Reviews

One of Franco's first movies (when he was still considered a good director), very pleasant to watch. It has all the elements of the traditional horror recipe and is often inventive and surprising ; of course it is not really scary (well, at least not anymore), but the angst mood does still work pretty well, and it is both funny and seriously set (what post-Scream so-called horror movies are not) ; and sometimes even beautiful (the black and white pictures help). Actor Howard Vernon is a good Frankenstein/Jack the Ripper villain, and has something of Peter Cushing or Christopher Lee. If you like old terror tales (from Universal 1930's to Hammer 1970's, that kind), you should give it a try, really.

With this one, Tim Burton delivers for the first time on screen the crazy world living in his mind. The philosophy is the same than in Beetlejuice, but this time it goes further in craziness. The tolerance message is more radical than ever, because I don't think that there's anything physically wrong with my black buddies, while Edward, by being this strange (close to horrible), forces you to go behind what he looks like (and I think that movies like this should be watched more often these days, when you hear people say about other kinds of people things that make no sense at all). But not only a political speech (that would be generous but maybe boring) this is a success in film-making : work on colors and architectures is, like always with Burton, wonderful, but most important, the movie stars Vincent Price for the last time - remember him, true horror fans !

Burton tries to give a new launch to Batman's theater career by adding to the comic-book aesthetics the one he found in his youth in Italian and English horror movies. A very good idea : by making Batman some kind of a modern Christopher Lee, he avoids the trap of being too close to the comic-book, which makes the 1960's movie and TV-series a little hard to watch today without laughing. But still something in the movie doesn't work (Michael Keaton, maybe, but I'm not sure he's the only one to blame) and the second Burton-Batman movie will be by far better (a masterpiece, to speak frankly). Well, at least this one proved that Batman could exist on screen without being ridiculous.

The film's main heroes are two borderline weirdos, which is, in a politico-philosophical way, very refreshing (at least we're over with the always-good-in-everything-heroes like John Wayne or Charlton Heston). All the characters close to the common way of life (and not only the American way of life, I can assure you that) are boring while the freaks are really funny (I mean you laugh with them, not against). Artistically talking, there's everything that makes a good Burton movie : an intelligent use of colors, an entertaining music and, wahoo !, Winona.

Those of you who want to see another Ed Wood could be disappointed, but should still have a look at it to see how Burton succeeds in putting his own personality in a movie whose real author might be Paul "Pee-Wee" Reubens. Gags are sometimes really funny, others totally missed but there's always Hermann and Burton's welcomed craziness to save the movie. Far from perfect, but still very interesting.

This one is a black and white animated movie in the grim style of the next-coming Nightmare before Christmas and can be seen as an early genesis of it. All the Burton gimmicks of his feature-films are already here, including (most important) the dark voice of the never-to-be-forgotten-by-horror-movies-fans Vincent Price (in fact the movie would have been still good with only the sound and no pictures) who will also star Edward Scissorhands. Burton fans should have a look on this short movie that tries to renew the art of cartoons.

This one is a tough action movie with a very strange kind of humor (that is weird to us but seems quite common in HK movies) : Ringo Lam makes JCVD act like he's got no brain (no jokes here, please) and maybe this is the way he acts the best (but why did they cancel the totally crazy sequence where Jean Claude eats a banana WITHOUT putting of the skin ?????). Action is cool (i particularly like the ambulance race - yep !) and Michael Rooker is definitely one of the best (and unfairly unemployed). In fact you could like this movie even if you're not a great fan of "The Muscles from Brussels". In fact it is so good that it was released in theatres in France (not in America, it seems) - but hey, only for two weeks.