John Dillinger, the Great Depression’s Public Enemy Number One, is forever connected to the movies. Not only did he copy his signature bank robbing move of gracefully leaping over the teller’s counter from an obscure crime film but he also was gunned down by FBI agents on July 22, 1934 as he stepped out of the Biograph Theater on Chicago’s north side after a screening of the Clark Gable gangster flick Manhattan Melodrama. As befits a notorious movie lover, in death the charming thief has become a popular movie character. On screen he’s been portrayed by a succession of good looking tough guys; Lawrence Tierney, Warren Oates, Robert Conrad, Mark Harmon and now, in a new film from Michael Mann, Johnny Depp.
At the beginning of Public Enemies Dillinger is a crook turned folk hero. His daring bank robberies made him the bane of law enforcement but a hero to the public who blame the banks for driving the country into a depression. Noting the bandit’s popularity, Bureau of Investigation chief Edgar J. Hoover (Billy Crudup) senses an opportunity to raise the profile of his then little known crime busting outfit. Making Dillinger the country’s first Public Enemy Number One he mounts a very public campaign to bring the charismatic outlaw to justice. Leading the charge is the equally charismatic Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale), the man who served as the model for Dick Tracy.
Director Michael Mann brings his usual lush visual style to Public Enemies, but unlike his most recent films (Miami Vice and Collateral) this is a surprisingly intimate film. Mann shoots almost every scene in tight close-up, showcasing the sculpted faces of stars Depp, Bale and Marion Cotillard. It’s an unusual style for a crime drama, but zeroing in on the actor’s faces emphasizes the intimate relationships between the characters, turning these bygone figures into living, breathing people rather than historical stereotypes.
Mann also surprises with his use of sound. This is a quiet film. Dialogue is mumbled, there is music, but it is used sparingly. The film’s calm is sporadically shattered by gunshots, which only makes the violence more jarring.
Mann’s stylistic choices—along with those of cinematographer Dante Spinotti, who gives the film a Godfather-esque feel with his use of shadows and darkness—breathes life into a familiar story.
In front of the camera there is star wattage to burn. Depp seemed an unlikely choice to play Dillinger; too slight, too good looking, but he is effortless in the role, bringing charisma and confidence to the film. Bale, in a secondary role, heaps on his usual intensity, but the histrionics of his recent work in Terminator: Salvation has been replaced with a smoldering, understated strength. Marion Cotillard as coat check girl Billie, brings believability as Dillinger’s girlfriend who’s willing to risk everything for a man she barely knows.
Performance wise the one false note here is Billy Crudup as Edgar J. Hoover. Crudup, usually a fine actor, is one note, a seething mass of insecurity and arrogance and little more.
Public Enemies is a movie of contradictions. It’s a romantic gangster movie; an art film disguised as a summer blockbuster; a film about a thief who was seen as a hero. It’s a complicated character study that holds up to more than one viewing.
According to Captain Jack Sparrow, the pirate’s motto is: “Take what you can and give nothing back.” Apparently the salty adage doesn’t only apply to sea bandits. The Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End filmmakers seem to have taken it to heart as well—they’re going to take almost three hours of your time, your twelve doubloons admission and in return they’ll give you… well, more than nothing, but not much.
Part three of the Pirates franchise picks up the action where last summer’s cliff hanger left it dangling. Scurvy dog Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) is still missing, presumably eaten by a giant sea creature. Heartthrob heroes Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) and Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley) are allied with the formerly skeletal pirate Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) to rescue Sparrow from Davy Jones’ locker and conquer the ghastly ghost ship, The Flying Dutchman.
Treachery and betrayal abound as loyalties switch on an almost minute by minute basis—double crosses lead to triple crosses which, in turn, lead to quadruple crosses in a story so confusing it would give Machiavelli a headache trying to keep things straight.
The Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy rivals only The Lord of the Rings movie for sheer length, the only difference being that LOTR was written by a scholar who spent fourteen years fine tuning the story, whereas POTC was written by a team of Hollywood hacks who are able to dream up pretty good action sequences, but fail to come up with a plot to connect the big money scenes. I suppose we shouldn’t expect much from people cobbling together a story based on an amusement park ride, but I doubt that even a hundred monkeys banging away at a hundred typewriters could come up with a more jumbled story.
