spurn this adaptation. Finally, it is a musical, a fact not made apparent by the marketing team, and so some moviegoers may feel tricked. But, if you're like me - an open-minded Depp-head with a Burton fetish (for that is how best Burton's imagery may be described) - Sweeney Todd might be more delicious than a meatpie - with or without human filling.

The film opens on a ship (no, not a pirate ship; that's later on in Depp Week) with the mysterious Sweeney Todd (Depp) and the wide-eyed sailor Anthony (Jamie Campbell Bower) each arguing that "There's No Place Like London." Anthony comes from a place of naivete, suggesting that London is the most beautiful city in the world, while Sweeney Todd - fresh off an unjust stint in prison - remarks on the ugliness of the city by way of an anecdote about a barber (Sweeney, pre-prison) and his wife who were targeted by the dastardly Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman). The story ends unfinished, and the two part ways. Depp instantly inhabits the skin of the dark and disturbed stranger, evoking pathos before we even know why his eyes are so sunken; Bower is sort of beige, more of a sounding board than an actual character, but at least his singing voice is professional-sounding.
Sweeney finds his way to Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter) and her meat pie emporium, wherein are sold "The Worst Pies in London." It's a perfect introduction to Mrs. Lovett and a perfect opportunity for HBC to show off just how delectably nutty she can be as she bemoans the bad luck her business has suffered. HBC continues to shine with "Poor Thing," as she reveals to Sweeney that his wife has killed herself, which leads Sweeney into the revenge ballad "My Friends," essentially a love song to the razors he plans to use as murder weapons. As Mrs. Lovett cloys and attempts to ingratiate herself with Sweeney, HBC gets one more chance to kook it up, but all eyes on this number ought to be on Depp, who pushes his voice as far as it can go - and succeeds.

The plot takes a step back for a moment as Anthony meets the love of his life - Joanna (Jayne Wisener), Sweeney's daughter and ward to Judge Turpin. The catch is that she's locked up ("Green Finch and Linnet Bird"), and her legal guardian isn't too keen on letting her go. The obvious solution here is to sing about it - Anthony gets the solo "Joanna" and promises to free his love before the end of the movie. This set of tracks might turn a few viewers away, but do stick with the film: Anthony and Joanna are slower parts of the picture, but intentionally so, as they're to provide a sort of counterpoint to the Sweeney/Lovett madness. Indeed, Joanna is more a MacGuffin than an actual character, since she's the thing Sweeney, Anthony, and Turpin are all chasing.

The plot takes a second, albeit more intriguing detour with "Pirelli's Miracle Elixir," a street-performance-turned-sales-pitch. The host, the Italian Adolfo Pirelli (Sacha Baron Cohen), serenades about his potion, which he and his young apprentice Toby (Ed Sanders) promise will regrow hair. But Sweeney calls them out and initiates "The Contest," a shaving competition to see who is the better barber. I won't spoil who the victor of the challenge is, but I will say that this is a great branching-out role for Cohen. Though he's known for his prankumentaries like Borat and Bruno, Cohen is at home as Pirelli, whose theatricality demands an actor who can play comedy with a straight face; Cohen is that actor, balancing the disingenuous front Pirelli wears with the actual menace beneath the blue frills.

Disheartened that his scheme is running slowly, Sweeney sulks as Mrs. Lovett encourages him to "Wait." It's a fairly low-key moment, but compared to the high intensity to come, it's a much needed breather, and it gives Burton a chance to play with some interesting angles and shots of mirrors in what is otherwise a scene of just one person singing to another. The calm, of course, precedes a storm, and with "Pretty Women" Sweeney gets his opportunity for revenge on Judge Turpin. It's a fantastically tense moment, as Sweeney readies his razors. It's also a unique scene because how often do you get to hear Alan Rickman sing? As quickly as this scene begins, it ends abruptly; Anthony interrupts, sending the Judge out of the barber shop and Sweeney into a rage. Suddenly, Sweeney has his "Epiphany" - the world is filled with monsters like Judge Turpin, which means the revenge scheme is thinking too small. As Sweeney vows to slit as many throats as possible, you'll get chills; finally, after about an hour of playing his cards close to the chest, Depp cuts loose and unleashes the full scope of his character's madness. It's this scene, as well as the next hour to follow, that I'm convinced earned Depp his nomination, since it's what fans of his trademark audacious insanity have come to expect and cherish.

