Oeuvre: Tim Burton - Sleepy Hollow

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow was one of my favorite short stories as a boy.  Likewise, the animated Disney short of the same name was in constant rotation around the Halloween season.  The chilling tale of the superstitious schoolteacher, Ichabod Crane and his mysterious meeting with the Headless Horsemen aroused my curiosity and fired up my imagination.

So, how does Tim Burton's film compare?  The movie, Sleepy Hollow, may have a streamlined title but it also has a far more complicated plot.

At the turn of the 19th century, man of science, Constable Ichabod Crane (Johnny Depp) is sent to a small, Dutch village to investigate a series of brutal beheadings.  The townsfolk believe that the killer is not of flesh and blood, but a hessian from the Revolutionary War they call the Headless Horseman, who has risen and is on the hunt for fresh heads.  Determined to find the true culprit of these crimes, Ichabod uncovers a sinister conspiracy deep within the heart of Sleepy Hollow, and maybe even... beyond the grave.

Andrew Kevin Walker and make-up effects designer Kevin Yagher conceived of this adaptation as a period piece slasher film.  This comes as no surprise, given that Walker also wrote Se7en.

Johnny Depp performs ably as the capable but cowardly Ichabod Crane, now constable instead of school teacher.  Also considered for the role were Brad Pitt, Liam Neeson, and Daniel Day-Lewis.  Depp is slightly goofier than Neeson or DD Lewis might have been and maybe if the film had been closer to the source material, they would have been better choices.  Unsurprisingly, Depp wanted a prosthetic nose and ears to match the description of the character.  Equally unsurprisingly, the studio refused.  He gives a performance that's vaguely feminine and fragile and while he's far too pretty to fit in with the rest of his surroundings, its always fun to watch Depp swing for the fences.

Christina Ricci is cast as Katrina Van Tassel and she is given more development than her character ever had in the book.  And yet, there's still nothing to her character.  Its some sort of mathematical paradox in which zero is somehow greater than zero.  I suppose she spurns Ichabod later but that's about it.

Brom Bones (now named Brom Van Brunt) is Ichabod's romantic rival but his role in the story is chopped down immensely, if you'll pardon the pun.  Ichabod's first run-in with the Horseman and the chase to the bridge remains intact, and even contains one of the possible endings of the original story, but it appears around the halfway point of the film.  Apart from that Brom acts more as the Jock in a slasher film, than the Gaston-esque figure he is in the book.

Apart from that, we are given a whole new cast of characters.  Baltus Van Tassel, Magistrate Philipse, Doctor Lancaster, Reverend Steenwyck, Widow Winship, Notary Hardenbrook, all great names, are played by an embarrassingly talented cast including Michael Gambon, Richard Griffiths, Ian McDiarmid, Jeffrey Jones, Michael Gough, Christopher Lee, and Miranda Richardson, most of whom play town elders and all of whom have something to hide.

Much is removed from Washington Irving's classic.  However, the tone of the film remains the same.  Eerie is the best word to describe it.  As I've said previously, the book is reshaped from a thrilling horror to a horror thriller.  My frustration at the changes aside, I have to concede that the film still works.  Burton turned this slasher film into a Hammer Horror film, even bringing in Hammer alumni such as Christopher Lee and Michael Gough.  The action and the kills are well shot and when the mystery really picks up, there is a modern energy that meshes well with the period setting.

"Their heads were not found severed..." warns Reverend Steenwyck, ominously.  "Their heads were not found at all."  There is a fantastic atmosphere that pervades most of this film.

The production design by Rick Heinrichs, from the imposing town halls, to the spindly scarecrows in a cornfield, to the twisted, dead tree in the middle of a forest are all straight out of what I like to call "horror by candlelight."  It all looks like something out of an Edgar Allen Poe novel.

The cinematography, shot by none other than the immeasurable Immanuel Lubezki is breathtaking and haunting.  His use of darkness and fog is classic horror the way it was meant to be seen.  Burton's frequent collaborator, Danny Elfman steps up to the plate in a big way.  Horror films are particularly difficult to write music for.  Low and ominous is an easy direction but its damn near impossible to make anything that stands out.  Almost any track would fit perfectly in a campfire setting.  He elevates the still and unnerving cinematography and provides a soundtrack that sends chills down your spine.

