Mars Attacks! (1996)

"For dark is the suede that mows like a harvest..."

I saw this once in the ‘90s- at a festival, I think, perhaps Phoenix ‘96. But I was very drunk, and let us not discuss any herbal substances which may or may not have been imbibed. Let us also, in the same token, disregard the bottle of Aragonian wine (yes, the bottle states it’s from “Aragon”, a name from the annals of history) that I have just imbibed at the time of composing this paragraph. Let’s just say that, yes, I can see this film is no classic, but it’s fun.

Tim Burton is always brilliant at making his films feel likes stylised worlds of their own, but he generally has his own gothic style. This film, like its superb predecessor  Ed Wood, gives us a style very different from Burton’s norm- in this case that of the ‘50s flying saucer movie. Hence the many CGI saucers look exactly as we might expect from countless movies. Hence the ever-present sound of the theremin. And the Martians, in old fashioned stop motion, look awesome.

Oh, and the film is bloody hilarious. No, it’s not the funniest film ever, but it’s a fun little spoof and extraordinarily well cast- Jack Nicholson is superb, as ever, as the cynical President. Pierce Brosnan is hilarious as a character taking the piss out of all those pipe smoking, exposition-spouting professors. Also excellent are Sarah Jessica Parker and the wonderful Pam Grier, with a small role for a Michael J. Fox presumably too far into his Parkinson’s disease for a larger role.

It’s also very, very ‘90s- Richie dresses just like I used to back then, and the less Grungy fashions are... yes, well. But the film is enormous fun, with its capricious Martians putting people’s heads on dogs’ bodies and zapping US Senators. And can we please have a Martian do you Trump what is done to the President here?

Ed Wood (1994)

"Nobody cares! These movies are terrible!"

That Tim Burton would make a biopic of Ed Wood is delicious. That it should be so bloody good is even more so. Monochrome, stylised and deeply evocative of both 1950s Hollywood and the schlock genres, this is a well-structured, good-natured and fun look at one of Hollywood’s more eccentric “talents” with an extraordinary performance of Johnny Depp at the centre of it all.

The opening titles, with the parade of ‘50s genre tropes and the glorious theremins, are wonderful, and set the mood perfectly. Then we move to setting up who Ed is, his transvestism, and the story of Glen or Glenda, complete with lots of 1950s trans people including the aristocratic but delightfully camp “Bunny” Breckinridge, played to perfection by Bill Murray. We then follow Ed’s, er, career right through to Plan 9 from Outer Space and see him happily married to a fellow geek- and then we stop, before we get any hint of his decline, alcoholism and early death.

Instead we see the tragedy of the great Bela Lugosi’s final years, forgotten by Hollywood to the point of appearing in Ed’s films, alone, homesick for a Hungary to which he can never return, behind an Iron Curtain. Martin Landau plays him with skill and much pathos, but also not without humour (“Karloff does not deserve to smell my shit!”).

We also see Juliet Landau (nepotism; fun for all the family), bizarrely using her native accent, and a superb cameo by Vincent D’Onofrio as the great Orson Welles. But this film belongs to Depp, and to Burton, who has conjured up perhaps his finest cinematic world.

Batman Returns (1992)

"I'm tired of wearing masks."

I haven't seen this since 1992, at the old Cannon cinema in Hinckley. I don't much remember what I thought of it then, but I like it a lot now. It doesn't quite beat its predecessor for me (sorry, Nick!)- it doesn't quite have the depth, visual elegance or Batman screentime- but Tim Burton leaves the franchise with two superb films under his utility belt.

Batman’s lack of screen time here is a surprise- Batman and Bruce Wayne are little more than a plot function here, with Michael Keaton not given much interesting stuff to do, especially as compared with the first film. But then we must remember that this isn’t primarily a franchise film but a Tim Burton film; the film is about the Penguin and Catwoman.