And how do we top a number about genocide? Add cannibalism to the mix, suggests Mrs. Lovett in "A Little Priest." With all the bodies piling up, she teases, why not use them to boost my business, too? The song is infectiously loony, catchy in a way that giggles after laughing gas are; we know this is wrong, but the sheer normality and the subdued mirth evident in the performances of Depp and HBC are precursors to the kind of dark humor that governs the movie. But the movie pulls back a little from high satire and returns to its tragic roots with a reprise of "Joanna," in which Anthony's continuing love for Joanna is counterbalanced with Sweeney's sad realization that his original mission has slipped away from him - and that he no longer cares. Visually this is the most spectacular number, loosing Burton's bloody vision for the character by depicting throat after throat slit in spectacularly gushing fashion like something out of Tarantino's wildest imaginings; by pulling back on the intensity of the singing, it provides a built-in apology for the somewhat odd choice of casting Johnny Depp in a musical, since the feelings behind the music are vastly more important - and Depp does a dynamite job of revealing those emotions.

Mrs. Lovett dominates the next few tracks: "God, That's Good!" in which she introduces a hungry London to her latest culinary concoction; "By the Sea," a perfectly deluded number in which she details her lovestruck vision for a blissful future with an otherwise disinterested Sweeney; and "Not While I'm Around," in which she's forced to make a difficult promise to Toby, who's beginning to grow wise to Sweeney's machinations upstairs. The real highlight, though, is the Shakespearean tragedy that governs the film's ten-minute "Final Scene." Here, all the disparate plot threads - Sweeney's quest for revenge on the Judge, Mrs. Lovett's conflict over her love for Sweeney and for Toby, Anthony's pursuit of Joanna, and even that nutty old beggar woman who's been meandering in and out of the plot - tangle together with lightning speed, and before you know it, it's over - culminating in the most heartbreaking homage to the Pieta. Burton omits (wisely, in the opinion of this reviewer) the stage production's songs in the final scene, making it more about the things that characters aren't saying to each other; it's visually stunning and composed in a way that instills a building sense of dread that closes with a cathartic collapse of the house of cards these characters have built for themselves.

It's a film that'll leave you breathless. Once you've caught your breath, though, you might find yourself humming along to a few bars. It'll take a lot more than ale to wash that taste out.
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is rated R "for graphic bloody violence." The movie is littered with angry arterial sprays, though all the blood appears in a highly stylized form, much thicker and color-desaturated than its real-life counterpart.

Tune in tomorrow, folks, because we're looking at another Depp/Burton collaboration - Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - as Depp Week continues here at The Cinema King.

Alice in Wonderland (2010)

I should begin by saying there isn't anything wrong with Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland. But.

That's admittedly a strange way to begin a review, but Burton's version of the Lewis Carroll stories (equal parts remake and sequel) is admittedly a strange movie.

In this version, Alice (fresh face Mia Wasikowska) is 19, facing a less-than-exciting engagement and befuddled by recurring dreams of Wonderland in all its smiling-cat glory. After ditching her would-be fiance for a white rabbit (Michael Sheen, famous as David Frost in Frost/Nixon) in a waistcoat, Alice falls down the rabbit hole, and the classic hijinks ensue - tense confrontations with the decapitation-prone Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter, replete with a digitally enhanced cranium), a zany tea party with The Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp), and a duel with the monstrous Jabberwocky (voiced with gusto by Christopher Lee).

