Tags: Burtonesque
Frankenweenie, Burton’s best film in years, is available in a number of editions: four-disc Blu-ray/DVD combo with 3-D Blu-ray and digital copy; 2-disc Blu-ray/DVD combo, and 1-disc DVD.
Read more >
Dark Shadows in 60 seconds: my “Reel Faith” review.
Read more >
D+ |
** |
-2|
Adults
If you are in love with the 1970s and Johnny Depp, perhaps you will enjoy this. Andrew O’Hehir says he knew he would love the film when he spotted a banana-seat Schwinn bicycle leaning against the front porch of Collinwood in an early scene. All right. But then comes a “happening” featuring Alice Cooper as himself (!), with a disco ball and cage dancers. At Collinwood. Is this really anyone’s idea of a good time?
Read more >
D |
*½ |
-1|
Teens & Up
The film is actually a joint evisceration not only of Carroll’s
Alice in Wonderland, but also of “Jabberwocky,” with Alice recast as (so help me) a messianic warrior-hero destined to claim the fabled “Vorpal Sword,” don shining armor, and wage an epic battle on the fated “Frabjous Day” against the forces of the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter) and the dragon-like Jabberwocky.
Read more >
C |
**½ |
-2|
Teens & Up
Critics adored
Batman for its eccentric, Burtonesque take on a pop-culture icon, for its moody, noirish gothic art-deco Gotham City, and of course for Jack Nicholson’s showy performance as the Joker. Comic-book fans, meanwhile, appreciated the film for rescuing the Dark Knight from the over-the-top camp comedy of the 1960s series and making him suitably dark and brooding. For all that, though, the film’s flaws are hard to overlook.
Read more >
B+ |
***½ |
+2-2|
Teens & Up
As imagined by Tim Burton in stunning, wildly stylized stop-motion animation overtly reminiscent of
The Nightmare Before Christmas yet technically far beyond it, this macabre fairy tale becomes, variously, a poignant meditation on the daunting weightiness of the vows of marriage, a raucous
danse macabre in jumping jazz rhythms and florid colors, a visually rich celebration of Edward Gorey Gothic-Victorian and Charles Addams grotesque, and, perhaps most surprisingly, a touching portrait of tragedy, doomed love, empathy, and sacrifice.
Read more >
B- |
*** |
+1|
Kids & Up*
And no one but Burton could possibly have thought it would be
a good idea to give candymaker extraordinaire Willy Wonka (Depp)
unresolved issues from childhood stemming from a traumatic
relationship with his dentist father (Christopher Lee!), leaving
Wonka unable to say the words "family" or "parents," and subject
to disorienting childhood flashbacks. When the book’s climax and
denouement have played out, and the credits should be rolling any
minute now, and the film suddenly invents additional obstacles to
delay the hero’s reward, then cuts to a scene with the other most
prominent character on a psychiatrist’s couch, can there be any
doubt that the film has gone off the rails?
Read more >
C |
**½ |
-1|
Teens & Up
Like Haley Joel Osment in Secondhand Lions wanting to
know the truth about the tales of his uncles’ alleged exploits,
Ed’s son Will (Billy Crudup) wants to know whether his dying
father really was a Big Fish in a small pond, or whether his
father’s tales were just Big Fish stories. Big Fish also
echoes Secondhand Lions by ending with a funeral scene
that provides some answers as Will finally meets certain
individuals from his father’s past.
Read more >
C |
**½ |
-2|
Teens & Up*
Helena Bonham Carter is also convincingly simian as the
chimpanzee Ari, though less so than Thade, since she has to be
visibly feminine and potentially attractive to the human lead
(Mark Wahlberg). But the gorillas, like Attar (Michael Clarke
Duncan) and Krull (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa), are as compellingly
realistic as Thade, if not quite as expressive.
Read more >
B+ |
***½ |
+0|
Teens & Up
Despite the macabre humor, there’s something touchingly innocent about Halloweentown. Its inhabitants live for fear and thrills, yet there’s no real malice in any of them — with the exception of a sort of Halloween outlaw named Mr. Oogie Boogie and his three young protégés.
Read more >