Interestingly, though, neither of the two traditional villains are wholly evil; that accolade goes to the splendidly named Max Shrek, a corrupt and morally depraved businessman whose Nosferatu-inspired name fits well with the film’s aesthetic for Gotham. He’s the catalyst for Catwoman. Selina Kyle, a downtrodden and humiliated secretary, single, alone and browbeaten by all and sundry, finds out stuff she shouldn’t and is thrown out of a high window, losing the first of her nine lives, and something snaps. At first it looks as though there’s a bit of a feminist message here, especially as Catwoman’s first outing is to rescue a woman from a man in a dark alley, but this doesn’t go anywhere. Still, Michelle Pfeiffer is pretty good and the kinky latex costume and whip looks cool- although it sort of takes over from the whole cat thing. Still, an impressive treatment of the character.

The treatment of Danny DeVito’s Penguin is much more radical; this Oswald Cobblepot grew up in the sewers, abandoned, and the only cigarette holder to be seen is that of his father, glimpsed early on. The umbrellas and monocle are present and correct, but this is a much more feral Penguin, no angel but genuinely vulnerable, and bordering even on likeable if he were not so lecherous.

These characters are fascinating, and what the film  is about, much more so than Batman or even Gotham. This is notably much more of a Tim Burton film and less of a Batman film than its predecessor, and the respective values you place on those two categories will probably decide which of the two you prefer. Personally, I may like this one less but it is nonetheless superb.

Batman (1989)

"Where does he get those wonderful toys?”

In one sense, and one sense only, this film parallels 1978’s Superman; both of DC’s flagship heroes, in spite of a long and varied Hollywood past, celebrated their fiftieth anniversaries with a whopping big, and rather successful, Hollywood blockbuster. But there the similarities end, because this is a Tim Burton film. And Tim Burton is far more interesting than Hollywood blockbusters.

It’s worth stepping back, though; 1989 was a long time ago, and I was only 12 when I saw this at my local Cannon cinema. But the popular perception of Batman was at best ambiguous, and largely coloured by the magnificent but very singular Adam West TV series, at that time being constantly repeated on UK television. And, after all, the dark, ‘80s version of Batman had only existed for a small percentage of the character’s fifty year history. After an admittedly dark, but very pulp introduction in 1939, it didn’t take long for Batman to morph into decades of Dick Sprang square-jawed straight heroism, which remained in place until the late 1960s. And even the 1970s “Darknight Detective” was very different from the darker 1980s tales of Frank Miller and Alan Grant. This film was, more or less, the introduction of this darker Batman to a wider public.

Tim Burton is, therefore, an inspired choice. This isn’t the Tim Burton we thing of today, of course; all whimsy CGI, a certain style, Helena Bonham Carter and a pre-meltdown Johnny Depp. No; it’s only 1989, and he’s not even done Edward Scissorhands yet. Nevertheless, Burton has a thing for design, and for Gotham it matters. Anton Furst’s cityscape is in some ways the real star of the film, a dark Art Deco. Even the retro fashions- men wear hats with their suits, evoking old gangster films- enhance the atmosphere. Michael Keaton is a deliberate statement as casting choice. And Kack Nicholson is magnificent in exactly the way you’d expect. Kim Basinger is good enough to obscure the fact that the character of Vicki Vale is only there as a token piece of prominent oestrogen in what would otherwise be a sausage fest, and Michael Gough is a fine, grandfatherly Alfred.

Perhaps the fight choreography is a little lacking, but in a film that looks this good and is so well-conceived that’s a minor touch; I can forgive Burton for not being an action film director. And it’s interesting that this Batman relies far more on gadgets than any great physical athleticism. Far more even than usual it makes you wonder why everyone doesn’t know that Bruce Wayne is Batman; after all, he’s the only person in Gotham who can afford all that stuff.

That aside, though, this film is easily as good as I remember it and, in the way it really-presented the character, arguably the most important Batman feature film.

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2016)

"Polite persons do not take their supper in the nude!"

 Well, there's a surprise. Oddly enough this is quite a departure from Tim Burton's usual directorial style, even if the subject matter is very him, but it works. The very English early twentieth century fantasy feel- never mind it's based on a series of American novels whose author is younger than I am- is a perfect fit for him and is done well, even if it doesn't necessarily feel very Tim Burton. And it's most odd to see neither head nor hair of either Helena Bonham Carter or Johnny Depp.

