BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE is a ramshackle effort trading on goodwill and nostalgia. What made the original so disarming and anarchic 36 years ago burbles to the surface from time to time, but as a whole, it is a mawkish thing following formulas that that original eschewed with raucous glee. We find Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) older… Read More »
MISS PEREGRINE’S SCHOOL FOR PECULIAR CHILDREN
I have not read the eponymous novel on which MISS PEREGRINE’S HOME FOR PECULIAR CHILDREN Is based, but a quick check of the of the Wikipedia entry for it reveals that for the screen adaptation many of the characters have been modified and plot point changed. This is not uncommon, and when the original source… Read More »
ALICE IN WONDERLAND
Tim Burton, wanting to put his own stamp on ALICE IN WONDERLAND, has wandered not just far from the story, but from the very essence of what Lewis Carroll created. Rather than a Wonderland full of terrifying adventures and deliciously absurd whimsy, he has created the Underland, a place of terrifyingly, yet lugubrious, bad filmmaking.… Read More »
FRANKENWEENIE
Decades ago Tim Burton created a short stop-motion animated film called FRANKENWEENIE, and this tale of a boy who brings his beloved dog back to life became Mr. Burtons entrée into the world of cinema. He revisits this tale in a feature length version, the which he has directed from a screenplay that John August… Read More »
BIG FISH
BIG FISH may be Tim Burtons most magical film to date. Paradoxically, its also one rooted firmly in reality, a la ED WOOD. Dont let that throw you. This is a landscape of the imagination as potent as anything Burton conjured up with EDWARD SCISSORHANDS or THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS. There is a giant named… Read More »
CORPSE BRIDE
Tim Burton’s latest animated film, CORPSE BRIDE,is a whimsical bit of the macabre, gussied up with the rapture of first love in both its full flowering and something more sinister. It’s Petit Guignol as light and fluffy as a corner full of cobwebs and, once you get used to the talking maggots, the rotting flesh… Read More »