There is only one element of the movie I outright object to and that is the ending, which essentially amounts to a climb up a wind-mill (gotta milk that Dutch heritage for all it's worth) and a horse chase with the Headless Horseman.  Why does it bother me?  Well, I'll tell you.

SPOILERS FOR THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW BELOW!!!

The short story is COMPLETELY different!  In Washington Irving's original tale, Ichabod Crane is a lanky, gawky, superstitious schoolteacher who comes to Sleepy Hollow to... well... teach school.  Despite his awkward appearance, Ichabod is surprisingly charming and attracts the eye of every woman in town, including Katrina Van Tassel, a young woman and heir to her father's considerable fortune.  Ichabod also has an appetite and daydreams about wedding Katrina so that, when her father passes away, he can inherit the fortune and eat, and eat, and eat.

All of this becomes a point of contention to the local bully, Brom Bones, who also seeks Katrina's hand.  He attempts to embarrass Ichabod, though the pranks fail to dissuade him.

Then, on a cold, autumn night, Ichabod attends a party at the Van Tassel's.  There, Brom tells everyone the ghost story of the Headless Horseman, an evil spirit who lost his head and seeks others to take it's place.  He warns that if anyone sees this specter, they must make for the bridge next to the old burying ground, where the Horseman will disappear.

That night, on his lonely ride home, Ichabod sees a man in the distance on horseback.  The massive man approaches him and Crane sees that the man has no head.  The Horseman charges Ichabod and chases him through the forest, with Ichabod running for his life.  Ichabod crosses the bridge and watches in horror as the Headless Horseman crosses the bridge and throws a severed head at Ichabod's face.

The next day, Ichabod is gone.  All that remains is his horse, a trampled saddle, a hat, and a broken pumpkin.  Brom Bones marries Katrina.  Did Ichabod truly run into the Headless Horseman that night?  Was he dragged to hell?  Or was it merely Brom Bones in disguise?  And if it were, did Ichabod flee the city?  Or was he savagely murdered and his body hidden?  The true fate of Ichabod Crane remains a mystery.

The End.

To me, that ending is WAY scarier than any ferris wheel fight scene.  The idea that our hero could be dispatched and we'll never know the truth is frightening.  I suspect that as children, we all have a fear that we will be taken and nobody will know what happened to us.  I understand that a story about a schoolteacher and only one supposed murder can't sustain a feature film but I prefer this sinister and ambiguous conclusion.

Its the movie's lame ending and a tired, bland love story between Ichabod and Katrina, that prevent this movie from being a horror classic.  That said, I still think that its a lot of fun and if you're in the mood for something to watch on Halloween that has that October spirit, I think this is a fun film to check out.

Oeuvre: Tim Burton - Mars Attacks

Tim Burton must have been inspired after binge watching the films of Ed Wood.  How else do you explain this throwback to the sci-fi schlock of the fifties that is MARS ATTCKS?

While Batman drew upon decades of rich, varied source materials, and Ed Wood was adapted from a biography, Mars Attacks is based on... trading cards.  And boy does it show.  How can I tell?  Because the story has no story.  Or maybe it has too much story.  Let's unpack this.

The "plot" is that hideous Martians visit Earth, at first, in peace (or maybe not, its never clear), and then with great malice.  During the discovery and subsequent invasion, we follow a slew of colorful characters, performed by one of the greatest casts ever assembled, including a pervy assistant to the President played by Martin Short, a jealous reporter played by Michael J. Fox, a frustrated bus driver played by Pam Grier, a snobbish First Lady played by Glenn Close, her precocious daughter played by Natalie Portman, a quiet, misunderstood teenager played by Lukas Haas, his oblivious grandma played by Sylvia Sidney, a redneck soldier played by Jack Black, Tom Jones played by Tom Jones, and Danny DeVito as a rude gambler named Rude Gambler.

But the main characters are Jack Nicholson as both the President of the United States and as an obnoxious casino owner, Annette Bening as a delightful hippie, a chihuahua-toting entertainment news reporter played by Sarah Jessica Parker, and her unlikely love interest, Pierce Brosnan as a suave Professor who smokes a pipe.

All of these actors live and die by the material written for them, which varies to a dangerously uneven degree.  Of this monumental cast, I'd say Nicholson, Grier, Bening, and Brosnan come out shining.

