TheRetroCritic

Shot at the same time as Charlie And The Chocolate Factory , Corpse Bride was Tim Burton's first animated feature as director despite having tried his hand at stop-motion animation before with early short effort Vincent and, of course, The Nightmare Before Christmas , which he produced but didn't direct. Like the title suggests, this one's both very wedding themed and death themed. The plot sees nervous Victor Van Dort (Johnny Depp) be forced into an arranged marriage with Victoria Everglot (Emily Watson) except everything goes wrong, or even more wrong, I suppose, when Victor mistakenly proposes to a corpse he mistook for a tree branch. The corpse in question, bony, maggot-infested Emily (Helena Bonham Carter) accepts the offer and soon drags poor Victor down to the land of the dead to meet her pals. To further complicate things, Victor had taken a shine to Victoria and sinister fellow Lord Barkis (Richard E. Grant) is trying to step in as her husband while Victor&#

You'd think a superhero western about two dudes, one horse, a bunch of bad guys and Rossini's William Tell Overture would be pretty easy to get right. Then again, Hollywood couldn't get its head around Wild Wild West ... That over $250M was spent on a western based on a old show from the 50's is frankly nuts, especially since there was no way a franchise could have ever been spawned from it! The Lone Ranger , on that basis, was a flop from the get-go. With that in mind, let's look at the film on its own merits. It sadly doesn't really work. Now, don't get me wrong: I do like many parts of this movie and I do think that there was a kickass Lone Ranger flick in there somewhere. Unfortunately, the film is too long and too convoluted to really make sense. Honestly, director Gore Verbinski seems to have missed the point of making a Lone Ranger movie in the first place. What this should have been is a superhero movie as a western with a serial feel. Wha

Sleeping is bad for you. I think if there's one thing horror movies have taught me it's that. After movies like Invasion Of The Body Snatchers and its badass 70's remake, it was time to freak teenagers out again with yet another film which sees its characters go to sleep and regret it instantly. A Nightmare On Elm Street also famously gave a young Johnny Depp a prominent-ish role and introduced us to one of the most lasting movie monsters to date: Freddy Krueger, a character Robert Englund would go on to play many, many times. Wes Craven's original film is a trashy but competently made and always entertaining mix of jump-scares, tense build-ups and cartoonish violence. It's one of those horror movies that isn't really all that scary unless you're a kid seeing it for the very first time. Watching it as a kid, it did leave its mark on me but revisiting it now I can appreciate it as just a solid horror movie with an enjoyably tongue-in-cheek overall vi

What can I say about Edward Scissorhands ? Here's a movie I've probably seen every year since its release: like The Nightmare Before Christmas and Batman Returns , it's pretty much become a Christmas tradition. Already a fan of Tim Burton's back catalogue, this is the film which sealed the deal: Burton had my childhood by the balls and he would never let go without a fight. Since, I grew up and although some of the director's films I've grown to simply like (or feel relatively indifferent towards) rather than blindly worship, Edward Scissorhands is one of those which still feels genuinely special. I mean, modern fairytales of the sort are made pretty much every year these days and, with certain exceptions ( Pan's Labyrinth , Where The Wild Things Are ), actually good ones are incredibly rare. For every Edward Scissorhands there's 10 Gooby s. But what makes Burton's film work particularly well? The marriage of gothic Frankenstein -style B mov