Tag: Johnny Depp
-
Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore torches the legacy of Harry Potter
I worked at Warner Bros. throughout the original run of Harry Potter movies. In case that sounds exciting, I assure you it wasn’t; it was an extremely minor role in a vast corporation, that involved selling t-shirts, iPhone cases, and battery-powered toy wands online. But it was very easy for us all — a bunch…
-
Relentless Withholding: Michael Mann’s Public Enemies
Khoi Vinh rightly observes in Minimalism, Michael Mann and Miami Vice that “Mann has produced a taut, stylistic and often brutally impersonal filmography that seems most interested in the concept of work” (via Daring Fireball). I wholly understand and laud the aim of a minimalist, “relentlessly withholding” narrative, but I don’t believe it’s ignorant or…
-
Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
Terry Gilliam is burdened with a number of unfair reputations. First, as a visual stylist more than a storyteller or director of actors — the latter, at least, obviously refuted by the fact that many high-profile stars will repeatedly work with him for pennies. Second, he’s also thought of as an unpredictable hellion and spendthrift,…
-
Oi t’ink Tim Burton’s up to summat in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Anyone who’s ever had the misfortune of a conversation about movies with this blogger is no doubt aware that I like musicals about as much as I like biopics. That is to say, not at all. I do, however, love Tim Burton, and count Ed Wood among my personal favorite films. So if he could…
-
Johnny Depp delivers a truly strange performance in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest is a healthy dose of frivolous fun; I don’t care what the critics are saying. I could do without Orlando Bloom’s cardboard performance, or the minature controversy around Keira Knightly being airbrushed on the posters, but that’s not what the movie is about. As with the first installment,…