When the movie is at it's strongest, it skewers those silly science fiction flicks Hollywood used to crank out.  That's one of the reasons Pierce Brosnan is so successful.  His role is the most 50's B-movie of them all.  He squints off in the middle distance, pondering man's place amongst the cosmos.  He performs an alien autopsy in a round, white room, wearing scrubs and a bubble helmet.  He reaches into the alien's head and pulls out Nickelodeon-green slime.  And he's almost never seen without his pipe.

But all too soon, we reach the breaking point of the film.  Namely that Mars Attacks doesn't know what to do after Mars attacks.  Before, the movie was a comic sendup, but it builds and then crumbles into disappointing series of lame gags.  The Martians have no purpose, no end goal, and as a result, they are subjected to cartoon gimmicks that make no sense.  Why do the Martians ogle a women like horny teenagers?  Why do they pose for a family photo in front of the Taj Mahal?  Why do they use the Easter Island heads as bowling pins?  Do Martians have family vacations and cheesy group photos on Mars?  Do they have bowling?  Is it possible that we are, in fact, not so different after all?  No, its just lazy writing.

The problem is an obvious narrative issue.  The story simply lacks focus.  Brosnan and Sarah Jessica Parker have a great blossoming romance, even as they are experimented on aboard the alien spaceship.  But once there, they have nothing to do with the plot.  This is made all the more frustrating by a hint of a romance in the last 2 minutes of the movie between two characters who SHOULD have been the primary focus of the film, namely Lukas Haas and Natalie Portman.  Haas has the closest thing anyone has to a narrative ark and its a shame that the movie didn't choose to put him front and center.

The special effects in this film are sometimes great and sometimes terrible and its hard to tell when it's intentional and when its a failing.  The aliens are an unsettling sight to behold but as I mentioned, they're boring at best and irritating at worst.

The big takeaway from Mars Attacks is that it is good when it needs to be good, and bad when it needs to be bad, and sometimes its the other way around.

Oeuvre: Tim Burton - Ed Wood

Ed Wood is Tim Burton's Schindler's List.  There.  I said it.

Lets dive right in, shall we?  In the early 50's, a young filmmaker named Ed struggles to make movies by any means necessary.  Undeterred by repeat failures, he is convinced his luck has changed when he meets the once great, now forgotten horror star, Bela Lugosi.  Together, the pair make some of the worst films of all time.

There are two types of Ed Wood fans; those who discovered his objectively terrible films on their own, and those who discovered him through this film.  Some are the former.  Most are the latter. Anyone who says otherwise is a liar.

The film shows considerable maturity for Burton.  Saddled with the responsibility of telling the story of a real person's life, Burton stays away from the stop-motion animation and gothic imagery that has defined his career up to this point.  Instead, he makes a film "the Ed Wood way."  The production design by Tom Duffield recreates Wood's reality in painstaking detail and the black and white cinematography by Stefan Czapsky captures it beautifully.  You're not just in Ed's world, you see it from his eyes.

They say we love characters for trying more than for their success.  Ed may be the poster child for that ideal.  The screenplay written by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, based on the book by Rudolph Grey certainly thinks so.  We're always in Wood's corner.  We cringe as he gets knocked down and we cheer for him each and every time he gets back up.

The film boasts an impressive cast including Sarah Jessica Parker, Patricia Arquette, Jeffrey Jones, Bill Murray (who regrettably has never appeared in another Burton film) and a delightful cameo by Vincent D'Onofrio and Maurice LaMarche simultaneously as Orson Welles.

Martin Landau is magnetic as the foul-mouthed Hungarian.  His relationship with Ed, as they grow from idolized admiration to mutual appreciation, is tragically beautiful.  Both are striving for respect and legacy.  Wood, for a respect he has never achieved and Lugosi for a respect he once possessed.  Never meet your heroes, kids.

But the real star of the film is Johnny Depp as the titular Ed Wood in what may be the finest performance of his career (not counting Captain Jack in Pirates 1).  He imbues the character with delicate sensitivity.  He looks at everything and everyone with the energetic wonder of a child.  Watching Depp going over dailies of Lugosi stumbling through a scene, you'd think he was watching the second coming of Christ.  He has no self-critic, no voice in his head asking if what he's making is total shit.  He can't afford it.