None of the Pirates movies have been exactly easy to follow, but the first two were blessed with some commanding performances that smoothed over the rough hewn story telling. In supporting roles Geoffrey Rush and Bill Nighy stood out amid the action, creating characters that were memorable and colourful. Rush’s Barbossa was a great villain; flamboyantly evil, he added some delicious menace to the first instalment.
In the second one Nighy shone as the fish faced Davy Jones, complete with a slimy prehensile tentacle beard and a giant lobster claw for a hand. It was a strange character but despite layers of make-up and special effects Nighy made it his own and out acted the heavy prosthetics.
Then of course, there was Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow, arguably the world’s second most famous pirate next to Captain Morgan. In part one his Sparrow was a marvel of comic invention, an unexpectedly swishy swashbuckler—a swishbuckler?—who stole every scene he was in. It’s the role that made Depp a household name, and for better or worse, will be the character he is best remembered for.
What seemed so fresh the first time around is now as tarnished as one of Sparrow’s fake gold teeth. Depp presents a caricature of a caricature, mumbling his way through this movie, relying on tricks recycled from the first two. It’s as if Depp, a constantly inventive actor always on the hunt for something new, grew bored of playing the same character for a third time. He can still raise a smile, but for sheer manic fun, check out the first movie.
Even less fun than watching Depp saunter through scene after scene is watching the embalmed performance of Rolling Stone’s guitarist Keith Richard as Sparrow’s father. Depp says he modelled his character on the guitarist, so pairing the two should be fraught with comic possibilities but instead we get an idea why Keith waited until age 63 to make his dramatic debut. As an actor rock and roll’s great survivor makes a great guitar player.
POTC: At World’s End is an orgy of swordplay, action and there’s even some hangings, but none of the big action scenes have the inventiveness of the previous efforts. Nothing here compares to the Dead Man’s Chest sequence where Depp, channelling Buster Keaton, balances atop a giant mill wheel while it careens through the countryside. The action here is big and loud, but otherwise pretty standard pirate movie stuff. Swords clash, pirates swing from ship to ship and cannons roar, but the stunts mostly feel like amped-up Errol Flynn retreads.
Abandon all hope, ye who enter the theatre! Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End lacks the panache of the first instalment, mistaking 168 minutes of rambling bombast for entertainment value.
The Seven Seas are not enough to contain Johnny Depp’s outrageous scallywag Captain Jack Sparrow. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, the anticipated sequel to the 2003 mega-hit The Curse of the Black Pearl is in theatres now is so much bigger, louder and more convoluted than its predecessor that perhaps in the third sequel Disney will be forced to create the 8th, 9th and 10th Seas for Sparrow to conquer.
Dead Man’s Chest finds pirate Jack Sparrow searching for a way to get out of his blood debt to the legendary captain of the Flying Dutchman, Davy Jones. Setting sail with Depp are most of the cast from the original, including Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom along with welcome new additions in the form of Bill Nighy as Davy Jones and Stellan Skarsgård as the be-barnacled Bootstrap Bill. Together and separately they flee from a cannibal bb-q, supernatural sailors and a sea monster, while engaging in tavern brawls, rum drinking and general yo-ho-hoing in a story so long-winded that I could have carved a nice piece of scrimshaw waiting to get to the point of the plot. Luckily director Gore Verbinski has infused the movie’s over-long running time with enough thrills, spills and chills to keep us afloat.
At the center of it all is Johnny Depp, the pirate who, appropriately enough, steals all the scenes he is in. It’s mostly smooth sailing for Depp but as with any sequel some of the fun is gone. In 2003 his Captain Jack Sparrow was a marvel of comic invention that wowed us with his swishbuckling devil-may-care antics. Here Depp gives us more of the same but this time out we know what to expect from him. The filmmakers have wisely limited his time on screen this time out in an effort to keep the character fresh. Too much of a good thing is still too much.
The real treasure here is the fish faced Davy Jones played by English actor Bill Nighy. He leads a crew of undead sailors who have morphed into a veritable seafood smorgasbord. His first lieutenant has the head of a hammerhead shark; another has a conch shell exoskeleton while another has pufferfish cheeks. Jones himself is an incredible creation with a slimy prehensile tentacle beard and a giant lobster claw for a hand. It is a strange character but despite layers of make-up and special effects Bill Nighy makes it his own out acting the heavy prosthetics.
