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| Ed Wood |
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  (9/10)
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Runtime: 127 |
| Public Rating: 8.27 (84 votes) |
Director: Tim Burton |
MPAA Rating:  |
| Genre: Comedy/Drama |
Year: 1994 |
| Writer(s): Rudolph Grey (book), Scott Alexander |
| Reviewed by: Arturo García Lasca |
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I don't know much about old filmmaking, I was kinda surprised after I saw the film when I actually realized those characters were once real, and Edward D. Wood Jr. is actually considered the worst director of all time. This movie, which is based mostly upon true facts -Not sure if it's all true-, shows us how Ed Wood, a pretty weird guy, became a filmmaker and did some of the worst films known to man up to date, along with some people who were famous around that era.
Ed Wood (Johnny Depp) started with theater plays, but they sucked big time, according to newspaper critics. He works with his girlfriend Dolores Fuller (Sarah Jessica Parker) and a homosexual who wishes to have a sex change opperation, Bunny (Bill Murray). Wood decides to enter the film industry, so he writes a story about a man who likes to wear women's clothes; it turns out he wrote about himself. Somehow he got to direct that script of his, and also star in it; the movie stunk.
It all started when Wood met Bela Lugosi (Martin Landau), who hadn't been in films for a couple of years but was once very famous, around the time he made Dracula (1931). Wood becomes a friend of Lugosi, and he uses him in his pictures to draw attention, and also to get money from the producers, "I have the script, and I have a huge movie star!" he would say -I'm not quoting him-. He would also give some roles to Tor Johnson (Geroge 'The Animal' Steele), a very big man Wood found at a wrestling match. Other people he met were Vampire (Lisa Marie), a host for a television show; Criswell (Jeffrey Jones), who made money by making idiotic guesses on TV; and he later met Kathy (Patricia Arquette), who later became his wife.
The thing with Ed Wood is that he wasn't really born to be in the film industry, he couldn't do anything right, no matter how hard he tried. Wood was a weird guy, wearing female clothing and everything, but he also had no talent for filmmaking; For example, he would never shoot the same scene twice, it didn't matter to him if something went wrong, he would just leave the scene as it was, even when the camera man and other crew members would clearly notice something went wrong. Wood himself would think he was doing everything right, and apparently he seem not to have a clue of why his films were such a disaster; he must have been a bit crazy in real life.
Johnny Depp is fantastic as Ed Wood, he played him so beautifuly it's even hard to imagine another person trying to do such a masterful job. That's why Depp is one of my favourite working actors nowdays, he doesn't seem to be afraid of choosing different roles everytime, and he does them all so well, gotta love him. But still, I think the best performance came from Martin Landau -I actually didn't realize it was him until the credits-, who actually became Bela Lugosi for this film. Landau was awesome as an old, isolated, ill man who knows will someday die and while waiting he just takes drugs and calls his good buddy Ed everytime he feels sick. His accent was very convincing, just as his tone of voice and movemenets; it all seem so right, it's hard to believe. The rest of the cast was also pretty good, but nowhere near the level Landau and Depp had.
The black and white was an incredibly nice touch, it certainly added 'something' to the film, I don't know exactly what that is, maybe it just made it more believable that the time we're looking at are the 50's. Great job by Tim Burton. "Ed Wood" is a wonderful film, the story is just a pleasure to watch and there are some laughs in the way so you don't get bored. I don't think the film got the recognition it deserved, maybe because 1994 had so many great films, I believe it's a real shame more people haven't seen this yet. Go watch it as soon as possible, it's fabulous.
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