Ed surrounds himself with failures, not to prop himself up, but because nobody of substance would agree to work with him.  They become his friends, compatriots, and accomplices as he passionately convinces them to steal giant, robotic squids and get baptized in a swimming pool.  And when Wood reveals himself as a transvestite, very risqué back then, they embrace him with loving arms, laughing with him.  They form a loyal circus group of badness that you want to join.

Ed Wood has had a hard time finding its crowd.  Its the film that most casual Tim Burton fans, I'm talking about the Hot Topic crowd here, seem to have missed.  Whereas, more serious cinefiles, those who stick up their noses at Batman or Sleepy Hollow, praise as his best.  Whichever way you look at it, whichever camp you find yourself in, its certainly a gem.

Under the care of almost any other director or written by any other screenwriter, this story could be nothing more than a series of potshots at the character but that's not the case here.  Sure, there are more than a few jabs at the hapless filmmaker and his crew, but at its heart, this is a story about determination and pursuit of one's dreams.  The film is never cruel.  Rather, its filled with admiration and respect for a man who was a terrible artist, but was still a man, with hopes and dreams, who made friends and watched people die.  He felt love and he felt heartache.  In that way, Ed Wood is one of the most human films I've ever seen.

Despite being critically well received and winning several Academy Awards, the film was a box office flop.  No accounting for taste, I suppose.  Check it out, immediately.

Oeuvre: Tim Burton - Batman Returns

After the monster smash that was BATMAN, Warner Bros was willing to do anything to get Burton back at the helm but Burton had moved on.  The tradeoff: he could do whatever he wanted with this one.  So how does one of Hollywood's most visually inventive directors follow up one of the most financially successful films of all time with a massive budget and free reign?  He makes one of the most unique super hero films of all time.  He makes BATMAN RETURNS.

The plot is all over the map, as though Burton and his screenwriters got bored every 15 pages and decided to go a completely different direction.  So here we go...

It's Christmas time and a corrupt businessman named Max Shreck has bribed all of the politicians to look the other way as his new power plant drains Gotham of all its energy.  Meanwhile, living in the sewers under the streets, is a deformed man named Oswald Cobblepot.  Abandoned and left for dead by his parents, Cobblepot was saved by either the Circus or an abandoned zoo, its never clear which.  Cobblepot blackmails Shreck for control and the two concoct a plan to elect the hideous Penguin Mayor of Gotham City.  At the same time, Shreck's shy but intelligent secretary, Selina Kyle discovers Schrek's fiendish plot and he throws her out a window.  She lives and decides she's had enough of men pushing her around.  She returns from the dead to seek revenge on all mankind as the vicious Catwoman.  Oh, and Batman's in it.

Narratively, it's a mess.  The stories work independently and there are no plot points that I would call "bad" but as a collective whole, the story simply doesn't work.  There is also a subplot about the Penguin deciding to kill all of Gotham's first born sons.  Then all children in general.  And an attempt to turn the Batmobile into a bomb.  And Wayne Corp deciding whether or not to do business with Shreck.  And a duel relationship between Batman and Catwoman/Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle.  It's bananas.

Michael Keaton returns as Bruce Wayne and Batman and he makes a strong argument for being the best Batman ever to grace the silver screen.  He is quiet, understated, and still trying to come to grips with how to be Batman and live a normal life.

One of the most common complaints about this movie is that there are too many villains.  The problem isn't the number but that their stories lack focus.  The Dark Knight Rises had the same problem, but at least the villains in Returns are interesting.  As the Penguin, we have Danny DeVito in the role he was born to play.  Correction: he was born to play Burton's Penguin.  He's gross.  He's violent.  He's frightening.  He's perverted.  He's hilarious.

The role of Catwoman was coveted by virtually every woman in town.  Legend has it, Sean Young dressed up in a cat suit and walked through the Warner Bros lot before barging into the Producer's office and declaring, "meow! I am Catwoman!"  The role eventually went to Michelle Pfeiffer and I don't care what any of the Nolan Fans say, Pfeiffer has yet to be beaten as Catwoman.  She plays both parts as extreme as possible and it works.  Her character carries an understandable grudge against all the men who have held women down for far too long (more on that later).  Her suit, which she had to be vacuumed into before every take, is a thing of genius, making her look like the Bride of Frankenstein had an S&M fetish.  Like everything else in this movie, she is far removed from the source material, but what is on screen is memorable and iconic.  Her performance single-handedly thrust countless boys into puberty.  Too much information?  Probably.