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest may not shiver your timbers in exactly the same way the first one did, but it still delivers. It’s fun and exciting, just as any movie based on an amusement park ride should be.
Hunter S. Thompson wrote “The Rum Diary” in 1961 before he became the revered gonzo journalist who penned “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.” It’s very loosely based on a period of time he spent in San Juan, Puerto Rico in the early days of his writing career, before, as his alter ego Paul Kemp (Johnny Depp) says in the film, he knew “who to write like me.”
So don’t expect the surreal poetry of “Fear and Loathing” or the disjointed charm of “Where the Buffalo Roam.” This is an origin story, the roots of gonzo, but the gonzo spirit of its creator is sadly missing.
Depp plays Kemp using a slight variation on the clipped Thompson accent he made famous in “Fear and Loathing.” He’s a hard drinking, failed novelist who thought he’d try his hand at selling some “words for money” to a newspaper in Puerto Rico. His plan to “lift the stone on the American Dream,” however, is kiboshed by an editor (Richard Jenkins) more interested maintaining the status quo than exposing the country’s ills. Assigned to writing an astrology column Kemp peers into the bottoms of lots of glasses of rum and becomes obsessed with Chenault (Amber Heard), the girlfriend of a shady PR man (Aaron Eckhart).
Kemp is a struggling writer, an artist still struggling to find his voice, which echoes the main failing of the film. Despite a director, Bruce Robinson, who made one of the funniest and best films about boozing (“Withnail and I”) and Depp’s close friendship with Thompson, the movie feels as if it is searching for a purpose. A voice. Despite the presence of a Hermaphrodite Oracle of the Dead, countless ounces of rum, one drug trip and some major movie star mojo from Depp, the movie falls flat.
It’s a story about perception—Eckhart’s PR man is selling one vision of the island, Kemp wants to reveal another—and how gazing into that chasm helped Kemp discover his voice and integrity but in the end it is neither the savage indictment of lazy journalism it should be, or (because of an ambiguous non-ending) the celebration of the power of the written word it couldn’t have been.
As the main curator of Thompson’s cinematic legacy Depp breathes some life into Kemp, although by times the broad performance feels at odds with the tone of the rest o the story.
As for the rest of the cast, Michael Rispoli embodies the boozy spirit of the piece. Giovanni Ribisi goes one swig over the line and will someone please give Amber Heard a job on “Mad Men?” Her face screams 1965.
Of course the film’s main character’s name is Paul Kemp and it takes place before the finely crafted persona of Hunter S. Thompson came into being but a healthier dose of the writer’s “ink and rage” might have given “The Run Diary” the spark it needed to really ignite.
If Michelangelo Antonioni and Sergio Leone had a love child and that love child directed a movie the result might be something like “Rango,” the new animated not-only-for-kids movie starring the voice of Johnny Depp.
Depp plays a theatrical chameleon with a big imagination and a host of imaginary friends who finds himself stranded in the desert. Following his shadow he lands in the town of Dirt, a miniature town inhabited by small creatures that look like they just crawled out of a John Ford movie. The town is short of water, in fact, it’s so dry cactus die of thirst. Creating the persona of Rango, a Wild West gunslinger, the lizard hero becomes sheriff and tries to get to the bottom of the water problem.
It’s possible that “Rango” is a movie that only the money-making team of Depp and “Pirates of the Caribbean” director Gore Verbinski could get made. It’s a big budget animated film that must have cost a fortune, but instead of playing it safe they have turned in a surreal family film complete with a cameo from gonzo journalist (and Depp mentor) Hunter S. Thompson. It may be a new kind of kid’s flick—existential comedy for kids.
Like many heroes before him Rango grapples with the big questions—Who am I? What is my destiny?—as he convinces the townsfolk to put their trust in him and “tango with the Rango.” Not sure if the young ones will get it, or if they’ll care about the story, which has more than a whiff of “Chinatown” about it but the animation by George Lucas’s Industrial Light and Magic—it’s their first fully animated movie in 35 years—will definitely capture their eye.
The movie truly looks fantastic—who knew lizards could have such expressive eyes—but takes a little too long to get to the good stuff. A self indulgent—and bizarre—intro gets things off to a slow start but soon the film finds its own unique rhythm, revealing its own bizarre charms.