I began the review as I did because I want to make it clear that the movie is as fun and enjoyable as most anything with Tim Burton's name on it. I also wanted to make clear that my disappointment with the movie doesn't hinder its capacity to be enjoyed by filmgoers. Okay, that's complicated - how can a movie's main flaw not be a flaw at all? Let's unpack that.

Beginning with the good news - the cast is vivacious and delightful as always. Johnny Depp gets his name before the title of the movie, likely because of his star power; his quirky eccentricities and a heavy dose of pathos in his backstory contribute to a fresh spin on the character, distancing him from the stereotypical nutjob as fully as Depp inhabits the character (which, like all his roles, is a complete immersion). HBC jokes that she plays in all of Burton's films because she's his wife, but the incontrovertible truth is that she's at her best when she's playing a completely disjointed person like the Red Queen; her first scene (in which she interrogates several frogs-in-waiting about her missing cranberry tarts) sets the stage for a mentally unhinged portrait, and her repeated cries of "Off with his/her/their head!" will make any filmgoer giggle with glee. As the White Queen (Red's sister), Anne Hathaway is - in Alice's parlance - "curiouser and curiouser," because I'm still not sure what to make of her; Hathaway bounds about the screen with the angelic grace of a waltz for one, but there seems to be a bit of madness ready to slip out at inopportune moments. Certainly this is an all-star cast (yes, that's Alan Rickman as the Caterpillar, here named Absolem), but keep your eyes on scene-stealer Matt Lucas, who ably juggles the dual role of eggbodied twins Tweedledum & Tweedledee (or is it the other way around?).

Screenwriter Linda Woolverton does a clever job of weaving a new through-line into the classic story; it's not spoiling anything to say that Alice is called upon to battle the Jabberwocky and dethrone the Red Queen, but there's a slyness at play that puts a new relevance on familiar occurrences. The Cheshire Cat matters more in this version; no longer is he just a grinning feline evaporating in the trees, but he's now a turncoat seeking redemption at every turn; similarly, the Mad Hatter's not mad per se, but he's getting there. Hats off (pardon the pun) to Woolverton, who also turned Hamlet into The Lion King.

So there's nothing really wrong with the movie, but here comes the bad news. The bad news is that Burton could have done much better. Again, that isn't to say that the movie's bad or missteps in any places, but there's a certain feel to the movie that doesn't quite match the Tim Burton style (wildly imaginative and visually disorienting in a Rembrandt kind of way). Maybe it's his fidelity to the source material; though the film has a smart new story arc, I have the same complaint about this one that I did about Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. That is, there are certain story beats that any adaptation simply must hit, and there's a fine line there between pulling it off and feeling unimaginative; Alice has its moments, but it often feels like we're moving from room to room on a predestined chocolate factory tour.

Similarly, I felt like Depp was holding back in a lot of places; his Mad Hatter could have been so much more. What we get isn't bad - the decision to speak in a Scottish accent whenever provoked to anger is new and different - but perhaps I've come to expect too much. It's classic Depp, but perhaps "classic Depp" is last year's style. The film is "Classic Burton," too, but it never quite pushes the limit of what I've come to expect from the director. I've always considered 2007's Sweeney Todd to be the movie Tim Burton had been gearing up for his entire life, so it's a tough act to follow in that respect.

I can't say that anyone did any wrong here. Perhaps Depp and Burton's creative juices are on hold after Sweeney Todd (which, no matter what one feels about the movie as a musical, has to be awarded a medal for ambition and enthusiastic execution). Perhaps Disney held the reins too tightly on Burton and Co. (a slapdash nod to the 1951 animated version feels like the kind of overt nod that Burton's usually more subtle about). Whatever the case, I remain pleased but disappointed (if one can feel those two emotions at once) with Alice in Wonderland and look forward to Burton's next pairing with Depp - an adaptation of the campy vampire soap Dark Shadows.

Alice in Wonderland has one of the strangest ratings of all time - "PG for fantasy action/violence involving scary images and situations, and for a smoking caterpillar." I mean, I guess that makes sense.