Is it me or are black and white films just cooler? (Raging Bull, Casablanca and ED WOOD!)

Rating: 8/10 (7 January 2005)

Having sat through the disaster that is the remake of Planet of The Apes, I felt that Tim Burton, not Edward D. Wood Jr., deserved the accolade of 'worst movie director of all time'. However, it was only a minor blip in a career that really I much admire: Edward Scissorhands and Sleepy Hollow being two of the three films that particularly stand out. There is no surprise that these two movies include the wonderful Johnny Depp, whose career peaked in the 90s (Pirates of The Caribbean was NOT that good, in fact it's quite average if you watch it again - most likely due to Orlando Bloom) with the outrageous Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas and the magnificent Donnie Brasco. However, Depp's defining performance (I think we're seeing a trend here) is in the biographical film of the title character Ed Wood. His constant smiling and his optimism, despite the truly terrible films that he writes/produces/directs/acts etc, are quite lovable to such an extent that the audience let him get away with his angora sweater fetish. The film is so funny - not only Depp, but the supporting cast as well. Martin Landau won an Oscar for his performance which I find actually quite surprising because Oscars don't generally go to comedic characters (Sam Jackson in Pulp Fiction, anyone?) but I guess even the stiffs at Oscar would have had a hard time not laughing at Landau's 'Bela Lugosi' wrestling with a plastic, inanimate, giant octopus. I love the style of the film: it's nice to see that the people from Hollywood still have the time to laugh at their industry's past mistakes in between making movies like Armageddon, Pearl HarboUr and The Sum of All Fears (do we sense another trend here?!)- actually, while I'm on it, I'd just like to say Ben, what happened, man? You wrote, inconceivably, Good Will Hunting!. But the best part of the film is that it's all true (well most of it, anyway). Check out Edward D. Wood Jr.'s career - he did actually make a film called Glen or Glenda, about a heterosexual man with transvestite tendencies, starring none other than Bela Lugosi. Only in Hollywood. Anyway, I realise that I haven't really given you that much information about the film here, so all I'll say is that I loved it. If you haven't seen it yet I envy you, because this film has the unusual quality of being fantastic the first time round; thus, you are in for a treat.