A hullabaloo arose in 1924 when sex symbol Rudolph Valentino, nicknamed The Shiek, was seen sporting a Van Dyke beard, cultivated for his upcoming role in The Hooded Falcon. The Barbers of America, fearing a loss of business if the famous actor made beards chic, threatened to boycott his films unless he shaved his beard.
Now comes Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, surely to be a target of another nation-wide barber boycott for it’s depiction of hairstylists as bloodthirsty fiends.
Sweeney Todd, the latest collaboration between director Tim Burton and actor Johnny Depp is the darkest musical you’ll likely ever see, a vivid restaging of the 1979 Stephen Sondheim stage musical that doesn’t spare the gore. Based on the classic penny dreadful story about a barber who slits the throats of his clients and his accomplice who then grinds up the bodies and turns them into meat pies, the tale doesn’t seem to lend itself to a musical treatment. The hills are alive with the sound of… gushing blood?
In fact, the musical has always divided audiences. On the opening night of its original Broadway run half the audience reportedly left in disgust at intermission but the show was a hit nonetheless and ran for a healthy 557 performances. The movie is likely to be as divisive. It’s bloody—geysers of arterial plasma spurt from slashed throats before the sliced bodies are unceremoniously dumped down a chute to land on crushed skulls with a sickening thud—but in the best Grand Guignol tradition it’s bleakly beautiful.
In the lead role is Johnny Depp in his sixth partnering with Burton. The deranged barber is another in a long line of risky roles from the actor who once said he would do anything for Burton, adding “If he wants me to have sex with an aardvark in one of his next movies, then I will do that.”
Luckily there’s no bestiality in Sweeney Todd, but that’s about the only sin left undone. Depp’s Sweeney—nee Benjamin Barker—looks like one of the characters from The Corpse Bride come to life. He’s so pale he makes Nicole Kidman look sun burnt and the stripe of grey in his hair brings to mind a German Expressionist version of Jay Leno. Wrongly imprisoned for fifteen years by a judge who coveted his wife, Todd has come back to London with revenge on his mind. His retribution takes the form of a bloody ballet of throat slashing unparalleled since the days of Freddy and Jason. Depp’s memorable performance heightens the drama, perfectly capturing the pent up rage of a man whose life is being overtaken by obsession.
Balancing out the gore is Sondheim’s intriguing light operetta score and Helena Bonham Carter’s take on Mrs. Lovett, the cannibal baker. Before the movie opened online pundits were commenting that she was only cast because she’s Mrs. Tim Burton. Not only is that dismissive and rude, it’s also far from the truth. Living with the director may have given her better access to the part, but she is the perfect choice from her Victoriana Goth looks to the much needed light touch she brings to the grim proceedings.
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street isn’t your father’s musical, but it is beautifully realized vision from one of the most interesting director / actor teams working today.
“The Tourist” is a movie that asks the question, Would one kiss from Angelina Jolie be worth risking your life for? Many would think yes, including Johnny Depp who plays the hapless eponymous character in this new thriller from Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, the director of the Oscar winning “The Lives of Others.”
In this twisty-turny thriller Johnny Depp plays Frank, an American math teacher on a train to Venice who gets caught up in some international intrigue involving a missing banker, Scotland Yard and some murderous Russians when Angelina Jolie sets him up as a decoy to throw the police off the whereabouts of her fugitive boyfriend.
“The Tourist”—a remake of the 2005 French film “Anthony Zimmer”— plays like “Strangers on a Train” meets “True Lies” with a hint of “CSI: Italy” mixed in for good measure. It doesn’t pack the kind of movie star magic promised by the pairing of Depp and Jolie—he’s too passive for most of the film for sparks to really fly—and the storyline feels like a “Matt Helm” movie idea reject, but taken for what it is, a stylishly forgettable Euro romp, it’s a bit of fun.
Despite Depp’s presence Jolie is the star of the film. The camera fawns over her, luxuriating in her every seductive blink, curve and hair flick. Depp falls for her, as does everyone else, including the police who have her under surveillance who debate whether she is wearing underwear or not. Take her out of the equation and there’d be a whole lot less reason to watch the movie.
Tim Burton and Johnny Depp are back at it, collaborating on their eighth film, resurrecting “Dark Shadows,” the long dead gothic soap opera.
The story of a lovesick vampire who awakens in 1972 to find a much different world than the one he left behind seems like perfect fodder for the duo. With Burton’s kitschy-Halloweeny style and Depp’s expertise at playing troubled outsiders, the question remains, Will this have more of the heart of “Ed Wood” (we’d like that!) and less the forced quirk of “Alice in Wonderland” or the other way around?
