This 35mm screening is part of the Tim Burton season at the Prince Charles. Details here.
Chicago Reader review:
Tim Burton's charming black-and-white fantasy biopic about Edward D. Wood Jr. (Johnny Depp), a writer-director-actor at the lowest reaches of Z-budget filmmaking who won posthumous cult status by virtue of his eccentric personality (as a straight transvestite) and his very personal form of ineptitude. Such a project requires the historical imagination to re-create a time before camp had entered the mainstream sensibility as an attitude of affection; instead Burton and writers Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski opt for a pie-eyed postmodernist fancy that in effect transports today's audience back into the 50s (derisive at a premiere of Bride of the Monster, respectful at a premiere of Plan 9, absurdly set in Hollywood's plush Pantages Theater). As a result Wood's singularly miserable and abject career, which ended in alcoholism and indigence, is magically transformed into the feel-good movie of 1994, budgeted for a cool $18 million and radiating tenderness (at least for the guys; nearly all the women are regarded as betrayers and spoilsports). Yet the movie still manages some remarkable achievements—in particular, a tour de force performance by Martin Landau as Bela Lugosi (whose friendship with Wood becomes the film's emotional center) and some glorious cinematography by Stefan Czapsky.
Jonathan Rosenbaum
Here (and above) is the trailer.
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