The cast is superb, though. Eva Green is the obvious highlight but Samuel L. Jackson deserves particular praise for portraying a fantasy villain very much out of his normal kinds of parts, and doing it with aplomb. Even the many child actors are at least ok, but Ella Purnell is a revelation.

Mostly, though- and I haven't read the novel and so cannot comment on how it's been adapted- the film succeeds because of the superbly imaginative and original fantasy world it presents to us from the pen of Kick-Ass' Jane Goldman, a kind of wartime X-Men with magnificently imaginative powers, extra timey-wimeyness ( I love the loops) and some particularly fearsome monsters and fantasy creatures that are superbly recognised, in some cases by mock stop motion. Very much an enjoyable film and one much better than its puzzlingly mixed reputation.

Beetlejuice (1988)

"You know what they say about people who commit suicide- in the afterlife, they become civil servants!"

Heaven forbid. What an awful fate.

I can't believe I've never seen this strange yet brilliant film before, a Tim Burton film from before he had quite settled on a particular style. It's delightfully quirky, and has the best stop motion effects I've ever seen in a film not involving Ray Harryhausen. Who needs CGI? Not the young Tim Burton.

It's also arresting to see Michael Keaton being brilliant in a comic role, and a very young Winona Ryder showing that she was the Dakota Fanning of her day. Best of all is the premise; a silly look at the haunted house genre from the perspective of those doing the haunting.

The whole things screams "late '80s", from the weird landscapes outside the house that look just like a contemporary music video to the fact that Lydia is an actual Goth who listens to Bauhaus rather than Evanescence. Along with the opera, that is.

There are some nice touches (I noticed the nod to The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) to both the premise and the design, but probably the best thing is the bureaucracy after death. I'd better get used to it- I'm already a civil servant...

But the one thing I'll remember above all is the stop motion. It's glorious, and cartoonish, and, well, ripped off somewhat by Drop Dead Fred three years later. This movie rules!

Edward Scissorhands (1990)

“Drop your weapons!”

Finally getting to see this film, after so many years, was an interesting pop culture experience: although I’d never seen the film I distinctly recall seeing Rob Newman riffing on it in The Mary Whitehouse Experience all those many years ago. It turns out that those sketches were, well, pretty accurate, but this is nevertheless a superb and surprisingly deep film.

It’s smalltown America during some strange timeless amalgam of the 1950s and the 1980s. On the hill is a blatantly out-of-place spooky castle straight out of a Roger Corman flick, which makes the casting of Vincent Price highly appropriate. But the style, particularly Edward himself (Johnny Depp, of course, in his breakthrough role), is unmistakably Tim Burton, immune to the passing of the years. The fact that Edward always wears a gimp suit in spite of all narrative logic is the most stylistically Tim Burton thing ever, as well as partly symbolising the theme of the film: stultifying small town nosey conformity and snobbery vs. the freedom to pursue alternative lifestyles.

There’s an obvious parallel, I suppose, with the Garden of Eden (which here is a creepy horror film castle!) and the corruption of the world (which, pleasingly, is represented by 1950s conservative values), especially as Edward is shown to be a brilliant gardener, if highly unconventional. I like the dinosaur.

Edward’s “fall” is down to the corruption of this environment by means of Winona Ryder’s love interest, and the final scenes are very reminiscent of James Whale’s Frankenstein, except for the fairytale ending. Ah yes, that word “fairytale”. It keeps coming up in my reviews of Tim Burton films, doesn’t it?

There’s a nice structural trick revealed at the end (the elderly narrator is Winona Ryder), and the film is both visually brilliant and powerful in its message. Any film that has its innocent protagonist be largely based on Freddy Krueger has got to be a classic.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005)

"I'm sorry, I was having a flashback."

So, Tim Burton did a movie version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Bound to happen, wasn't it? The book is perfect for his whimsicality (is that a word?) and visual style. There  is room, I suppose, for the complaint that Burton has become too comfortable with a certain kind of film and a certain type of approach- vaguely gothic, whimsical films in the fairytale style which tend to star Johnny Depp or the missus, Helena Bonham Carter, and that it would be nice to see him do something else for a change. But the formula works, again and again.