Depp is Barnabas Collins, (played on the original show by Canadian actor Jonathan Frid who passed away last month at the age of 87), an eighteenth century man cursed by the succubus Angelique Bouchard (Eva Green) after he broke her heart. Turned into a vampire and buried alive for two centuries, he is exhumed in 1972 and returns to his family home, Collins Manor. Things have changed. His once grand home is in disrepair, the family fishing business is in tatters and he thinks the lava lamp is a “pulsating blood urn.”
His descendants, matriarch Elizabeth (Michelle Pfeiffer), her daughter Carolyn (Chloë Moretz), Elizabeth’s brother Roger (Jonny Lee Miller), and his son David (Gulliver McGrath), make a deal with him. In exchange for business help they’ll make him head of the house once again. Trouble is, the rival fishing company is run by the still jealous Angelique who still has feelings for Barnabas.
“Dark Shadows” unfolds at a funereal pace. A peppy prologue sets up the story, but once the main credits roll and Burton is saddled with the task of introducing the movies many characters and giving them all something to do, the pace crawls to a stop.
The movie has a couple of good ghostly apparitions, is wonderfully designed, the sets are beautiful, the look is muted—the vivid colors of “Edward Scissorhands” and “Pee Wee’s Big Adventure” are gone, replaced by a monochrome palate—and the cast is certainly fetching, but while al that may entertain the eye the general lack of energy does little to entertain the rest of the senses.
Depp does what he can to keep things moving. With a ghostly pallor that recalls Edward Scissorhands’s white complexion he is a vampire-out-of-water living among humans in a time he doesn’t understand. His first tentative steps in “the future” are well played and understated. His culture shock at seeing a car or a MacDonald’s sign is fun, and while Depp is skillful, it’s a one-joke premise that wears out its welcome.
More fun is Eva Green’s turn as Angelique. She’s strange and sexy, which is exactly the right tone for this movie. Her love scene with Barnabas—Burton’s first ever!—has the energy sadly missing from the rest of the film.
“Dark Shadows” could have been a fun companion piece to “True Blood” and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” Too bad the storytelling is as musty as the dilapidated old Collins Manor.
Director: Terry Gilliam
Stars: Heath Ledger, Johnny Depp
Classification: PG
As you may have guessed from the title, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is an odd movie. Directed by Terry Gilliam, it’s the strange tale of a mysterious immortal who complicates his life by making deals with the devil.
Complicating Gilliam’s life during production was the unexpected death of his star, Heath Ledger, but, the show, as they say, must go on and here we are after the untimely January 2008 passing of the young actor with a completed film. How did Gilliam finish the movie? A new credit, A Film from Heath Ledger and Friends tells the tale.
Three of Ledger’s buddies, Johnny Depp (seen dancing on a leaf!), Colin Farrell and Jude Law, stepped in to play “through the looking glass” versions of the late actor.
Set in present day London, the film begins with a look at Doctor Parnassus’ (Christopher Plummer) bizarre travelling show that offers people a chance to step through Dr. P’s magical mirror into an alternate reality. He’s selling imagination, but his gift of mind’s eye manipulation came with a heavy price.
Eons before, he made a trade with the devil (Tom Waits): Remarkable power in exchange for his first born daughter on her sixteenth birthday. That anniversary is now days away but with the help of a mysterious stranger named Tony (played by Ledger, Depp, Law and Farrell) and the magic mirror, Dr. P just may be able to save her.
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is more a piece of surrealist art than a traditional movie. Imagine watching a Salvador Dali painting come to life and you’ll get the idea. Gilliam, who co-wrote the script as well as directed, has allowed his imagination to run riot.
While the story meanders to and fro he fills the screen with unforgettable images; Old Nick dangling Dr. P from the end of a branch or a multi-eyed hot air balloon shaped like a man’s head or the ensemble of skirt-wearing, dancing Bobbies. Visually, it’ll make your eyeballs do the Watusi.
The story, however, may leave some a bit baffled, but so what if it warps the brain a bit? The film oozes Gilliam’s trademarked anarchic spirit — he might be the only filmmaker who could replace his leading man with three other actors and actually pull it off — and is the most original movie of the year.
