Bovie Movie

This supernatural gothic whodunnit is another beautifully crafted offering from eccentric maestro Tim Burton. With a perfect cast milking every sinister nuance, Burton’s clever take on Washington Irving’s timeless tale of terror uses the classic look of Hammer’s golden horror era to stunning effect. Johnny Depp, sporting a clipped English accent, is brilliant as maverick policeman Ichabod Crane, sent to the small New England community of Sleepy Hollow to investigate three mysterious beheadings, which the locals are blaming on the ghost of the legendary Headless Horseman. Cruel shocks and subversive thrills combine with sly humour in a stunning movie that’s steeped in Burton’s Grimm fairy-tale sensibilities and unrestrained love of the fantasy genre. 

It took ten years for Oliver Stone to get his script made, but when this Vietnam War drama finally reached the screen it became a box-office smash and won four Oscars. Stone has the edge over Michael Cimino, Francis Ford Coppola and Stanley Kubrick, all of whom made major Vietnam movies, in that he was actually there as a volunteer who fought for patriotic reasons and got wounded before becoming disillusioned. From the scary opening when the new arrivals are greeted by the sight of body bags bound for home, the movie is an authentically messy tour of duty through the paddy fields where two Americans (Willem Dafoe and Tom Berenger) are at war with each other and fight for the soul of rookie Charlie Sheen. This is a modern classic and a personal exorcism for its director, who went on to complete a trilogy of Vietnam movies with Born on the Fourth of July and Heaven and Earth. 

A modern day fairy tale which tells the story of Edward, the man created by an inventor, who died before finishing him and left Edward with scissors where he should have hands. One day when the local “Avon” representative calls at the historic mansion where Edward has been living alone, she takes him home to stay with her family. He has to adapt to the new life and environment that he isn’t used to. Soon he shows a talent in cutting hair and hedges, and wins every body’s heart. But life isn’t always so sweet…

Accountant Johnny Depp is told he has 90 minutes, and six bullets, to murder the governor of California or his daughter will be killed, in director John Badham’s weak Hitchcockian suspense thriller. Supposedly playing out the shock predicament in real-time, with lots of close-ups of clocks — it clearly isn’t real-time, however — Badham consistently fluffs the tension by accenting the preposterous plot contrivances rather than creating any real empathy with the plight of the characters. Even the usually engaging Depp can’t rescue this thriller. 

In this offbeat western from Jim Jarmusch, Johnny Depp stars as William Blake, a mundane clerk who arrives in the shoot-’em-up Wild West town of Machine to take a job as an accountant only to find the position has been filled. Things go from bad to worse when he accidentally kills a man and is pursued as a gunslinger. Independent director Jarmusch’s black-and-white take on the cowboy movie is as bizarre and deadpan as his usual work, but it’s enlivened by appearances from the likes of John Hurt and, briefly, Robert Mitchum, not to mention Gary Farmer as an eccentric native American who’s under the illusion that Depp’s William Blake is the poet. How oddball can you get? 