All of the villains are interesting creations, except for Shreck played by Christopher Walken.  Does anyone ever believe him as a human being?  I don't know if Shreck was a part of the comics (although Max Shreck is the name of the actor who played Nosferatu years ago so I'm guessing no), but he only works as a stitch in this movie.  He ties the villains together and while the film gets some of its best satirical pot shots at his expense, he only adds to the bloated feeling throughout.

So why do I like this movie?

Well, despite its loopy, convoluted story, I just can't ignore what a unique film this turned out to be.  It exists in a strange spectrum.  Only a studio's desperation to keep Burton happy and a director determined to not just repeat himself could have lead to a film with this tone. There is a dark spine in this movie, as crooked as it may be.  It's a spine with child murder and perverted sexual politics.  Its comic book origins are firmly in place when the Penguin ascends into a One Percenter Christmas party in a giant Rubber Duckie and when a band of deranged Circus performers attempt to abduct all the first born children of Gotham's elite, but it also contains banter about overpaid security guards and fillings of voids, if ya know what I mean.

Then there is the discussion of women's rights as everyone but Bruce Wayne view women as sexual objects.  Shreck openly debases the obviously intelligent Selina but tells his fellow board members, "she does make a hell of a cup of coffee."  Even as the Penguin's control of Gotham tightens, he can't help but look at his admirers with the lust of a man who has never been touched and practically calls Catwoman a cock tease.  Meanwhile, Catwoman herself is fed up, not just of all the men in her life, but with women who act as damsels in distress.  Its refreshing to see a character confront these concepts so aggressively and unapologetically.  As Batman punches her in the face she cries, "how could you? I'm a woman!" As Batman tries to help her up, apologizing, she kicks the legs out from under him, stating, "as I was saying, I'm a woman and can't be taken for granted."  Hear me roar, indeed.

McDonalds famously cancelled their toy deal with Warner Bros after parents complained about the film's content.  Its a one of a kind film that can have armies of marching penguins that is "too dark" for the kiddies.

After Batman Returns, Warner Bros decided they'd had enough of this director and his quirky visions.  They decided to go considerably brighter and hire Joel Schumacher to direct the next film.  While I enjoy Batman Forever for what it is, we all know what Batman and Robin turned out to be.  After the campy Batman fizzled and died, Nolan stepped in with his considerably more grounded Dark Knight Trilogy.  Even though I despise the last film of the series, I adore the first two. Those films simply do not happen if Batman doesn't crash and burn with Batman and Robin and those films don't happen if Burton doesn't scar children with his perverse super hero film.

So, I guess what I'm saying is, we have to be thankful for Batman Returns, but not just for what it gave us in the future.  I genuinely like it.

Oeuvre: Tim Burton - Edward Scissorhands

After the ground-shaking success of BATMAN, Tim Burton had free reign to do whatever he wanted. While some directors use their clout to make big budget, original movies that otherwise wouldn't have been made, (cough, Christopher Nolan, cough) Burton went small and personal, and so we have Edward Scissorhands.

You probably know the story of Edward Scissorhands by now. And if you don't, you at least recognize the unforgettable images or have heard Danny Elfman's equally unforgettable score.  A lonely inventor creates a man but dies before he can finish him, leaving the man with only scissors for hands.  When an innocent Avon lady accidentally discovers him, she brings him home to her small suburban neighborhood, where he becomes very popular among the bored townsfolk.

Johnny Depp makes his Burton debut as the titular Edward Scissorhands.  Known primarily as a teen heartthrob from 21 Jump Street and A Nightmare on Elm Street, Depp curls inward as the shy, misunderstood character. Depp speaks less than 170 words in the entire film and yet his performance is clear and touching.

Dianne Wiest plays Peg, a devoted wife and caring mother, but also a door-to-door makeup salesperson. In many ways, she is similar to Edward. She's optimistic and eternally kind despite being continually downtrodden and disrespected by her neighbors.  She is married to Alan Arkin, who could not be more All-American Dad if he tried.

