Tag: Disney animator

Categories
Animation Features Live Action Movies

Beetlejuice

Director – Tim Burton – 1988 – US – Cert. 15 – 92m

***1/2

A recently deceased couple hire a bio-exorcist to rid their former house of its new, yuppie occupants – review originally published in Samhain, 1988

Whilst its opening shot recalls the aerial opening of The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980) segueying into that of The Witches Of Eastwick (George Miller, 1987), this film has been described as a reworking of Ghostbusters (Ivan Reitman, 1984) and The Exorcist (William Friedkin, 1973) (!) from the ghost’s point of view. The plot concerns a couple (Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin) who die and then find that their house – which they have to live in as ghosts – is bought by an horrific collection of yuppie trendies.

The couple try to carry on as normal, picking up the occasional useful tip from a weighty tome entitled ‘The Handbook for the Recently Deceased’ (or diseased, as they first pronounce it!) and despite warnings from their afterlife caseworker Juno (played by veteran Hollywood actress Sylvia Sidney) they decide to employ the self-styled bio-exorcist Beetlegeuse (Michael Keaton) to frighten off the new occupants.

The single most memorable image of Beetlejuice is that of a desert landscape peopled by sea monster-like worms, reminiscent of nothing so much as a surrealist version of Frank Herbert’s Dune.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Edward Scissorhands

Director – Tim Burton – 1990 – US – PG – 105 mins

*****

Burton’s first post-Batman outing is essentially a fairytale set in the modern world.

A rare fusion of big budget American Studio movie and highly personal vision, Tim Burton’s first post-Batman (Tim Burton, 1989) outing is essentially a fairytale set in the modern world. Its environment is a pastel-shaded suburbia inhabited by gossipy women, largely absent men (they’re at work during the day) and equally absent teenagers (away on a camping trip). This is clearly not so much a naturalistic representation so much as a paradigmatic equivalent, which is probably just as well since at the end of one predictable street is an equally unpredictable, gothic mansion towering into the heavens.

As Avon Lady Peg Boggs (the versatile Diane Wiest) traverses this route, she wanders about first the magnificent castle grounds – adorned with exquisitely sculptured bushes – and into the creepy interior where she finds Johnny Depp’s Edward, the boy previously described in the film’s frame story by an old aged Winona Ryder as “a boy who had scissors for hands”. He also has numerous tiny gashes on his face, to which Peg painstakingly proceeds to apply her craft!… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Edward Scissorhands

Director – Tim Burton – 1990 – US – PG – 105 mins

*****

PLOT

An old lady tells her grandchild a story: “there once was a man who had scissors for hands.” His name was Edward (Johnny Depp), and he lived in the old mansion on the hill where an inventor (Vincent Price) was refining him into a real boy. But before the inventor could add the final touch – replacing the scissors with real hands – he died.

Meanwhile, Peg Boggs the local Avon Lady (Diane Wiest) is doing her rounds when she calls at the spooky mansion to discover the strange boy with the cut face who she makes up and brings home – to arouse the curiosity of the bored, local housewife community.

Edward soon demonstrates amazing creative abilities, carving hedges into statuesque forms and cutting hair on dogs and humans in unique styles. Housewife Joyce (Kathy Baker) is smitten with lust for Edward – with catastrophic results – while the boy himself falls hopelessly in love with Peg’s daughter Kim (Winona Ryder), who is taunted by her boyfriend (Anthony Michael Hall). Disastrous consequences follow.

OPINION

Having delivered a Batman (Tim Burton, 1989) far more satisfactory than anyone dared hope, and taking the inevitable (after all the hype) fortune at the box office, director Tim Burton is given free rein to do whatever he wants.… Read the rest