Tag: Tim Burton

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024) Film Review

The ghost with the most is back

Rating 12a
Length 1h44
Release 06.09.2024
Director Tim Burton
About Three generations of the Deetz family return home to Winter River after an unexpected family tragedy. Still haunted by Beetlejuice, Lydia’s life soon gets turned upside down when her rebellious teenage daughter discovers a mysterious portal to the afterlife. When someone says Beetlejuice’s name three times, the mischievous demon gleefully returns to unleash his very own brand of mayhem.
Moon: Full Moon spotted during Beetlejuice’s backstory about an hour in.
Where to Watch: Still at cinemas nationwide
Trailer:

Trick

  • I assumed it was the notoriety surrounding Jeffrey Jones that saw his character, Charles, meet his demise. It is sad, then, how much his likeness was used throughout the film. Often, a disgraced actor’s character is done away with sans pomp and ceremony. So I am surprised that his image is shown on his grave… stone?
    It was one thing to show his death through stop motion. Hell, I quite liked it and thought it was a novel way to get past not casting him. However, that should have been it. No headless character popping up and certainly no photos of him at all. It then begs the question; is Jones still getting paid for this instalment?
    Given that Jones is not imprisoned, it all feels very bad faith and bad taste to involve the character so heavily.
  • On a similar note, Santiago Cabera’s Richard is underused. Many of the scenes involving Charles, could have been replaced with Richard and reducing the audience ick from Charles and giving Richard the room to develop his character.
  • I could tell Beetlejuice was Michael Keaton this time around. It’s not like I didn’t know who Michael Keaton was when I watched the original Beetlejuice; I’d seen Batman. However, much like James Spader in Mannequin, I really struggled to see Keaton in the role, he was so involved and invested.
    Now, that’s not to say he wasn’t invested this time. It’s just that it very much felt like Michael Keaton playing Beetlejuice.
  • I wanted to love Jenna Ortega as Astrid. On one level I did. She is the perfect daughter for Winona Ryder’s Lydia. My issue is passing on the conflict from Delia and Lydia to Lydia and Astrid.
    Astrid being obsessed with death on the one hand, but also not believing Lydia and her past does not work for me. Something needs to change within the conflict, or they need to be on the same page from the start. Think Gilmore Girls and the Gilmore matriarch. Don’t get me wrong, the conflict works narratively. However, it fails because you’ve created a carbon copy of Lydia in Astrid.
  • The lip-sync overwhelm. Loved the synching to Brian Adams however the film was trying to recapture the magic of the original scenes and, in doing so, comes across a little too try-hard. The worst, for me, was the wedding ceremony dance/sync-along. It felt too forced and tired.
  • We get it Burton, you have a type. Please stop casting your current beau in your work. Yes Monica Belluchi is a goddess. Does she fit the role well? Eh! I personally would have preferred someone else, someone who was not so ethereal.

Treat

  • As a sequel with an extended length of time between, and upon first watch, I really enjoyed being back in this world. The colours and the contrast of the living and the dead. It all provides such a beautiful and quirky comfort. There’s a story that was legitimate and worth telling, the characters still feel the same and not like the actors have forgotten everything that made them great.
  • Catherine O’Hara is delightful and everything I remembered of Delia Deetz. From the moment we see her in the art installation, I remembered why I’ve always longed for a sequel.
    What I loved most of all, was that she was still the quirky woman I remembered, but she’d embraced that part of herself and the medicated harshness was gone from her character.
  • It’s funny, it’s charming and it attempts to throw you off guard. How successful it is with that, I guess it how good you are at reading films.
  • Bob!
  • It is a self contained story. Yes, there may be a sequel down the line, however there doesn’t need to be one. It leaves you fulfilled, at least it did me.

Final Thoughts

It is never going to live up to the standard of the first outing, but it gives enough to satisfy anyone wanting to return to the world or those who enjoy Tim Burton’s work.

Sleepy Hollow (1999) Halloween Advent 2022

Rating 18
Length 1h29
Release 12.4.2017
Director Greg McLean (Writer James Gunn)
About An ordinary day at the office becomes a horrific quest for survival when 80 employees (John Gallagher Jr., Tony Goldwyn, Adria Arjona) at the Belko Corp. in Bogotá, Colombia, learn that they are pawns in a deadly game. Trapped inside their building, a voice over an intercom tells the frightened staffers that two workers must be killed within 30 minutes. When another ultimatum follows, friends become enemies and new alliances take shape, as only the strongest will remain alive at the end.
Moon: Full moon when the Tree of the Dead is first seen
Where to Watch: Netflix and Now TV
Trailer:

First Thoughts

This film is in my overall top 10. Surprising it would seem to others as apparently I don’t like Johnny Depp. It’s not that I dislike Depp, it’s that I do believe the use of Depp in Burton’s work should have been sparingly.
I remember watching this as a rental during one of my summers at Aunt Ursula’s (You’d understand if you saw her). One of those stormy sort of days in which it seemed to get dark unusually early.
I remember the poster took pride of place outside Walsall Arboretum in the Summer of 1999. I wasn’t allowed to go see it in the cinema given its age rating and being only 13. Oh, it looked awesome.
Then I remember buying it as an ex-rental VHS the summer after. It became the sort of film I would put on and do other things while it was on. While I enjoyed the film in itself, it was the music that perhaps had me watching it as often as I did.

I’ve not watched it for at least two years now. I try to not repeat watch films in an attempt to widen my experiences and in favour of looking to much older films… I say as this film became a legal adult this year.

Trick

  • I would go so far to say that there’s an overload of flashbacks for such a film. However, I’m going to say that the ones I really could do without are those of Ichabod himself.
    I get that they’re to develop the character and give us insight into his leanings towards science over faith, however it can be deduced from everything else. other than it being a way of presenting a secondary filmic tone, there is very little to gain.
  • There’s a little too much gloss on what should really have rough edges. Burton works best within the realms of pulp. I love this film, there’s no doubt about that, but it really is missing the B-movie tone that would make it perfect.

Treat

  • Not only is this film an almost love letter to the Hammer Horrors, Burton manages to get two Hammer veterans onto the screen. Christopher Lee and Michael Gough, however fleeting, add a certain atmosphere.
  • Miranda Richardson is glorious in her duel role. She is, without a doubt, the standout among the ensemble. Which when you consider that involves actors who’ve fought in a galaxy far, far away or battled at the school for witchcraft and wizardry that truly is saying something.
    This is a woman who has scared the crap out of me and made me laugh within a split second of each other for year in Blackadder, in which the tone is overly buoyant and light. Burton has given her the keys to the gory kingdom and she doesn’t half bring her A-game!
  • I cannot deny, this film is visually stunning. The filter used, while detracting from the overall gore, adds something so much more sinister in terms of tone.
  • Ray Park could have been on a par with Andy Serkis. You know, if he wasn’t a massive bag of dicks. Okay, he also couldn’t act for shit, whereas Serkis doesn’t hide behind the CGI.
    That said, it is Ray Park and not, alas, Christopher Walken, who brings the Headless Horseman to life. Maybe it’s just me and my knowledge going into the film, but the fight scene with Casper Van Dean’s Brom has all the signature moves of Darth Maul. Believe me, it pains me to give this guy credit over Walken, but that’s a testament to how well he performed.

Final Thoughts

The last of Burton’s greats. A wonderful retelling of Washington Irving’s classic tale with the DNA of a Hammer Horror. A great watch at any time, but the perfect one for the spooky season.
Long may it reign as part of my own personal top 10.