In any love story, you need a love interest.  Kim, played by Winona Ryder is a girl next door type whose teenage attitude makes her fear Edward and reject him as a freak.  However, she has a good heart and a patient spirit like her mother and finds herself warming to him, much to the annoyance of her boyfriend Jim, played by Brat Pack alum,  Anthony Michael Hall.  He plays a jock who treats Edward like a child and pretends, in his own callous way, to be friends with him.

And finally, there is the lonely Inventor played by Vincent Price.  He is inspired to invent Edward while looking at a cookie baking machine of his own creation.  It's that kind of movie.  His role was expanded in the script, but Price was very old, and his battle with emphysema and Parkinson's meant that most of his scenes were cut.  Fittingly, the last scene he shot for the film, that of his death, would be the last thing Price would film in his life.  He passed away shortly thereafter but his role in this movie, however brief, is charming and endearing.

This may be the most Tim Burtony movie of all time.  It is the perfect confluence of his talents.  Once again, his American heritage mixes with his German influences, and while they merged smoothly in Batman, here they clash but they clash beautifully.  Edward Scissorhands exists in a reality slightly skewed from ours.  Peg's pink Avon uniform stands out vibrantly against the gothic castle.  Edward's pale skin and gravity defying hair make him stick out like a sore thumb amongst the clean cut "normal" people that surround him.  His contempt for the American suburbs is fully on display here as well.  The houses are painted in garish Easter pastels and all the men leave for work at exactly the same time, but there is also a scary, dark castle atop a scary, dark mountain that comes out of nowhere.  If it weren't for the fairy tale elements of this movie, one could argue it is riddled with plot holes and marred by dramatic simplicity but it totally works.  If you wonder where Edward gets the blocks of ice, you're asking the wrong questions.

One of the deeper, darker concepts this movie explores is our relationship with phenomena.  Edward is treated with admiration and curiosity but he's nothing more than a novelty to most of the town.  These people are terribly bored.  To them, he is something to gawk at, and when he doesn't behave the way they want him to, he's something to fear.  They are more than happy to believe that he is a thief, a sex offender, and even a murderer despite all evidence to the contrary.  Even Peg, the well-meaning mother, is corrupted by Edward's presence.  As Edward becomes more and more popular, she starts to use him as a means of increasing her social value.

In a deeply troubling scene, Peg sits with Kim and admits that she should never have brought Edward down from that castle.  That their lives would have been better if he had just stayed up there forever.  Its upsetting because even Peg, one of Edward's most passionate defenders, thinks its better for Edward to be locked away in desperately lonely isolation, instead of hoping that others will grow to acknowledge and love him as they do.  Its a dismissal of humanity's worth as a whole.

The only pure person in this movie isn't Edward, its the Inventor, a man who created life out of the emptiness in his heart.  Edward is a child and can be molded as one.  Left to his own devices, he cuts his face.  He hurts everything he touches but longs for human interaction.  His very first lines are "don't go."  He wants to understand the world around him and sees beauty everywhere, but even he is corrupted by the world he is forced to inhabit.  In our culture, he experiences desire and longing, but with it come jealousy and violence.  Edward, it seems, is not meant for this world.

It's impossible to separate the artist from the art in this case.  I'm not referring to Burton's fondness for vibrant colors, black blacks and pale makeup.  I'm referring to Edward as a character and Burton's childhood in Burbank.  At its core, the story is about a lonely young man, who doesn't understand people.  He becomes an artist and even achieves a small level of fame before being chased out of the town he never asked to be a part of.  Edward and Burton even look alike, with the same pale skin and trademark straggly hair.  This only contributes to the film's feeling of honesty.  There is something true about Edward Scissorhands and I think it's because its the most personal movie Tim Burton ever made.

What Burton creates here is a modern day fairy tale; the story of where snow comes from.  The film is intensely moving, thanks in no small part to Depp's performance and Elfman's score.  One scene in particular, in which Winona Ryder asks Edward to hold her always draws a tear from my eye.  Edward Scissorhands is a deeply beautiful, tragic love story that deserves to be seen by everybody. Its just that good.

Oeuvre: Tim Burton - Batman

The sequels and remakes have used the additives of 'Returns', 'Forever', 'Begins', 'V. Superman', and 'And Robin' but 25 years ago, there was only one 'BATMAN.'