Here, for example, we focus on a poor family who live in a version of modern England in a kind of poverty which implies no Welfare State, and all of whom, Oliver Twist-like, speak in not entirely realistic RP accents. The town in which they live is a highly stylised version of an Industrial Revolution northern city, a sort of cross between Coketown from Hard Times and the paintings of L.S. Lowry. It's some distance from the American setting of Roald Dahl's novel (a childhood favourite, naturally), but it works wonderfully well.

The children accompanying Charlie on his tour of Willy Wonka's factory are deliciously horrible grotesques, as we might expect. It's an inspired idea to have the great Deep[ Roy portray all of the Ooompa Loompas, and their delightfully and darkly funny songs at each child's comeuppance are a highlight of the film, although the sequence with Mike Teevee, inveighing against the bad influence of television, has dated somewhat; the twenty-first century has very different, though equally silly, targets for its periodic moral panics.

Johnny Depp is superb, and suitably weird, as Willy Wonka. I didn't like the treatment of the character towards the end of the film, however. When he and Charlie take the Glass Elevator up and out of the factory we get not an exciting adventure with the Vernicious Knids but a load of sentimental family-themed twaddle that I could have done without. Still, at least this silly subplot gives us a glimpse of the great Christopher Lee. There are also lots of nicely metatextual gags throughout, and that sort of stuff is right up my street.

If you'll forgive the ending, this film is a delight. Yes, it's exactly what you'd expect Tim Burton to do with the source material, but isn't that what we all want?

The Nightmare before Christmas (1993)

“Attacked by Christmas toys? That's strange, that's the second toy complaint we've had.”

I watched this on Christmas Eve and it’s now 20^th January. Still, better late than never, eh? After all, it’s not as though people are sick and tired of all things Christmas at this time of year, right?

I now fully realise how culturally impoverished I was not to have seen this gothic, glorious little jewel of a stop motion animated musical before now. The first of the songs, I learn, eventually found its way into Marilyn Manson’s set list, while Henry Selick’s stop motion animation is the best since Ray Harryhausen. The art is not yet dead. And yes, I know, it’s yet another musical. I seem to be losing my credentials as someone who doesn’t like them.

This is a Henry Selick film; he directs and does the stop motion animation. Yes, Tim Burton supplied the storyline, but it’s not the storyline that makes this film so extraordinary. It isn’t a Tim Burton film, however close it may be to his sort of aesthetic.

The whole concept is completely mad, of course, and bizarrely abstract. Halloween and Christmas are both towns, naturally, with appropriately weird inhabitants, and Halloween decides that it’s going to do Christmas instead, with unfortunate results. That’s it. But around all this we get set pieces and visual treats galore, making this short film a piece of Christmas Eve perfection.

All the characters look great. There’s Jack, of course, but I particularly like Sally, created out of cadavers by the superbly named Dr Finkelstein. Best of all, though, is Oogie Woogie. He’s the coolest, the best singer, and made out of insects. What’s not to like?

So, yeah, good film. The next review might not be so gushing. It certainly won’t be so much of a wait…!

Alice in Wonderland (2010)

“I’ve been shrunk, stretched, scratched and stuffed into a teapot!”

Well, it was only a matter of time until Tim Burton had a go at Alice in Wonderland, wasn’t it? Three things were pretty much inevitable: it was going to feature Helena Bonham Carter, it was going to feature Johnny Depp, and it was going to be good. Lo, all three of these things come to pass.

Of course, Tim Burton, being Tim Burton, doesn’t actually make an adaptation of Alice in Wonderland; he jumps straight to Through the Looking Glass, but still calls it Alice in Wonderland anyway. It all looks amazing, and as trippy as all versions made since Jefferson Airplane did White Rabbit have to be by default. The early flashback scenes to Alice’s childhood have a very stylised, uber-Victorian look, while the present day scenes have a very un-Burton realism to be contrasted with the, er, wonders of Wonderland. I only saw this film in 2-D, and I’m gutted; lots of shots were quite clearly composed to look amazing in 3-D, and I’d imagine that the contrast with what I assume would be a 2-D “real” world would be even more effective.

