J.D. Hansel

Tim Burton

The Nightmare Before Christmas Review

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This film has been a source of inner conflict for me for a long time.  I saw most of it years ago, but I couldn’t finish it.  I found it too boring, even though I recognized its creativity.  I thought that I could overcome this dilemma by coming back to it a few years later, but sadly, I’m still caught in the same spot.

This film is brilliant.  Its visuals are absolutely stunning, and the attention to detail is so praiseworthy that one would have to bow down to Henry Selick in order to overstate how great the detail is.  Even the very idea of the film, with all of its characters and little gags, is pure genius.  In a way, I love this film.  The problem is that it gets very dull very fast.

The reason for this is that the film only has one note – or at least it holds the same note too long.  There are a few moments that stand out in the film as contributing something different to the film from its usual aesthetic: the scene in Christmas Town, the scene in which the toys attack the children on Christmas, and the scenes in which Santa is in the clutches of the Boogie Man.  All of these scenes are strong, and I like them a lot – the first is charming, the second is very Gremlins, and the third is very Tim Burton.  Apart from these, however, most of the film is just the same few feelings and motifs on repeat.

Some of this is due to the writing, and the actors might be partly to blame also, but this one mostly falls on Elfman.  “This Is Halloween” is a good, catchy song, but almost all the other songs run together and are nearly impossible to tell apart.  They all use the same few chords and are very limited in the emotions they express.  Consequently, the film feels like a broken record.  So I don’t think I could stand to watch this film every year, but since there’s clearly a lot to love hear, I’ll try to squeeze it in a couple times a decade.

Sleepy Hollow Review

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It’s always a pleasure to see a spooky movie that doesn’t rely too much on jump scares, instead reveling in a charmingly eerie aesthetic with creepy visuals.  In fact, it’s even a pleasure to find a film that’s not just trying to be a horror movie, but is specifically trying to be a Halloween movie.  It’s a special pleasure to watch a Halloween movie that’s not just throwing clownish, irritating exaggerations of Halloween character types at me the whole time.  This is the kind of pleasure I have come to expect from few directors but Tim Burton, who brings his knack for nightmarish aesthetics to the Washington Irving tale “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.”

Now, to be clear, this is not Burton at his best – by this point in his career we’ve already entered the phase in which he’s making everything bland and gray – but it’s still a fun watch.  Johnny Depp is as over-the-top as one would hope, without being annoying, and the rest of the cast is largely comprised of some of my favorite British actors.  The only problem here is that this great cast is working on great sets with a great director to bring to life a not-so-great screenplay.  It’s a predictable story with the usual bashing of “men of reason” for having too much certainty.  Yes, that’s right – the people who believe 100% in a headless horseman of all things accuse the sensible detective of having too much faith, all because he’s pretty sure he ought to be looking for a real, living murderer rather than an undead legend.  Now, I’ve seen this foolishness in enough Hollywood films that, for a silly fantasy story, I can almost let it go, so I can still mostly enjoy the movie.  The story may be weak and a little slow, but it’s still something I can see myself putting on the big TV every few Octobers.

Batman Returns Review

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MINOR SPOILERS

A few years ago, I was browsing through channels to find something to watch while doing laundry when I put on a marathon of Batman movies on some cable channel, just so I could educate myself about the hero.  It included Batman Returns, Batman Forever, Batman Begins, and possibly one or two more, but this was before I cared about watching movies properly, so I didn’t make sure I’d seen each one of them all the way through.  I caught a significant portion of Batman Begins and most if not all of Batman Forever, but since I was occupied with some chores at the time, I wasn’t really paying much attention.  Batman Returns stuck out to me though.  I think I came in somewhere in the middle and checked out somewhere near the end, but I really liked the idea of a superhero and a villain falling in love out of costume and not knowing what to do once they figured out each other’s secret identity (all in a public place where they can’t fight, no less).  While this dramatic device may be the film’s greatest contribution to cinema, and it’s probably the most brilliant aspect of the film (if not of the franchise), I think there’s a lot more where that came from throughout the film.

This movie is probably one of the greatest sequels of all time because it doesn’t feel the need to repeat everything from the first film, nor does it just try to take everything to a much bigger scale like many sequels do – it just plays to the strengths and dynamics of a different set of characters.  True, the idea of the villain tricking “the people” into thinking the hero has turned on them is now a somewhat common sequel trope, but like most of the tropes in the movie, it’s all handled very well.  It helps that Danny DeVito is a practically perfect Penguin, and the rest of the cast is spot-on as well, making for a Gotham City that’s very much . . . itself.  I think that’s what I like about this movie – it loves being what it is, so it goes to the extreme.  Tim Burton also takes his style to an extreme here, showing his ability to capture the eerie quality of simple things, bring the maximum amount of “creepy” out of any scary things, find the beauty in fakeness, carefully integrate models with full-size sets, and light Batman perfectly.  What’s particularly impressive is how a movie filled with so much gray manages to retain warmth, theatricality, and a striking amount of vivid color, making for one of the best aesthetics any film has ever had and possibly surpassing its predecessor in its visual style.

While its ending is a little underwhelming for me and Burton’s pacing is typically slow, most of my problems with the film are mere nitpicks – in the end, this is what a Batman movie is supposed to feel like.  One thing that I think the film could use a little bit more of, however, is camp.  The movie certainly engages in over-the-top theatricality and a little silliness, but I think the Batman I best understand is Adam West’s.  Part of why the news of his passing has been harder for me to take than that of most other recent celebrity deaths is that I know we’ll never have another actor who can play a superhero in a way that makes you take him seriously when he needs to be taken seriously while also keeping him incredibly light, fun, silly, and jaunty.  Maybe we’ll never get another movie that captures the theatricality of Gotham the way the West, Burton, and Schumacher productions did either, but they’ve all been really inspirational to me.  I’ve always considered Spider-Man/Peter Parker to be the hero with whom I best relate, but it’s Batman productions like this one that fill me with excitement and enthusiasm for becoming a filmmaker, and for that I’m very thankful.

