Updated RankingsBig Eyes (2014)
* * There’s something off with this biopic and I think it’s Burton. Amy Adams and Christoph Waltz are top actors. (Despite Waltz’s best work coming from Tarantino, I’ve seen enough to know he’s up for other complex characters.) The script is from the writers of Ed Wood, a high point in Tim Burton’s career, because beneath the weird contours of that story he found so interesting he also found the heart and humanity. Big Eyes is closer to the skittles fantasy of Edward Scissorhands, and the characters are missing an anchor, despite the hard work of Adams and Waltz, who come off as cartoons in some scenes, most notably the courtroom finale.
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (2016)
* ½ Further proof that the Tim Burton that once was is well and truly lost, possibly gone forever. A fantasy that replaces anything fantastic with expensive special effects. We’re handed one shiny sequence after another, but there’s nothing creative, clever or ingenious to tickle the imagination. Since Tim Burton arrived on the scene we’ve been dazzled by films like Pan’s Labyrinth and Mad Max: Fury Road. Even a typical Marvel film has more "Wow!" than this boring magic act.
The film also contains perhaps the most annoying performance Samuel L. Jackson has ever given. It’s no wonder they didn’t mention him in the advertising. Also, he looks like the Death God from Death Note.
”The Jar” (1986)
* * * - Okay Even with the limitations of an episode of a TV Show, there is plenty of Burton’s style, from the Art Direction to the Danny Elfman score. The plot is 2nd rate Twilight Zone (and very similar to Big Eyes, with an artist getting famous off someone else's work), and the characters have no room to develop so they’re painted in the broadest strokes. So it’s not deep, but it’s still fun.
Hansel and Gretel (1982)
* ½ WTF? Long lost Burton short didn’t need to be found. Plenty of Burton touches in the character design and I liked the way the witches’ house was stuffed with colored goo. Why is the cast Japanese? The kids are bad, but the worst performance is the guy who plays both the Stepmother and the Witch. Best character is a creepy Gingerbread Man hand puppet, who would appear as one of Joker’s balloons in Batman.