The cast is, obviously, brilliant, and Helena Bonham Carter as the Red Queen and Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter are both as extraordinary as you’d expect. (Depp effortlessly switches between RP and Scottish; is there any accent he can’t do?) But there are far too many gloriously whimsical performances to. I ought to mention, though, that this is the last ever screen credit for Michael Gough, who was ninety-four years old when he voiced this role.

There’s obviously a moral behind the story: as the White Queen says, “You cannot live to please others. Alice arrives down the rabbit this time in the midst of a very public marriage proposal from an absolute drip of a man, a proposal she’s under huge pressure to accept, and the film shows her gradually coming to realise that she doesn’t need to. In this sense, Wonderland is the “looking glass” of the original title, although the plot is very different. There is also a nice philosophical conversation at the end between Alice and the Hatter in which Alice comes to realise that this world is real, and not a figment of her imagination, subjective though this is; which one of them is real and which dreaming. It’s nice to see the Jabberwocky poem crowbarred in, too; the mosyer itself is a magnificent bit of CGI.

Of course, there’s a heavy dose of feminism in here that was lacking in the novel. There is only a Red Queen and White Queen; kings are absent. The moral of the film presents what would in Victorian times have been a rather shocking message about the role of women. And, of course, the conclusion, in which Alice becomes an apprentice in a huge trading company, is not exactly realistic for the period but is necessary for our modern, and rather more enlightened, sensibilities.

One day I’ll probably give a bad review to a Tim Burton film. But I don’t see that day coming any day soon.

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

“My elixir is piss???!!! Who says this?”

I don’t as a rule, like musicals. I do, as a rule, like Tim Burton films. So this was an interesting film to approach. I reviewed Little Shop of Horrors recently too, mind: perhaps my attitude to musicals is becoming more open-minded. I certainly enjoyed this one, although of course I have no idea how faithful it was to Tim Burton’s original.

This is a Tim Burton film, so obviously it stars Johnny Depp, complete with cockney accent, and the missus, Helena Bonham Carter, who is by far the sexiest of all of H.H. Asquith’s descendents. Both are, obviously, superb. The whole look of the film is exactly what you’d expect from a Tim Burton film, with all the brilliance thereof, and this style works wonderfully here. It’s usually twilight, with muted, pastel, pre-Raphaelite colours working well as a limited palette. Only the flashbacks, depicting a time of happiness, are brightly coloured. The dark visuals serve to evoke a wonderfully gothic and dark Victorian London, and yet there’s beauty in the darkness; it’s never depressing. It’s a perfect marriage between the visuals and the wonderfully dark humour of the story and the songs.

Yes, I enjoyed this as a musical. The songs were fantastic. Perhaps I’ll be converted. You can certainly expect the third review after this one to be another great musical, I can tell you for certain. After that long hiatus I have quite a backlog…

Alan Rickman is superb as a baddie, which will surprise no one, and gets some gloriously moustache-twirling lines (I love the scene where he sentences a little boy to hang, which by the rules of all drama means he need to die horribly as punishment!), although there’s one point where I noticed Stephen Sondheim doesn’t seem to have quite known what a catamite is. It’s something much gayer than implied by the dialogue here…! But the dialogue, and the lyrics, are gloriously witty throughout. All the characters are grotesques, which means we can enjoy their gruesomely blood-spattered demises.

The best character, though, it Mrs Lovett, that gloriously scatter-brained cannibal, whose demise is the most wonderfully gory of them all. Bonham Carter is magnificent, and has superb chemistry with Depp. I love the fantasy sequences depicting both characters in a cottage by the seaside, with poor Sweeney Todd looking thoroughly miserable!!!

The ending is a bit predictable, but it’s supposed to be: the mysterious old woman turning out to be the protagonist’s wife is one of the most clichéd of all the many tropes of the Victorian novel. The Judge finally gets to die, after much teasing, and the spurting of the blood goes on and on, gloriously. We end with gallons of blood flowing and yet, somehow, it’s all very romantic.

Enormous fun. If you’re partial to a Tim Burton film but not too keen on musicals, like myself, give this a chance.