|
New movie reviews, DVD reviews, interviews, and all things film.
Home | Archive | About | Cinematical.com | Lists | News | Links | E-mail me | Sign up for my weekly newsletter! Surveillance **1/2 Whatever Works *** More Sno Cone, Inc. Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li Tokyo! 12 Rounds Tunnel Rats Two Lovers Zane Grey Theater: Complete Season One More Willem Dafoe: The 2009 CineVegas Interview David Carradine A 2002 Interview with Edward Asner Vinessa Shaw Henry Selick 2008: The Year's Ten Best Films The San Francisco Film Critics Circle Awards 2008 The 25 Best DVDs of 2008 Bruce Campbell Darren Aronofsky and Marisa Tomei Josh Brolin A Tribute to Paul Newman Steve Coogan on Hamlet 2 Manny Farber (1917-2008) Bernie Mac (1957-2008) Emily Mortimer Brad Anderson Don Cheadle at CineVegas Abel Ferrara at CineVegas Tina Sinatra My Top 100 Films [Updated] My Top 60 Directors [Updated] The Top 50 Movies of the Past Ten Years (1997-2006) Terry Zwigoff on the new Bad Santa Director's Cut Alfonso Cuarón Interview Guillermo Del Toro Interview Christmas Movies Combustible Celluloid's Big Guide to Halloween & Horror Movies Cult Movies Actress Interview Gallery The Top 100 More Features and Interviews James Agee: The Library of America Collection, by James Agee Just Making Movies, by Ronald L. Davis Guide to Essential Movies, by Joe Leydon Cecil B. DeMille's Hollywood, by Robert S. Birchard Profoundly Disturbing, by Joe Bob Briggs A Third Face, by Samuel Fuller Dark Lover, by Emily Leider Agee on Film, by James Agee Lulu in Hollywood, by Louise Brooks Negative Space, by Manny Farber 5001 Nights at the Movies, by Pauline Kael More Books Reviews A-C Reviews D-F Reviews G-J Reviews K-M Reviews N-Q Reviews R-T Reviews U-Z The online film magazine Combustible Celluloid offers new movie reviews, DVD reviews, film reviews, actor interviews, actress interviews, director interviews, film books and all things cinema related for the thoughtful and passionate. Online for ten years! Over 3000 reviews!
© 1997-2009 Combustible Celluloid |
Tim Burton's Corpse Bride (2005)Rating: 3 1/2 Stars (out of 4)With This Ring I Thee DeadBy Jeffrey M. Anderson
The good news is that Corpse Bride is a return to Burton's spunky, unfettered ideals. Made possible by the ever-growing cult around the 1993 stop-motion animated The Nightmare Before Christmas, Corpse Bride is similarly animated, though it looks so smooth that audiences may suspect CGI is involved. Like the earlier film, Corpse Bride has a delirious, gothic sensibility, as if Charles Addams and Edward Gorey had risen from the grave to contribute to its spirit. Johnny Depp, working with Burton for the fifth time, lends his voice to Victor Van Dort, a skinny, meek lad who finds himself engaged to a girl he has never met, Victoria Everglot (voiced by Emily Watson). They meet for their wedding rehearsal, and the good news is that they're instantly attracted to one another, but the bad news is that Victor botches the entire thing, and retreats to the woods to practice his vows. Once there, he unexpectedly finds his vows heard and accepted by the corpse bride of the title (voiced by Helena Bonham Carter). Drawn into the underworld, Victor must figure out a way to return to the land of the living before his fleshy betrothed marries an evil gold digging villain, Barkis Bittern (Richard E. Grant). Based on an old Russian folk story, Corpse Bride is set in the 19th century but has nothing dreary or stodgy about it. Burton and his co-director Mike Johnson (an animator on The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach as well as a director on the short-lived Eddie Murphy TV show "The PJs") keep the film moving at a snappy pace. Likewise, the film contains a new set of Danny Elfman songs, but they're quick and snappy as well as few and far between. The voice casting here is far more inspired than in The Nightmare Before Christmas, partially because Burton has by now built up a company of trusted actors. Albert Finney (Big Fish) and Christopher Lee (Sleepy Hollow, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) lend their pipes to two of the most vivid characters, but an actor named Stephan Ballantyne stands out as well, delivering a dead-on Peter Lorre impersonation in Emil, a maggot living in our corpse bride's brain. Burton and Johnson have cleverly balanced the film's darkness with PG-friendly escapism, so that the corpse bride's astonishing hourglass figure doesn't seem too much of a goth fetish; it should pass by young viewers without notice. Thankfully, Burton did not feel the need to talk down to kids, or clean up his act for them. Like Roald Dahl, whose Chocolate Factory Burton just returned from, this director understands that kids -- and audiences in general -- respond to honesty. Burton has plumbed his spidery soul for a glorious vision of undead vixens, walking through the night as if every day were Halloween. DVD Details: Warner Home Video's DVD doesn't particularly feature any extras worth writing home about: just a bunch of featurettes. There's a music-only audio track and a trailer. All told, however, this is still one of the only 2005 movies that I'd want to own and watch over and over again, so it doesn't really matter what the extras are. Starring: (voices) Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Emily Watson, Tracey Ullman, Paul Whitehouse, Joanna Lumley, Albert Finney, Richard E. Grant, Christopher Lee, Micahel Gough, Jane Horrocks, Enn Reitel, Deep Roy, Danny Elfman, Stephan Ballantyne |
| Home |
News |
Search Reviews |
Classic Movies |
DVDs |
Features |
Film Books |
Gallery |
Links |
About |
The Rating System |
Email Me |