News Hit

To celebrate the release of Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, News Hit will take a look back at the 5 best films of Tim Burton.

Beetlejuice (1988)
After the moderate financial success of Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, Burton returned with the decidedly riskier venture of Beetlejuice, an often-grotesque, comedy-fantasy hybrid that makes the most of future-Batman star Michael Keaton’s gift for ribald physical comedy. Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis is a sweet-natured married couple whose idealic life is cut short, leaving them as ghosts. After a boorish new family moves into their home, they call upon the services of Beetlejuice (Keaton), a repulsive, obnoxious “bio-exorcist” ghost with the power to expel the living. Beetlejuice showed Burton’s gift for mixing the macabre with mundane, combining garish costumes, Borsh-esque imagery and suburban milieu for a strange comedy of manners. Warner Bros., confounded but pleased with its box office success, gave Burton the green light to reignite his long-delayed Batman, which was previously stuck in development hell.

Here is the introduction to Keaton’s Beetlejuice:

Edward Scissorhands (1990)
Lyrical, sad, emotional and exhilarating, Edward Scissorhands is perhaps Burton’s most iconic film, a very moving and wholly successful modern fairytale and a welcome respite from the commercial juggernaut of Batman. Johnny Depp shook off his teen idol status forever for this teenaged-Pinocchio, Edward, a gentle, shy mechanical man who was born with scissors for hands and yearns to be human. Brought down from his haunted, decrepit home by a kindly Avon lady (Dianne Wiest), Edward is accepted into her home and falls for her initially sceptical teenage daughter, Kim (Winona Ryder). Burton calls this his most personal film and it is not hard to see why, as its themes of social isolation and loneliness resonates throughout the entirety of his career.

Here is one of the best scenes from Scissorhands, featuring Danny Elfman’s wonderful score:

Batman Returns (1992)
Coming off the staggering US$411 million success of Batman, Warner Bros. offered Burton complete creative control over the sequel. Burton’s tale of misjudged social misfits and damaged outsiders fit closer into his ouvreu than the overtly commercial offering the original. It is a pity Michael Keaton’s caped crusader is given less to do this time (he does not even appear in the opening ten minutes) and the film devolves into the grotesque once too often, but the rich atmosphere of the original is heightened here, creating a bizarre, arresting landscape of the madcap and insane. Michele Pheiffer is absolute dynamite as Catwoman and Danny De Vito (like Jack Nicholson’s Joker) is perfectly cast as the sly, repulsive Penguin. The film eventually grossed over US$250 million, but Warner Bros., unsatisfied with the film’ dark, adult tone, moved on with the series, inviting Joel Schumacher to tackle the next film in the franchise:

Here is the film’s trailer.

Ed Wood (1994)
Along with the Coen Brother’s Barton Fink, Burton’s Ed Wood is one of the strangest films about Hollywood, and also one of the best. An affectionate, Capra-esque tribute to the power of films and filmmaking, Tim Burton’s beautiful biopic chronicles the struggles of Edward D. Wood Jnr. (Johnny Depp), an energetic, optimistic young filmmaker who would eventually make some of the worst films in history: Plan 9 from Outer Space and Glen or Glenda. It would have been so easy for Burton and writers Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski to go for cheap laughs at Wood’s expense (he was also a transvestite and surrounded himself with fellow trannies, wrestlers and has-been movie stars), but the filmmakers instead celebrate Wood and cherish his oddball, extended-filmmaking family. Depp has never been better as the generous, dogged Wood, whilst Oscar-winner Martin Landau’s theatrical reading of Bela Lugosi is a beautiful homage to the great Hungarian actor:

Check out this excellent scene, where Lugosi takes Wood’s speech from Bride of the Monster and injects a Shakespearian-like meaning and engagement.

Big Fish (2003)
Coming off the critical drubbing and audience indifference to his misjudged “reimagining” of Planet of the Apes, Tim Burton went smaller with this whimsical, romantic adaptation of the Daniel Wallace novel. Although this seems a bit of a best-of of many of the director’s visual ideas (the strange mechanical constructions of Edward Scissorhands, the dark, gloomy forests of Sleepy Hollow, the American Suburbia-meets-fantasy style of Beetlejuice), this very touching story of father-son reconciliation feels like his most personal production since Ed Wood, resonating with Burton given his own strained relationship with his own father. Ewan McGregor is dashing as the young Edward Bloom who grows into Albert Finney’s sprightly, charming storyteller and Burton surrounds the two leads with a terrific supporting cast (including Jessica Lange, Billy Crudup, Steve Buscemi and, in her American debut, Marion Cottilard). Sprightly, and just on the right side of whimsy, this sad, beautiful kaleidoscope is a wonderful study of reconciliation and the cracks between fathers and sons.

Check out this sequence in which Burton proves as romantic a filmmaker as any other:

Andrew Moraitis