Edward Scissorhands Review

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Ah, now this is a movie for Halloween season.  It’s a classic tale of a man-made monster, and like most good monster stories, it shows us that the real monsters are always people.  Naturally, I was very excited about seeing this movie, and I had high hopes because it’s a Tim Burton film.  Burton was, visually speaking, the best director out there (until he abused his CG privileges), and Edward Scissorhands is as gorgeous as one could hope.  Between the unique setting, the strong characters, the delightful soundtrack, and the perfect cast, it really has an atmosphere of its own, making it entirely unforgettable.  I was pleased by the superb performance by Johnny Depp, and thrilled to see Vincent Price in the role he was born to play.  Everything is just for the story being told.

If only the story itself were better, this would be an excellent motion picture.  Alas, the story is almost entirely lacking in conflict or plot (a.k.a. “story”) for the first half.  It takes a very long time to get going, and once it does, it’s rather cliché and predictable.  The pace is absurdly slow for much of the film, with only some scenes toward the end feeling particularly exciting, and the ending is not entirely satisfactory.  However, we do see the main villain defeated, and we do learn the lesson that we all knew from the get-go we were going to learn, so I suppose the movie offered everything it promised.  Because of the issues with the screenplay, however, it just didn’t offer everything I would have wanted.

78 Edward Scissorhands

Ed Wood Review

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(MINOR SPOILERS)

There are a couple of downsides to doing movies about real people and events.  The first is that it can often limit one visually; the filmmaker almost always must portray a world that is believable to the audience, which typically means no animation, no theatrical lighting/color, no surreal sets or props, etc.  Secondly, some liberties have to be taken with the characters since they are based on real people, meaning that names must be changed to avoid lawsuits, or the people must be fictionalized to seem likable and interesting.  There’s also the simple, obvious problem that the series of events that take place in real life are seldom as interesting as what is commonly found in fiction.  Did Tim Burton’s Ed Wood successfully avoid, or at least properly handle, all of these potential dangers?

On the whole, yes, the movie manages to have very interesting visuals, characters, and story flow.   Mostly. To be fair, there were a lot of times when I was a little bored by the movie because it can be kind of tedious. With a slightly faster pace, I would have enjoyed it a lot more, but I did still enjoy it.  It was really the characters that got me through it, because I did enjoy the majority of the cast.

This may not be my favorite Tim Burton film that I’ve seen thus far, but it is my favorite Johnny Depp performance.  Yes, he’s playing the type of character that he tends to play too often, but heck, I’ll take this over his Willy Wonka any day. Ed Wood is a very likable character and relatable character, in spite of the fact that he’s kind of an idiot.  I just can’t help but admire his passion and enthusiasm for making movies the way he believes they should be made.  Also, Martin Landau is fantastic as Bela Lugosi, and Bill Murray is Bill Murray at being Bill Murray all throughout the Bill Murray. Bill Murray.

There are a lot of great scenes in the film that work for a variety of different reasons.  The scene in which Bela is about to commit suicide is the most Burton-ly shot scene in the film, and is thus my favorite visually.   My favorite in terms of character and story, which is probably more important, is the exchange between Ed Wood and Orson Welles.  That’s the scene that makes the whole movie worth watching.  The scene in which Bela appears on television (with no idea how to improvise) is really a painful scene to watch, but not because it’s a bad scene.  Rather, it’s because it hurts to see him struggle in such a difficult, awkward situation.

The big problem with this film is not historical inaccuracy, a cinema sin that is also present, but is actually the simple fact that this guy’s life was difficult to focus into one cohesive story that clearly moves in a particular direction.  It’s always a little difficult for me to watch a movie if I get no sense that each scene is a part of getting the story to its climax, and Ed Wooddoes kind of drag for that reason.  Still, I would recommend that everyone go into the movie prepared to be a little patient, and then enjoy getting to meet this delightful character called Ed Wood.  Plus Bill Murray.

48 Ed Wood

Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure Review

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Boy, was I ever excited to see this movie.  It’s a cartoony ‘80s comedy directed by Tim Burton!  And did you see its trailer?  It’s bound to be great!

It stunk.  The movie dragged on forever with characters I did not care about and a plot that seemed pointless in the worst possible way.  I know that it’s not right to judge a screenplay based on the movie having not read the screenplay itself, but this movie seems terribly written.  Each scene seems to be without purpose, even to the point that many scenes in the film could be rearranged and it would make no difference.  The plot doesn’t built, the twists are dull or insignificant, the beginning is a waste of time, and the climax, while containing some strong elements, has a scene with Pee Wee rescuing animals from a burning pet store that has nothing to do with anything else in the entire film.  Why in the world should the climax be unrelated?  Who thought this was a good story?

That being said… this movie is so beautiful.  The darkness, the colors, the lights, and all the theatrical visuals make it a distinctly ’80s Burton work of art.  So, so, so many shots in this film are breathtaking, and they inspire me to try to reach their level of majesty should I ever become a filmmaker.  I almost wish that this film did not have Burton as a director.  Had he not done this piece of junk and instead worked on a project with a good story during this time period, he might have made a movie I would have adored.  However, if it led to the ’89 Batman, I guess this movie was meant to be.

41 Pee-Wee's Big Adventure