While you know all the players, you may not know the plot.  Orphaned billionaire Bruce Wayne protects Gotham City as the masked vigilante known as Batman.  His life is complicated when he falls for Vicki Vale, a famed photographer pursuing the true identity of the fabled Batman.  But when an old enemy returns from the dead as the twisted Joker, Wayne must put his personal interests aside and stop this madman once and for all.

There's a whole generation out there who think Batman begins and ends with Nolan and that Burton's films, while revolutionary for the time, are dated by todays standards.  While that is occasionally true, there is still much to admire.  A quarter of a century later, 'Batman' still stands out for its dark imagery and mythic atmosphere.

Michael Keaton is a Batman.  He doesn't overcompensate with a deep, gravely voice.  He rarely speaks in anything over a whisper.  Everything about his Batman is minimal, from his quiet but stern composure signifying that he is, in fact, badass, to his simple, pitch black costume, thanks to Bob Ringwood.  But where Keaton truly excels is as Bruce Wayne.  The character has proven impossible to capture by everyone who has played the part by everyone except Christian Bale and Keaton.  Keaton's Wayne is vulnerable, bordering on aloof.  He's a slightly stuttering recluse who doesn't know how to talk to people.  You'd never guess that he puts on a cowl and beats up muggers but that's what is so great about him.

The object of Wayne's affections Vicki Vale played by Kim Basinger, a last minute replacement for Sean Young.  What makes her character so interesting is that she begins the story pursuing Batman but turns her eye to Wayne who she finds more interesting and elusive.  Almost any other movie would have the opposite, no matter how predictable.

Michael Gough is a considerably better Alfred Pennyworth than Michael Caine ever was.  Like everything else in this movie, he's understated compared to Nolan's often self-important reboot.

And then there's the show-stealing Jack Nicholson as Jack Napier but you can call him... the Joker, a maniacal lunatic who plans to take over Gotham with the ingenious use of cosmetics.  Lex Luthor can keep his real estate schemes, our guy's got makeup!  Nicholson plays the part very traditionally.  He is slightly more ominous than Cesar Romero ever was but he's also just plane goofy.  He has a prosthetic grin permanently stretched on his face but you feel that Jack would have been smiling like that regardless of the makeup.  He's clearly having a ball.

One aspect of the story that I admire greatly is the Batman/Joker dynamic.  You get the same "you made me!  No, you made me!" talk that all superhero movies feel the need to saddle themselves with, but here we get a variety.  Batman confronts Jack Napier, the Joker confronts Bruce Wayne, and finally, Batman confronts the Joker.  With every interaction the relationship is different and in every scene it grows.  That's rare, even for superhero movies these days.

Danny Elfman's score opens the film and presents itself as the most memorable Superhero score next to John Williams' Superman over a decade earlier.  Sparing a very few exceptions, these two giants have not been topped.  It's ominous, its fast, its energetic, its just Batman.  But the rest of the soundtrack is pretty fantastic too.  The Joker's motif, 'Waltz to the Death' is fun to listen to and works incredibly well when juxtaposed to the grim aesthetic.  And the track 'Descent into Mystery' which plays as Batman travels back to the Batcave for the first time gives me chills.

With the help of Production Designer Anton Furst, Burton's Gotham is a thing to behold.  Skyscrapers so high they pierce the thick, story clouds that shroud Gotham in a perpetual darkness.  Wayne's mansion feels authentically exaggerated and his Batcave will continue to set the gold standard by which all other Batcaves will be judged.  The world exists in a timeless age, where men wore trench coats and fedoras, but computers also exist.  And yet, it never detracts from the story.

There are things that age the story (I'm looking at you, Prince!), and there are massive jumps of logic that some won't be able to make (where did all those goons on the church rooftop come from, anyway?) but if you're willing to look past all that, I think Tim Burton's Batman is a treat.  There are so many aspects of the movie that still haven't been topped, despite the six films that have followed it.  But if you think its unique, wait till you get a load of 'Batman Returns.'

Oeuvre: Tim Burton - Beetlejuice

Last month, I stressed the importance of a filmmaker's sophomore effort.  A great deal of importance is placed of a director's first film, as it should be.  It's the film that gets your foot in the door.  It's often treated as a "Here's who I am!" statement.  But its the next film, with more experience and a greater budget, that you plant your feet, spread your arms wide and declare "This is who I CAN be!"  With 'Beetlejuice', Burton shows his true colors.  Turns out its a lot of blacks and whites.  But also, a whole lotta fun!

Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis play Adam and Barbara Maitland, a couple  hopelessly, dorkily in love.   He spends most of his time in the attic building a model of their quaint little town and she buys him a can of furniture oil and they're both really excited about it.  Norman Rockwell could not invent these two.

But there's trouble in paradise.  The lovers die in a freak accident and return home as ghosts only to discover that their beloved house has been infested by a dysfunctional family from New York.  Unable to scare away the unwanted inhabitants, the newly-deads turn to a sleazy, disgusting spirit for assistance.

All, literally all of the characters in this movie are a lot of fun.  There's no weak point.  Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis are charming and delightfully inoffensive and yet they're never boring.  They accept their fate with a sense of bewilderment and curiosity, refusing to let death get them down.

Jeffrey Jones, Catherine O'Hara and a young Winona Ryder play the Deetzes, the family that buys the haunted house.  The father, Charles Deetz is a big land developer who came out to the country for some piece and quiet.  Perfectly content with this old-fashioned lifestyle, he even comes with a copy of "American Birds."  Catherine O'Hara plays a wicked step-mother of sorts as Delia, a no-talent artist, crawling out of her skin out in the sticks.  With the help of Otho (Glenn Shadix), a vaguely homosexual interior decorator/spiritual, the two tear down the perfectly nice home and rebuild it into a gaudy, modern catastrophe.  Winona Ryder plays Lydia, a slightly suicidal goth with a flair for photography.  She's so morbid that she can see the deceased and agrees to help the lovely couple.  All of these people are cartoons and they should be hair-tugging annoying, but they're all funny in their own ways and compliment one another.

Then there's the world of the dead, a DMV for the recently deceased headed by Sylvia Sidney as a heavy-smoking caseworker.  Its a scene filled with tons of sight gags, colorful characters, and marvelously simple special effects.

But the real star of this movie is Michael Keaton as the bio-exorcist and titular Beetlejuice.  I really can't stress enough how fantastic he is in this film.  In every scene, he jumps off the screen.  He plays the part as a used car salesman meets the Genie.  He's a mad tornado of crass and filth.  Keaton was robbed at the Academy Awards last year for his brutally honest performance in 'Birdman' but he wasn't even nominated for his performance in this.  Unforgivable.

Legend says that following the surprise success of 'Pee-wee's Big Adventure', Burton began searching for a new project to pursue.  However, he was despondent after script after script of unoriginal ideas.  He was about to give up hope, when at the bottom of a mountain of listless screenplays, he found a concept bursting with unique imagery that fit Burton like a glove.

The Production Design by Bo Welch, the Art Direction by Tom Duffield, the Set Decoration by Catherine Mann, the Costume Design by Aggie Guerard Rodgers, and the Makeup by Ve Neill, Steve LaPorte, and Robert Short, for which they won an Oscar, are all top notch.  The effects aren't perfectly polished.  At no point, do I forget that we're on sets on a soundstage somewhere, but that's part of the charm.  It's all rough and tumble.

The score by Danny Elfman is iconic.  Whenever anyone makes a movie about conniving spirits, this theme is bound to show up in the trailer or TV spots and for good reason.  Like the characters, the scenery, the special effects, and everything else about the movie, its chock full of personality.

Burton directs this story with a precise deliberation and a fantastic imagination.  The stop-motion animation, particularly a snake within a snake that looks like something from 'Dune.'  His excitement and love for every aspect of filmmaking is tangible and I spent most of the movie grinning ear to ear.  There's a scene at the dinner table involving a choreographed dance sequence, shrimp cocktails, and the Banana Boat Song by Harry Belafonte.  The last act in particular, when Beetlejuice makes his way into the human world, is a hilarious thrill ride.  When I saw this film as a kid, I remember not laughing.  Not because it wasn't funny, it is, but because I couldn't understand what I was watching.  What is happening in this movie?  Its unexpected, unpredictable, and wholly original.  I can't imagine NOT liking this film.  It's a blast.





Extra Tidbit.  Some crazy individuals with too much time and even more talent made an awesome Beetlejuice Rollercoaster in Minecraft.  Check it out here...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afcudstM9zA