Terry Gilliam (Brazil, Twelve Monkeys, The Fisher King) directed this colorful, stylized, pseudo-psychedelic $21-million adaptation of the 1971 Hunter S. Thompson classic, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey into the Heart of the American Dream, about stoned sportswriter Raoul Duke, Thompson’s alter ego, on a wild drug-crazed road trip, a paranoid plummet into the belly of the beast, with his pal, lawyer Oscar Zeta Acosta. Originally serialized in Rolling Stone (November 1971), the book catapulted Thompson headfirst toward the Kerouac-Mailer-Capote pantheon and jump-started the entire movement of “gonzo journalism.” Carrying a suitcase of drugs, Raoul Duke (Johnny Depp with shaved pate) and his attorney Dr. Gonzo (Benicio Del Toro) drive a red convertible across the Mojave from L.A. to Vegas, where Duke has an assignment to cover the Mint 400 desert motorcycle race. As the drugs kick in, Duke ventures into voiceover, filling in the blank spots and narrative gaps. “This is not a good town for psychedelic drugs,” says Duke, but even so, they consume vast quantities, eventually escalating to ether. Duke notes that with ether “you can actually watch yourself behaving this terrible way, but you can’t control it.” The two trash their hotel room, and Gonzo goes back to L.A. Thinking the hotel room holocaust will lead to an arrest, Duke begins a drive back to L.A., but after an odd encounter with a highway patrolman (Gary Busey) and a telephone conversation with Gonzo, he returns to Vegas to cover the District Attorney Convention on Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs in the glitzy Flamingo Hotel. This time the drugged-out duo trash their Flamingo room. The crazed carnival atmosphere segues into a carney casino, Bazooko’s Circus, where a barker (Penn Jillette) spiels amid aerialists, clowns, and a rotating carousel bar. Gonzo worries over runaway teen Lucy (Christina Ricci), who paints portraits of Barbra Streisand. Soon the hallucinations begin: Duke sees Gonzo transmogrify into a demon with breasts on its back, and an acid vision of a Vegas bar features large legit lounge lizards (courtesy of monster makeup man Rob Bottin). Flashbacks depicting Duke’s intro to the drug scene jump back to love-Haight relationships in San Francisco’s Summer of Love. Cameos and guest stars include Mark Harmon, Cameron Diaz, Flea, Lyle Lovett, Harry Dean Stanton, Ellen Barkin, Tobey Maguire, and Hunter S. Thompson himself. The film features a Geffen Records soundtrack mixing rock of the period with Vegas lounge tunes. Over the years, various script adaptations came and went as did numerous talents; people connected with past efforts to film Thompson’s book include Martin Scorsese, Jack Nicholson, Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, and writer-director Alex Cox. Shown in competition at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival.

John Waters’s hilarious send-up of Grease and Jailhouse Rock revolves around juvenile delinquent Johnny Depp having the hots for square Amy Locane. A superb hepcat soundtrack mixes real throbbing golden oldies with wonderful hormone-busting rock ‘n’ roll parodies, and the usual hip dream cast (including Iggy Pop and porn queen Traci Lords) pushes the vivid cartoon caricatures as close to the edge as possible, with Hell’s Angel Susan Tyrrell going deliriously over it. The nostalgic delights in Waters’s reform school drool are often more subtle than his other period offering, Hairspray, but it’s still a polished debunking of pop culture from the “Pope of Trash”. 

After Elizabeth (Keira Knightly), Will (Orlando Bloom), and Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) rescue Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) from the clutches of the Kraken, they must face their foes, Davey Jones (Bill Nighy) and Lord Cutler Beckett (Tom Hollander). Beckett, now with control of Jones’ heart, forms a dark alliance with him in order to rule the seas and wipe out the last of the Pirates. Now, Jack, Barbossa, Will, Elizabeth, Tia Delma, and crew must call the Pirate Lords from the four corners of the globe, including the infamous Sao Feng (Chow-Yun Fat), to a gathering that will make their final stand against Beckett, Jones, Norrington, the Flying Dutchman, and the entire East India Trading Company.

Made around the same time as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, this wonderful fantasy appeared in what was a vintage year for fans of the director. This exquisitely crafted example of stop-motion animation puts a hip spin on a Russian folk tale, with shy Victor Van Dort (voiced by Johnny Depp) wandering into the woods to practise his marriage vows and ending up spliced to a corpse (Helena Bonham Carter) — a passionate, blue-hued beauty with a maggot living in her eye. She whisks him off to a curiously vibrant subterranean land, but this enchanting world and his new bride’s increasingly apparent charms are little comfort to Victor when he’d rather be hitched to his living, breathing fiancée Victoria (Emily Watson) above ground. There’s a strong resemblance here to Burton’s previous foray into feature animation, The Nightmare before Christmas, but this time the gothic morbidity is tinged with more sweetness, and the consistently funny and often lyrical script is far better. 

Johnny Depp gives one of his most remarkable performances as John Wilmot, Second Earl of Rochester, the 17th-century poet who drank and debauched his way to an early grave. First-time director Laurence Dunmore places Wilmot in the context of his time, away from the “gadzooks-egad” stereotypes of the Restoration setting and squarely in the forefront of the era’s revolt against puritanism. Samantha Morton is marvellous as the would-be actress embroiled in the Earl’s life, while John Malkovich makes an intriguingly ambiguous King Charles II. There are many other high spots, particularly Wilmot’s address to Parliament, and the whole film has a simplicity of mood that’s enhanced by the music of Michael Nyman. But this is Johnny Depp’s movie. He eloquently and emotionally portrays this immoral yet fascinating man who died at the age of 33 having exhausted what there was of life.